Allie's War Season Four (110 page)

6

WALKED IN ON

I CLICKED OUT, fighting the harder edge of fear I could feel riding my light.

I couldn’t feel much on the seer standing in front of me, which frustrated me more. I felt glimmers of Adhipan structures on him, like Jon intimated when I spoke to him briefly on the comm. I felt something else there, too, some taste that swam around mine, evoking memory and emotion, but so far out of reach it hit me more like the ghost of a long-forgotten scent.

Whatever it was, this seer was hitting my buttons in a big way.

“Who the fuck are they?” I said, not making any attempt to hide my annoyance that time. “This group you represent? Some kind of ‘Bridge’ group I’ve never heard of?”

Silence.

Not only from the green-eyed seer with the antique rifle, but from Balidor and Revik, too, who were the only others standing with me on the pier right then. They hadn’t disarmed the strange seer, which was odd enough––especially that Revik hadn’t insisted, given that we’d had a bunch more death threats aimed at me in the past few months.

Even more bizarre to me, neither Revik nor Balidor seemed all that curious about the group
 
this seer claimed to speak for. Revik hadn’t asked the strange seer a single question, and Balidor had been unusually reticent, too.

That left me to be the one firing questions.

Increasingly, I felt like I was on my own, though. Not only in terms of my difficulty in trusting the other seer, or not wanting anything to do with yet another weird religious group that focused their angst on me and Revik...but in being willing to push against this other seer at all. It was like both Balidor and Revik had simultaneously opted to abstain.

They seemed unwilling to even challenge the authority of the other seer.

I admit, I was having trouble getting on board with that.

It didn’t help that I could feel something weird going on with Revik himself. Beyond the weirdness of him trusting this strange seer no one would admit to knowing, Revik didn’t want to know more about his claimed allegiances, either...or the seers he purported to represent.

But more than any of that, he felt off-balance.

Revik’s light being off always threw me off-balance, too, even when I didn’t know what was up with him. Really, especially when I didn’t know what was up with him.

This time, I was having trouble fully admitting how much it bothered me, which only made that fear and concern and protectiveness twist into an even harder anger.

Even now, as I faced off with the green-eyed seer, I could feel Revik staring at him, studying his face and light from behind where I stood. Revik remained behind me pretty much that whole time, which wasn’t like him, either. The not speaking part was somewhat
more
like him, but the silence was extreme in this case, even for him.

Really, apart from me, no one was saying much, though, despite the fact that four of us stood near the end of that dock under the arc of softer lamp-light.

I could also feel Revik pretending he
wasn’t
looking at the seer, which bugged me even more. I could feel a denser emotional response wrapped up in all of that, too, but I had no idea what it meant, so it only stressed me out more.

I knew I didn’t have time to dissect any of this now, not for either of us.

We had less than twenty minutes on the clock, and that stressed me out, too.

Honestly, I couldn’t really understand why we––Balidor and Revik, especially––were perfectly okay with wasting those last, precious minutes messing with this mystery seer in the first place. I felt like I had little choice, though, given Revik’s reaction and the insistence of the seer himself, who had been respectful to me to the point of subservience.

Unfortunately, that subservience didn’t manifest as clarity.

He explained who he was and what he was doing here only in the vaguest of terms, implying he was here for List seers even as he implied he was here to help us. When I suggested to Revik and Balidor that he might have been the one to take the Listers we’d come here to find, I could tell both of them didn’t agree with me, although they were vague about that, too.

All of it felt like b.s. to me...or at least that there were more than a few yawning gaps in his story...which annoyed me even more.

Still, Balidor seemed determined to talk to him, even though neither of them said anything that actually made much sense. The Ahdipan leader stood a yard or two in front of me on the dock, with Revik more or less behind me, so that we formed an uneven line facing the seer, who stood slightly further away.

We’d only been here a few minutes, but it felt like a lot more time had passed.

The mystery seer himself had been deposited on the dock by a very stabbed and bleeding Jon, who explained the green-eyed seer had helped them, and then asked to speak with me and Balidor...or Revik, if neither of us two were available.

Jon himself left for the ship not long after they dropped Mr. Vaguely Annoying off, along with an unconscious human and Maygar, who didn’t seem to like the green-eyed seer much, either, as far as I could tell.

Feeling Revik look at the seer again, I tensed.

Immediately, the charge in his light dimmed, before I could get any kind of sense of what was behind it. I’d felt surprise there, but it was more than that. In fact, that feeling edged closer to shock than true surprise, which might have explained Revik’s uncharacteristic silence.

Well, uncharacteristic when it came to military and security matters, anyway.

More annoying from my perspective, Revik was clearly trying to hide his interest from me...maybe me, more than anyone...something he hardly ever did any more. I hated the evasion I felt there. I hated the faint flavor of guilt that came with it. It pissed me off, even more than the emotions I felt seething in some other region of his light, too obscured by shields for me to do much more than speculate on what they meant.

One thing was clear, though.

Seeing this fucking seer was upsetting my husband.

Something about that single fact made me view him with an overt hostility. I knew it was irrational, but I didn’t much care about that, either. Between that, losing the List seers to some jackass sheik in Dubai, and Jon’s stabbing, I wasn’t in the best of moods, anyway.

“Explain it to me again,” I said. At the silence my words produced, I stepped closer to Revik. Lifting his wrist, I stared down pointedly at the face of the old-fashioned watch he wore. “A little less vague this time, if you don’t mind? We’re on the clock.”

The green-eyed seer sighed a bit, glancing at Balidor.

Balidor looked at me, then shrugged apologetically with one hand. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was apologizing to me, or for me, however, which only annoyed me more.

Before I could make up my mind, Balidor cleared his throat. Turning back towards our mystery guy and his annoyingly loaded silences, Balidor returned the seer’s stare long enough for me to feel and see something pass between them.

It hit me again that Balidor knew this guy, too.

“...It sounds like a cult,” I snapped, glaring at both of them when they turned.

Balidor winced at something in my expression, looking faintly caught.

“...I don’t need a bunch of weirdo cult followers hanging around, ‘Dori,” I said, my voice warning. “I don’t care how good their sight-skills are. The last thing we want is to be overrun by a bunch of fanatics. I say no. Alliance, fine. But not on my ship.”

From behind me, Revik laid a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I felt the warning there, as well as the quieter reassurance, but I had to bite my lip to keep from snapping at him, too. It didn’t help that I caught our mystery guest staring at Revik again. He gazed at his face, right before his eyes focused down, looking more intently at the hand Revik had on my shoulder.

Great. He was even shittier about hiding his emotional reactions than Revik and Balidor were.

I could see him staring at Revik again, not long after I thought it, his expression reflecting something like incredulity, almost like he couldn’t believe Revik actually stood there, behind me. And sure, a lot of people stared at Revik and me like that, given who we are, and how often our pictures showed up in the human feeds. Seers stared at us for religious reasons, too, and just due to our status in the seer community. Humans stared at us...usually in fear.

This felt different. While I couldn’t read the exact details of that stare, I could feel the decided lack of neutrality behind it.

It felt personal.

Like Revik, Balidor seemed to feel my anger, and sent me a reassuring pulse of warmth.
It’s all right, Allie. He’s not a threat to us...

Biting my lip, I didn’t answer that at first, either. I saw Balidor glance at the green-eyed seer after he sent it, frowning slightly. Again, I felt something pass between the two of them.

“Who is this fucking guy?” I burst out.

Behind me, Revik jumped.

I turned that time, moving out from under Revik’s hand and looking between him and the green-eyed seer. Then I swiveled my gaze to Balidor.

Clicking softly, Revik avoided my eyes. So did Balidor.

The green-eyed seer met my gaze, but when I saw the faint apology there, somehow it only made me angrier. Still staring at him, I felt my jaw harden more.

I aimed my words at Balidor and Revik, though.

“Are you both really going to keep pretending you don’t know him?” I said. Turning, I gave Balidor a harder stare when Revik continued to avoid my gaze. “Because you really suck at it. So does he...” I added, motioning at the stranger with an angry flick of my wrist.

“Allie, calm down,” Revik said. “Please.”

I felt the deeper pulse of meaning that time, too.

Realizing my light was charging up, I fought to control it, realizing only then that my eyes were starting to glow. I knew then, what I’d been fighting to know for the last handful of minutes. I was overreacting to this.

I fought to think through why, then realized I already knew why.

Giving Revik an even harder look, I flinched when I saw him blush.

Are you really not going to tell me? Really?

He clicked softly, but met my gaze.

Not here,
he sent, quiet, almost a murmur.
Can we talk about it on the ship?

His thoughts sounded almost pleading.

Biting my lip, I shifted my stare to the green-eyed seer, addressing him directly.

“Look, I’m sorry if I’m being rude,” I said, my voice short. “But our clock’s running down, and it’s been a shitty night. If you want to come on board, you can come on board...we can finish this discussion there. If Balidor will vouch for you, and my husband trusts you...as they both clearly do...I’m not going to fight it.”

I motioned at Revik from behind my back, without looking at him that time.

“...But we have to get him indoors. Now. Do you understand this?” When the green-eyed seer didn’t speak, or change expression, I looked at Balidor. “He understands this, right? Or am I not supposed to explain that a good portion of the civilized world wants us dead?”

Balidor looked about to answer, but before he could, the green-eyed seer surprised me, beating him to it. Clicking softly, he made a negative motion with one hand, his light exuding regret that time, but also a kind of intensified politeness.