The device did little to nothing to moderate emotions...they seemed to have left that part of his light raw on purpose. While a liability in some ways, the opening would cut two ways, leaving room for vague impressions of emotional reaction or even thoughts from them, if they thought loudly and consistently enough around him.
He might be able to use that. He might.
He would be able to feel her.
For a moment he could only lean there, panting. Even in the midst of assessing of his predicament, emotion continued to flare in his chest. When he blinked, he realized tears ran down his face...although what they were from, he could no longer tell anymore.
The older seer nodded, still staring into Revik’s face.
“Yes, my friend,” he breathed, softer. “Yes, I understand. I surely do.”
For the first time, the gray eyes actually smoldered with anger.
“Despite what I said, I regret very much that I let her go with you.”
Balidor spoke low; so low, Revik doubted it would be picked up by surveillance.
“...I knew it was a mistake,” he whispered, softer. “It is one I will not repeat. Not ever. Do you understand me, Rook?”
He stared at Revik, as if willing him to speak. Willing him to say he understood.
Revik did understand, but kept it off his face.
Finally, Balidor sighed, clicking a little in irritation.
“I don’t think it will be an issue for long, Rook,” he said. “She will see your true face now. She will understand what you really are, under that costume they gave you...”
Revik didn’t move his gaze, even when the other averted his, a frown on his lips.
The knees straightened, bringing the older seer gracefully back to full height.
“So we each have made our promises to one another...yes?”
Revik couldn’t form words, but he felt it through his entire body.
Pain wrapped into grief, leaving only that darkness...the demon below.
Promises.
The Adhipan leader could phrase it to himself however he liked.
He would be free one day.
He would be free...in one way or the other.
She would be waiting for him there, on the other side.
And this time, Revik would be ready.
3
HOPE
I SAT AT the table with the rest of them, silent with the rest of them.
No one spoke until the recording finished playing, and even for a time after it ended.
I felt Jon’s eyes on me as I slid fingers through my hair.
My adoptive brother Jon was the only human in the room. As I continued to watch his face, he clasped my fingers in his, using the hand that had lost two of his fingers. He never used to touch me with that hand, I thought, staring down at it. He seemed to have gotten over being self-conscious of the deformity. Lately, he touched me with it all the time.
He’d lost the fingers to the first seer he’d ever knowingly met, after my husband. Jon and Revik had been held captive together in a similar cave in the mountains, and tortured along with my best friend, Cass, for months.
Before that happened, my brother had been a pretty normal guy, at least for San Francisco. He’d been a jock. He had a lot of friends, male and female. He’d always been a little shy on the dating front, but I understood why. He was a gay guy in San Francisco who didn’t like to swing. He never came out and said it, but I always figured he kept the whole dating and romance thing low-key, given how many guys would have tried to get into his pants if they’d known his orientation.
Anyway, he was always too philosophical for most of the jet set crowd in SF, gay or straight. He’d always been political, too, even a bit of a conspiracy nut at times, or so I’d liked to tease. He’d worked full time as a kung fu instructor in the Richmond District, and probably 90% of his students, male and female, had a crush on him.
He’d laughed all the time back then.
He looked so different these days, at times I barely recognized him.
Jon had regained most of his muscle tone from dedicated work in mulei, the seer martial art. He’d even gotten involved in politics again, with his boyfriend, Dorje. He sated his philosophical leanings by sitting in on teachings with Vash and his monks, and by studying these dense seer tomes that frankly would have bored me to tears. He was even meditating again, maybe more than he had when he lived in California.
But his face would never be the same as it had been back then. His features had hardened. Something in his hazel-colored eyes carried an intensity that hadn’t been present before. Sadness lived there too, even when he smiled. Even when he seemed otherwise happy.
His hair had grown out a dark blond in the past few months, the same color as our human father’s. He wore it in a clip at the base of the neck, seer-fashion.
I wondered if Dorje had given him the clip, too.
I felt him staring back at me. I felt the worry in his human light as he studied my eyes.
I knew my face showed something, although I didn’t know what.
I couldn’t get past the image that hung frozen on the screen, of my husband, Revik, staring coldly at the man in front of him. Eyes vacant of any expression, of anything I recognized. I saw nothing of the man I’d originally married in that stare.
I didn’t even see anything in it I recognized from Syrimne...the man I’d grown to know in the past six or so months I’d spent being his wife in that rebel stronghold in the Southwestern mountains of China.
I’d grown to love that man, too. Maybe not as much as I had my original husband, but I grew to care about him a lot, to respect him.
At times, I’d wanted to forget the whole reason I’d gone to him in the first place. I’d wanted to just stay there with him...be his wife. Pretend the rest never happened. Above all, never let him find out the real reason I'd agreed to live with him again.
I'd wanted that so badly it kept me up for nights. I barely slept at all after the Registry job, and I was on the fence right up until the very minute everything went down.
The sad truth was, I'd wanted to stay with him. Even given how he was. Even knowing how bad it was for both of us, for me to pretend, to leave him there like nothing was wrong.
Even in spite of things between us being a bit of a charade.
Not like everything was perfect, living there with Syrimne. We never reached that true depth of intimacy I’d had with him before he changed. There had been a forced quality to some of it...even the sex. Maybe especially the sex, at least when we were both using it to try and tie ourselves to one another. In some ways, his attempt to make the marriage work with me had also been an attempt to make a mythology of our relationship, one that didn’t always leave room for the actual people behind it.
One that didn’t always leave room for me. Certainly not a version of me capable of telling him the truth about what I saw happening between us.
I’d found myself doing things with him, as a part of that charade, that I never would have imagined myself doing for anyone else. In some respects, he’d been like a child...like the boy he’d been as Nenzi, before he turned back into Syrimne.
He’d been an exhibitionist. He’d been insecure and enthusiastic and he hadn’t seen me clearly. He’d been too wrapped up in the myth of who he believed me to be.
He’d been too wrapped up in the myth of us.
We’d done things together that were borderline degrading, really. I knew that was more about his insecurities though, too...as well as attempts by both of us to solidify that hold we had on one another. I did it because I was terrified of losing him. I was terrified of losing him to Salinse, to the Dreng, so I’d wanted to have more of a hold on him than they did.
I don’t know why he did it exactly, but I can guess.
I’d already left him once before. We’d called our months together a ‘trial’ period, and he didn’t want me to leave him again at the end of it.
As Syrimne, he harbored no
qualms about putting that stamp of ownership on me, even in quasi-public settings. At times, it was crass, embarrassing, overly rough.
And I let him do it. I even encouraged it at times, in an attempt to get him to trust me...to view us as being on the same side.
But still, even beyond all that, I’d found myself caring about him. As Syrimne, he could be incredibly tender and compassionate...even beyond the masks I sometimes witnessed. I saw kindness towards his people; I saw that kindness aimed at Terian, too, as his prisoner. When we were alone, he seemed almost to see me as a person again, as something other than his mate, the Bridge, who’d been promised to him since before he was born.
I’d forgiven a lot in him, knowing how much had been pushed on him growing up. I’d forgiven a lot, knowing his mind had been broken, that he’d been beaten and brainwashed until he hadn’t really been able to grow up properly at all.
I’d forgiven a lot also because even under all that, I felt the man I’d married, so strongly at times it hurt to know I couldn’t really be with him, despite everything.
The person in the security feeds, I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t know that person at all...and while they’d explained it all to me, numerous times, I still didn’t understand.
Maybe I didn’t want to understand.
We all sat around a heavy, semi-organic table housed in a conference room underground. I’d been in this particular underground structure once before. For weeks, in fact. But that time, I’d been unconscious through most of it. I’d also been screaming and wishing I could die during the periods I’d been awake...so I didn’t remember the furniture, size or layout too well when we arrived a few days earlier.
I certainly didn’t remember this room, which the Adhipan had been using as a strategy planning area for the past week or so. I’d never seen the kitchen that first visit, either, or any of the bunker-like residence rooms...or the library or other common areas.
The whole place felt old and futuristic at the same time. The rooms combined an odd mix of seer tech and furniture that looked to date from the late fifties or early sixties. I’d even found a stack of records in one of the lounge areas, with singers like Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Holly, a few of Elvis and Johnny Cash. I think the newest thing they had was Bob Dylan, which kind of jived with the dated feel of the caves in general.
We‘d brought Revik here because of the tank.
The organic holding cell, which we’d all come to start calling “the tank,” was the only thing we knew of that was strong enough to cut Revik’s light off from the light of the Dreng.
Hopefully.
It had been designed by Galaith to remove a seer from the Barrier entirely.
The Barrier proper that is, meaning the space from which seers derived all of their powers, and where over half of their consciousness normally lived. Since the Barrier also housed pretty much every connection seers had to one another and other beings, removing a seer from it entirely was no mean feat. Most devices that claimed to do it, only accomplished it at certain levels or frequencies, by housing them in a shielding construct of some kind.
The tank was different.
Galaith, while human, hadn’t been above experimenting on the light of both seers and his own race. He’d also been interested in finding ways to both enhance and control seer powers...as well as grant similar powers to humans.
The tank had been designed to remove a seer from the greater Barrier totally. Not part of the way removed, like a sight restraint collar or sight-inhibitor drugs, or even one of the Dreng’s own constructs. Entirely removed.
It meant, in theory at least, that the Dreng couldn’t reach him in there.
It meant he couldn’t reach them, either.
It also meant that I couldn’t reach him, not from outside the tank's walls.
It meant no seer could find him, anywhere in the world, even those who had a strong personal connection to him. That same tank might be killing him, if I could believe what these seers were telling me. And not from his separation from me.
Maybe it just hurt that he actually did need the Dreng more than he needed me.
“You’re sure that’s what’s wrong with him?” I said, looking at Vash.
“Yes.” The old seer’s expression held compassion. “...I am sorry, my dear.”
“Have you done anything else to him?” I said, turning to Balidor. “Since I tranked him on the plane. Did you give him anything? Anything at all?”
“We stabilized him in transport...”
“I mean since he got here.”
Another seer answered, speaking up from the other side of the room. Poresh, one of the seer infiltrators working under Balidor in the Adhipan, made a line in the air with his finger, a seer’s no. He’d been overseeing the care of Revik’s physical state, and now he looked me directly in the face, his voice falling into the cadence of a formal report.
“There have been sedatives a number of times, Esteemed Bridge," Poresh said, bowing to me in deference. "Those have merely been attempts to help him deal with anxiety...and the overt irrationality and aggression that accompanies this state. Nothing we have given him would cause the effects you are witnessing. In fact, the drugs have mitigated those effects...marginally, it is true...but they have kept him from hurting himself several times.”
“Is he being fed?” Jon said. “He looks like he’s lost weight.”
“He is fed...he does not always eat. He is fed a lot, Esteemed Bridge,” Poresh said with added emphasis, taking in my more pointed look. “Three meals. Sometimes more. As much water as he can drink...”
“Is it seer food?” I said.
“Seer food only, Esteemed Bridge. You had told us he would be unlikely to eat anything else. We also supply him with specific items, when he asks...including hiri...”
“He likes curry,” Jon said. “It’s about the only human food he’ll eat a lot of.”
Balidor gave Jon an openly disbelieving look, one laced with irritation.
I’d watched the Adhipan leader change, too, since I’d first come to know him.
Really, since I’d left the Forbidden City with Revik, a little more than six months earlier, he’d seemed like a different person. We still called it an op, the two of us, when referring to my time with Revik in those mountains. We acted like it was just work, just part of getting Revik away from the Dreng...but both of us knew it had been more than that. It had been the tipping point for me, I guess, in the decision of what I would do about Syrimne.
As in me, personally, in terms of my marriage. I’d made my choice.
I think Balidor could handle that I’d fallen in love with, and married, Dehgoies Revik. He’d liked that Revik. He’d even tried to recruit him to the Adhipan, and more than that, to become his friend...even mentor him as an infiltrator for the Seven. He’d supported us as mates, and during a time when a lot of the more traditional seers didn’t.
So it wasn’t the fact that I’d married Revik in the first place.
Or that I’d accepted him, despite his past.
What Balidor couldn’t comprehend is how I could choose to remain married to Syrimne, an agent of the Dreng. Nor could he really wrap his head around the fact that I’d chosen Syrimne over him, the leader of the Adhipan, and supposedly one of the good guys.
I couldn’t really explain it to him, either.
Revik, in all of his guises, still managed to trump any relationship I formed with anyone else, no matter how much I might care about that other person...and no matter what Revik did, to me or to anyone else. I’d done things I never thought I’d do, trying to help him. I’d done things that would probably make him hate me, when all was said and done, but I still couldn’t say I regretted them...not truthfully.
I’d told Balidor all of that, of course. He’d known how I felt about Revik from day one. But like most people, even seers, he only heard the parts that made sense to him.
Since that scene on the plane, when Balidor saw
me choose Syrimne over him yet again, despite everything, things had been pretty cold between us.
He didn’t bring up the thing with us again, though. He seemed to have accepted, finally, that any kind of romance with me was a dead end. Since that time, he’d held me at arm’s length in a way that made it clear that while he may have accepted it, he certainly didn’t forgive me for it. He also didn’t let me be alone with him much more than a few minutes at a time, even though we used to hang out all the time as friends, before all this.
But truthfully, I couldn’t care about that either.
My mind was caught in a loop, and I couldn’t get out of it. I stared at Balidor, but not for who he was to me. I stared at him because he was still the best infiltrator we had of all the seers, and because I needed him to help me fix Revik.
“‘Dori?” I said. “I need you to explain this to me. He wasn’t like this. Even on the plane. He was angry at me, and harsh. He even threatened me...but he wasn’t like this...”
It wasn’t the Adhipan leader who answered my question.
Vash spoke up instead, from the other side of the long table.
He had arrived in the compound only that day. The presence of the oldest seer in the Council of Seven...hell, perhaps the oldest of all seers, anywhere, for all I knew...had been a large part of the impetus for the meeting.
The decision to wait for him before having this little pow-wow had been mine. He still had the best sight of anyone I knew. He also provided a voice of reason and moderation when it came to the more militaristic approach of the Adhipan...especially when it came to Revik.
He cared about Revik, which to the others made him biased.
To me, it made him an ally, someone I could trust.
Now he sat on the far side of the rectangular table, wearing his trademark, sand-colored robe. His long, white hair tied loosely back in a clip, he’d sat there quietly through most of the discussion so far, his expression unmoving as they played the surveillance footage of Revik collared in that tank. I could tell by looking at him that he hadn’t been unaffected by what he’d seen. Vash’s narrow, smooth face almost always appeared to be smiling in some form, whether at his sculpted lips or at some level of depth in his dark, fathomless eyes.
Allie's War Season Two Page 57
