Allie's War Season One (107 page)

Her smile is patient.

Is it so important, to be the same race as us?
She quirks an innocent eyebrow.
Or is it to him you are so determined to be alike to?

Averting my gaze from those rock-still eyes, I force myself to pause, to think.

Maybe,
I concede.
Or maybe it’s just a little much, thinking I knew what I was...twice...only to find out I was wrong both times. Is this how the elders came to think I was the Bridge? Those biology things?

She makes another of the ‘more or less’ gestures.

The markers in your aleimi are even more telling,
she sends.
If you were more accustomed to looking at people by their aleimi, rather than by physical appearance, you would realize there are some distinct differences in yours.

So Revik knew?

She gestures affirmative.
Most certainly he knows. He conducted the final confirmation.

Confirmation? Meaning what?

Tests of your aleimi,
she sends, waving dismissively with one hand.
You would not have noticed these tests, not then...but it is partly why you were able to bond with him so easily.
She smiled.
In a sense, you already knew one another. Far more than you probably realize...

I feel like I am back on the ship, discovering all over again what he’d done to me behind my back. Even now, he keeps me in the dark about how much he knows.

I found out on the ship, after practically prying it out of him at gunpoint, that he’d invaded my privacy numerous times while protecting me for the Seven. He’d been through every room of my apartment in San Francisco, as well as my mom’s house, my brother’s, my friends’. He’d had weapons stashed at my place...and at mom’s. He’d created a hiding place in my ceiling for in case he ever had to get me out of there without using the door. He’d read my mind and the minds of just about everyone with whom I came in contact regularly.

He went through my drawings, medical records, school records, police records, all of my online accounts. He had open access to anything I did on the net, any VR portals I visited...any porn I looked at or read. He’d conducted surveillance on my work and school, my bosses, my family...

Why didn’t he tell me?
I say finally.

She sighs.
You wish me to decipher the intricacies of my nephew’s mind?

Feeling my anger rise, she clicks again, softer.

...There are many possible reasons,
she says.
To avoid frightening you. To avoid losing your trust so early in your relationship. Disclosures of this type tend to operate better in stages. That you are the only known living representative of your species...and that you did not realize because you can shape-shift to match your environment...is not comfortable information, either to give or to receive.

Thinking further, she made a dismissive motion with one hand.

...And, yes, the telekinesis alarmed him a bit.

At my silence, her amusement returns.

...He also did not expect to find himself married to you within a week of having awakened you.
She chuckles, her humor sending ripples through the Barrier space.

...
I imagine a lot more of his attention was consumed with determining how to relay
that
particular piece of information to you, Bridge Alyson.

Still smiling, she studies my eyes.

I feel a faint worry under her humor, though. Like Chandre, she’s concerned she’s harmed my view of Revik. This irritates me, too.

Alyson,
she sends, before I can say anything.
...We are simply aware that, given your current condition, you are likely to overreact to any information about your mate. In this case, it is completely unwarranted. He was under strict guidelines on approach and disclosure. He asked us, many times, for permission to approach you directly so that he might start training you. He was refused, repeatedly...mainly because we did not know how violent your awakening would be. Blinded, you were safe...relatively speaking.

I pause on this.

So why didn’t Vash tell me?
I ask.
Once I got here?

I am telling you,
she says.

Fighting to keep my temper in check, I pull a childhood trick I used when I got angry at my mother.

Holding up my hand, I stare at the reconstructed flesh.

It works, in part. I am amazed at the detail...down to a cut I got that morning on the helicopter door, bruises on my knuckles from the fight with Maygar.

I wonder if I added those details, of if she did.

You did,
she says.
You see? It is one of your gifts...to become like those around you. You have only been partially successful at this in the human world.

Again, I remember something Revik said to me.

Like blood on a white sheet. They notice you, then make up a reason why...

Thinking aloud, I say,
Mom said I stared too much. Later it was that I flirted, or that I said the wrong things...but honestly, it didn’t seem to make any difference what I did or didn’t do.

At Tarsi’s smile, I look up at the painting on the rock wall, focusing on the figures painstakingly drawn there. I count twenty-five, maybe thirty forms in the painting other than the two she’s already said were the Bridge.

They’re all intermediary beings?
I say.
All Elaerian?

She points at particular images.

The first stands below the image of the sword bisecting the sun. He is a boy, holding the blue sun in his arms and laughing. His eyes are kind, startlingly innocent.

Death,
she says.
You know him as ‘Sword’ or ‘Sword of the gods’...Syrimne d’ gaos.

Her finger moves to another of the forms, a female figure in all red, woven into and standing behind the image of the sword and sun.

War,
she says.
Also cataclysm.
Her finger moves again, to a figure made of bones, but in the shape of a crow-like bird.

Rook,
she says.
He is also called famine...the starver of souls.
She glances at me.
These are imperfect translations, of course...but your knowledge of old Prexci is insufficient at this time, so I am providing the English. It is only roughly equivalent—

I know those names,
I say, interrupting her.

Looking around a little uneasily, I remember a conversation Revik and I had, what seemed a million years ago now, about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Bridge.

He didn’t call them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of course. That had been my sarcastic contribution to the conversation.

I’d blown him off at the time, thinking he was nuts. But in the cave, I am pretty sure Tarsi just listed off three of their names, one after the other: Death, War, Famine. The fourth was their leader, who rode a white horse...that was the one no one could agree if it was supposed to be evil or some kind of force for good. I looked at the images of the Bridge.

In both, the figure was dressed in all white.

Great. That was perfect.

When I look at Tarsi again, she is smiling, but her eyes are watching mine.

It is not so simple as the humans portray it,
she sends gently.
Let us simply say for now that much was lost in the translation.
She gestures towards the painting with one hand.
What else do you see here, Alyson?

I re-focus on the images in front of me.

It’s like chess,
I say. I point to the image of a centaur in a helmet, carrying a sword. He wears chain mail, his face fierce.
Knight?
I say.

She nods.
Warrior...Knight is also good.

I point to an image of an older, Saint Nicholas-looking man wearing a crown.
King?
I ask. When she gestures ‘more or less,’ I point to his female counterpart.
...Queen?

Again, she makes the ‘more or less’ gesture with her hand.

We call the King ‘Shield,’
she says.
The queen is ‘Arrow.’ But essentially you are right. They are stabilizing forces. They provide structure when it is needed...

Shield?
I stare up at the kingly form.
Galaith then, right?

She gestures assent.
That is correct.

So he was good?

She gestures dismissively.
Good, bad...at base he was neither. He aligned with the Dreng, Alyson, so no, he was not good.
Her light eyes focused on mine, and their complexity made me stare.
...As with Syrimne,
she added.
It did not have to be that way. And he still served his purpose...more or less. There were darker consequences to that stability than were strictly necessary. But he did help to thwart that early attempt at bringing the Displacement...prior to his recruitment by the Dreng.

I stare up at the face of the being there, and imagine I can almost see him in it.

He, too, is your brother, Bridge Alyson,
she added.
It is part of why you were tasked with curbing his excesses...

I gave a wry smile.
If by ‘curbing his excesses’ you mean bringing about his death, well I guess I fulfilled my task well enough...

The old seer merely shrugged, her eyes focusing back on the mural.

Not all of your brothers and sisters made it to the human chessboard,
she says.
But many make their appearances in other places...

She points to the image of a dancing rabbit.

Fool,
she says.
Trickster.

I point to the image of a turtle, under the earth.
That one looks familiar, too...what is he?

Wisdom,
Tarsi says.
And traditionally, it is she.
She points to a being I hadn’t seen, woven into the fabric of the oceans.
‘Dragon’ would be close in English. Not quite that...not quite fish. Perhaps it is more accurate to call him ‘Birth.’ They are male and female, creation...closer to the Chinese meaning of dragon than that of European humans. Some of these beings do not incarnate down here in an individualized form, Bridge Alyson...

I look around at the other images. We haven’t covered a third of them.

Do you understand now?
she says.

Understand?
I look at her.
Understand what?

She smiles, and her smile is patient.

Why Death is your responsibility,
she says.

I DIDN’T SLEEP well that night.

Piled high in furs, mostly yak and llama, I didn’t want for warmth, and the bed wasn’t too hard.

It was him. The separation pain came back as soon as I closed my eyes.

Mixed with that came a paranoia I hadn’t experienced since he first left for Egypt. I knew it was irrational. Whatever Revik did to skirt the truth when it inconvenienced him, I’d never known him to lie to me outright. He’d made it pretty clear he expected monogamy from me, and that he had a fairly all-encompassing definition of what that meant. Besides, if he wanted some before I got back, he was smart enough to do it somewhere other than Seertown.

That train of thought didn’t help my mood much, though...nor did the realization that I’d left him with a hell of a hard on, not unlike both times he’d turned to others in the past.