Not looking at either of them, I cleared my throat, speaking levelly.
“We can go back in now,” I told them.
19
CONTEST
JON FROWNED A little, staring at his eight fingers splayed on the table in front of him. The table itself, an organic and therefore tinged green like all the rest, glowed faintly under his hands, exuding a pale light. Despite the sun-replicating lights around the rim of the room, it created a ghostly glow in every face ringing the long, oval table.
Jon's hands looked whiter to him, too...whiter even than they had before, when they’d been on the run for months from Revik and his people in India and Nepal.
He was getting pretty tired of living underground, like some kind of mole.
Despite the more irritated musings filtering through his mind around this, he couldn’t help but listen as Vash continued to speak. The ancient seer directed his words to the whole room, in that same, calm voice he always used, the one that remained both gentle and melodious no matter what was going on around them...or what he was saying.
“...Therefore,” he summarized serenely, completing a discourse involving inter-dimensional Barrier spaces that went over Jon’s head entirely. “...I believe it is possible we have reached the limits of what we can do with him in this way.” His words grew slightly somber, despite the inherent cheerfulness of his tone. “...We continue to see scenes of war, but the images are no longer impacting him in a manner that would be helpful to our purposes...at least not sufficiently to open whatever it is he is protecting in his aleimi...”
“Protecting in his aleimi?” Jon muttered. He looked up, his hands still splayed on the table. “What does that mean, exactly...?”
“It means, young cousin,” Vash responded politely, looking directly at Jon. “...That we cannot access the part of his light that is broken off from the rest. He is protecting it. And without that part of his light repaired, he will remain broken.” He made a more or less gesture with one hand. “...For all intents and purposes. It is preventing us from healing the main rift.”
“He threw up a few times,” Dorje added into the pause, glancing at Balidor. The other seer didn’t appear to acknowledge him, so Dorje looked around at the others in the room, his voice turning explanatory. “...I had thought that indicated an emotional response of some kind. It seemed tied to the sessions...”
“Indeed,” Vash conceded agreeably. “There is shame, yes...and self-hatred. He is not devoid of emotion, witnessing these scenes. But they do not hit at the core of what he is protecting. Shame alone is not sufficient to reach whatever it is that Alyson had been leading him towards.”
“You think she was on to something?” Jon looked up at the old seer. “Allie, I mean.”
The seer met his gaze just as seriously. “Most definitely. We both do, cousin. Tarsi and I believe that is the primary reason he drove her away so vehemently...”
Before Jon could fully absorb this, Vikram spoke up from the other side of the table.
“What do you think it was?” he said. “Something about the war?”
Vash made a polite gesture with one hand, but one that obviously meant ‘no.’
“Something more personal than that, I suspect, brother,” he said. His dark eyes shone in the glow of the table as he turned his head, looking at Tarsi. After a pause where something seemed to be communicated between them, he shrugged with one white hand, almost a seer apology.
Tarsi spoke up when they broke eye contact.
“He won’t show us anything personal,” she said curtly. “He distracts us with the war...with his killing. Ironically, it is a part of himself he finds safer. He has, on some level, come to terms with the image of himself as a killer...”
“I thought he was just being a prick,” Jon muttered, staring back at his hands. “Showing her all that crap...about the women he seduced, and that teacher...”
“He killed the teacher,” Tarsi interjected, causing all of them to turn. “He didn’t tell her that, did he?”
At the silence around the table, Tarsi shrugged, her clear eyes showing a different kind of understanding than Vash’s. Jon continued to watch her, briefly unable to look away from her eyes, which were so much like Revik’s sometimes it was unnerving.
“He didn't tell us that, either. We had that before,” she said, matter-of-fact. “...Before these sessions I mean. There are records of Ewald Gottschalk with the authorities of the time. Just very few.” Leaning back in her chair, she met Jon’s gaze. Her oddly smooth skin didn’t take away from the age he could feel on her, an almost timeless quality, especially with her dark hair, only faintly streaked with gray, and the teeth that looked like those of a twenty- or thirty-year-old human.
“...He went to find her, like he told the Bridge. But it was on his uncle’s orders. He killed her...and when her husband came home, he killed him, too. The difference is, that time, the local authorities caught him. They found him sitting on a stump outside their house, covered in blood...holding a gun.” She glanced back at Jon. “The blood was hers. He shot her at point-blank range. In the face. Then again in the chest...”
Jon swallowed, feeling sick.
He saw Tarsi glance at Balidor, her clear eyes almost blue in the odd lighting.
“It’s one of the only records we have of him from that time,” she added. “...From the humans, anyway. He was charged in the double-homicide that time, and spent a few weeks in jail before his uncle got him out for ‘health reasons,’ promising he wasn’t a flight risk. Before the trial could happen, his uncle faked his death...masked it as a political attack by the French, paid for by enemies of Germany. Then he set fire to the police station where they had his photograph and fingerprints...and the bloody shirt as evidence, of course. There’d be no record of the event at all, but one of the policemen had taken the hard-copy file of the incident details to another township...to check it against other unsolved crimes. That human...he was pretty industrious, for the time. In his own words, something about the crime made him think it hadn’t been the first...” She paused, looking once more at Jon.
“...He thought him a monster. A kind of remorseless animal.”
“A serial killer,” Jon clarified.
“That would be the modern term...yes,” she conceded. She went on in the same voice as before, glancing around the table. “...They had a partial of the police file as a result. But no evidence, no way to positively identify the killer, other than by appearance, which might have been good enough back then, but they couldn’t try a corpse...”
Tarsi shrugged, holding her hands almost flat, level with her shoulder. She continued seconds later, her voice just as matter-of-fact.
“His death ended the inquiry,” she said. “...The policeman in question died not long after. I don’t know how the partial record escaped Menlim’s notice...but it did. Ewald Gottschalk’s remains were interred in a family plot, and that name never resurfaced again.”
There was another silence.
Jon looked up somewhere inside it, glancing at the other faces. He couldn’t tell from their eyes if they were speaking to one another in the Barrier or not. They all looked faintly unhappy...all but Balidor, who wore no expression at all.
“Did he lie to her on purpose?” Jon asked Tarsi finally.
Tarsi shrugged again, her eyes unmoving once they turned to his.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Could be either. But it’s significant, either way.”
Jon nodded, returning his gaze to his hands on the table. When no one broke the silence for another stretch of time, he glanced around at faces once more.
“Has anyone heard from her?” he said then. “Did she even make it to China?”
“She did,” Vash acknowledged, smiling at Jon. “She made it there...and left shortly after. She said the others had already been released...including Cass and Baguen. Some agreement was struck between the Lao Hu and with the remnants of the rebels, who are now under the command of Wreg.
Whatever it was, Voi Pai seemed content with the result.”
Alarmed, Jon looked up. “Did she run into Wreg there?”
“No.” Vash gesturing reassuringly, smiling again. “They had left well over a week before she got there, she said.”
“So where is she?” Jon said. “Did she say where she was going?” He paused, looking around at all of them. None would meet his gaze, none except Dorje, who squeezed his hand. Disengaging their fingers, Jon continued to look around the table. “Are we really just going to let her go?”
“What would you have us do, cousin?” Balidor asked quietly from the corner.
Jon turned, looking at him in surprise. It occurred to him only then that it was the first time he’d heard the Adhipan leader speak.
“Go after her...track her at least!”
When he looked around at the others, Vash raised an apologetic hand.
“She is the Bridge, young cousin. It is not right that we do such a thing...and even more, it is not practical. Brother Balidor taught her shielding well.”
Jon frowned, then bit it back, looking back at the table.
“So where’s Cass?” he said, his voice neutral once more. “Baguen?”
“We do not yet know,” Vash said.
When Jon looked up at this, he met Vash’s calm eyes.
“...For obvious reasons,” the old seer added. “They cannot come here, Jon...surely the rebels would follow them. Wreg, in particular, would not pass up such an opportunity...he would hope they would provide a trail leading directly to the Sword. We could not even tell them the location of this site, in the event they might be captured. Both she and Baguen knew this when they left. They have likely gone to one of the several safe zones we outlined for their use.”
But Jon was already nodding, waving off the old seer’s explanations.
“Yeah,” he sighed, rubbing his face with his mutilated hand. “Got it.”
“So what must we do?” Tenzi asked, from near Balidor. He looked first at Vash, then at Tarsi, who seemed to command his eyes for longer. “The Bridge may not return. We cannot wait for her, to rid the Sword of the Dreng. Eventually, they will find us here...”
“Yes,” Vash agreed. “Both of these things are true.”
“And?” Jon said, staring at both of them now as well. “Is there no solution, is that what you’re saying? What is the purpose of this stupid meeting, then?”
Tarsi clicked softly, but somehow, it got Jon to pull back his anger. Looking at those clear eyes, he remembered again that she had once been in Balidor’s role, as head of the Adhipan. Unlike Vash, who had always been more of a spiritual and occasionally political leader, she had been their top infiltrator.
“We are advocating a different strategy,” Tarsi said. “It is one with which we would need assistance...possibly one or more volunteers.”
“What kind of strategy?” Vikram said.
Tarsi made a ‘more or less’ gesture with one hand. “We believe a more...aggressive approach might be more effective at this stage.”
“Meaning what?” Jon said. A kind of wariness came over him as he studied the eyes of the ancient female. “Like, beat him up, aggressive?”
He’d meant it as a not-so-funny joke, but the old seer’s eyes grew thoughtful, just before she shrugged in Vash’s direction. He, too, merely raised an eyebrow, as if conceding a point.
“You’re serious?” Jon said.
“Not precisely that,” Vash said, holding up a hand in a calming gesture. Then, thinking for a moment, he made another of those ‘more or less’ gestures with one hand. “...Well, more or less. We believe he will be less able to block the two of us if he is sufficiently distracted...”
“Distracted?” Jon gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re serious?”
Vash went on just as smoothly. “If we distract him long enough from his attempts to block us, we might be able to circumvent them. The connection his wife created remains quite intact...and quite strong, really...surprisingly so, considering her absence. We are able to reach his light, so the problem is not the same as the one we had with him before, when we attempted to reach him in the Pamir. We believe with the proper...distraction...we might be able to get past his defenses.” Vash paused, glancing around the table at all of them once more. “...It would have to be sufficiently strenuous for him...” he added.
“You mean...uncuff him?” Jon said.
“It would be better, yes, young cousin,” Tarsi said.
There was another silence.
Then Jon gave a low laugh.
“Who would be stupid enough to do that?” he said. “Did you not see the footage of him with Allie? Or did you imagine we’d take him in turns, until he’s killed half of us, or we’ve somehow managed to tire him out?”
“I’ll do it,” a voice said.
Jon turned, realizing who had spoken even as he looked at the Adhipan leader’s face. Again, he’d barely noticed his silence until he’d broken it.
Everyone else stared at Balidor, too.
“‘Dori,” Jon said, exasperated. “You remember how Revik fights, right? You remember Maygar...how it took about ten of your guys to get him down?”
“I said I’ll do it,” Balidor said to the rest of the table, ignoring Jon as he met Vash’s gaze.
The two older seers glanced at one another. Then they looked at Balidor somberly, their eyes serious. Recognizing that look, Jon gave another disbelieving laugh. No one joined him in it.
Instead Vash looked at Tarsi, as if deferring to her judgment.
“I think he is the perfect choice, yes,” Tarsi said, answering a question that Jon, and likely no other seer at the table heard. Her eyes sharpened on Balidor.
“You cannot kill him,” she warned.
Balidor gave a short laugh. “Understood.”
“There is some risk. Your cousin is not wrong...”
Balidor dismissed this with a gesture.
Then Tenzi spoke up from where he sat beside Balidor, making Jon jump.
“What about the prostitutes?” he said.
At Jon’s irritated look, the seer gestured apologetically.
“...I just meant, if we wished to distract him. Wouldn’t that work just as well? He asked for some, didn’t he? The Bridge approved the request. We would not need to risk brother Balidor then...” He gave Jon another apologetic look. “...And he is less likely to be suspicious. He asked for them, after all. He is expecting them, yes?”
Another silence fell, this one uncomfortable. In it, Jon felt every pair of eyes on him, as if waiting for him, personally, to approve that approach.
After a pause, Jon sighed, clicking softly with his tongue.
“He’s refused them, since then,” he said, clearing his throat. “I think he was just trying to piss off Allie. Or maybe he got nervous when she left...but he hasn’t exactly been cooperative on that point since he read her letter.” Jon gave a low grunt. “Hell, I almost think it would be a good idea. He’s been a serious asshole since she left...and that’s saying something...”
When he glanced up, he found Vash smiling at him, his eyes holding a kind of understanding. His smile grew warmer when Jon met his gaze.
“He said what he had to say,” the old seer nodded. “...To get her to leave. It is a shame, really, that it worked. But perhaps she, too, had reached the limit of what she could accomplish on her own, without a different set of tactics to aid her.”
Everyone looked at Balidor again, as the silence once more stretched.
“So when do we begin?” the Adhipan leader said.
JON LEANED OVER Dorje’s seat, peering through the green-tinted window.
Like the others, he found himself glued to the contents of the tank, unable to take his eyes off the window...at least not without shifting his gaze to one of the monitors ringing the security station, giving him different perspectives on the same view.
Imaging devices covered every segment of the rectangular room. Monitors displayed aro
und him in a single, crescent-shaped pane, as thin as glass. They paused on Revik at different angles, and on Vash and Tarsi, who were already inside, sitting in the far corner of the room on thick prayer mats. The latter two both wore heavy robes, their eyes closed, faces smooth. Between them and the rest of the tank stood a thin, organic wall...not a Barrier shield, but a physical one, to keep them from being hurt by what came next, Jon supposed. Dorje, who had put it in place the night before, told Jon it performed some energetic function too...amplifying something, or maybe keeping the two of them somewhat apart from Revik's light. Whatever it was, Jon hadn't really understood how it would help, but apparently Tarsi provided the design.
Either way, neither of them would be much help in a fight. Not a physical one, anyway.
The camera angles shifted again, moving to the opposite ends of the room, including the hatch-like door and the corner across from it, which had only a toilet and shower. Dorje programmed both for use by Allie, along with a spigot for water and a partition she could pull out to change.
Jon had watched Revik stare at her when she retreated behind it, his eyes unmoving until she came back out again. Thinking about Vash’s words, about how he’d driven her away on purpose, after showing her more than he seemed willing to show anyone else, Jon frowned a little, looking at the chained man in the green-tinted room.
It was hard to imagine that on some twisted level, to Revik, showing his wife scenes of him molesting women and whoring could be considered a sign of trust.
Jon turned when the other seers did, following Balidor’s approach to the outside hatch. Balidor entered without preamble, Tenzi and Vikram unlocking the door and opening it for him, then shutting it behind him. He wore the same thing he always seemed to wear, what Jon was beginning to think of as the Adhipan uniform...dark pants, a gray-green shirt that probably had some kind of organic in the fabric, a heavier vest over that. He wore all but the boots, which were absent; he wore what looked like black slippers instead, separated out for each toe, with what looked like grips on the bottom.
Allie's War Season Two Page 102
