Allie's War Season One (43 page)

I flinched a little at the nickname, but didn’t answer.

My mother had called me that.

Still casting around for something to keep me focused on the room, I tried to hold a normal expression as Eliah sat down on the bed. When the pause went on too long, I forced myself to look at him.

Unlike me, he’d changed out of the sparring gear.

I’d never really seen him in street clothes before, not apart from glimpses through the door when he guarded our stateroom. He had two different-colored eyes, one nearly black, the other blue, yet with his hair combed back and the blue sweater he wore, the combination worked well with his square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair. Sitting casually on the end of the bed, hands clasped between the knees of his dark-brown slacks, he looked like a cologne ad, or maybe a television spot for high-end coffee. What was it with these seers, that all of them were good-looking? The men all looked like
GQ
models.

Eliah had the air of a man who’d never bother with a midlife crisis. He’d be too busy scuba diving the Norwegian fjords or tackling K2.

He smiled faintly. “Cheers, love. Although the ‘midlife’ crack stings a bit.”

Hesitating, I decided the normal thing to do would be to sit. I let my weight sink into the plush armchair across from him.

“So what now?” I said. “You’re on babysitting duty, is that it?”

“I suppose so, yes.” He continued to study my eyes. “That all right with you, love?”

I shrugged, keeping my voice studiously casual. “Sure. Whatever. Not sure why it’s necessary, though. It’s not like this is the first time Revik’s gone on walkabout.”

Eliah flushed a little.

I couldn’t help but notice him glancing at the bed again.

“Yeah, well.” He gestured vaguely. “I guess Chan was worried you might overreact this time. She doesn’t want anything happening. Not with a ship full of human witnesses.”

“Overreact?” I stared at him. “Meaning what, exactly?”

He gave me a shrewder look. “You know where he went, don’t you, love?”

I hesitated, wanting to ask, then didn’t.

“It’s none of my business,” I said after a pause. “If he wanted me to know where he was, he would have told me.” Averting my gaze, I busied myself examining a bruise on my arm. When the silence grew awkward, I bit my lip, then spoke up again. “You want to play chess or something? I need a shower, but then we could play. I could stand to eat, too. Have you had any dinner?”

“I want to ask you something, first,” he said.

I felt myself stiffen. “Okay.”

He smiled. “Don’t say yes too quick, love. It might offend you.”

I nodded, massaging my arm. “Seems to be my day for that kind of thing.”

He laughed. When I didn’t say anything more, he made a vague gesture towards my body.

“All right,” he said. “You and the walking corpse. What’s going on?”

I raised my eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I hear his first wife strayed. Is he feeling bitter...testing you, perhaps?”

There was a silence. I fought with how I might laugh off his words, or just avoid the question without it seeming too obvious or defensive.

Then I realized the silence had stretched too long already.

Regaining my feet, I made my way to the bathroom. Eliah got up to follow.

“Allie...wait.”

“It’s fine. I just really need a shower,” I said. “If you want to order food, go for it...or you can leave, honestly. Unless Chan says you really have to stay.”

“Allie...”

I shut the door on him, not quite in his face, but close enough that I felt him flinch through the wood. I had to ignore that too. I would have to think of some way to talk through what I’d just done, but for now, I just wanted to get my mind on straight again. As I tugged the stretchy tee I wore over my head, bending over the tub, I heard him lean against the door.

“...Didn’t want to ask it, love,” he said, his words slightly muffled. “...but I’ve been hearing things. You know. Small ship...even smaller construct.”

The echo of water splashing against the fiberglass tub drowned out his voice as I turned up the faucet. He spoke louder, but I still missed a few words.

“...Most of our females won’t touch him, truth be told. There’s rumors about what he did when working for those Rooks, some of it to women...”

“Eliah,” I called out. “I can’t hear you. Can it wait?”

He raised his voice. “I could see it, if you just wanted a roll. Hell, he sells it, so he’s got to be competent at least...”

Wishing I hadn’t heard that part, I bit my lip, but his voice again rose above the water.

“...But gods almighty beyond the Barrier, Alyson...how in the realms of hell did he talk you into
marrying
him? Was there coercion involved? Because, love, if so, you have grounds for severance. Even apart from what he’s done since...”

I’d been about to flip on the shower nozzle when I froze, hearing his words as they replayed in my mind. I just stood there for a few seconds more, half bent over, wearing only my underwear. I watched water flow out of the silver tap.

“Allie?” He paused. “You know he’s got no social status to speak of, right? Hell, I think he’s officially still in penance. You’ve basically elevated him about ten ranks, just by agreeing to the bastard...and I don’t see anything in it for you. Then he treats you like this...”

The linoleum blurred.

My mind pieced together words, fragments of conversations, references. I remembered the look on Ivy and Ullysa’s faces in the kitchen when I wouldn’t go to him that morning, his half-assed apology about Kat, the constant, oblique references to whatever happened between us that first night we spent in Seattle...

“You know it’s illegal for seers, right?” Eliah said.

“Illegal?” I repeated numbly.

“Infidelity. You need permission. I’m assuming you didn’t give him that?”

I stood there, unable to answer. Thinking about Jaden, my parole, the look on Kat’s face when she thought I’d offered her Revik...

Tugging my shirt back over my head, I turned off the water.

After standing by the door a second more, I opened it, and found myself meeting the serious eyes of Eliah, one blue and the other a near black. He started a bit, to find himself facing me so suddenly. For a moment we just looked at each other.

Then my jaw hardened, and I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Order food. I have a few questions.”

For a moment, Eliah only looked at me.

Then he broke out in a grin.

I CURLED UP in one of the round-backed chairs that passed for comfortable, a half-eaten plate of oysters on the counter next to me. I wasn’t hungry any more, but food and alcohol seemed to be the way to get Eliah to talk, just like it was with most humans.

Eliah himself sprawled on an identical chair to my left, drinking a beer as both of us faced out the balcony door to the sea.

I forced my attention back on the room, and on him.

Mechanically, I smiled at something he said.

“Really?” I said. “...What did you do then?”

He grinned, eyes glassy from alcohol. “I just picked myself up,” he said. “...Dusted myself off. Pretended I’d meant to stick my hand in that letter box.” He returned my grin, seeing me shake my head. “Those poor worms...”

I stiffened and he added apologetically,

“...Humans. We end up acting fairly idiotic around them sometimes, just to avoid the hassle of an exposure threat. It’s a real bitch to get your license back once it’s been yanked. And it’s one thing to move undetected by humans. When you’ve got the Sweeps on your arse, it’s a whole other story.”

He gestured around us, pointing to the television and the stocked bar.

“But hell...this is my home. Living in caves, chanting...not the life for me. I don’t much fancy being sold at auction to some rich dickhead, either. Clan tattoos get burned off, you know. Overambitious Sweeps who want a bit of extra cash and get bought off by the traders. Of course, being in the Guard protects me from most of that. Even the Sweeps won’t mess with the Seven too much. They don’t want to risk the Adhipan on
their
arses, either...

“...Thank Christ,” he added, leaning over the arm of the chair and swigging more of the beer. “But there’s the flip side of that, too. If I don’t make the effort to act a bit human-ish, the Sweeps would have me living out in the middle of Mongolia somewhere, milking oxen. Not much of an improvement, really.”

“The Sweeps?” I said, puzzled. “But they’re human, right?”

“No.” He shook his head.
“I’thir li’dare
...that bastard Dags doesn’t tell you anything, does he? No. The Sweeps is part of the World Court, yeah, but they’re culled from the clans. They’re the police. Couldn’t rightly be human, could they?”

“You have your own police,” I repeated, a little dumbfounded.

In the human media, the Sweeps were always portrayed as a kind of global Homeland Security. They worked under SCARB, sure, or maybe adjacent to SCARB, tracking renegade seers, but it had never occurred to me they weren’t run by humans, or human themselves.

He flicked his fingers to the right and up, the gesture I recognized as “yes.”

“The Rooks have a heavy presence on the Sweeps, of course,” Eliah said. “They’re sort of a competing nation with the Seven, you could say...but it’s more a philosophical difference, really. The other nations tolerate them because whatever else they may be, the Rooks are good at concealment. Ironic really, as they were the first to advocate dominance over isolationism.”

He leaned back on his elbows.

“Containment’s a real controversial issue with seers these days, love,” he added. “Before, humans were seen more like animals...” He gave me another apologetic glance. “Most of us didn’t even
want
to interact with them, truth be told. The world was bigger back then, and it was easy to talk about non-interference, live and let live, will of the gods an’ all that. Now humans fly everywhere, go everywhere, want to see everything. Even our most isolated clans are stuck having to deal with them in one form or another...and there’s interbreeding and mixed marriage and all kinds of nonsense on our side, too.”

He winked at me. “We’ve got nasty libidos, we seers.”

I rolled my eyes, but grinned slightly.

“Damn, that’s cute,” he said, leaning back over the arm of the chair. “Fuck. How can he keep his hands off you?”

Feeling myself stiffen, I receded back into the cushion, propping my arms on the rounded back of the chair. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just going to ask. Do you really believe all of this Bridge stuff? About me killing everyone, ending the world?”

He broke into a laugh, spilling his beer.

“Trust Dags to put a positive spin on it. What a morose bastard.”

“Eliah,” I said. “What do you think? Honestly. If it’s true, I think it must have something to do with the Rooks. I’ve been studying their network, but until today, I never really—”

“You’ve been
what?”

Eliah raised his head, staring at me. The sharpness of his voice took me aback a little.

“Studying their network,” I repeated.. “I’m interested in how it works. The way the whole top part seems to shift—”