Allie's War Season Three (43 page)

Wreg entered the room first, wearing a form-fitting long-sleeved shirt and dark pants. Revik couldn't help thinking how the seer still dressed a few decades out of date, even now. Some portion of his thoughts must have reached the other seer, because Wreg made an obscene gesture in seer, smiling wanly back.

Revik shrugged, smiling. "Get Jon to take you shopping," he said. "...Or Holo. They're at least young enough to have a clue..."

Wreg gave him a hard look, but Revik kept his own face expressionless.

"So you really want to deal with this cunt now, Nenz?" Wreg said, motioning with his head towards the organic window. "Adhipan will be pissed, you know...if you leave him out."

"He's busy," Revik said. "He got stuck coordinating the succession order for the remaining Council members, now that Vash is dead...and helping them choose a new leader. Between that and running a trace on every communication Dorje's made for the past twenty-four months, he probably won't have a spare minute for days..."

"Still." Wreg gave a faint shrug, his expression uncomfortable. "He'll be pissed."

Revik smiled a little. "I'll make sure he knows it wasn't you."

Wreg made a dismissive sound. "Blame me, if you want. Adhipan hates me already...what do I care?"

Still, Revik suppressed a smile when he glanced back at the array of monitors.

The four screens displayed the breakdown of VR projections of the scanning work Balidor's people had already done on Raven. After looking at it for a few minutes more as the other three and Wreg handled the preliminary connection work, Revik had to admit he didn't see much he could do to improve it, either. It looked like, whatever her real reason for being here, Raven was clean. As clean as someone like her could be anyway...and as clean as they could determine, considering what just happened with Dorje.

Revik knew she still might have some portion of her mind or memories guarded in some way...perhaps by having them erased and held by another seer, prior to her coming here. Even so, she didn't appear to have brought anything with her into the hotel. Nothing that could harm them, or give her a link into their operations.

After another forty minutes of all of them working pretty much silently, occasionally showing one another something in the Barrier, or asking for a second opinion, Revik had to admit he felt ready. Balidor had done ninety percent of their job for them.

"He is good at what he does," Wreg acknowledged, the reluctance only minimal in his voice.

At that, Revik laughed aloud. "Did you just compliment brother Balidor? Wait...can you do it again, so I can record it?"

"No," Wreg said. He cocked an eyebrow. "And don't tell him either. That shithead doesn't need another reason to be arrogant..."

Revik smiled again, clicking softly as he shook his head. Looking over all of the aleimic maps in front of them in the VR space, he finally nodded.

"Okay," he said. "You'll record everything, right?"

Wreg seemed to know Revik was thinking of Allie when he said it. "Of course,
laoban.
You sure you shouldn't wait?" He hesitated. "Until they can all be here, I mean...?"

When Revik gave him a look, Wreg made a vague gesture with one hand. "Adhipan may not be the only one who's pissed, Nenz..."

Revik didn't look up from the console when he answered in a neutral voice. "I know. But I think this is better." Checking Raven's organic restraints a last time, along with the integrity of the collar she wore and the Barrier signal it emitted, he nodded.

"All right," he said, feeling his jaw harden. "I'm going in."

THE SMILE SHE gave him as soon as she saw him at the door managed to set his teeth on edge. It also made him second-guess his decision to do this without Allie. Just from the once-over she gave his body, and the way her pupils dilated, he could tell she was going to go out of her way to make this interview about the two of them.

He didn't stand still for her loaded appraisal, but crossed the room without acknowledging it.
 
Balidor or someone else had already put a table by the cot where she stretched out, along with a chair on the opposite side. Walking directly to it, he pulled the chair out without preamble and sat, crossing his arms as he fixed her with a stare.

She didn't get up at first but set her book aside, pausing to stretch on the cot where she sprawled, showing her midriff under the short, tight shirt she wore.

"Cut it out, Raven," he said. "I'm not in the mood."

"You're always in the mood, Dehgoies," she smiled. "...Unless you've changed a
lot."

He didn't return her smile. "You wanted to see me, so I am here. Talk."

"You look good," she said, giving him another once over, her eyes lingering on his crotch. "...Really good. Being the Sword seems to agree with you."

"Raven, if you dragged me in here just so you could play cute, hoping my wife's listening on the other side of that glass, you're wasting your time..."

"Am I?" Raven smiled. "You haven't told her much about me, then."

He grunted dismissively, averting his gaze.

"Did you tell her, Revi'? About us?"

He let his voice grow bored. "Why wouldn't I? She doesn't have any reason to be threatened. Not by anyone...but certainly not by you. You were convenient, Raven. Less than a footnote. Why would she give a damn about you?"

Her expression didn't flinch. Instead her opaque blue eyes grew more catlike as she looked him over again.

"So...how is the missus these days?" she said, her voice turning more shrewd. "She still as high and mighty as she was when I last saw her?" Her mouth quirked, her eyes holding more of a glint. "I seem to recall her on a knees a lot, actually, the last time I poked my head in at the Forbidden City to visit my friends. She was quite the party girl..."

Revik felt his jaw harden to granite.

Studying his expression, Raven leaned closer to him across the table.

"Did she tell you about Ditrini yet, Revi'?" she asked softly. Her lips curled in a higher smile. "Their lead infiltrator? He took quite a liking to her, as I understand...didn't want to give her up, from what my friends there tell me." Still watching his eyes, she inclined her head, gesturing subtly with one of her cuffed hands. "...I guess after she killed that giant, Voi Pai was a little angry with her. She gave your wife to Ditrini as a pet. Did she tell you about that, Revi'? I hear he was pretty generous with his possession..."

Revik stared at the far wall, unmoving. He found himself struggling to keep his reaction from her, to remove it from his expression, from his light...then realized it didn't matter. She knew it would get to him. That was why she was doing it.

"You don't have anything to tell me, do you?" he said finally. "What? Are things so
boring
with Galaith and Terian gone that you needed a new game to play, Elan? Why not go visit your old pals in SCARB? They seem to be pretty busy these days..."

Raven smiled, making a mock apologetic gesture with one hand.

"You've gotten sensitive, Revi'," she said. "I certainly hope I haven't offended you..."

Unfolding his arms, he started to regain his feet.

"I think we're done here," he said.

"Wait!" She half-shouted the word, holding up a hand.

Halting where he stood, still next to the table, he looked down at her, raising an eyebrow. Seeing the panicked expression on her face, he sighed in irritation.

"Really, Elan? You've become quite the drama queen..."

"And you don't have a sense of humor at all any more, do you?"

"A sense of humor?"

"You would have given me shit for the same, once upon a time," she retorted. "You used to give as good as you got, Dehgoies...not go off in a huff like some teenager..."

Staring at the far wall, though, her face seemed to tighten. After another pause, she laid her cuffed hands on the table, leaning closer to him, her expression more earnest.

"I do need to talk to you, Revi'," she said.

The coyness had dropped from her voice. Seeing the impatient look on his face at what he perceived as more theatrics, she clicked at him in irritation, combing the straight black hair out of her eyes with one hand.

"Look," she said. "I'm sorry for the digs...I know how much your wife hates me, and I couldn't resist. But I really
do
need to talk to you. So...truce? Long enough for you to hear what I have to say? Then you and your wife can beat me or sell me or dump me with the Sweeps or whatever you want, Revi'...I'll even cry and scream and beg her if you want..."

Revik gave her a skeptical look, even as he scanned her light. He knew Wreg and the others would be scanning her a lot more thoroughly from the other side of that window, and that they would be recording all of her Barrier signatures so the infiltration teams could look them over in more detail later. Even so, he couldn't help trying to get a better handle on what he could feel himself. Other than trying to get a rise out of him, he didn't feel any duplicity on her. Then again, he wasn't positive he would. Raven had always been a good liar, partly because she was such a master at lying to herself.

She also probably had help. He'd never known her to work alone, not really. She always gravitated towards the biggest power source she could find and held onto it in any way she could. It was the only reason she'd ever gone near him, for that matter...at the time, he'd been the closest she could get to Galaith himself.

Even so, he found himself understanding what he'd seen in Balidor's light. The Adhipan leader hadn't believed her showing up here to be entirely a ruse.

She really did think she had something to tell him.

She even sounded sincere...or as sincere as she ever got, anyway.

Lowering his weight back to the chair, he folded his arms, leaning back as he continued to study her face.

"So?" he said, making a flowing gesture with one hand. "Cut the foreplay and say this thing. Talk, Raven."

She hesitated again.

Feeling his impatience start to keen upwards once more as the silence continued, he bit the inside of his cheek when he saw her seeming to turn words over in her mind. He couldn't tell what she was doing exactly. Screwing with him, trying to keep him in here as long as possible? Trying to get him to lose his temper? Or was she really rehearsing words? Revising some speech she'd worked out in advance? In any case, he only got one concrete piece of meaning from the flicker of thoughts he felt from behind the collar.

"Something about Maygar?" he said. "What? Where is he, Elan? Is he dead?"

Her eyes flickered up. Briefly, he was startled at the panic he saw in them.

"He's not dead," she said. Her voice was firm, as if to convince herself as much as him. "He's in Argentina, Revi'. He was captured...after he did that job with your operative..."

"What?" Revik frowned, clicking. "None of my people have been working with your son, Elan. You must know I'd kill the little bastard as soon as look at him..."

But she was already clicking back at him, shaking her head as she gestured vehemently in the negative.

"No," she said. "You are wrong. He was working with one of yours. In this country...only a few months ago."

"Who?"

"That dark-skinned seer...the one with the braids. Chandre. She was with him in California when they took out that lab. Her, Varlan, that human who used to work for you, my son..."