18

BETRAYAL

 

TERIAN STUDIES THE construct, mesmerized.

Like all constructs, the images that obfuscate the border between it and the Barrier proper contain some flickering of truth. Like now, they show a monolithic parade of living stills that coalesce around certain themes despite how quickly they morph and change. Water figures in abundance of course; given their mode of transport, that is hardly surprising. The construct flashes with waterfalls, waves, cracking ice in metal trays, rivers and streams gushing over dark stones, puddles on city streets, saliva, sweat, tide pools, rain.

Terian recognizes some of these images from providing light to Dehgoies in the past.

Others must belong to Alyson, or one of the Seven’s Guard, whose lights watch over the edges of the construct walls.

Terian has studied the construct for days.

It takes that long to notice differences in the ripples of light. Now he knows the rhythms and moods of its normal state, as well as the range of its oscillations.

Therefore, when a shift occurs in those rhythms, even a relatively small one, he cannot help but taste the new flavor, the faint whisper of something he hasn’t felt before within the churning pulse. The difference weaves into water and ice and cold night skies. The change is subtle, but distinct enough that Terian picks it out before it can be reabsorbed.

A flicker of warmth greets him, a fleeting image of limbs entwined, clouding breath and glowing eyes, gone as soon as he catches the scent.

He has felt masturbation before this, of course.

There are over twelve seers inhabiting this particular construct. Only a few of those seers are female, including the Bridge. Even fewer of them are currently having sex.

Terian even swears he’s felt Dehgoies masturbate...although he can’t be certain of something that specific, of course. Not from outside the construct’s walls.

This feels different.

The images stabilize, enfolded by whoever is currently tasked with monitoring the construct walls. Terian already knows that whoever that person is...it is not Dehgoies.

An old steam engine floats by, whispers of blood and illness, and then back to water and night, ice and mountains, eagles winging silently over cold waves and tastes of Asia and even flickers of Germany and the war, South America and the United States, Russia and the Ukraine.

Withdrawing more of his consciousness from the Barrier, Terian pinpoints the new flavor again, rolling it over his tongue, so to speak, as his light acquaints him with the difference it carries, making sure he understands what it means.

Once he is sure, he snaps out entirely...

...and his blue eyes focused on polished wood.

Alone in the fireplace-heated room, he laughed aloud.

The raw flavor of sex was a new development, clearly.

It could be one of the other seers, of course, but the impact it had on the construct made Terian doubt that very much. No, it had to be the Bridge...or Dehgoies himself.

Probably both of them.

Which meant, first and foremost, that Dehgoies had been uncharacteristically restrained with her. Terian couldn’t help but wonder why. In any case, it was almost a pity he would have to interrupt them so early in their little courtship ritual. If Terian had more information from behind those construct walls, he might choose not to, given the option.

After all, nothing was more vulnerable than a seer in the first stage of a mating ritual. As it was, Terian strongly suspected they had not yet consummated. Likely because Dehgoies did not wish to be that vulnerable, either.

Still, Terian wondered if there was more to it.

Terian had flown several of his bodies to this base in Alaska, to be on the waiting end of their slow excursion through the inside passage up the Canadian coast. Most cruises took a week to make the journey north to Anchorage. Likely to throw them off, Dehgoies and the Bridge followed a route that spent nearly a month on the coasts of the United States and Canada before entering the open seas for Russia. Terian had examined the route carefully, of course, as soon as he knew which ship they would take.

He would take them then, he’d decided...as soon as they had no place left to run.

Once the ship left the shores of Alaska and entered the open ocean, Terian’s people would move on the Seven’s Guard, and then on to Dehgoies and the Bridge.

Which meant they needed to be in place well before.

Despite his careful planning, though, Terian was growing impatient.

Given all the movement in the Pyramid of late, he feared Galaith might be angling another of his squadrons into place to make the collar on the Bridge.

Terian knew how things worked.

One minute your team led a key op. The next, it was relegated to clean up duty. A security mechanism in part, the changes often had a mechanical component, built into the fabric of the Pyramid itself. The rotating tiers formed the primary defense that secured Galaith’s position as Head, by keeping all of the tiers below him in constant flux, and thus all of Galaith’s potential successors in flux, too. Despite the mechanical aspect of the rotating hierarchy, however, Terian happened to know that Galaith still had discretionary control at the top.

Terian would only be pulled if Galaith let it happen.

But Terian didn’t trust Galaith anymore.

In fact, Terian had been getting the feeling for awhile now that the boss wanted to put some distance between himself and Dehgoies...maybe even between himself and the Bridge, too. Maybe Galaith thought he’d pull a stunt like Dehgoies had, try to tie the Bridge to him by gaining access to a more intimate level of her light.

In any case, Galaith had grown secretive again, telling Terian next to nothing about his overall plan. He’d been stalling on the final approach for weeks now. It almost seemed like he wanted Dehgoies and the Bridge to remain free awhile longer.

Terian knew he would never know if he’d been sidelined, either.

All he could do was run his own secondary op, and ignore the edicts from above if they seemed to pull him further and further away from the center of the action.

He wasn’t just any second tier aspirant.

In fact, Terian was pretty sick of being second-tier altogether.

The Org would have grabbed Dehgoies years ago if Terian had been in charge, not left him in the Seven to rot. Terian would have done for his friend what he hoped Dehgoies would once have done for him—help him see reason. Help him realize the depth of his mistake, and that it wasn’t too late to make things right.

He thought of Dehgoies as family.

He was certainly the closest Terian ever had.

Gods knew, his own biological roots hardly qualified. In fact, Terian had most of those early memories of dear mum and dad on back-file, inaccessible unless certain key words triggered their download. The system worked well enough, in that no one had ever stumbled upon those words inadvertently. Terian himself found those memories both useless and uninspiring.

A faint pulse sounded from the implant he had grafted to his spine at the base of his neck.

A voice eclipsed the construct. “Sir? Are you there?”

Terian adjusted his focus. “Yes, Varlan...I see you.”

“Has something changed, sir? Shall we continue to hold?”

Galaith had been unambiguous; he wanted Terian to hold back on a direct assault, to wait until the force could gather in Russia. Terian read additional motives in Galaith’s desire to wait, too—likely so that Dehgoies had time to grow more attached to his new charge—but Terian hadn’t told Galaith everything he knew about that yet, either.

He glanced at the little girl curled up on a stuffed chair, her face slackened in sleep. He knew what that part of him would say, if he asked.

It meant insubordination.

And yet, Terian had a good feeling.

Rarely had his good feelings steered him wrong.

“No,” Terian said to the seer on the line. “No more holding. It is time. Engage silent mode from the hierarchy proper. Report only to me, and wait for an opening. I strongly suspect we will see one, soon enough...”

The seer acquiesced silently, just before his presence faded.

COLD WATER. IT was exactly what Revik needed.

Unfortunately, the pool water didn’t look at all cold.

Steam rose over shallows filled with splashing kids wearing cartoon-covered flotation devices. Revik stood at one side of the arch leading to the covered, lagoon-shaped pool with its glowing, underwater lights. So far he hadn’t done anything but walk.

He’d contemplated a drink, but couldn’t bring himself to act, not yet.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Hearing him, a woman glanced up as she walked towards the pool, wearing only a bikini and a towel. He didn’t return her look directly, but his body responded to her stare, enough that he tensed.

Feeling his mood worsen, he made up his mind before he’d really thought about where. Somewhere in the background, he ticked through options. He automatically rejected the atrium or any of the casinos. There was a neon affair with a dance floor and padded leather bar crammed with drunk tourists, a poolside bar on the other side of the ship, a few scattered piano bars...and a smaller, faux-colonial British pub, replete with high-backed chairs, bamboo tables, potted palms and a real tiger skin on the wall over a fireplace.

Poor taste, touring the remnants of what had been some of the world’s most stunning glaciers, now a meager white only in the dead of winter, with the skin of an extinct animal nailed to the wall.

Snorting in a dark kind of humor, Revik decided it was perfect.

He walked in that direction, passing the entrance to the salon and gym. He located the pub the next floor down, and after a quick scan, found an empty barstool that placed him with his back to the wall on the far corner.

He hesitated only another breath before extracting a copper-colored clip from his pocket and hooking it to the collar of his shirt.

He hadn’t been careful. The bartender frowned.

Pretending not to notice, Revik waved for a drink, pointing at one of the taps. Reluctantly, the human took a glass off the back shelf, and filled it.

“You got a permit?” he grunted, setting down the pint in front of Revik.

Revik ignored the man’s hostility, nodding.

“The management wanted it discrete. Clips only...no wires.” He lifted the beer, and the thread of the man’s mind.

...we’ll just see about that, ice-blood. Can’t hurt for me to check with “the management,” after all...

The human’s thick fingers were already reaching for his earpiece when Revik brushed the thought from his mind.

Instantly, the large hand dropped.

The bartender stood by the computerized cash register, puzzled.

By the time he’d moved a few steps away, he forgot Revik entirely.

Sighing, Revik moved his stool further into shadow and settled himself in to wait. On a ship of this kind, most wouldn’t even recognize the clip. He might have a long wait before he got approached, if he relied on that alone.

Still, it felt cleaner this way. If he got no interest after a few more drinks, he’d reassess. He let his eyes go to the monitor over the bar, which displayed the day’s news. He got through a few beers watching brightly-colored avatars argue about terrorism and China’s inadequate response to the threat of renegade seers on their own soil.

An hour later, he’d switched to bourbon.

He contemplated a walk to the neon bar to try his luck, when he felt eyes on him and turned. A slender woman in tan slacks and a form-fitting ivory sweater stood a few paces behind him, probably in her early forties.

He’d seen her walk in, but dismissed her when she pulled out a book and settled in a corner to read, an appletini parked on the round cocktail table in front of her. She had money, clearly, but looked the type who wouldn’t go near a seer bar if her life depended on it. The kind whose human husbands tended to be Ullysa and Kat’s most regular customers.

He saw her study the clip on his collar, then glance down the length of his torso and legs. Seeing his eyes on her, she hesitated only a second longer. Clutching a small black purse in one hand and the martini glass in the other, she walked briskly up to the bar, her lips pursed.

Approaching him directly, she leaned against the wood.

He didn’t move his leg when she pressed into his thigh. She glanced up at him cautiously, an odd mix of nerves and daring and curiosity in her eyes.

“Are you what I think you are?” she said, soft.

He nodded, still watching her face.

“Yes.”

She studied his eyes, looking from one to the other as if trying to see past them. It was almost a seer’s stare. He found he was already reacting to her, and kept his mind carefully away from hers. As if she’d heard him, she said,

“Are you reading me now?”

“No,” he said, smiling.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes,” he said truthfully.

When she didn’t move away, he slid down further in his seat, glancing for the bartender. The woman looked down at him, reacting to his mind’s nudge, and reddened. Giving a nervous laugh, she brought her martini glass to her lips.

“I see. How much?” She hesitated. “You charge, right?”

“Yes.” He thought fast. “Five hundred.”

“Five hundred? Are you worth that?”

He dipped lightly into her mind. She waited, as if she knew what he was doing. He pulled out a moment later, shifting slightly on the stool.

“For you, yeah,” he said.

She smiled wanly. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

He smiled politely.

“This is crazy,” she muttered, taking another swallow of her drink. “I’ve never even talked to one of you before.” She switched her purse to her other hand, looking down the bar to buy herself time.

Revik didn’t answer. He’d learned more than he wanted in his brief tour. She was lonely. Her husband was on the cruise, too, but with someone else, likely someone he’d arranged to have come on the ship so he could slip away from his wife every chance he got. This woman knew, obviously, but for some reason wasn’t ready to leave him.

Human sexual relationships depressed the hell out of him.

He was about to tell her to forget it, when she nodded decisively.

“Okay.” She downed the rest of the martini, her eyes bright. “What the hell. Do you have a place, or—”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

She pursed her lips. “Really? Then when?”

Revik hesitated. He hadn’t thought this through. Now that he had an actual person to react to, he realized he wasn’t worth anything close to the price he’d quoted. He needed an appetizer first, even if it was just his hand. He nodded towards the fireplace.

“In an hour? There’s something I have to do first.”

She looked doubtful, and he shook his head.

“Not that,” he assured her.

She nodded, but clearly didn’t believe him.

Hesitating another beat, he got up from the barstool, realized he still had an erection and paused, willing it to subside. When it wouldn’t, he felt his face warm. Instead of walking away, she lingered by him, shielding him from the rest of the room. His pain worsened briefly.

“Thanks,” he said after a moment.

She glanced down, a faint smile on her lips. “So the rumors are true, then? Is your kind always this...enthusiastic?” She waited for his answer, then added, “It’s good to know I don’t repel you, at least.”

Bitterness colored the last of her words.

Impulsively, he touched her hand that held the glass, letting his fingers linger on her skin. She shivered as it turned into a caress, and for another instant, he hesitated. He would lose her if he left now, he realized. He made up his mind as he felt her blush under his stare. He circled her wrist with his fingers.

“Forget the money,” he said. “And the hour.”

She blinked at him, and for the first time, he noticed her eyes were green. His cock hardened painfully again, even as nausea slid through his chest, making it hard to breathe.

“We’re not always like this,” he said, watching her look at him. “It won’t be as good.”

She studied his eyes. “It’ll be good enough.”

“Now,” he said, to be clear. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She balanced her martini glass on the edge of the bar, following the insistent tug of his fingers. He unhooked the clip from his collar, shoving it in his pocket as he led her out of the room.

I THREW MY jacket on the floor of the cabin, unwinding cotton wraps from my hands with shaking fingers. A few choice swear words left my lips, loud in the empty room.

Sparring hadn’t helped my mood at all. I’m not sure why I thought getting my ass kicked for the hundredth time by Eliah would help under the circumstances, but maybe I hoped it would distract me at least.

I could already feel Revik hadn’t been back.

Still, a tendril of my light flickered out, examining the room to be sure. Realizing that no amount of scanning was going to change reality, I slumped cross-legged to the floor. Fingering my hair out of my eyes, I fought a sudden tightness in my chest and closed my eyes.

Barrier clouds appeared.

A wolf runs across the tundra, tongue flicking over black lips in a blood-stained grin, body elongating...

But I don’t want to see that again, either.

Clouds hang bright and sharp, still against liquid black.

The Barrier enfolds me in dark and light waves. I can see it now, easily, whenever I close my eyes and resonate with its vastness. More importantly, I can feel when I am inside it, not just looking at it from without, or glimpsing the places where the physical world and the Barrier world overlap.

I’m not supposed to be here.

Even without Revik’s warnings, my gut tells me so.

The construct should keep me safe. I’m in a big fishbowl of protected space, cut off from the Barrier proper...but even I know that what I’m doing isn’t strictly covered by the construct’s shield. It’s not enough to stop me, though.

Not now, and not the countless times I’ve done it before, when Revik wandered out of the room at night or in the early morning, or whenever he thought I was asleep for more than an hour. He thought I didn’t know he roamed the halls while I slept, but I did.

I’d wait for him to leave, and then I’d sit like this. I even snuck in a few jumps after he’d passed out on the bed.

Those were riskier though...he was a light sleeper.

I no longer need to pause at the edge of the sharp clouds. I’ve eliminated a lot of the preliminaries, and even the intermediary steps. I’ve learned to make my jumps economical, due to the time constraints.

Even though I have time now, I do the same.

I don’t screw around, or look at the scenery. I don’t bother to play in any of the currents that flow in the waves above or below where I float in the clouds. I don’t visit nebulae, or stare up at the multicolored stars like I did the first few times I came here on my own. I don’t bother with vortices, either.

I aim directly at the gray wall around the spot at the top of the Pyramid.

Images hit me at once.

Most center on the keys I turned to get this far. The faceless man hides behind door after door, but it always starts in the same place, with a bearded man on a scaffold in a dying city that has a main square covered in broken shards of black volcanic glass. Before the Barrier jump with Revik, the image held no storyline, no meaning to me. Now I know, somehow, that the bearded man on the scaffold is the faceless man.

They are both Haldren, both Galaith.

Somehow.

I don’t understand, but I also don’t care.

Haldren whispers over an old man’s battered body.

Liego...Liego Kardek...why did you do it?

I know now that Kardek is the old man’s name.

Revik blames Kardek for the war that killed the Elaerian...the First Race...but I know better. I know Liego better by now, too. Liego and Haldren go way back, sharing a timeline I don’t understand, but that I am forced to accept on some level, at least enough to find him. I see Liego with Haldren when he is a child in that other world. A squalling, sickly child wearing rags, alone and abandoned. Liego rocks him to sleep, sings songs when the orphanage comes late to pick Haldren up from the school where Liego teaches.

Liego pities the boy. Eventually, that compassion becomes a deeper love.

The boy moves in with him and a man named Massani after no one claims him from the first set of wars. I watch Liego feed the four-year-old. I see him talk to an angry, confused adolescent, hold him as he cries at some disappointment or rejection.

I see Liego teach him in his private laboratory, ready him for exams, introduce him to a society that accepts him because of who Liego is.

Hatred wells up in me, mixed with a love that hurts more.

It is not my life, not my problem, but I take it personally. I take him personally. I crash through wall after wall, following the thread of that gaunt child.

He still exists...somewhere.

Haldren. His name is Haldren.

A recklessness lives in me. I decide I am tired of the slow way, the seer game of hide and seek, step by step, mapping and remapping of lines, all the cloak and dagger bullshit that I’ve tried my best to follow as Revik taught me. I don’t need to understand all the threads that tie me to this place and time. I am looking for the monster who killed my mother. I don’t care that he was once a child in some other version of Earth, except that it might help me find him now.

Dropping the pretense, I envision the child in the front of my mind.

I call to him.

I yell his name through the faceless shadows of a distant Pyramid, and most of the beings tied to that prison do not hear.

I think it is futile, that I am wasting my time, when...

I am with him.

Abruptly, I am there, at the top of all those chafing lines.

I float over the apex of the Pyramid.

Shocked by my success, I see him. He sits alone, in a structured room. Lines of silver and hard, metallic white stick to his head and heart.

The child is one of a thousand whispering masks.

He looks like a machine. The Pyramid has disappeared, I realize. It occurs to me that it disappeared because I am inside it. Haldren doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to see me at all. He rests inside a dream. A flat, pleasant emptiness.

Watching him exist in this state, I find I almost understand.

He is safe here. He is protected, in a way that the old man couldn’t protect him when he was alive. He is protected from feeling, from vulnerability, from caring about anything that might hurt him, or make him feel pain. He can sit in this empty space, untouchable, because the silver light ensures that he doesn’t have to feel any of it. He can give orders, and tell himself he is the cause of none of it. He can be the king of ghosts, of wasted machines.

He can kill my mom.

Or he can let it happen...and not care about that, either.

Anger flares my light.

A white arc leaves me, utterly different from the seething strands eclipsing Haldren on his metal throne. The flame sparks as it comes in contact with the Pyramid’s trembling strands. It finds one of the connecting points.

There is a strange silence.

Then a tangled, silver ball explodes.

I hear the crack below that single pearl of flame. Something totters, begins to fall. I hear voices scream, awakened from their collective dream. I watch that piece of the Pyramid tumble into a void-like abyss. Everything disappears below the connecting point I have broken. I watch lights disappear, erased from the network mind like branches cut from a dying plant...

Haldren disappears.

I fall. I fall for a long, long time...

Until I see only one face, one being.

A narrow, wasted mask looks at me, its eyes like poisoned urine. The face holds a dense knowing, a mirrored depth. The being smiles. I’m not looking at a person anymore. I am looking at one of the Rooks.

I see you, Bridge, it whispers.

I see where you are...

 

 

...AND I SAT up, gasping, batting at my head with my hands.

Just like that afternoon, I found myself lying on my back on the carpet, but instead of VR stars I see the low, white-painted ceiling of the stateroom.

My head hurts. There is sharp pain, but also a feeling of despair.

I realize I am still partway in the Barrier and dig my nails into my arm, trying to force myself the rest of the way out.

My eyes clicked back into focus.

The silver light clung to my head in some undefinable way, so I sparked outwards with my aleimi, trying to get it off me.

All I felt was amusement, laughter as the being left.

I was still sitting there, gasping, when a sharp knock rattled the cabin door. I turned to stare at it, fighting to regain my breath, fighting the fear that wanted to throw me back into the Barrier.

Revik wouldn’t knock.

“Allie?”

I recognized the Irish accent. Eliah.

“What the hell’s on in there, love?”

Only minutes had passed. Seconds, maybe.

White hands on green mirrors. Blood with water.

He was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. Everything hurt, and...

Pain whispered through my fingers. I held my head, biting my tongue as hard as I could to try and keep my light inside my body.

“Yeah,” I managed. “Okay. What do you want?”

I don’t remember saying he could come in, but the door opened. Eliah crossed the threshold into the room and stopped, looking around as if startled by a strange smell. Closing the door behind him, he studied me with cocked head.

“What’ve you been doing in here, love?”

I pulled myself shakily to my feet, wincing at the bruises from our earlier fight.

“Feeling sorry for myself,” I said, forcing a smile. My hands shook, so I clenched them at my sides, not meeting his gaze directly. “Why? Do you want to kick my ass again?”

He smiled wanly, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. “You all right?”

“I’m fine, Eli. What’s up?”

“Orders.” He hesitated, then glanced at the bed, as if he couldn’t help himself. “...To hear tell it, your other half will be out for awhile. I’m supposed to keep you company until he gets back. You know, keep you from being too bored...” Trailing, he watched me rub my temples. “Allie-bird? Seriously. You don’t look so good.”

I flinched a little at the nickname, but didn’t answer.

My mother had called me that.

Still casting around for something to keep me focused on the room, I tried to hold a normal expression as Eliah sat down on the bed. When the pause went on too long, I forced myself to look at him.

Unlike me, he’d changed out of the sparring gear.

I’d never really seen him in street clothes before, not apart from glimpses through the door when he guarded our stateroom. He had two different-colored eyes, one nearly black, the other blue, yet with his hair combed back and the blue sweater he wore, the combination worked well with his square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair. Sitting casually on the end of the bed, hands clasped between the knees of his dark-brown slacks, he looked like a cologne ad, or maybe a television spot for high-end coffee. What was it with these seers, that all of them were good-looking? The men all looked like GQ models.

Eliah had the air of a man who’d never bother with a midlife crisis. He’d be too busy scuba diving the Norwegian fjords or tackling K2.

He smiled faintly. “Cheers, love. Although the ‘midlife’ crack stings a bit.”

Hesitating, I decided the normal thing to do would be to sit. I let my weight sink into the plush armchair across from him.

“So what now?” I said. “You’re on babysitting duty, is that it?”

“I suppose so, yes.” He continued to study my eyes. “That all right with you, love?”

I shrugged, keeping my voice studiously casual. “Sure. Whatever. Not sure why it’s necessary, though. It’s not like this is the first time Revik’s gone on walkabout.”

Eliah flushed a little.

I couldn’t help but notice him glancing at the bed again.

“Yeah, well.” He gestured vaguely. “I guess Chan was worried you might overreact this time. She doesn’t want anything happening. Not with a ship full of human witnesses.”

“Overreact?” I stared at him. “Meaning what, exactly?”

He gave me a shrewder look. “You know where he went, don’t you, love?”

I hesitated, wanting to ask, then didn’t.

“It’s none of my business,” I said after a pause. “If he wanted me to know where he was, he would have told me.” Averting my gaze, I busied myself examining a bruise on my arm. When the silence grew awkward, I bit my lip, then spoke up again. “You want to play chess or something? I need a shower, but then we could play. I could stand to eat, too. Have you had any dinner?”

“I want to ask you something, first,” he said.

I felt myself stiffen. “Okay.”

He smiled. “Don’t say yes too quick, love. It might offend you.”

I nodded, massaging my arm. “Seems to be my day for that kind of thing.”

He laughed. When I didn’t say anything more, he made a vague gesture towards my body.

“All right,” he said. “You and the walking corpse. What’s going on?”

I raised my eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I hear his first wife strayed. Is he feeling bitter...testing you, perhaps?”

There was a silence. I fought with how I might laugh off his words, or just avoid the question without it seeming too obvious or defensive.

Then I realized the silence had stretched too long already.

Regaining my feet, I made my way to the bathroom. Eliah got up to follow.

“Allie...wait.”

“It’s fine. I just really need a shower,” I said. “If you want to order food, go for it...or you can leave, honestly. Unless Chan says you really have to stay.”

“Allie...”

I shut the door on him, not quite in his face, but close enough that I felt him flinch through the wood. I had to ignore that too. I would have to think of some way to talk through what I’d just done, but for now, I just wanted to get my mind on straight again. As I tugged the stretchy tee I wore over my head, bending over the tub, I heard him lean against the door.

“...Didn’t want to ask it, love,” he said, his words slightly muffled. “...but I’ve been hearing things. You know. Small ship...even smaller construct.”

The echo of water splashing against the fiberglass tub drowned out his voice as I turned up the faucet. He spoke louder, but I still missed a few words.

“...Most of our females won’t touch him, truth be told. There’s rumors about what he did when working for those Rooks, some of it to women...”

“Eliah,” I called out. “I can’t hear you. Can it wait?”

He raised his voice. “I could see it, if you just wanted a roll. Hell, he sells it, so he’s got to be competent at least...”

Wishing I hadn’t heard that part, I bit my lip, but his voice again rose above the water.

“...But gods almighty beyond the Barrier, Alyson...how in the realms of hell did he talk you into marrying him? Was there coercion involved? Because, love, if so, you have grounds for severance. Even apart from what he’s done since...”

I’d been about to flip on the shower nozzle when I froze, hearing his words as they replayed in my mind. I just stood there for a few seconds more, half bent over, wearing only my underwear. I watched water flow out of the silver tap.

“Allie?” He paused. “You know he’s got no social status to speak of, right? Hell, I think he’s officially still in penance. You’ve basically elevated him about ten ranks, just by agreeing to the bastard...and I don’t see anything in it for you. Then he treats you like this...”

The linoleum blurred.

My mind pieced together words, fragments of conversations, references. I remembered the look on Ivy and Ullysa’s faces in the kitchen when I wouldn’t go to him that morning, his half-assed apology about Kat, the constant, oblique references to whatever happened between us that first night we spent in Seattle...

“You know it’s illegal for seers, right?” Eliah said.

“Illegal?” I repeated numbly.

“Infidelity. You need permission. I’m assuming you didn’t give him that?”

I stood there, unable to answer. Thinking about Jaden, my parole, the look on Kat’s face when she thought I’d offered her Revik...

Tugging my shirt back over my head, I turned off the water.

After standing by the door a second more, I opened it, and found myself meeting the serious eyes of Eliah, one blue and the other a near black. He started a bit, to find himself facing me so suddenly. For a moment we just looked at each other.

Then my jaw hardened, and I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Order food. I have a few questions.”

For a moment, Eliah only looked at me.

Then he broke out in a grin.

I CURLED UP in one of the round-backed chairs that passed for comfortable, a half-eaten plate of oysters on the counter next to me. I wasn’t hungry any more, but food and alcohol seemed to be the way to get Eliah to talk, just like it was with most humans.

Eliah himself sprawled on an identical chair to my left, drinking a beer as both of us faced out the balcony door to the sea.

I forced my attention back on the room, and on him.

Mechanically, I smiled at something he said.

“Really?” I said. “...What did you do then?”

He grinned, eyes glassy from alcohol. “I just picked myself up,” he said. “...Dusted myself off. Pretended I’d meant to stick my hand in that letter box.” He returned my grin, seeing me shake my head. “Those poor worms...”

I stiffened and he added apologetically,

“...Humans. We end up acting fairly idiotic around them sometimes, just to avoid the hassle of an exposure threat. It’s a real bitch to get your license back once it’s been yanked. And it’s one thing to move undetected by humans. When you’ve got the Sweeps on your arse, it’s a whole other story.”

He gestured around us, pointing to the television and the stocked bar.

“But hell...this is my home. Living in caves, chanting...not the life for me. I don’t much fancy being sold at auction to some rich dickhead, either. Clan tattoos get burned off, you know. Overambitious Sweeps who want a bit of extra cash and get bought off by the traders. Of course, being in the Guard protects me from most of that. Even the Sweeps won’t mess with the Seven too much. They don’t want to risk the Adhipan on their arses, either...

“...Thank Christ,” he added, leaning over the arm of the chair and swigging more of the beer. “But there’s the flip side of that, too. If I don’t make the effort to act a bit human-ish, the Sweeps would have me living out in the middle of Mongolia somewhere, milking oxen. Not much of an improvement, really.”

“The Sweeps?” I said, puzzled. “But they’re human, right?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’thir li’dare...that bastard Dags doesn’t tell you anything, does he? No. The Sweeps is part of the World Court, yeah, but they’re culled from the clans. They’re the police. Couldn’t rightly be human, could they?”

“You have your own police,” I repeated, a little dumbfounded.

In the human media, the Sweeps were always portrayed as a kind of global Homeland Security. They worked under SCARB, sure, or maybe adjacent to SCARB, tracking renegade seers, but it had never occurred to me they weren’t run by humans, or human themselves.

He flicked his fingers to the right and up, the gesture I recognized as “yes.”

“The Rooks have a heavy presence on the Sweeps, of course,” Eliah said. “They’re sort of a competing nation with the Seven, you could say...but it’s more a philosophical difference, really. The other nations tolerate them because whatever else they may be, the Rooks are good at concealment. Ironic really, as they were the first to advocate dominance over isolationism.”

He leaned back on his elbows.

“Containment’s a real controversial issue with seers these days, love,” he added. “Before, humans were seen more like animals...” He gave me another apologetic glance. “Most of us didn’t even want to interact with them, truth be told. The world was bigger back then, and it was easy to talk about non-interference, live and let live, will of the gods an’ all that. Now humans fly everywhere, go everywhere, want to see everything. Even our most isolated clans are stuck having to deal with them in one form or another...and there’s interbreeding and mixed marriage and all kinds of nonsense on our side, too.”

He winked at me. “We’ve got nasty libidos, we seers.”

I rolled my eyes, but grinned slightly.

“Damn, that’s cute,” he said, leaning back over the arm of the chair. “Fuck. How can he keep his hands off you?”

Feeling myself stiffen, I receded back into the cushion, propping my arms on the rounded back of the chair. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just going to ask. Do you really believe all of this Bridge stuff? About me killing everyone, ending the world?”

He broke into a laugh, spilling his beer.

“Trust Dags to put a positive spin on it. What a morose bastard.”

“Eliah,” I said. “What do you think? Honestly. If it’s true, I think it must have something to do with the Rooks. I’ve been studying their network, but until today, I never really—”

“You’ve been what?”

Eliah raised his head, staring at me. The sharpness of his voice took me aback a little.

“Studying their network,” I repeated.. “I’m interested in how it works. The way the whole top part seems to shift—”

“The succession order?”

It was my turn to stare. When I glimpsed images in his mind however, watching the different pieces of the Pyramid move up and down, trading places with one another under the top spot at the apex of the Pyramid, I found myself nodding. It was oddly reassuring that the thing I’d been looking at had a name.

“That’s right,” I said. “The succession order.”

“Why on earth would you be interested in that?” he said.

His voice remained sharp under the disbelief, and I saw what might have been wariness under that. For the first time in our conversation, I remembered he was an infiltrator, like Revik.

“We’ve never been able to see into that, love,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would you even look there? What do you expect to find, exactly?”

I smiled, but had to fight to keep the anger out of my voice.

“I know,” I said, smiling again. “It’s practically Revik’s mantra. It’s way over my head. I’m just a beginner...I get it. You don’t need to go there, Eli.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant, love.”

“So you don’t understand why I might be interested in the people who killed my mother?” I said, my own voice sharper. At his silence, I bit my lip. When he still didn’t say anything, I asked again, “So what do you think, Eli? Really. About the Bridge stuff, I mean.”

The hard look faded from his eyes, leaving the lighter one a clear blue.

“Love, I know you’re worried about reincarnation and all that,” he said, sighing. “But I don’t think that’s the point, really.”

“Then what is the point?”

“It’s about roles, see. Some are too important...some affect too many people to leave to chance. The Bridge is like that. There needs to be someone overseeing things, when something as heavy as a Displacement goes down.”

For a moment, I could only look at him, replaying what he’d said.

“You really believe all that stuff?” I said.

He grinned, resting his head on the chair’s back. “You sound surprised.”

“For a seer, you’re almost...normal. I had my hopes.”

Leaning forward, he placed his free hand, the one not gripping his beer, lightly on my thigh. “Does that mean you’re warming to me, then, love?”

Smiling, I shook my head, moving my legs out of reach of his fingers. “There’s a serious shortage of female seers on this ship, am I right?”

“Brutally small,” he agreed cheerfully. “And Chandre’s as likely to try for you as I am. But you’d be a peach anywhere, love. And that pain coming off you is simply...maddening. I don’t know how he can stand it...”

I felt my jaw harden again. I considered making a joke, trying to laugh it off, but decided there was no way it would come off.

I shrugged instead, folding my arms.

“Revik said that seer relationships were ‘complicated’...and largely biological. He said I shouldn’t take it personally. Is that true, too?”

Eliah snorted. “Bloody romantic.”

“Is it true, Eliah?”

He shrugged. “It’d be true in a way, I suppose. We’re a bit more biologically wired for monogamy than humans. But that’s not exactly the same thing, if you don’t mind my saying...and doesn’t have anything to do with who we choose as a mate. In fact, you could say the reverse is true.”

At my puzzled look, he shrugged with one hand, seer-fashion.

“The biological symptoms could be unsettling, I suppose. Especially if you didn’t know what was happening. Someone like you, who thought they were human, it’s got to be that much harder...” He frowned, studying my face. Leaning forward, he looked at my eyes.

“Gods. You’re not in love with him, are you, Allie-girl?”

I shook my head, but felt my chest clench a little anyway.

“I barely know him,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked.” Still studying my eyes, he added more cautiously, “The rest of us, we assumed you chose him for protection. Or, frankly, because he was the first male seer you met, and bad luck on you for that.”

He hesitated, laying a hand on my arm.

“But if you are in love with him. Well...that changes things. Won’t be so easy to pull out of this thing with him then, pet. And I’m sorry for that.” He caressed my arm. “I truly am.”

I focused on his eyes. They seemed to brighten strangely in the dim light of the cabin.

As they did, his words faded, as if someone twisted the dial on a radio.

Every other sound in the room seemed to amplify. Ambient noises grew deafening: the sound of the ocean through the propped-open door, the wind lightly banging the hanging blinds, the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall. I heard an odd hitch in Eliah’s breath as he watched my face, his heart beating through his rib cage, slowing as he listened for my answer.

I had time to note I’d been kidding myself, telling myself I hadn’t known where he’d gone, or what he’d intended to do.

I got the chance to think the timing was ironic...

Then everything in the room dimmed. 

I should have known I’d feel it when it happened. From what Eliah told me, along with what happened with Jaden...even from what little Revik had said, in his own vague way...I really should have known.

I should have known a lot of things, but they still always managed to surprise me.