Allie's War Season Four (147 page)

I didn’t want to be measured against them. I didn’t want to be another person in his long list of people who’d gotten him off this way.

He smiled. I hadn’t looked up yet, but I felt it.

“Allie,” he said, softer. “You have to know how completely different it is with you.”

I didn’t meet his gaze, but I shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know what I’m doing with this, Revik. I don’t know how to give you what you want...” Biting my lip instead of going on, I shrugged again, folding my arms in front of my chest.

I practically saw him roll his eyes.

“Are you going to make me say it?” he said.

“Say what?”

“Bullshit, Alyson.” His voice turned harder. “...China.”

I gave him an angry look, but he cut me off before I could speak.

“You do know,” he said. “...And don’t even get me started on San Francisco.”

Knowing he was referring to Jaden that time, after already referencing the period I’d worked as a consort for the Lao Hu, I grimaced, hit by two different sets of unwelcome memories. Most of those were things I’d much rather have left far, far behind me, and not only because Ditrini featured in a fair few. The fact that it had been Ditrini didn’t take away from Revik’s overall point, but I also thought he was missing mine more than a little, even where coercion wasn’t involved. It was easy to do that kind of thing when you didn’t give a damn.

“I get that,” he said, his voice lower again. “I really do. It was easier for me, too.”

There was a silence.

I found myself turning over his words, in spite of myself.

When the silence continued, I felt him backing off with his light.

I also felt him politely and cautiously retracting his offer.

Well, not retracting it, exactly, but maybe letting me off the hook. Somehow, that didn’t reassure me either, though. Pain worsened in my light, even as I felt another part of me grow almost angry. I hated that I wrestled with this crap. I hated that I was such a coward with him, and that his past sex life still managed to threaten me and get between us. I shouldn’t have to feel shitty about this. Remembering some of the stories Cass told me back when we were in school together...even things me and Jaden had done...

“Allie,” Revik’s voice held a touch of warning that time.

I killed the thought, erasing it entirely from my mind.

“Sorry,” I muttered, folding my arms tighter.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “It’s fine. Really.”

I knew he was being a good sport, though, and that pissed me off, too.

“I want to see Lily, too,” he said, his voice warmer that time. “Why don’t we talk about this later? We can have lunch with her...then we’ll go to that meeting on Dubai. I think we should still have it,” he added, pulling a long-sleeve shirt off the chair where he’d hung it, and shoving an arm into one sleeve. “It’ll just be a planning meeting now. The first of many, like you said.”

I felt his light de-charge, even as he said it.

That worsened my pain, too, but that time, I only nodded.

Even as I did, it occurred to me that we’d just survived our first marital fight.

The first real one, anyway.

16

PARENTS

I HAD PRETTY mixed feelings about hitting Dubai, truthfully, despite how adamant I’d been about it. We hadn’t hit a Shadow city before.

More to the point, I wasn’t really sure we were up to it, even though I’d given the team a lot longer to prepare this time.

I couldn’t tell what Revik thought, exactly. He’d been surprisingly quiet about the whole thing since we’d solidified our compromise, maybe because he’d already gotten the bigger things he wanted. Meaning, I gave him sole discretion when it came to determining the safety precautions for me and Lily––both on the ship and for the op itself.

Revik didn’t get everything he wanted, though.

The Council ruled against him, regarding his request to execute Cass.

I admit, their decision surprised me. I’d been expecting to hear them come back with the opposite verdict, especially after the case Revik and Balidor laid out with the Council itself, two days after me and Revik’s big blowout.

Listening to Revik make his case, I found myself simultaneously impressed and a little resigned when I realized I didn’t have anywhere near as good of an argument to keep Cass alive. Really all I had was a gut feeling that we shouldn’t kill her. Revik, on the other hand, argued like a lawyer. He also shared a lot of sight imprints and memories of Menlim’s specific threats against me and Lily to back himself up. He made a pretty convincing case, even to me, that letting Cass live posed a direct threat to me, and indirectly, to Lily.

Moreover, Balidor backed him up, as did Wreg, if to a lesser degree.

Jon remained uncharacteristically quiet.

Chan gave a brief statement supporting my stance, although her points appealed more to Cass’s religious significance, so I’m not sure if it helped, even given her audience.

My arguments were definitely the most nebulous, though, even to my own ears.

After the verdict came back to keep Cass alive, I thought at first that Chan had been the one on the money, that the Council’s decision was some religious thing, either because of who I was, or their unwillingness to kill Cass as a member of the Four.

According to Balidor, though, that wasn’t true, either.

He said they used their collective sight in the end, and what they perceived as the more beneficial outcome from the perspective of the Ancestors, a collective entity I still understood only in the vaguest sense.

Either way, they said no to Revik.

Even Tarsi said no.

Oh, and as a part of that whole thing, I found out Balidor had been named as the newest member of the Council of Seven, too.

I hadn’t been thrilled by that news, honestly.

“No,” I’d said, when he informed me of the honor they’d extended him. “I appreciate that they’ve offered it,” I said. “But no. You’re the head of the Adhipan, ‘Dori. I absolutely cannot spare you. They’ll have to pull someone out of meditation or something, if they’re short a body.”

Balidor gave me one of those smiles of his, clicking at me softly. “It is a very great honor you would deprive me of, Esteemed Bridge. You know that, yes?”

His words flustered me, making me ashamed and angry at the same time. I didn’t catch that he was teasing me until a few seconds later.

“Damn you,” I said.

“We worked out a compromise...” he began, smiling wider.

“You knew I’d freak out,” I said, rolling my eyes and clicking at him. “You knew, and you let me do it anyway. Jerk.”

“I can do both, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, making a graceful gesture with one hand as he leaned on the edge of his small, metal desk. “I just wanted to see your reaction, I confess. They promised to only pull me into sessions where my Adhipan duties will not conflict.” Smiling at me faintly, he let his gray eyes turn more serious before he added, “It
is
a great honor, though. I am a bit insulted you do not think so.”

Giving an involuntary laugh, I threw my arms around him, giving him a hug. My voice came out half in laughter and half in that lingering embarrassment.

“You really are a jerk,” I told him.

“It’s been mentioned, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, smiling back. “Mostly by your husband, incidentally.”

Despite his newfound status, Balidor recused himself from the decision about what to do with Cass since he’d also offered testimony. Even so, he sat in on the deliberations. He didn’t give me a lot of details in terms of either their reasoning or what they’d seen, but he did tell me they had looked at various permutations of possible timelines. He told me those timelines that turned out the most promising all had Cass playing some kind of role.

Of course, Balidor added, making one of those difficult-to-read facial expressions of his, some of the very
worst
of those scenarios featured Cass, as well.

Right around that same time, Balidor informed me that he’d heard back from his mysterious leader of the Children of the Bridge, too. He didn’t tell me much, other than to say that she preferred to introduce herself to me in person. Apparently, she also wanted to explain to me who she was in person, too, and why she had not revealed herself before now.

I found it kind of irritating and pretentious, honestly.

Since she also offered to lend us infiltrators for the upcoming op in Dubai, though, and to help us to find more humans and seers on the Lists, I agreed to her terms.

We found a midway point to meet, after discarding a number of possibles.

We had to go around Singapore, since Singapore was a Shadow city, too, although one of the smaller ones...and of course we didn’t want to get too close to Dubai itself, or any of the surrounding waters, not until we were ready to make our move. As Dubai was one of the most well-fortified of Shadow’s quarantine zones, and well as one of the few boasting a full-fledged military presence including naval and air, that meant we had to give it a wide berth.

We were warned off Jakarta and really anywhere in Indonesia due to extreme violence reported on
Drahk
, and Timor wasn’t much better, supposedly. Extreme flooding still plagued the Philippines and New Guinea, so we decided against those, mostly because we didn’t want to risk grounding the ship. We considered Australia, except that the Children of the Bridge folks said it would be too difficult for them to get to the more isolated areas where we would need to go...and the cities of Australia had banned seers entirely at that point, and would have shot us on sight if they figured out who we were.

The Maldives were entirely underwater after their fields crashed, which I admit, disappointed me, since I’d really wanted to see them.

Balidor suggested the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka, where apparently most of the human population had already fled and/or stabilized. Reportedly, Sri Lanka in general had handled the virus reasonably well, and while they’d been hit with a fair few refugees from southern India, none of the Sri Lankan cities had been specifically targeted via their water supplies, so they’d managed to maintain somewhat of a protected zone.

Anyway, we wouldn’t be there for long.

Because we needed to minimize stops, we would be picking Loki and his team up at Sri Lanka, too. Apparently they’d already worked out a route that would allow them to hop and refuel the Chinook once they took to the air again, stopping in Pakistan and a few other places en route to get down to a small airstrip just north of Yala National Park, which was partly flooded but still had a few open beach areas. Once the carrier got within range, they’d land the Chinook on the deck, of course, but at least we’d know where to look for them if anything went wrong.

But yeah, I really didn’t intend to stay long. In and out.

Now that Balidor was more or less cooperating with my demand that we minimize secrets among the core group in the leadership team, I didn’t much care about the Children of the Bridge, to be honest. I figured they were a bunch of religious fanatics, and I still didn’t really want to use people like that.

Not when it came to long-term planning, anyway.

Basically, I figured I would meet this person, we would agree to some kind of alliance or treaty, I would borrow some of her infiltrators, since Balidor claimed a few of them had recent knowledge of Dubai and its security protocols...and that would be that.