Allie's War Season Three (21 page)

"...But you can get him to agree to
this
now, too?" Balidor retorted. "Is that what you mean? Don't even pretend you don't have your own stake in this,
Esteemed
Bridge. I know damned well that you've tried to talk him into your bed before now...that you've invited him to your room, time and again. That you would use
this,
of all things, as an excuse to seduce him..."

I glared up at him, feeling my temper slide abruptly away from me.

"That is
not
what I'm doing!" I snapped. "Damn it, 'Dori! I want to help him..."

"Alyson!" Balidor said angrily. "Don't you understand? If the two of you start going down that path, you will both lose the ability to think clearly about this! You will be right back where you were the first time with him..."

"He just needs light. He'll be okay, if we can get some light into him..."

"That is
not
all he needs," Balidor said angrily. "Are you not listening to me? Vash and I are both relatively certain that you will completely re-bond with him...which means that neither of you will be in a position to keep him from bleeding to death once you start.
Neither
of you will be in your right minds...neither of you will care about the irrationality of what you are doing..."

"I'm not talking about sex, 'Dori," I said, looking up angrily. I felt my cheeks flush hot. "I'm not talking about that, all right? That's not on the table..."

"I know exactly what you are
talking
about, Alyson," Balidor snapped. "I can see it, plain as day, in your light. And it
is
sex, no matter what you tell me or anyone else. Ask yourself if he would see it that way, and then tell me you won't be screwing with his head..."

My face grew hotter. "It'll help him, won't it? It'll give him a chance to heal..."

"What makes you think you will be able to stop?"

"Because I don't want to hurt him!" I said angrily, clutching him tighter in my lap. "Do you really think I'm incapable of walking away? That I'll conveniently
forget
he had a piece of metal sticking out of him earlier?"

"Yes," he said coldly. "That's exactly what I think."

Staring at him, I didn't answer at first.

I could only look at him, fighting the words that wanted to come from my lips. I forced myself to try and think about what he was saying objectively, to hear his words as concern for Revik and not just his usual overreaction to anything that might turn him back into Syrimne. I knew Balidor had been trying. I knew he'd made a real effort to help Revik, especially while I'd been with the Lao Hu. They were almost friends again, even if things were awkward with all three of us whenever it came to me and Revik's marriage.

I also happened to know that Balidor, more than any other seer or human I knew, needed to get laid...pretty much desperately at this point, at least as far as I was concerned. He probably needed it as much if not more than Revik and I did. I was almost ready to order him to take a week off, have the other infiltrators lock him in one of the hotel suites with multiple unwillings, male and female. All expenses paid.

When I glanced up, I saw Wreg smiling, hiding a chuckle behind one hand.

Balidor's face had darkened, holding a barely restrained fury that told me he'd heard my opinion on that subject, too. Heading off what I saw there, I shook my head, forcing my voice lower, more subdued.

"I was there, remember?" I said. "I won't forget he was injured, 'Dori...believe me. I'm the one who pulled it out of him..."

"You're the reason it was in him in the first place," Balidor snapped.

"I don't want to hurt him!" I repeated, raising my voice.

"You already
did
hurt him, Allie. Why do you think he's like this?"

I bit my lip, once again forcing myself to look away.

I didn't have a good answer for him, though. I knew he meant more than the bank job with his words, just from the cutting tone he used. He, like my brother and a few dozen other of my friends, was still more than a little pissed off at me because of the agreement I'd made with the Lao Hu. I knew most of them, including Balidor, thought I did it to get back at Revik...to hurt him deliberately for hurting me. I hadn't...not consciously anyway...but it didn't seem to matter what I said about that anymore, either.

In any case, I was at peace with myself on the whole Lao Hu thing. Finally. So I wasn't about to let Balidor pull some holier-than-thou crap about it now, not when I was fairly sure that Revik, at least, had accepted my reasons for doing what I'd done. Revik promised he would try his damnedest to let it go, that he wouldn't hold it over my head, and I believed him.

Even so, I knew he wouldn't really be able to keep that promise until we got past this part.

He'd talked before about having some kind of ceremony...something to help us start over once we were ready to live like married people again. He hadn't brought it up since that time he first mentioned it on the plane from Beijing, but somehow I knew that wasn't wholly off the table, either. Again, though, I had trouble imagining us being able to do that in a real way until we got past these damned imprints in my light.

I continued to stroke his hair as I thought all of this, not looking up at either Balidor or Wreg. It hit me again, how exhausted I was...how exhausted Revik must be, too, especially if he really had been refusing light, like Balidor said.

When I glanced up next, I saw Balidor and Wreg both looking at me.

The expressions they wore appeared pretty vastly different, however. Wreg's eyes held sympathy, if they could be said to hold one emotion above the rest...along with a lingering anger he seemed to aim only at Balidor when he glared at him periodically.

Balidor, on the other hand, looked at me with something like resignation.

Seeing the expression on his face, I nodded, mostly to myself.

"Take the collar off," I said.

I said it quieter that time, but there was very little in the way of a request in my words.

Giving a last, irritated sigh, Balidor shrugged, seer-fashion.

Walking over to me, he didn't bother to move Revik off my lap, or even to sit down. Moving Revik's hair aside from the relevant part of his neck, he flipped the thumbnail switch on the back of the collar expertly with his finger. When the latch opened, he bent over the retinal scanner, holding his face still as the red light swiped across both of his eyes. It was one of the newer collars, so I didn't hear the click, but I felt it when the mechanism disengaged.

Without speaking, Balidor tossed a set of cylindrical keys to the bedspread beside where I sat. I watched as he turned on his heel, walking to the door and then past it, through the opening and into the outside corridor. He left without so much as a backwards glance, closing the door sharply behind him. When I looked at Wreg, he only shrugged, gesturing towards the door in irritation.

"Ignore him, princess," Wreg grunted, then hesitated. "...Just be careful,
na?
Adhipan is an asshole, but he was not exaggerating, with what he said..." He made the seer gesture for 'crazy' by his head. "Nenz, he is not so okay right now...he was saying a lot of strange things."

I nodded, not answering.

"We'll be outside," Wreg added, turning for the door to leave. "Yell if you need us. Send up a flare, if you can't yell..."

I felt my jaw harden at his words.

Open construct. Of course.

That meant every seer in this part of the Barrier shield they'd erected over our floors would be able to see and hear and feel pretty much everything that went on in this room.

"Privacy is not a luxury you can afford right now, princess," Wreg said, his hand on the doorknob. He motioned vaguely to where Revik sprawled over one half of the bed. "We'll be discreet. Just try not to let him rip that thing open again..." His eyes held an additional reminder when he added, "Let us know when we can start channeling light to you, too, princess. He'll need it, no matter what you have planned..."

Feeling my face warm, I nodded again, my voice neutral. "Thanks, Wreg."

The giant seer hesitated again, looking at me with a vague worry in his eyes. Then, with another shrug of those massive shoulders, he opened the door, already closing it behind him before he was all the way to the other side.

I didn't have much time to think about Wreg's reactions, either.

I felt Revik around me once more. Like it always did with the removal of a collar, his light crept back subtly, so quietly I barely noticed at first. His aleimi slid back around his body and mine like a dimmer switch being turned up with painful slowness. I felt him reacting to feeling me there next to him, but my fingers were already on the back of his neck, pulling the collar off him entirely, easing it out of the holes it had created in his skin and flesh by the bones of his spine.

I hated those marks. I also happened to know from personal experience that they took months to heal completely. If a seer had worn a collar for any amount of time, say, longer than a few months or maybe a year, they pretty much had those marks for the rest of their lives. Not quite scars, since something in the collars prevented true scar tissue from forming, as it would have interfered with re-collaring over time...but we were definitely marked.

Mine still hadn't fully healed from my months with the Lao Hu.

Every seer I knew had those marks on the back of their necks. I couldn't think of a single exception...other than Vash, and maybe Balidor. If either of them had ever been collared, it was so long ago that the marks had eventually grown impossible to discern.

Picking up the keys Balidor left on the dark blue bedspread, I turned them over in my fingers, looking for the marks indicating which locks they fit. When I'd identified each, I turned over Revik's wrist, looking for the round lock to the matching key for the right cuff, which also happened to the be the one they'd locked to the headboard. Sliding the cylindrical key with the correct symbol into the opening, I turned it, feeling for the click.

When it came off, Revik shifted in my lap, looking up at me. His voice was gruff.

"Allie...don't."

"Don't what?" I said, tugging at his hair. "Do you really want to sleep in these?"

He didn't answer, but I saw the hesitation in his eyes.

"Do you want them to stay on?" I said again. "I can put it back on, Revik."

After another pause, he shook his head. "No."

He didn't move as I massaged his shoulders, then his upper back. After initially tensing, he relaxed deeper into my lap when I didn't stop, closing his eyes as I caressed his hair back from his face, tracing the muscles of his arm with my other hand. It was so strange that he was just lying there, letting me touch him. For months, he'd hardly let me near him. Now he didn't move, other than to lean deeper against me, his fingers locked around my leg. I touched his face again, running my fingers over his jaw with one hand.

"Did you really tell them to collar you?" I said, letting the same fingers slide down his neck to his collarbone.

Revik's jaw hardened. I saw his eyes avoid mine, and realized he had been listening to the three of us talk about him. I also saw that other look still coloring his expression, especially in his pale-colored eyes, which held a distant, not-there cast as he stared down at my fingers on his wrist. I watched as he looked up, focusing on my face. I saw that predatory look return, long enough for it to pause my breath. I felt him thinking about what I'd said, wondering what I'd meant exactly, when I'd said I would ease things for him. His imagination toyed with my words, letting them heat his skin. Now that the collar was gone, he wanted me to think about it again. He wanted to see whatever Balidor had seen...

Realizing how clearly I could hear him, I averted my eyes, my own skin warming.

He wasn't shielding from me at all.

That was unusual, in and of itself...especially lately. Twisting the cuff on his other wrist around towards me, I distracted myself by looking for the lock on that one, as well. After I shifted the key ring around in my fingers to find the key with the second symbol, I inserted it in the notch I found and twisted again. When the second cuff came off, I felt his light react, even as he moved deeper into my lap.

I felt his thoughts again, cascading around me, impossible to avoid. He tried to decide if he should tell me to leave, if he could even make himself ask. Then I felt him looking at me, thinking about my words to Balidor again. I felt him wanting to ask me about that, too. I felt him wondering how to word it, to get me to imagine it...