Allie's War Season Four (55 page)

Even as he thought it, something clicked.

You say Cass would be motivated to take me from Allie?
Revik sent to Jon.

Jon nodded. Revik felt it through the link between them.

Even with Allie dead?
Revik sent.

The words stuck briefly, somewhere in his mind, but came out regardless.

Yes,
Jon sent, still sounding certain.
I’ve felt this kind of angry jealousy thing on Cass since this whole thing started. Not so much about you. Just, you know...everything.
Jon glanced over at him from the other side of Wreg, and Revik saw his eyes faintly, in some fragment of reflected light.
I felt it even before we got to South America,
Jon added, as if thinking aloud.
...Jealousy, only twisted into something darker. Maybe from the Terian thing...before, I mean. Being tortured. Maybe from stuff in her childhood. When I felt it in South America, it had this real no hope feeling to it, like being lost. It really worried me at the time. I don’t know, I could never really pin it down, not exactly. Not in terms of what it meant...

Can you feel it now?
Revik sent.
Can you feel her? Cass?

Jon sighed inside the Barrier, shaking his head.

No.

But you felt this before with her?
Revik sent. At Jon’s assent through their link, he asked,
When did it start? In Argentina?

Sort of,
Jon said, then shook his head again.
Well, no...not really. It’s hard to explain. I remember the feeling even from when we were kids. I didn’t know what it meant back then, much less what it would turn into, but she always had this in her. When her mom called or something, and she had to go back to her own family, after spending a lot of time in ours. Like this looking in from the outside, feeling like she...
Trailing again, clearly remembering, Jon shook his head.
I don’t know. Like she felt cheated. Like her life was stolen from her, and all she could do was live some corner of Allie’s. Allie’s family, Allie’s friends...

Revik nodded, thinking.

He found himself putting some piece of it together with Menlim, with what he remembered about the man who raised him. Menlim could use that. Moreover, Menlim would use it...Revik could even think of a number of different ways how.

Still watching his feet move in the dark, he nodded again.

I understand,
he sent.

And in that moment, he almost did.

17

SECOND FRONT

TARSI SAT ON a padded, leather bench on one corner of the conference room.

The others had forgotten about her.

Tarsi didn’t mind. She only really noticed that fact insofar as it gave her the opportunity to watch the rest of them, and to think her own thoughts, with only the smallest monitoring of theirs with some less-engaged part of her aleimi.

The seers in the room exuded stress, sadness, worry, fear.

Tarsi understood that, too. She watched them work under the three largest monitors on the virtually-equipped window overlooking the park. A young human girl with dark brown hair hunched over a number of hand-helds with secondary monitors, sitting with Vikram, who had come from the Pamir and the Adhipan training cells, as well as Anale, who also had been trained first under Tarsi herself.

The human girl had an interesting aleimic structure, Tarsi noted...but then, she had been named high up on the human Displacement list, her stats listed directly under Jon Taylor himself. Like Jon, she’d also been categorized with a rank of ‘1’––the only other 1-rank on the human list.

Dante was her name, Tarsi remembered.

Tarsi decided she might need her, too, before all of this was finished.

Her nephew was walking into a trap.

Tarsi knew it. So did her prodigy, Adhipan Balidor, who led this group of seers supporting the assault from the House on the Hill hotel. Tarsi strongly suspected that every seer in this room knew it, to one degree or another, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. Not a one of them knew the specifics of that trap, of course, including Tarsi herself. Tarsi could taste enough of Menlim’s construct, however––that same construct that strangled the entire of the island of Manhattan––to know that Shadow and his servants were not afraid of her nephew’s approach.

They welcomed it.

They welcomed the return of
Syrimne d’ Gaos
with open arms.

Whatever her nephew faced on the other side of those organic-paned doors leading into that seventy-plus story, park-side Tower building, on the corner of East 79th, it would be more than he could handle. It would be more than he could be protected from by these shields of Balidor’s and Jon’s, too. Tarsi strongly suspected her nephew knew this, however.

He just didn’t care.

Tarsi even understood why he might not care, given everything. He’d gone there to kill his child, she suspected, as much as to kill the being, War, and her accomplice, Rook, that broken-minded seer who had once been called Feigran. Her nephew had gone there to ensure his daughter wasn’t tortured as he had been as a child, or worse, turned into a willing pawn of the Dreng. Tarsi figured he probably expected to do that the hard way, too.

Meaning, her nephew likely expected to be calling on Adhipan Balidor to blow up the building, once he’d verified the relevant parties were inside.

Tarsi understood his motivation there.

She didn’t judge him for it, not even in the abstract.

Truthfully, Tarsi couldn’t reasonably expect her nephew to care about much of anything at this point, other than to protect what remained of his family. Even so, she knew someone had to. Someone
had
to care, and the Bridge had given that job to her. Clearly, the others didn’t know how to prioritize the course of the Displacement and the humans they’d been brought here to assist, either, not even her favorite pupil, Adhipan Balidor.

Maybe it wasn’t even their job to care about such things, not anymore. Perhaps their role was to support her nephew in his, and to play out this little drama of Shadow’s and War’s.

Maybe it really was her job. Maybe it was the real reason no one had killed
her
yet.

After all, Tarsi’s name was on that list, too. First wave. Warrior.

This had to be the first wave, Tarsi more or less figured...as much as such a thing could be figured by those who didn’t have the gift or curse of true prescience. Tarsi herself had only met two true prescients, in the entire of her existence in this incarnation...and both in the last one hundred years.

Tarsi herself never had that gift, thank the merciful gods above.

She was here, though, not dead, not moved on to the places behind the Barrier, so still part of the fight. Moreover, the Bridge had given her a job to do. Maybe from where the Bridge had been for the last few months, she’d seen all of this coming. Maybe that’s why she blew off the two of them, Tarsi and Vash, in hatching this crazy idea of hers.

Tarsi found herself wishing she knew a prescient now.

Of course, she
did
know one...technically.

But last Tarsi knew, that person was far away, and Tarsi didn’t exactly have a means of reaching her easily...assuming she was even still alive. Her and her mate could have been killed in the craziness following the plague of C2-77. Hell, they could have been killed years ago, for all Tarsi knew, although somehow, Tarsi doubted that, too.

Still, Tarsi hadn’t heard from that person in years, so anything was possible.

‘First wave’ had been written by that person’s name on the Displacement lists, too, but ‘First wave’ had been written by a lot of names who hadn’t lived to see the start of that historical event. Chaos still reigned in the physical realms, for good and for bad. Nothing that could be, ever happened without question or doubt or struggle. Free will created a randomness that defied even the most rigid patterns of even the most entrenched momentums set in motion over the generations. Free will always would trump fate, no matter how certain that fate seemed.

Tarsi remembered enough to feel reasonably confident in that fact, although it was easy to forget that, when one looked at the intensity of some of those momentums in the Barrier’s waves.

It had been years since Tarsi had spoken to her, at any rate...years and years.

Tarsi had been prevented from speaking to her, for the same reasons she’d been prevented from speaking to any who held secrets that couldn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Tarsi had agreed to those restrictions, of course, but more than anything, Tarsi wished she could ask that prescient’s opinion on unfolding events now.

If nothing else, she’d love to have a discussion with her sister about just who put that list of Displacement names in that safety deposit box. Whether her suspicions on that score were correct or not, Tarsi knew without a doubt it hadn’t been Menlim.

Thinking about that now was nothing more than indulgence, too. Whatever role her rather elusive sister might play in the end game,
right now,
Tarsi needed to be focused on the job she’d been given by the Bridge before she died.

Tarsi had pressing matters in the present to attend to.

Standing up on legs that creaked a bit, reminding her and irritating her about the frailties and limitations of physical bodies all in the same set of breaths, Tarsi bent down only long enough to pick up the mahogany cane her attendant in the Himalayas, Hannah, had carved for her and presented to her at their last meeting. Knowing that Tarsi had been about to go on a long trip, first to the Pamir and then to New York, to preside over the Bridge and Sword’s wedding ceremony, Hannah had also woven a thick cape for her, out of sheep’s wool and dyed a midnight blue. The funny girl had been worried Tarsi might be cold in New York, after leaving the Himalayas. Clearly, she’d been watching too many movies on the feed player her husband got for their cabin in the valley.

Smiling at bit as she remembered Hannah, Tarsi used the cane to navigate her old body to the door of the room. She wondered idly if any of them would notice her leaving, and if so, if they would try to stop her.

None did. They were too busy.

Young people,
she couldn’t help thinking with a shake of her head.

Walking down the carpeted corridor to the elevators, Tarsi reached the business foyer by the double row of doors and hit the call button for up. Leaning on her varnished cane, she waited. It seemed to take an interminable time for the ping that came to signal the elevator car’s arrival, then another oddly-lengthy delay before the doors to that car actually opened.

Once they had, Tarsi walked inside the mirrored box and squinted down at the numbers until she found the one she wanted. Pressing it, she retreated to the back of the car, resting her rear end on the brass railing to take some of the weight off her swollen ankles.

She should know better than to sit in a chair for so long. She should have been sitting cross-legged, on the floor. That way, her feet didn’t swell up, leaving her half-crippled the next time she needed to walk somewhere. Vash wasn’t around anymore to jab at her about being old, so she had to remember these things on her own.

Thinking about him brought a smile to her lips, along with that paler regret.

Not regret for him, of course. Regret that she got stuck here in an old body without anyone to share being old with.

Somewhere from the space behind the Barrier, she felt him laughing at her.

That laughter came closer then, so close he might have been in the elevator car next to her.