Allie's War Season One (25 page)

Revik closes his eyes, leaning his head on stone. “Approach my brother, Whelen.”

“You have not yet heard my proposal—”

“—And yet I am not a fool,” Revik cuts in, opening his eyes again. “Whatever game you and your pet Sark are playing, it is my family name you want. You picked the wrong son. Nothing I said would ever be heard in the Pamir, least of all by my own family. And I have had my fill of humans and your...‘modernization.’”

The faceless man holds up a hand, another gesture of supplication.

“I know your life has been hard, Revik. I know of the death of your parents. I know too that you were adopted by a family that did not want you.” His tone grows cautious.

“...I also know of your current problems, as I have said. But women die in childbirth, cousin. Even among your kind. It is pointless to throw away such a promising, young life for what is a relatively natural event. She was not seer. This suicide of yours cannot be inevitable.”

He pauses, watching Revik’s face.

“Was the child Blauvelt's? Or another’s?”

Revik doesn’t answer at first. He gives a short laugh.

“You really want me to kill you. Perhaps I should oblige this wish of yours.”

Galaith holds up his hand again. “You are wrong about me. My regret for your misfortune is sincere, cousin.” He pauses, still watching Revik’s face. “And I have already spoken with your blood cousin, Whelen,” he adds. “I told him where you are, too. I told him of your predicament. Your family understands more than you believe, despite your decision to distance yourself, to live among my people and participate in this heinous war on her behalf.”

“It was not for her,” Revik said.

“It
was
for her, brother. You felt obligated—”

“I meant, it was not her fault.” Revik is once more staring at the shadow-darkened corners of the cell. “Please go.”

“Revik, your blood cousin, Whelen, doesn’t interest me.” Galaith’s words contain a gentle pull. “We have no need of family names. That clan nonsense is of the past. I want your talent, Revik. I believe you will prove to be our most valuable asset yet.”

Terian leans closer. He holds up two fingers in a backwards V, wiggling them at Revik.

“...Second-most valuable,” he says, winking.

Galaith chuckles, patting Terian on the back with one hand. “Yes,” he says. “It was Terian here who petitioned hardest for your recruitment, Rolf. Our little Terian is most anxious to see what you can do...he may have created a bit of a reputation for you in advance, I’m afraid. One you may have to defend in not too long a time.”

His smile grows more visible as he discerns Revik’s involuntary reaction to his words.

“...I, too, am anxious to witness these talents, cousin,” he says. “Indeed I am. Most anxious.”

A flush of warmth grows in some part of Revik that doesn’t need to feel much else.

He is still thinking, turning over this spark in his mind, when the walls around me fall once more into black.

I CHOKE...CHOKED...am choking...caught inside a fisted clutch of light, an egg-shaped pocket that holds me unflinchingly in place. Inside that heated glow, I birth. The turning planet brings stars past me in a pale swath, sky broken by sharp eyes and lightning flashes, snaking charges of gold and orange and crimson, the late side of the setting sun.

The pain worsens, a spike that arcs, a taste before it keens steeply up, inexorable, becoming gradually more unbearable, until I am sure my insides will be ripped out, torn into so many pieces there is nothing left.

Beyond where I lay, a golden ocean beckons. It is familiar.

He is there too.

I’m sorry,
he says.
It’s not why I asked for you. I’m sorry, Allie—

Shhh.
My voice is steady, somehow apart from the lights clashing, the ghosts winging over both of our heads.
Revik, it's all right.

Don't leave me, Allie. Don't leave me alone with this...

The pain worsens again, makes it hard to see.

Still, the words come easily, without thought or regret.

I won't,
I tell him.
I never will.

There is a question in this...one that shocks his heart.

Before I’ve understood either the question or the possible answers, he’s agreed. A surrender lives in that agreement, what is almost shame. He clasps my fingers, and I see tears in his eyes. They bewilder me, touch me somehow through the pain and he pulls me closer until...

He kisses me. It is a brief kiss. Clumsy, awkward, almost tender...meaning lives there, more meaning than I can comprehend. I feel him agree again.

It feels final that time...like a promise.

A vow, maybe.

Like an ending and a beginning, all at once.

...and then, the night sky disappears.

Above us, light weaves into complicated patterns, in and out like a shuttlecock between silk threads. I have a fleeting impression of time removed. The weaving of the threads grows more and more complicated, more subtle, more intensely beautiful and intimate and connected to my heart. I watch a painting form in the vastness of that sky, a painting of diamond light, in a pattern too breathtaking for words. My struggle stops, even as the pain I felt before melts into warm breath, a feeling of ending that somehow...doesn’t...can’t.

I know, somehow.

I feel it in him, too, a surge of familiar.

The feeling is so dense, I can’t see past it. A timelessness lives in that sense of the familiar, something I can’t explain to myself, something I understand without words, without really understanding it at all.

Something is...different.

I don’t know it yet, but it will never be the same again.

12

CHANGE

I SAT IN a window, balanced toe to heel on the white painted wooden sill.

My butt had started to numb in the twenty or so minutes since I first fixed my perch, but I liked being balanced on the narrow ledge as I looked out the rain-splattered window. Through the glass lived a world of gray, with charcoal streets and sad-looking trees breaking up long swaths of sidewalk.

A man walked by in a tarp of a raincoat, slowly pushing a shopping cart filled with cans and covered with a blue tarp. He glanced up at the window.

I held my breath, frozen as he stared at me, but his face looked resigned, his eyes blurred by rain. Gripping the cart’s handlebars, he resumed pushing it down the street, his expression unchanging.

A long, slow, questioning tug slid through my belly.

He was looking for me...it grew urgent briefly. Then it faded back, pulled somewhere else.

I glanced over at the bed, without turning my head.

Above him hung the tapestry where an angry-faced blue god rode a lion, tongues of flame circling his head in a bright orange and red aura. My eyes shifted to tapestry nearer to me, the one depicting a gold buddha with multiple faces that formed a high cone stretching above his neck. Crowning the stack of extra heads hung a delicate, androgynous face exuding golden light. I found myself looking at that face a lot this morning.

Revik moved then, and my eyes drifted reluctantly down.

He slept on his back, arms and legs sprawled, his hands and fingers open. I studied the softness of his expression and felt the pulling return, urgent that time, enough to bring the nausea back in a warm flood.

I’d woken to the feeling, and him wrapped around me, half crushing me with his arms and body in sleep. I’d been careful of his hurt shoulder without thinking about it much, but I’d been wrapped around him just as tightly. My face had rested in the hollow of his neck, one of my legs curled around and between his.

I’d been pulling on him unconsciously, as much as he had been me.

It had felt completely natural that his fingers were tangled in my hair, that he’d tugged me closer with that same hand, his other arm wrapped around my back, his mouth brushing my temple in sleep. When I’d stroked his bare arm and chest without thinking, caressing his fingers, he’d let out a low sound, enough to wake me for real...and get me swiftly out of his bed once I realized other parts of him were awake ahead of his mind.

Since then, he’d been looking for me with his light. It wasn’t enough to wake him, just enough to make me sick.

I still hadn’t left.

I couldn’t decide why, but my reasons felt irrational, even to me. I was starving. I needed a shower like I’d never needed one before...I smelled like filthy lake water and my hair had the consistency of matted straw. I wanted clean clothes. I also could be talking to the other seers, the friendlier ones, anyway, and trying to find out more about my mom, Jon and Cass.

Instead I was here, watching him sleep...like some kind of stalker.

The truth was, I couldn’t seem to make myself want to leave, even after I had to go to the bathroom.

Feeling eyes on me, I turned...and nearly fell off my window perch.

Ullysa smiled at me from the doorway, looking like an old movie still with her hair piled on her head and a powder-blue gown clinging to her hips. Turning away from me, she scrutinized Revik clinically.

Without thinking about why, I hopped the rest of the way off the sill and crossed the room, drawing the woman’s eyes back to me.

Ullysa frowned, exuding a faint puzzlement.

That puzzlement didn’t dissipate as she turned to study my light with the same narrow-eyed stare she’d trained on Revik.

“What?” I said quietly when I reached her.

Ullysa shook her head. Then her face broke into a smile of such sincerity that I was taken aback.

“He is better,” she said, clasping my arm with warm fingers. “I am relieved. You did very well with him.”

I blinked into the woman’s violet eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “Good. Look, is there any way I could borrow some clothes? I’m starving too, and a shower—”

“Yes! Of course!” Ullysa squeezed my arm tighter, exuding more warmth. “You may have whatever you wish while you are here, Bridge Alyson! Anything at all!”

“Great.” I smiled back, a little unnerved by her enthusiasm. “I’ll pay you back, once I—”

“No.” The seer waved this off, making a sharp line in the air with her fingers. “There is no need for that...the honor is ours. And Revi' is an old friend.”

My eyes shifted involuntarily to the bed.