For a split second, Cass saw compassion in the dark red eyes.
“Forget him, human,” she said. “He is already dead.”
Looking at the corpse-like man surrounded by candles, Cass nodded.
But he wasn’t dead, not really.
27
TATTOO
CASS STOOD INSIDE a different building now.
Sunlight wafted through gaps in the water-damaged wood, making patterns across a dirt floor strewn with sawdust and straw. Swallows and smaller birds flitted in and out of the wide door, leaving and returning to nests high in the rafters above.
Cass knew the seer was reading her.
Chandre stared at the bare skin showing on Cass's arms, her own, darker hands resting on her hips. Cass knew where the seer’s mind had likely gone––to Allie, and what Allie would say if Chandre let this happen.
A lot of seers had been sensitive lately, after the thing with Maygar.
“Are you sure?” Chandre said. “It will hurt you. More than me.” She gestured around at the other seers in the barn, who watched the proceedings with no small amount of curiosity. “…More than any of them. And it is a seer’s mark.”
Cass focused on a butterfly fluttering through a shaft of sunlight. She watched it dip and circle lazily, as if confused by the dust-filled beams.
Chandre frowned, tapping her shoulder with one dark finger.
“It will hurt,” she repeated. “It will hurt a lot. The ink they use… it is not human ink. It is treated, Cassie. It burns, like acid, so it will last through our longer lives.”
Seeing that Cass was already impatient, Chandre raised her voice.
“They use more of it on this mark, as it is religious to us. It will scar.”
Cass smiled wryly, turning on her with a raised eyebrow. “I have a few scars already, Chan. At least this one, I’m putting there myself.”
Chandre’s frown deepened.
“It is a seer’s mark,” she repeated. “You are a fool to wear it.”
Cass folded her arms under her breasts, pushing them up slightly. “I’m not asking to be a member of the club. I’m just asking to wear one of your T-shirts. Figuratively speaking.”
“But why?” Chandre said. “It puts you in danger. Unnecessarily!”
“Well, that’s the point, right? I’m not going to hide behind my human status.”
Chandre waved off the males by the wall as some nodded, murmuring in approval to Cass's words.
“…It is stupid,” Chan said, turning on her once more. “Worse than that, it is worm logic. Not the logic of my people.” She glared around at the other seers, daring them to disagree. “A people who have to hide, who make a lifetime of not being seen.”
“Well,” Cass said, throwing her hands up. “I’m not one of ‘your’ people. As you feel the need to remind me constantly.”
Frowning harder, Chandre stared at her. Her dark-red eyes slid perceptibly out of focus, which told Cass she was probably reading her again. Biting her lip, she waited for the seer to finish, trying to remind herself that this was the other’s way of showing concern.
Clicking out, Chandre folded her arms, clearing her throat.
“Your friend,” she said stiffly. “Alyson. She is my friend, too.”
Cass snorted. “Pathetic, Chan. I mean, really.”
“You would have her hate me? She is the Bridge!”
“Great. And your precious Bridge believes in free will, in case you hadn’t noticed. She’s never tried to talk me out of anything I wanted to do. Well,” she said, folding her arms tighter. “Except Jack. And she was right about that.”
Laughter rose in pockets around the room.
Chandre paused to glare the others into silence.
Cass remembered they were speaking Prexci and felt a little swell of pride that hers was good enough to carry on a conversation… much less an argument… in front of a bunch of infiltrators.
Staring her down a last time, Chandre shrugged, motioning for the man standing behind her to proceed. Cass caught the subtle gesture she made to the male seer though, telling him to move slowly. It occurred to Cass that the infiltrator thought she’d ask him to stop before the mark was finished, if it hurt enough.
Biting her lip, Cass plunked down defiantly in the chair next to the tattoo artist’s stool.
“Don’t expect me to be sympathetic later,” Chandre said.
Cass was surprised to hear real emotion in the seer’s voice.
“You want to kill yourself?” she said. “Go ahead, worm. Fine with me. Enough worms in this world already.” She folded her arms. “Don’t need another one… a dumb one, too.”
Cass rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help smiling, just a little.
The male with the organic tattooing needle looked dubious as well, but he stepped forward when Chandre motioned him sharply the second time. He wore a leather apron over a threadbare black T-shirt, his dark blue eyes rimmed with a line of pale pink that stood out in a dark, strong-featured Asian face. Grunting a little, he sat on a low stool by the beat-up recliner the other seers had lined up behind, waiting their turn to be inked.
Cass tried not to look at the bloody rags strewn on the dirt at his feet.
She knew it would hurt. She’d seen young seers crying during their turns under the needle. Chandre made her watch half a dozen getting marked ahead of her, so she’d see how much it hurt.
The seer with the tattoo needle glanced at Chandre again.
“You’ll take responsibility?” he asked the hunter.
But that was too much.
Cass rolled her eyes. “No. The Bridge will eat your spleen. And I’ll watch. Laughing. Laughing and singing my ‘I hate seers’ song…”
The other seers laughed louder at this, until Chandre glared them all into silence.
Cass rearranged herself on the reclined chair, holding out her arm. Carefully, the male leaned over her skin, aligning the needle before giving a last glance to Chandre.
Steeling herself, Cass held her arm still, the way she’d seen the other seers do it. Before the needle lowered all the way, a young male approached silently on Cass's other side.
He bowed respectfully, asking permission with his eyes.
Cass nodded, feeling a rush of gratitude.
“Thanks. That would be great.”
He positioned himself behind the chair to hold her still, pressing his shoulder into hers and gripping her arm. The seer holding the needle gave Chandre a last, fleeting look with those odd-colored eyes.
Then he pressed the end of the organic needle to Cass's skin.
He began to work, and every seer in the place fell silent.
Chandre hadn’t been exaggerating. The pain was bad.
Bad enough to blank out Cass's mind, to make it difficult not to struggle, or cry out. She couldn’t think at all as she fought to adjust.
Still, she found something familiar there, enough to allow her to brace her mind and her body against what otherwise would have been agony. It grew steadily worse as more of the acid-like ink got under her skin, until it felt like her arm was on fire and being eaten at the same time.
Still, she found something oddly satisfying in the fact that she’d experienced worse.
A lot worse.
Worse than most of the seers watching had ever come close to.
She bit her lip, eyes tearing, but didn’t struggle against the male seer’s hold. She didn’t make a sound, not even when the tattoo artist pulled the needle away, ripping away part of her flesh and skin.
She watched him change the color of the ink, filling the organic holder with a pale blue.
Then he started again. That time, it hurt more.
But again, not as bad as she’d dealt with under Terian.
Pain alone couldn’t break her––not anymore.
By the end, she stared up from the chair at the light flooding through the barn doors, watching the birds flit to and fro, feeling the seer’s calloused fingers on
her arm as well as the white-hot end of the organic needle.
About an hour later, the artist hung the needle up on the metal stand.
Dabbing her skin with antiseptic, he winced a little when Cass moaned, fighting not to pull away. She’d gotten so relaxed under the steady fire of the needle itself, the dabbing of the wound with an alcohol compound caught her off guard, since it was a different kind of pain. She made herself look over when he dropped another blood-soaked rag to the sawdust-covered floor. Then her eyes fell to her arm, staring at the blue and white sword and sun burned into her skin.
White and blue flames came off the pale blue orb in the middle, bisected with a white sword detailed in black ink.
It was stunning.
Even now, surrounded by red skin, it practically glowed.
She staggered slowly to her feet, and the young seer caught her around the waist, holding her up. She bowed to the tattoo artist, a little stiffly, but with her hands in the proper position.
The male seers cheered, stomping their feet on the wooden floor.
When she turned in surprise, they cheered louder, whistling and applauding.
Stepping closer, Chandre looked at the tattoo, and frowned.
Cass had almost forgotten she was there, waiting. Now she saw that the seer had stood there the entire time, unmoving, while the organic needle marked her.
Peering down at the fine lines of the tattoo, and the color already visible under the red flesh, Cass smiled. Blowing on it a little and wincing, she bowed again in thanks to the old seer, then to the male who assisted by holding her arm.
Then, grinning, she raised both of her arms in a victory salute to the other seers in the barn.
Laughing, the males cheered louder, thumping the wooden floor with their feet.
“Shut up!” Chandre yelled.
They did. Cass grinned at her, but it didn’t change Chandre’s expression, which remained worried, and faintly upset. Ignoring the rest of them, she began speaking to Cass rapidly by motioning with her hands, then seemed to remember that she was human and switched seamlessly to verbal.
“…be sure to cover it tonight,” she finished in English. “I have a crème for this. It is herbal, so it won’t hurt you. I will bring it by later, and some tea. And drink lots of water. At least three or four glasses before you rest.”
Stepping closer, Cass caressed the muscular seer’s arm.
The males in the room quieted, staring at them.
“So I’m a dumb worm now, huh?” Cass said.
Chandre’s jaw tightened. “I did not deny you.”
Cass smiled. She tossed back her black and red-dyed hair. “No,” she said. “You didn’t.” She squeezed the seer’s arm, kissing her on the cheek. “You coming by later?”
Chandre nodded, gesturing affirmative. She didn’t meet her eyes, though.
Releasing her, Cass walked past the line of male seers to the doorway.
She ignored the stares. If ever there was a town with a shortage of females, it was Seertown. Some of those by the wall had already propositioned her… politely, of course, given her relationship to the Bridge.
They hadn’t just been testing the waters, though. She’d definitely sensed frustration and disappointment off them when she’d said no.
If nothing else, she’d never suffer from a sex shortage here, even with the ugly scar on her face.
It didn’t help really, knowing that.
CASS SAT AT a table in a rooftop café, smoking a hand-rolled hiri.
She listened to rain hitting the corrugated tin roof.
It rained a lot in Seertown.
It rained more here than it did in Seattle. More than Portland, even, where two of her cousins lived. Mist would float into the valley between rains as well, making the buildings and even the colorful prayer flags invisible.
She’d been sitting there for what felt like hours, with only the old human who owned the place coming up periodically to replace her cup of chai. He let her play the record player, which had a motley stack of vinyl left behind from tourists and oddball pilgrims.
Right then, she had on The Stooges.
It had been Maygar’s favorite record.
She glanced down at her upper arm, blowing lightly on the sun and sword tattoo that stood out on her skin. The colors seemed to brighten every day, growing sharper as the red of her skin faded. The flames around the sun’s orb also got more detailed.
Chan was still unhappy about it, although she’d stopped grumbling overtly.
She’d been getting more possessive lately, Cass noticed.
It didn’t help, what had happened to Grent.
Grent got back to Seertown a few days after Revik left to go find Allie. He’d been practically dragged there bodily by the other Adhipan seers following a burial ceremony for his mate, Laren, in Sikkim. Cass almost wondered if they’d deliberately waited until Revik left before they’d brought him back to India.
None of the mated seers seemed to want to talk about Grent.
Everyone knew he was letting himself die in the basement of the Seven’s compound. Vash and others in the Adhipan went to see him daily, but he wouldn’t eat. From what Tenzi told her, and Jon via Dorje and Garensche, Grent was in a lot of pain.
Jon went to visit when Dorje asked him, and he told Cass it reminded him of watching a friend of theirs in San Francisco, Justin, trying to quit hard drugs. Grent had been silent throughout the visit, meditating as he sat on the floor of a monk cell under the main floors. Despite his apparent serenity, however, he’d sweated off half of his body weight within a few days, and seemed only to be preparing to die.
Cass thought about visiting him, too, but she didn’t really know Grent. She couldn’t quite bring herself to go down there, knowing at least half of it was curiosity.
She didn’t want to think about maybe having to see Allie like that one day… or Revik, for that matter. Given how often people seemed to be trying to kill one or both of them, it didn’t strike her as far-fetched that she might outlive them, despite their crazy seer lifespans.
On the whole, the compound went on with things as usual, but there was an atmospheric change that affected everyone, even when they didn’t talk about it.
Everyone knew he was down there, dying. It couldn’t help but leave a pall over the whole group. She’d heard Yerin talking about burial rites already, so Cass knew no one expected him to live through this.
She’d also heard the elders talking about Allie in concerned tones, and what they would do when she got back.
So, given all that, getting a tattoo seemed pretty minor.
“Does it hurt?” a voice said.
Cass jumped, turning towards the stairwell.
A middle-aged seer stood there, just past the doorway. He had chestnut brown hair and the lightest, most piercing gray eyes she’d ever seen.
Cass recognized him, vaguely.
He was one of the new ones, who came from the mountains. In fact, she was pretty sure he was their leader. He didn’t look particularly Chinese though, except around the cheekbones, and then only if you were looking for it. He was like Revik––one of those seers whose ethnicity was impossible to pinpoint with any real accuracy.
Their similarities ended there, though.
Where Revik had a striking angularity to his features, and eyes that stood out even more than this man’s did, he wasn’t stereotypically handsome. He definitely fell into the sexy camp, in Cass's view, and she totally got why Allie was so attracted to him, but his features didn’t quite fit together in a way that most would consider harmonious.
The man standing in front of her, on the other hand, had the chiseled face of an aging movie star. Almost shockingly handsome, he wore it as unselfconsciously as he did the uniform-like dress shirt and dark pants.
If human, she would have pegged him at about forty-five. Since he was seer, she had no idea what that made him. Likely, at least twice Revik’s age. Maybe more.
“Does it hurt?�
�� he asked again.
Cass looked down at the tattoo on her arm, following his eyes.
“A little,” she said. When he didn’t move, she held up her cup. “Chai?”
He glanced at the record player.
“It’s Iggy,” she said. “You can change it.”
“No.” His eyes cleared. “No, it’s fine.”
Approaching where she sat, he gestured with one hand, a request to join her.
When Cass gave the appropriate countersign, he sank into the opposite chair. She watched him in some curiosity as he relaxed deeper into the wooden seat, propping his arms on the water-damaged armrests and stretching out his legs.
He gazed out at the view, squinting past the rain. Old buildings cascaded down the hill, strung with prayer flags.
“I am Balidor.” He turned. “You are Cassandra?”
Cass smiled wanly. “No one but my mother’s called me that in about twenty years, but yes, that would be me. Call me Cass.”
“Interesting name.” He smiled. “It is not Thai. You are Thai, are you not?”
“I’m a mutt,” she said, answering with a shrug. “A real one. Thai, Ethiopian, Irish. Scottish.” She took a sip of the chai. “I think my mom named me after the Greek Goddess. You know. Apollo’s babe.”
“Ah yes.” He clicked softly, as though remembering. “Cassandra. A great beauty. She could see the future, could she not?”
“Yes.” Cass leaned back in the plastic chair. “But no one ever believed her.” She blew bangs out of her eyes. “It’s always sounded pretty stupid with my last name. It’s Jainukul,” she added. “In case you wanted to do a security check on me. That’s Thai, by the way.”
He nodded, seemingly without noticing her jab.
She found herself watching him curiously again, really thinking about his age. He had a kind of leonine grace that reminded her of the way kings were often portrayed from the Middle Ages. He wore authority with an assumed air that made it seem almost genetic.
He also seemed vaguely stiff, as though his manners came from a different era.
Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World Page 28
