Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  He shrugged, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “You’ve got to learn to blend, Chan.”

  “I blend fine,” she said, still watching the humans warily as they stood around outside the roll-top garage door, drinking beer. “I simply prefer not to live in places where they view seers as rabid animals that need to be raped daily and beaten into submission.”

  “Here,” he said impatiently, thrusting a pair of sunglasses on her. “Stop staring and put these on. Or with your bad temper, we will have a problem.”

  Without waiting for her, he slid off the long seat, snapping the latch to the car door and stepping out.

  Shoving the mirrored glasses over her nose to cover her eyes, Chandre took another few seconds to tie back her braids in a loose bunch at the nape of her neck, and then followed him out of the car. She felt the stares as soon as she straightened to her full height, but a quick scan of their light caused her shoulders to relax.

  They didn’t know what she was. They just liked muscular women.

  “Hey!” one of them yelled. “You with the braids!”

  Another of his friends whistled, bringing a general laugh.

  “Pretty woman!” another sang out. “Lovely lady! We’re talking to you!”

  “You with poser boy over there, honey? Hey! Dark and gorgeous! Over here!”

  “How about you come for a ride with us?”

  After hesitating the barest breath, Chandre didn’t look up, but simply turned, following Maygar to a set of stairs badly in need of more rust-colored paint.

  “Lovely lady legs… come on! Ditch that boyo! Have a beer with us!”

  Listening to them vie for her attention, she found herself remembering Allie in Berlin.

  Chandre had been escorting her to Seertown and to Vash for the first time; the Bridge had been grief-stricken, barely able to stand, but she’d still managed to snap out of her coma long enough to scoff at what she called Chandre’s “throwing a grenade at a gnat” tactics, in her dealings with the local male humans.

  Her advice to Chan had been to just do what the human females do, and blow it off.

  Unless they come after you, pretend you don’t hear it, she said.

  Chandre found herself remembering that advice with a thin smile now.

  Her smile widened as she reached the top of a stoop that smelled vaguely like wino piss. The Bridge’s advice seemed to have worked. The men forgot about her as soon as she made it clear she intended to ignore them.

  When he turned back, Maygar gave her a puzzled frown.

  “What are you smiling about? Thinking about taking me down again?”

  “No,” she said, clicking softly. “Never mind.” Her voice turned business-like. “Where is this big surprise, Maygar? You have brought me a long way without telling me anything, and I still don’t see why we couldn’t have done all of this in VR. Or in the Barrier.”

  He stopped outside the front door to his building, hands on his hips.

  Ignoring the wrinkled brow look he developed as he stood there, Chandre glanced past him, to the door itself. Chipped rust-brown paint adorned the front of the wood, revealing an older, yellow coat of paint below. The effect mottled the front of the building, making it look like it had a skin disease.

  Feeling his stare, she turned, meeting his gaze.

  “What?” she said. “What story are you going to feed me now?”

  “Look,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket for a different set of keys. “I know this will probably sound crazy to you…”

  She clicked at him in annoyance. “That is never how anyone wants to hear someone start a sentence, Maygar.”

  “…But I think I’m being followed.”

  “Followed?”

  “By a pro, I mean.” He hesitated. “Maybe more than one. Even before.”

  “Before what?” she said impatiently.

  “Before this disease thing fell in my lap.” He shrugged with one hand, giving her another nervous look. “I didn’t want to freak you out, so I didn’t say anything.”

  She raised an eyebrow, scanning the street beneath them. “And you bring me to your place of living? So that I will obtain this tail, as well?”

  He clicked at her, unlocking the main bolt of the outside door.

  “I don’t mean literally followed, Chan. I mean in the Barrier.”

  “I still appreciate the favor, brother.” Snorting, she shook her braids, walking in past him when he opened the door. “Who is it that is following you?”

  “I thought it was your people. Before, I mean.”

  “My people?”

  “You know. The Sword’s. I figured I’d end up in one of his interrogation rooms, a few hot pokers up my ass.” Giving her a wan smile, he shrugged. “It could still happen. Knowing that asshole, he’ll never get over his little grudge.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “His little grudge? You attempted to rape his mate. When they had not yet consummated… and knowing full well he intended upon asking her that very day to complete things with him. Then you appear in D.C., as if somehow involved in her capture, where yet another seer abuses her––”

  “Yes, yes.” He waved off her words, but she saw a bloom of color reach his cheeks. “I know all that. I just meant, I didn’t think it was for anything but personal reasons.”

  “Personal reasons are all we have,” she retorted. “You are seer. You should know that.”

  Running his fingers through his straight, dark hair, he sighed again, motioning for her to proceed up the stairs in front of him.

  She noticed for the first time that he wore his hair shorter than she’d ever seen it, a good few inches shorter than what he wore in Seertown. He’d grown taller, too, and his features had lost some of their roundness. She’d forgotten how young he was still, only a few decades older than the Bridge. The Bridge herself aged rapidly in the past few years, but most in the Seven assumed that was because she’d taken an older mate.

  Chandre was still looking him over, noting other changes, when Maygar sighed again.

  “I know, Chan. It’s just…” Hesitating, he waved off whatever he meant to say as he began to climb the wooden steps after her. “Anyway, I stopped thinking it was about that.” He gave her an apologetic look. “I’ve been watching you for awhile, trying to figure out what you were doing in D.C. I kept an eye on a few others I knew to be working for him, too.”

  “Why?” she said, more puzzled than annoyed. “Because of this tail on you?”

  He gave another vague shrug, eyes evasive.

  “Mostly,” he said. “But this new thing feels different. Different than Dehgoies and his goons, I mean. And it didn’t add up with what you and the other Rebels seemed to be focusing on. So now I think it’s someone else.”

  “Who?” she said again, looking back at him.

  “I said they were pros, Chan. I don’t know.”

  She heard a glimmer of something else in his words, and scanned him with her light.

  “You don’t know?” she said. “Or you don’t want to say?”

  “Well,” he said, sighing again. “It could be more than one group. If someone’s after me about the job I just did, it might be Varlan. But like I said, I think I was being followed before that, so it’s probably not only him.”

  “Varlan?” Chandre clicked through memories in her light. “Who is that? Is he a Rook?”

  “Yes. He used to work for Galaith. He didn’t stay with Terian when the Pyramid fell. There are quite a few who didn’t, but who still work together occasionally.”

  Chan gave him a wary look, doing another quick pass over his light. She gave a low snort, but without humor. “You stole from him.”

  “No,” he said. “Not exactly.” At her pointed look, he shrugged. “Well, I didn’t steal from him, but I might have stolen from one of his people. They might have mentioned he was the lead infiltrator on the job. The one working directly with the client.”

  “How many infiltrators on this job?
”

  “Four. Maybe five.”

  “Who is the client? Is this the old woman you told me about? The scientist?”

  “Maybe. She might work for someone else, though. They didn’t know.” At her skeptical look, Maygar rolled his eyes. “I can’t be absolutely certain, but they seemed to be telling the truth. The whole job seemed to be set up so that no one knew what it was really about.”

  “And what was this job? Is this about that lab?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Maygar said, sounding a little annoyed with her questions. “It’s why I brought you here. It’s just easier to show you, Chan.”

  Her puzzlement returned. “And this Varlan. He was one of Galaith’s, but not Terian’s?” At Maygar’s gesture of yes, she pursed her lips. “Is he an infiltrator of high rank?”

  “High, yes. Actual at ten. Eleven maybe.”

  She shook her braids, exhaling in a sigh. “That is risky business, brother,” she said, clicking. “Why would you go provoking a seer of that kind?”

  “Yeah, well.” Maygar shrugged. “I may have been drunk. And I didn’t really know who he was then. Anyway… you’ll understand when you see it. It was a calculated risk.”

  “Stupid, you mean,” she snorted, louder.

  Maygar didn’t answer, but she saw his mouth harden.

  Running his words over in her mind, Chandre continued to climb the steps, following Maygar’s gesturing hand at the second landing. He brought her to a door with a brass number 17 nailed crookedly into the wood. She glanced up and down the hallway, noting water damage and more peeling paint, this time of a sky blue color that had mottled mostly to gray.

  “And again I ask. Why would you bring any of this to me?” she said, watching his hands as he fumbled with the key to open the door. “You know I am loyal to the Sword.”

  Maygar glanced at her. After a pause, he gave another shrug, but she saw his eyes harden.

  “I knew you could get it to Allie for me,” he said simply.

  Chandre’s eyebrows shot up.

  He swung open the door, and walked inside.

  “Why would you want me to do that?” she said finally.

  “Well,” Maygar said, tossing his keys on a table by the door. He gave her an irritated look. “Who else is left, who is actually fighting the Dreng, instead of ‘compromising’ with them in some way?”

  His voice sounded bitter at the end. Glancing back at where she’d hesitated at the door, he narrowed his gaze.

  “Are you coming? I’m not going to hit you, like you did me.”

  After the barest pause, Chandre followed him, still puzzling over his words.

  “Anyway,” he said, running a hand through his hair with a sigh. “I’m still loyal to her, even if I’m not crazy about her mate. You must know that about me, at least.”

  Chandre barely had a chance to glance around the cluttered space, when another voice spoke up, from the far side of the room.

  It was deeply and decidedly male.

  “I would be very careful where you admitted that aloud, brother,” it said smoothly. “I would be very careful about that, indeed…”

  21

  VARLAN

  THE WORDS CARRIED enough of an aleimic pull that Chandre lowered her guard unconsciously, reacting at a near-animal level. She was unable to pull her shields back entirely, even after she realized and fought her light’s unconscious surrender.

  Maygar came to a dead stop in the middle of the room.

  She reached for her gun even as, behind her, someone shut the door of the small, dim space they’d just entered. Her fingers had only just closed on the handle when the same voice spoke again, its cadences unaltered, if infused with slightly more light.

  “Put it down, sister.”

  She heard a long exhale, and realized she could smell hiri smoke––the dense, hand-wrapped kind that cost about fifty dollars a packet.

  The male seer added, softer, “I hate to shed the blood of any of our race. Particularly when there is absolutely no need.”

  Chandre looked for the voice in the darkness in front of her, using her eyes that time, but a ping to her light drew her gaze to the left.

  Standing by the curtained window, a seer held a Mossberg rifle trained on her chest.

  After the barest pause, Chandre released the handgrip of her gun.

  Removing her fingers from her jacket, she raised both of her hands, making them visible on either side of her chest. She kept her eyes on the rifle, and on the seer holding it, trying to decide if she recognized him. Because most of his face remained in shadow, and he was so heavily shielded, she could not be sure she didn’t.

  Whoever he was, he wore a dark-colored tattoo that covered most of his face.

  “Thank you again, brother, for this little vacation,” she muttered to Maygar.

  Maygar scowled in her direction, his hands also up at chest level.

  When the male spoke next, humor tinged his words.

  “Your friend here seems to have drawn you into his troubles, sister.” He exhaled more smoke, adding, “Since you are here, perhaps you can do yourself a favor. Help me persuade this young brother to return the property he stole from me.”

  Chandre’s eyes finally came to rest on the male seer who spoke.

  He sat precisely upright in a scuffed 1970s-style wooden chair with spoke-like decorations at its back. Next to the chair stood a roll-top desk, from roughly the same time period. A map covered most of the wall behind the seer’s chair, and more maps and newspaper clippings covered other walls in Maygar’s rather cluttered studio apartment.

  The seer’s gray-streaked hair was pulled back in a wooden clip, in a style the Adhipan used to wear back before the time of First Contact. That, and the lines in his long face and the depth of his eyes gave her some indication of his age, and it was not young.

  His deep-set, violet eyes gazed up at her, resting on hers briefly before flickering to Maygar. He sat with hands folded in the lap of an organic-enhanced black coat buttoned over his abdomen and chest. The scar that ran from his lips to below one of his eyes gave his face a serious, yet dangerous look.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said emotionlessly. “But I really need my property returned to me. At once.”

  Once again, the light behind his voice caused Chandre to shiver.

  “We can discuss any…” He coughed lightly. “…repercussions. Related to your rashness, my young brother, but only after I have the materials I require in hand.”

  Stubbing out a hiri with fingers stained by some dark powder, he clicked in a soft, rolling purr. Even the way he clicked carried a different Asian accent, one Chandre knew from other old timers she’d met in the mountains.

  He looked familiar to her somehow, but she couldn’t place him, even with her seer memory. Whatever caused it, the impression was fleeting, and likely being distorted by the man who returned her gaze.

  He was definitely above a rank-10.

  Maygar lowered his hands slowly.

  “I would be very careful if I were you, brother,” the man said softly.

  “I’m going to get it,” Maygar said. “I need my hands.”

  “Proceed.”

  Maygar walked over to the small refrigerator on the floor by a sink and a counter mostly taken up by a two-burner, electric coil stove with rusted iron brackets. Chandre watched, frowning slightly, as Maygar began prying off the panel on one side of the fridge, using a small instrument like a miniature crowbar.

  As he worked, she heard the crackle of minds around her, likely irritated that they hadn't found the hiding place sooner.

  Chandre looked back at the gray-haired seer, swallowing before she jutted her chin.

  “What is this thing he took?” she said, forcing her expression still. “If I’m to die for it, should I not at least know its significance?”

  The older seer looked up at her, his eyes holding a kind of tired smile.

  She wasn’t buying it, of course, no
t from a seer of his rank, but it was disarming anyway.

  “No one need die today, sister,” he said. “I have a few questions for our young friend here, however.” He gave her another wan smile, weaving his fingers together in his lap.

  “You are Varlan?” she said, holding that violet gaze with an effort.

  The seer’s lips quirked.

  “I am Varlan,” he said simply.

  Chandre glanced at Maygar, who was now pulling something out of the edge of the refrigerator panel. It looked like an organic memory chip, now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light. He had wrapped it in several layers of plastic to protect it.

  “And?” Chandre said, looking back at Varlan. “Do you intend to elucidate the mystery of whatever it is he stole from you?”

  Varlan exhaled, looking up at her. “I do not.”

  When she frowned, he made a more conciliatory gesture with one hand.

  “Surely you can guess the basics, sister,” he said. “You know of the weapon. You have been making inquiries about this thing, as well. For the Bridge, correct?”

  “I know of it.” Chandre folded her arms. “But I no longer work for the Bridge. It was her husband, the Sword, who engaged me––”

  But Varlan cut her off, clicking in mild rebuke.

  “You can sell that fairytale to the boy here,” he said. “I know you are working as a double agent, infiltrating the Rebels. I know your handler is Adhipan Leader Balidor. You work for the Bridge, sister Chandre.” A smile touched his lips. “…Although it is unclear to me if she is aware of that. At least not yet.”

  Maygar’s eyes jerked up from where he knelt by the refrigerator. His eyes widened almost comically, shining faintly in the dim light of the room.

  “Chan!” he said.

  Chandre winced, unable to avoid hearing the happiness in the young seer’s voice. It was too bad he hadn’t yet figured out they were probably dead. Or why it might not be a particularly good thing that this Rook knew so much about her.

  “I knew it!” Maygar crowed, still grinning as he shook his head. “You’re a sly one, Chandre-la, I’ll give you that! I really almost believed you that you were loyal to that Rook!”