7

BIRTHDAY

I SAT ON a bench rimming the wide cargo hold. I was freezing, shivering against the gusts that whispered through the wide compartment. I didn’t get up to look for a coat.  

The pain had worsened again.

I had to assume that was partly because it had worsened on his end. It also crossed my mind that it might be because he’d taken me up on my offer to let him screw his way across several continents if the urge struck him.

I couldn’t really go there, though. It wasn’t something I could laugh off, not yet. I couldn’t even use it to make the rest of it real in my head.

I stared at the floor of the cargo hold, where I’d retreated to hide from the others. I had no idea where the plane was headed at this point, only that Vash didn’t think I’d be safe in Asia, given what had happened in New Delhi. So after a long pow-wow with Balidor and the rest of the Council and their military arm, the Adhipan, the decision had been made to hide me. They hadn’t told me where, of course. They knew Revik and I were still connected, so they probably wouldn’t tell me any more than they absolutely had to at that point.

In fact, when the plane did land, I’d already been warned that I would be blindfolded and knocked out, so I wouldn’t be able to identify the location before they had me locked away.

Which told me it would likely be underground somewhere.

Which meant lightless, cold...probably boring as hell. 

In the meantime, I did know that seers had been dispersed in several directions, some of them wearing cloaks of my light...not like that would be enough to fool him, at least not for long. Still, it might confuse the issue long enough to keep us safe...for a short time at least...while Vash tried to do what I’d threatened Revik with. 

Or so I supposed. 

I didn’t know for sure what the plan was, for the same reasons I didn’t know where they were taking me. I had been cut out of the construct, the military arm of it anyway, likely indefinitely.

Hell, I was lucky they’d let me stay conscious for the flight itself. 

He didn’t say so, but I got the feeling that Vash had his doubts he could sever us, too. The only hope we had lay in the fact that I’d formed the energetic bond with him before he’d killed the boy. Being bonded to half an Elaerian, instead of a whole one, at least made the idea of severing us theoretically possible.

I couldn’t help but find it ironic, however. They’d managed to sever the one person Revik had been into three different, partial persons...meaning Revik, Syrimne and the Rook he’d been under Galaith. Yet now they may not be able to sever him and me back into two full persons.  

Most of the Council had scattered. They disappeared somewhere underground on Balidor’s advice, and with about half of his people, the Adhipan, protecting them.

Vash came with us, of course.

But Tarsi opted to go elsewhere, too. 

She didn’t tell me until the day she left. She came to New Delhi, to the safe house where all of us stayed for the day or so it took us to regroup after the bombing at the hotel. 

No one had to tell Tarsi anything. She seemed to know exactly what had happened. I tried not to think about the fact that saying goodbye to me meant she would be saying goodbye to Vash again, too. They kept it pretty quiet, but I’d known the two of them had some kind of relationship. It had rekindled for a few months now, ever since I got back from Terian and D.C.

So I’d taken more than one thing from Vash, in my confrontation with Revik.  

She hugged me before she left, tears in her eyes.

I’d never seen her openly emotional before, so of course I assumed it meant I would probably die sometime in the next few months.

I knew also that it broke her heart, what had happened to Revik. He was her blood nephew, her actual sister’s son...not a fake one set up for his assumed identity. In fact, the opposite had been true. She’d changed her name and formal bloodline to match his after he’d been rehabilitated as Dehgoies Revik. 

I knew she loved him, Syrimne or no. 

Whether she blamed me, I would likely never be a good enough infiltrator to know for sure. Tarsi, despite her frail exterior, reminded me more of Balidor than she did of Vash.

She was...battle scarred...for want of a better term. 

Balidor told me she’d once been the best infiltrator of their people.

She didn’t chide me about anything I’d done in Delhi, or even speak to me of it. She hugged me, kissed my cheek, and then she was gone. 

I don’t think I knew how much I’d grown to count on her until it struck me that I might never see her again.

I wrapped my arms around my torso, shivering in spite of myself. I wore thermals, a sweat shirt, jeans, combat boots. I needed my coat, but I didn’t get up to look for it. I sat there instead, gripping my own torso as if to keep my insides from falling out on the metal floor of the plane. I don’t think I knew I was crying until the sound of footsteps on the circular staircase from the passenger cabin broke me out of my stupor.

I looked up, and my vision blurred.

I realized I was holding my own ribs tight enough to hurt. Shivering uncontrollably, I realized I hadn’t noticed the cold either, not for however long I’d been in that paralysis. I couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t articulate anything, even in my own head. 

I felt like I was being slowly crushed.

When Balidor sat next to me, I could only look at him.

He didn’t say anything either. Wrapping his arms around me, he pulled me up against his chest. He wrapped his coat around me as best he could and we just sat there, silent, for what felt like a long time.

I BIT MY tongue accidentally and made a sound, jostling up and down in the back of what must be a truck, or a van of some kind.

I tasted blood, but it seemed pointless to complain. 

A black hood covered my head...or some kind of hood anyway, that blackened my physical sight. I had on a collar, and I found myself fingering it nervously in spite of myself, touching the organic metal. 

I understood now, why Revik hated the damned things so much.

At the thought, my mind tried to shut down again.

Since I couldn’t distract myself by looking around, I counted bumps in the road instead...and I listened. I heard the breathing of at least four other people in the back of the vehicle with me. I tried to identify them by their breathing alone, but could only make partially-informed guesses. One smelled like Jon.

I know that probably sounds odd, but being awakened as a seer changed my senses, so I actually could smell people sometimes...people I knew well, anyway. 

I guessed one of the others to be Balidor, but that may have had more to do with my knowledge of him and Adhipan protocol than anything to do with my seer spidey-senses. I heard a laugh then, and realized in some surprise that Cass was there, too...which meant likely the Wvercian giant, Baguen. That might account for the smell of hiri to my right...since I knew he smoked pretty regularly.

“Alyson,” Balidor said, soft. “The idea was that you would not pay attention to your surroundings. Or mark your companions as targets...”

I felt my throat close. 

“Can’t you tell me a story or something, ‘Dor?” I said, fighting to smile, although I knew he couldn’t see it. “You know...get my mind off things?”

“No need,” he said, laying a hand on mine. “We are here.”

The vehicle (‘truck’ my mind supplied unhelpfully) began to slow. 

Then it came to a stop.

There was a pause while everyone around me seemed to be picking up luggage. I smiled to myself...one benefit of being the prisoner of Zendor...porter services. 

“Very funny, Alyson,” Balidor murmured. He handed me a bag, which I took, awkwardly. “Your hands seem to work just fine...”

“You’re a riot, you are,” I said.

He caught hold of my arm. Someone else took my other one, and I found myself being led across a relatively-even ground. It was actual ground, though, not cement.

“Allie...” Balidor growled.

“Sorry!” I said. “It’s a little hard not to pay attention at all. Especially since I’d prefer to keep from falling on my face...”

“A little faith in your escorts, if you please,” he said. “Step,” he added.

I did as he said. I followed him and the person to my left, doing my best to blank out my mind, stepping when they told me to, following the pulls of their fingers when I needed to change direction.

So when I tripped on something hard, a root or a stone or something, I nearly fell.

“Jeez! So much for my faith-invoking escorts...” 

Balidor chuckled a bit. So did the person to my left, who I immediately realized was Jon. I managed to keep hold of the bag Balidor had thrust on me, somehow. 

“Dicks,” I said, after we’d been walking a little longer.

“Charming, Esteemed Bridge,” Jon smiled.

The acoustics sounded different now, and the surface under my feet was flat. Not exactly flat...but flatter certainly, almost like paving stones...

“You’re doing it again,” Balidor said.

“You’ve got me collared,” I said. “What more do you want from me?”

He laughed again, and I realized he was teasing me.

“So it doesn’t matter what I think at all?”

“No, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, and I heard the grin in his words. “You’ve been in a construct since the van stopped...”

I cursed him out, which of course only made the two of them laugh harder.

“Step,” Balidor said again, still laughing. “Step...”

“Okay,” I said, in mock irritation. “...I get it already. At a certain point you just say ‘stairs,’ Balidor...and let it go...”

“She’s awfully touchy,” Balidor remarked to Jon.

“You can say that again,” Jon replied. 

I snorted, but let out a kind of gasp when someone, probably Balidor, picked me up in their arms. I felt myself being passed from hand to hand before I got to the bottom of wherever it was, and then my feet again touched a floor, this one as flat as cement.

With a flourish, someone pulled the hood off my head. 

I found myself in the dark, surrounded by smiling faces. I could see them, because on a table in front of me, stood a cake, with what looked like about thirty candles burning on it.

I turned my head, and found Balidor’s face, smiling at me below gray eyes. Next to him, I saw Jon, Cass, Dorje. I was still standing there, bewildered, when Tenzin kissed me on the cheek, squeezing my hand.

“Happy birthday, Bridge,” he said, smiling. 

I looked at Jon, who gave an apologetic shrug. 

Fighting back my emotional reaction, I forced a smile, looking around at all the faces surrounding me. I must have had a funny expression though, because most of them laughed. 

Balidor clapped me on the shoulder then.

“Hurry up with the cake part,” he said. “We’ve got presents...”

I nodded, wiping my face self-consciously.

“Blow them out, Allie,” Cass said. She stood with the giant, Baguen, holding his hand. Next to Jon, Dorje stood smiling too. 

Hesitating only another half-second, I leaned over the table, staring down at all the different-sized candles they’d dredged up from wherever. Some where white and as thick as my finger. At least one was twice as big, but the rest were close to the size of regular birthday candles.

Smiling down at them, I took a deep breath, and was about to blow...

When a shriek from the corner of the room made me jump about a foot in the air. I’d barely comprehended that the sound was real when Balidor had thrust himself between the origin of the yell and me, his gun out, aiming into the dark. 

“Something touched me!” Illeg said, one of the female seers.

“Unge, hands to yourself!” Tenzin joked.

“It wasn’t me!” he protested.

“I’m not going crazy!” Illeg snapped. “It wasn’t one of us! Do you think I would have yelled like that if it was?”

Balidor kept a hand on my shoulder, his gun still pointed to the darkened corner of the cave-like room where they’d taken me.

“Show yourself!” he growled, pushing me further behind him.

Trying to look around his shoulder, I stared into the same space of dark, holding my breath as I waited for an answer.

I could hear breathing, a near-hysterical series of pants that sounded like some kind of animal. Balidor exchanged glances with me, and I saw he’d heard it too.

All of the seers had backed away from that corner. Jon and Cass had, too. Several others unholstered their guns. 

I flinched as an organic yisso torch sparked in the hand of one of the Adhipan or Seven. The crowd of us had clustered now on the far side of my cake, whose candles still flickered and guttered in the breeze from the stairs. 

Holding up a hand against the glare, I made out the outline of a form against what appeared to be a stone basement wall. Whatever the form was, it moved just enough to tell me it was alive, its chest heaving in rapid pants, as though about to have some kind of seizure. I tried to make sense of the shape of it. Narrow shoulders stood above a thin body, large hands and feet. The ears stuck out on either side of a squarish head, but from what I could make out in the dim light by the wall, the face itself had delicate, almost feminine features despite the sharp line of a masculine jaw.

I found myself thinking it had to be a seer, but with the collar on still, I had no way of knowing for sure.

Whatever it was, it looked severely underfed.

“Come out of there!” Balidor commanded. “Right now! We are armed. We are not afraid to take action, if you do not...but you have nothing to fear from us if you are peaceful...”

From Balidor’s formal speech, in Prexci no less, I had to assume I’d been right, that the creature crouched before us was seer, not human.

It took a hesitant step out of the shadowed wall, still breathing in rapid pants. The face reached the circle of light in a slow steady unfolding, like the moon illuminated by the sun. The skin of the stranger shone so pale under the light of the yisso torch that it looked almost like a searchlight next to the reddish brown hair on his head.

I blinked, still trying to make out the puzzle of what I was seeing.

I found myself looking at a face I’d never laid eyes on before, but that somehow held a glimmer of familiarity to me, despite that fact.

Then I saw the eyes.

A sharp amber in color, they blinked at me, owl-like. 

Looking at the ghost-like, spindly arms, seeing the faint smile at the edges of the full mouth under bruised-looking, hollow eyes, I found I knew exactly who I was looking at.

“Holy cow,” I breathed. “It’s Feigran!”