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

by JC Andrijeski

  He trailed, maybe seeing something in Revik’s face.

  His eyes darkened, right before he looked back at the monitor.

  “…But if she’s on the Rynak,” he said.

  Not finishing the thought, he shrugged, his eyes cold as he stared at the feed.

  Revik’s jaw hardened.

  He looked at Balidor, but the Adhipan leader didn’t return his gaze. His eyes were more difficult to read than Wreg’s, staring at the same lines of text projected over the console. His anger looked colder than the Rebel’s, too.

  Wreg glanced at all of them again, but seemed to be speaking to no one in particular.

  “We’d hoped that human of hers might lead us back here.” He focused on Jon, exhaling in a rolling set of clicks. “But she didn’t. She and that Wvercian went to the Americas somewhere. Really, we only found this place through sheer luck… a fluke. One of the seers we’ve been working with in SCARB must have run a trace on you.”

  “Who?” Balidor said, staring at Wreg.

  Wreg shrugged. “No one I know. She tried to bury the signal in her records. We have a program for tampering, something Gar wrote a while back. So we got a flag that showed she talked to someone here.”

  “Chan,” Jon said, speaking up from Revik’s other side. He looked at Balidor, then at Revik. “He means Chandre. She warned me we’d better move, that we were at risk. She found me through my implant. Some SCARB bullshit, where she had my illegal ident on file.”

  Wreg shrugged with one hand, neither agreeing nor arguing.

  “Well, we assumed she was a traitor,” he said only. “We sent someone after her, too. They should be halfway to D.C. by now.”

  “Call them back,” Revik said. “Now, Wreg.”

  He didn’t look up from the console, but his words silenced the room.

  When the other didn’t move right away, Revik lifted his gaze.

  For a moment, Wreg continued to stare at him, a wary measurement in his dark eyes. Then, seeming to understand his words belatedly, he nodded before he turned to Jax, clicking his fingers to get his attention before signing a command. The younger seer removed himself swiftly from the room, half-jogging down the long, green corridor.

  Revik barely followed any of it.

  He continued to stare at the console, but he could feel all of them now, even when he tried to shut them out. He fought to think, to move his mind past this, past the images that wanted to rise, that wanted to connect to what he’d been feeling off her for the past weeks.

  “Revik?”

  He turned before he could stop himself.

  Jon stood there. The human paled, seeing the look on his face, but his hazel eyes remained steadily on his.

  “Revik, man,” he said shakily. “It’s all right. We can get her out. We know where she is now, so we can get her out. Right?”

  Revik didn’t answer.

  When the silence stretched, Balidor spoke into it.

  “Not without starting a war with the Lao Hu,” he said.

  “But they have the Bridge,” Jon said. He looked back at Revik. “Are you going to tell me the rest of the seers are going to stand by and let her be a…” Hesitating, he reddened, waving a hand vaguely. “…You know. To do that?”

  Balidor gave him a grim look. The smile at his lips didn’t touch his eyes.

  “Does she seem particularly popular to you in the seer world these days, cousin?” he said. “I think right now, it would not help us to look for support from within the seer community.”

  Revik turned, and saw the Adhipan leader’s eyes on him, too.

  Balidor’s gaze was warier than Jon’s. He looked as though he were measuring Revik’s face, the vibrations in his light. He looked at him as one might look at a wild animal, trying to determine what it might do.

  “So,” Jon said. “Then we risk war.”

  Still looking at Revik, Balidor sighed.

  “It may not be that simple, cousin,” he said.

  “What choice do we have? We can’t leave her there!”

  “The human is right,” Wreg said. “We cannot leave her, Nenz. It says they’ve sold her. That means they’ve broken the original deal with her.” He looked at Balidor, as if finding his gaze easier to hold than Revik’s. “She was under contract before. There was a specific sum involved, and then she was to be set free. If they’ve sold her, something’s changed.”

  “What was the sum?” Jon said.

  “Does it matter?” Balidor asked dryly.

  “It does if we have to pay it,” Jon shot back.

  “Twenty-two million. American.” Wreg looked at Jon as he said it, then, as if feeling something off Revik, he glanced at him as well. “It was a steep price––an unfair price. But that Voi Pai cunt would not negotiate the amount. She wanted a quarter to a half mil for each of the infiltrators, even those with very little formal training. She charged more for me and some of the others. The work camp was a set price.”

  Revik barely heard that, either.

  He stared at his own hands, fighting the rest of it out of his head. What he’d felt off her, for weeks now––long before he voiced it aloud to Balidor.

  He should have known what it meant. He should have figured it out.

  Balidor must have noticed something. He must have picked up on something in Wreg, maybe one of the others. Balidor had known something was off in their story, and he’d made the connection to Allie, long before it occurred to Revik that anything might be wrong.

  He’d been so sure she’d taken up with someone else. He’d assumed she simply found another lover more quickly than he would have expected, maybe even to forget about him.

  Or to get back at him, maybe.

  He should have considered it might be something else. She’d never done anything remotely like that before, not even when he’d given her cause. Even the thing with Balidor hadn’t been what he’d thought. They might have been friends. She might love him even. But according to Balidor, she hadn’t let herself love him romantically.

  She hadn’t been looking to replace him, or even to hurt him.

  Hell, she’d never even threatened to sleep with someone else. Even that time in Delhi, when she’d been so angry at him she’d looked at him like she hated him, she’d thrown his past indiscretions in his face, but hadn’t threatened him with the same.

  This time had felt different, though.

  Even Jon convinced him it was different, that he’d have to work just to get her to talk to him. Jon told him she probably wouldn’t talk to him, at least not anytime soon. It hadn’t occurred to him she might be in danger, that something might have happened to her.

  It should have occurred to him.

  Hell, half the free seers in the Western hemisphere wanted her dead.

  But he knew he was distracting himself, even now. He couldn’t think past that distraction, or what wanted to cycle back to the forefront of his mind.

  Anger rose in his light. It was at himself, he could feel that much, but he couldn’t contain it, and it wasn’t enough to aim it solely inward.

  He lifted his eyes, staring at Balidor.

  “How could you be so stupid?” Fighting his voice, he gripped the console harder in his hands. “Goddamn it! What was she doing there? She’s the Bridge, goddamn it! Are you all fucking stupid, to have forgotten what that means?”

  Everyone stared at him again.

  Revik saw the fear in their eyes. He knew from his blurred, ghosted vision that his were glowing again. He tried to bite back his anger, to control himself, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words from exploding out of him.

  “Voi Pai asked her to come!” he said. “She took one of Allie’s oldest friends! Did you really think she’d let her just walk out of there?” He glared at Wreg. “That she’d ever let her out? That she’d ever honor a contract, even one for twenty-two mil?”

  None of the seers moved.

  Jon glanced between Wreg and Balidor, then swallowed.

  “Y
eah, about Cass,” he said. “Why didn’t Cass get word to us? Not inside. I mean when she got out. Why didn’t she tell us Allie was there?”

  There was another silence.

  Wreg clicked softly, still looking at Revik, although he aimed his words at Jon.

  “That was part of it,” Wreg said. “My vow to the Bridge.”

  “What was part of it?” Jon said.

  Wreg shrugged, one-handed. “I erased the human. Her Wvercian said he’d take care of it from there, keep an eye on her. Make sure none of it came back.”

  Jon stared at him, his eyes showing incredulity.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Her own boyfriend?”

  Wreg gave him a hard look. “He’s loyal to the Bridge. He knew how to follow orders. Believe me, I was grateful of that. I would have had to kill a lot of Wvercians in that situation. Most of them have no loyalty. Except to money… or their dicks.”

  Revik shook his head, still staring down at the console. He didn’t speak though, and didn’t look up when he felt the others watching him.

  “We can’t leave her there,” Jon said, looking at Revik. “We can’t, man.”

  “We’re not leaving her there, Jon,” Balidor said.

  Revik felt something in his chest tighten, even as the others’ words sank in. Raising his head, he straightened abruptly, taking his hands off the organic metal.

  “No,” he said, his voice cold. “No. We’re not leaving her.”

  “So we’re going, then?” Jon said, relief in his voice. “When, Revik?”

  The Elaerian glanced at Wreg, then at Balidor, whose eyes once more looked wary.

  “Now, Jon,” Revik said flatly. “We’re going right now.”

  59

  UNFEELING

  I SAW MORE clients now.

  Everything was different now.

  I tried not to think about it. I focused on work, on the infiltration training, even on meditation, which I’d been learning from a few of the senior Lai Hu monks.

  I tried not to think about anything beyond those things.

  Ulai was my handler again.

  As punishment for Gerwix, Voi Pai had given me to her head infiltrator for awhile, a seer named Ditrini, who’d moved me into his living compartments for the duration of the “loan.” Voi Pai claimed she did it because she needed someone with a firmer hand to keep an eye on me, after what I’d done, but it was no secret it was punishment, to me or anyone else.

  It was also no secret that she’d done it to humiliate me. I knew that even before I got the measure of who Ditrini truly was.

  My time with Ditrini lasted a little more than a month.

  When he finally hurt me badly enough that I couldn’t see clients for several weeks, Voi Pai stepped in, moving me back to my old room near Charlie and Miao.

  I couldn’t think about Ditrini now, though, not in logical terms, so a part of my mind simply erased him, refusing to think of him at all. I knew Voi Pai had sent him away, which helped maintain the illusion. I knew she’d sent him away because of me.

  I didn’t have it in me to be grateful to her for that, but I was grateful he was gone.

  Things were better with Ulai, but only in contrast.

  The number and type of clients changed, once I was able to work again.

  A lot more of them struck me as coming from organized crime, and I was pretty sure I slept with a few slave traders and military dictators. The vibe of these new clients clashed so dramatically with the tech moguls and first world heads of state I’d seen before, I wondered if Voi Pai was still punishing me, just in a different way.

  The sessions were also considerably less formal––and shorter.

  The security protocols didn’t seem to have grown any more lax, however. On my end, they’d tightened considerably. My client compartment was also fitted with gas.

  I couldn’t help but find that karmically appropriate.

  Voi Pai claimed I’d cost her around forty million U.S. dollars for what I’d done, killing Gerwix. She said I owed her for that.

  When I scoffed at the idea of a piece of excrement like Gerwix being worth forty million, she’d snapped at me, showing the first real anger I’d ever seen on her. She said most of the forty million came from “respect” money she’d been forced to pay Gerwix’s employer to keep the peace––and to keep the rift from widening between him and the Lao Hu.

  Of course, this only made me wonder again who the hell this guy was.

  Voi Pai still wouldn’t tell me. Ulai wouldn’t tell me, either.

  The thought of working off sixty million kept me up at night.

  I had no idea how much Voi Pai was charging these new clients I’d been seeing, but it couldn’t be the same ten or twenty thousand paid by the original list. Even among that high-end group, the price varied significantly between “friends of the Republic” and their more flush business partners from the West.

  Even if I commanded the same high price for every single one of them, I’d done the math. Sixty million, even at forty thousand a pop, was around four a day for over a year. There was no way I was making forty thousand a pop––not even close. Nor was I seeing four clients a day.

  The reality was closer to two. Three, tops.

  At ten thousand a client, that was four years of four clients a day––or eight years of two clients a day. But I doubted I was making ten thousand for all of these new clients, either.

  Basically, whatever the exact breakdown in hours, money and days, it meant doing this gig for longer than I could bear to think about. My mind couldn’t really go there yet, especially knowing Ditrini wouldn’t stay away forever.

  I figured I was looking at six or seven years, minimum.

  Realistically, more like eight to ten.

  Whatever the exact number, I was beginning to hate the work. I’d never liked it, but my dislike had grown colder, more focused––more angry, I guess.

  Other things changed. I was bumped up in infiltration classes. I now spent five or six non-working hours a day with an older set of seers, working hard with my aleimi, mostly at tracking and sparring. Only one of my former classmates joined me in the new group, a twenty-something female seer with an unusually high potential rank, something like a ten or eleven. Since the classes were daily, that cut into the number of clients I could see in any given week, as well––which was strange, given the size of my current debt.

  They were training me now at considerable expense to themselves.

  It made me wonder why.

  Ulai wouldn’t tell me that, either.

  The silence around these things increasingly made me nervous, until I was half-sick with worry. A sense of foreboding clung to my mind and light, pretty much 24/7, making it difficult to eat, difficult to concentrate in my classes. I started to drop weight. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I woke up worried, feeling trapped. I stayed up at night, staring at my ceiling.

  More often lately, Ulai asked to sleep beside me, maybe sensing my nerves. I let him, and even had sex with him some of those nights, but his presence never provided real comfort. I distracted myself, wondering about him, and about Voi Pai, but the truth was, neither of them really factored into my thoughts all that much, either.

  I spent more time practicing for infiltration classes than I did thinking about anything else in my increasingly small world.

  I was waiting for something.

  I didn’t know what I waited for, but I felt Ulai and Voi Pai waiting for it, too.

  It made Ulai more clingy with me; it caused Voi Pai to avoid me whenever she could.

  I wondered if I’d been sold.

  Then I wondered if maybe I would be sold, once they’d finished training me.

  Either way, it was pretty clear Voi Pai didn’t intend to wait around for the next ten years to collect her sixty million.

  Maybe that should have been a relief to me, given everything, but from the feel of her light, and the way she avoided my eyes, it really wasn’t. Whatever this new deal w
as, Voi Pai clearly didn’t think it would benefit me.

  I supposed at this point, it didn’t really matter.

  Whatever it was, I could feel that it was already in motion.

  I could also feel it was coming soon.

  60

  A FAIR PRICE

  JON SHOVED HIS hands deeper into his pockets, looking nervously around at the line of infiltrators that ringed the walls of the high-ceilinged room. Most held assault rifles of one kind of another, and didn’t seem shy about aiming them at their guests.

  He noticed the majority of those guns pointed at Revik, however.

  Revik had done surprisingly well, keeping his cool.

  That was in spite of the three days’ wait they’d had, at the gates of the Forbidden City, and the following ten hours in a holding area outside the first, and largest, of the inner walls. Then there’d been another day of security checks, interviews, cups of tea, ceremonial greetings, tours of the gardens, poems, songs, puppet shows.

  Through all of it, Revik remained polite.

  Despite how he’d reacted when he first discovered Allie’s situation, he stayed calm through all of Voi Pai’s delaying tactics, all of her formalities and hoop-jumping. He adhered to every one of the protocols requested of him, even when they bordered on the ridiculous.

  He also sent gifts to Voi Pai herself––expensive gifts, from what Jon could discern, and paid for out of his own money.

  Really, Revik had done everything conceivable to impress upon the Lao Hu leader the friendliness of his intent. Now that they’d finally breached the City’s inner sanctum, he remained calm, almost eerily composed.

  He also remained quiet.

  Jon still found himself staring at the Elaerian when the other man wasn’t looking.

  It wasn’t just that he looked different than he had for the last year or so––although the differences in facial expression and demeanor could be startling at times. It wasn’t even that he’d gotten quieter again, to the point where he didn’t speak much at all now, even in strategy sessions, unless he had something specific to contribute.