Trickster Read online

  He let out a gasp when the hiri he’d held between his fingers burned down to his skin, causing him to curse, then to drop the stick on the deck. He stared down at it, watching the resin smolder, watching a black, round stain form on the wood before he bent down and plucked it carefully up, bringing it to his lips.

  He inhaled deep on the smoke.

  “I am sorry,” Dehgoies said.

  Terian felt his eyes on him, but didn’t return his gaze.

  He smiled instead, a crooked smile that felt strange on his face.

  “No, you’re not,” he said simply, his voice light. “You’re relieved.”

  “Terry––”

  “It’s okay, brother,” Terian assured him.

  His voice remained strangely calm, if somewhat far away.

  Leaning over, he patted the other male’s arm, smiling that off-kilter smile at him again.

  “It’s all right, brother,” he said, and that time, some part of him almost meant it. “I appreciate you taking the time to fuck me properly before you told me.”

  He felt another pulse of frustration leave the dark-haired male’s light.

  “Terry, for fuck’s sake. Can we talk about this?”

  “Why?” Terian said, his voice still strangely calm. “Is there more you need to say?”

  Dehgoies stared at him, frustration still whispering off his light, and now confusion.

  “No,” he said blunt. “We could still talk… if only to make sure we both understand one another. If only to make this easier for both of us.”

  “It already is easy, brother. It is as easy as nothing at all.”

  Dehgoies stared at him.

  Then he frowned.

  “What does that mean?” he said, his voice wary.

  But Terian was already on his feet.

  Pausing to stub what remained of his hiri out in a heavy, glass ashtray on a round table near the head of the loungers, he smiled one more of those crooked smiles at his friend, wrapping the blanket more tightly around his naked body.

  When Dehgoies only continued to stare at him, his pale eyes glowing with moonlight, his narrow mouth in a harder frown, Terian turned his back on his friend entirely.

  Without waiting, he receded back into the darkness of the beachfront house.

  He entered the warmer home and closed the sliding glass door behind him. As he did, he looked through it to find Dehgoies still watching him, that harder scrutiny still in his crystal-colored eyes, even through the tinted glass.

  Even now, his friend still saw him.

  Even now, Dehgoies still understood him better than anyone else.

  Eight

  Flirting With Danger

  Command Bunker / CIC

  Guorum Work Camp

  Nearest city: Manaus, Brazil

  November 27, 1978

  We stood inside now, in a much cooler room.

  I glanced around that room surreptitiously, at least where I could without being rude.

  Unfortunately, it contained little to distract either my eyes or mind.

  Located within an underground bunker, it came equipped with the requisite low ceilings and cement-brick walls. At some point, it had been converted from what might have been officer’s quarters into a makeshift common room, although the space had clearly been allowed to fall into disrepair in the time since.

  I tracked details as I glanced around, my eyes skimming over metal folding chairs, a scuffed linoleum floor, stained throw rugs, yellow and black water and mold marks on the ceiling, a hotel-generic painting over a couch with obviously broken springs.

  The bulk of my attention remained on our host, even as I focused my eyes elsewhere.

  I thought about him, about what I’d observed of him so far.

  I also thought about what he was doing with us, right now.

  The fact that Terian had chosen to debrief us as a group, rather than pulling Varlan into a separate room, struck me as outside the norm. The fact that he’d given our full pod equal access to the security construct, rather than prioritizing Varlan’s access––or even Varlan’s and my own access, as Varlan’s second––struck me as equally odd.

  Those amber eyes swiveled in my direction.

  Catching the lifted eyebrow of our new commanding officer, I looked away at once, forcing my mind back to the matter at hand.

  I felt reaction ripple my light, however, and probably my facial expression.

  Varlan was speaking by the time I’d recentered.

  “…Adhipan?” the older seer was saying. “You really believe the Adhipan participated in these extractions, brother?”

  That pricked my ears.

  I swiveled my head, turning to stare at Varlan.

  The older seer didn’t appear to notice, or care.

  His violet-tinged eyes gazed unblinkingly at the significantly-younger Terian.

  “What is your evidence to that effect, sir?” he said.

  Varlan’s voice remained calm, unerringly polite, deferential even.

  “…I apologize for asking,” he added. “But it is highly unorthodox protocol for the Adhipan to involve themselves in such an interventionist capacity… much less to risk exposure with so few lives at stake. It strikes me as significant, if that is the case. Particularly given the number of high-ranked seer guards employed at this site.”

  Shock flickered through my light.

  I hadn’t misheard him.

  He really had said the Adhipan.

  Moreover, not only were they speaking of the Adhipan in calm words, but Varlan, despite his surprise at their potential involvement, was clearly entertaining such a thing as a real possibility.

  I felt similar glimmers of surprise from the others in my pod.

  Their light felt less immediate to me now, given the effects of the denser construct that now completely strangled my aleimi, but they still felt closer to me than ordinary seers.

  Now that I had adjusted to existing inside that construct, I found the structures there utterly beautiful. More than beautiful––I also found them fascinatingly complex, not to mention borderline intimidating in terms of their potential functionalities.

  I had never felt anything so skillfully or subtly woven.

  I already sensed additional layers of access above my own, cutting me off from this and that level of intel and connection––even as the openness meant I could feel every single living being inside the construct itself, down to the blades of grass growing out in the fields of the open areas of the work camp, and the insects crawling inside the walls.

  But this news of possible Adhipan involvement jerked me out of my obsession with Terian’s construct, and Terian’s mind, if only for a few minutes.

  I had not heard rumors of Adhipan sightings since the last great war.

  In the period directly following World War II, Adhipan rumors and claimed sightings grew almost ubiquitous among Org agents out in the field.

  More myth than reality up until that point, at least for younger seers, the Adhipan were seen as the “holy warriors” of the orthodox seers out of Asia––an elite squad of infiltrators hand-picked at birth by the Seer Council itself.

  None of the old timers seemed to doubt the Adhipan’s existence, but they also seemed the most close-mouthed as to who and what the Adhipan really were.

  It was rumored that many in the Adhipan were born with off-the-charts potential ranks, along with highly-evolved scores in the seer equivalent of IQ and emotional-empathic testing.

  The Adhipan plucked these wunderkind from wherever they were born––whether the most crowded human city or the most isolated seer mountain stations––and trained them to their highest possible actuals, using ancient sight-training methods developed thousands of years prior to the current age.

  They then taught their recruits to conceal themselves as per Code, to become warriors for the Ancestors, for the truth and the light… or whatever other religious nonsense with which they chose to fill their young heads.

&nbs
p; The Adhipan was the traditional seers’ answer to the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Secret Service and the Human Protection Act agencies, all rolled into one.

  From what I knew, they were a hell of a lot more pious about it, though, with their adherence to Seer Code and their sworn allegiance to the head kneelers in the monasteries.

  That meant they still adhered to the rest of that bullshit caste system around the old clans.

  Still, I could not hate them really.

  They were not like the other sheep.

  They fought for the race, like I did.

  But like most kneelers, they cared more for their mythical afterlife and some nonexistent purity of means than they did for beating back our human oppressors now, in the present moment, when it actually fucking mattered.

  I had no patience for that delusional crap.

  I had no patience for kneelers who would only work with certain Barrier presences, scorning help from anything they considered “impure,” even if it could effect a real difference in the war on the ground.

  I was too much of a pragmatist to have anything but scorn for that kind of finger-wagging.

  According to myth, the Adhipan still believed in the doctrine of non-interference.

  So essentially, they lived by a code that preached the polar opposite of the Org, at least when it came to anything important.

  Still, the stories about those famed warriors could be pretty fantastical.

  Not that I had ever actually met anyone from the Adhipan.

  I’d known seers who claimed they had.

  I’d even met a few who claimed they had been members of the Adhipan themselves.

  Normally those claims only aroused derision in me.

  The only rumor I’d ever truly believed had been the one about Varlan himself, and I’d been told that Varlan staunchly denied it. Then again, they said, “birthed Adhipan, died Adhipan,” so maybe, in his way, Varlan continued to hold true to that code of silence.

  The most oft-cited rumor about the Adhipan, of course, surrounded their supposed role in taking down Syrimne d’Gaos at the end of World War I.

  Syrimne––himself not a myth––was the one and only officially documented telekinetic seer, at least in the past six or seven centuries. And yes, Syrimne had indeed been taken down by someone during that period, although few seers believed the official story, which credited his demise to a human, of all things, a Serb with the unlikely name of Hraben Novotny, who partnered with the Adhipan in the ending months of the war.

  The most common alternate story was that Adhipan Balidor, the group’s infamous and mysterious leader, had been the one to bring the telekinetic seer down.

  The other rumor was that Galaith himself had done it.

  His name, Galaith, which meant “Shield” in Old Prexci, was said to have been given to him after he brought down Syrimne d’Gaos before Syrimne could destroy the world.

  Many disputed that interpretation of events, as well.

  To me, the mere fact that Syrimne had been brought down at all was still more than a small mystery, no matter who had done it.

  Glow eye.

  That pejorative predated Syrimne, but remained part of his legacy, too.

  “…So, yes,” Terian said, giving me a faint smile as he raised the bottle back to his lips. Lowering it, he swallowed, letting out a light gasp. “We have verified that much, and no more. There are definitely signs our old friends may be among them…”

  Out of nowhere, heat flooded my light, catching me off guard.

  The influx caused me to shift my weight, and to wince from the sex-pain that abruptly worsened from the other male’s attentions.

  Terian winked at me when I glanced his way.

  His amber eyes then shifted to encompass the rest of the room.

  It occurred to me only then that they’d continued to talk, that Varlan and Terian had been speaking the whole time my mind was elsewhere.

  It also occurred to me I may have missed something important.

  “…As I said,” Terian continued, wiping his mouth. “It is somewhat inconclusive at this point, but that is the main evidence we have of their involvement at this time.”

  He aimed his words at Varlan.

  “Galaith seems to think it is more than enough to warrant caution. He also wishes us to conduct, as a secondary concern, a concerted effort to gather imprints on every single seer we isolate as a part of this extraction group. That is why we require your help with this operation, my brother. We thought you might have an interest in this hunt… despite the relative insignificance of the current threat. The Adhipan constitute a rival we would do well to know better, particularly in these trying times. To collect as much tracking data as possible would be wise, even if we end up being wrong about specific elements of our quarry.”

  “Indeed,” Varlan said, nodding.

  Before I could look away from his face, he gave me a bare glance, as well.

  “They are not a myth, then?” Gregor said.

  I felt some relief at the question.

  One, I did not have to be the one to ask it. Also, clearly, the rest of my pod was still as stuck on the Adhipan question as I was.

  “No, my brothers and sisters.” Terian smiled, glancing at Gregor, then the rest of us. His eyes followed the others to me, razor sharp, appraising. “The Adhipan are most assuredly not a myth. That much, I can tell you.”

  I felt excitement tremble the lights of the other seers in the room.

  I felt it in my own light, too, despite my discomfort.

  “Pardon me, sir,” I ventured.

  I spoke almost before I knew I intended to.

  I felt another flush of heat off Terian’s aleimi when the higher-tier seer turned to face me.

  Swallowing thickly, I pushed past it to continue speaking.

  “Is it true that Dehgoies could be among the targets, sir?” I finished haltingly.

  Terian’s smile grew lazy.

  Even so, I felt something there, what might have been an emotional flinch of some kind.

  It struck me to remember that Dehgoies and Terian had been friends before the former’s defection. That friendship had been rather infamous, in fact––and widely considered to be as close to true brotherhood as one could attain between friends, even within the Org.

  It also struck me, in those same few seconds, that my question might have been horribly impolitic as a result, and for more than one reason.

  It was too late to retract it, though, so I could only brace myself as I stood there, waiting, feeling tension snake and spark through the living light of the room.

  Terian smiled then, raising the now half-emptied bottle to his lips and taking another long drink. As he lowered it, he cleared his throat, his amber eyes on mine.

  “It is possible, yes, brother,” he said, surprising me.

  The words surprised me enough that I asked another question, again without thinking.

  “Is he…” Realizing where my words were headed, I hesitated, feeling myself flush. “I mean, is it the opinion of the Sweeps, sir, that Dehgoies himself could be––”

  “Are you wondering if Revi’ is now in the Adhipan?” Terian said, cocking an eyebrow.

  The silence grew even more dense.

  Terian shrugged, lowering the bottle, his eyes still fixed on my face.

  “That is not the prevailing theory at this time, my good brother, no,” he said, his voice pleasant, holding that subtler charm. “We certainly have no intel to that effect, and it is not the current thinking of the infiltration teams we’ve had watching the extraction group. But it remains a possibility, of course. At this point, we are ruling nothing out.”

  I made a respectful gesture with one hand, what served as a deferential type of thank you coupled with an acknowledgement of Terian’s words.

  “I understand, sir,” I said. “…Thank you for clarifying, sir.”

  I may have to punish you for that, that sensual voice whispered in my mind.


  I flinched, feeling fear rise from a deeper level of my gut.

  Sir… I stammered into that space. I apologize profusely, sir… sincerely.

  That is exceedingly good to hear, brother, Terian replied, sending a harder flicker of heat in my direction, tugging at my light in the areas of my abdomen and chest. Sickness roiled through me, intensely enough that I barely heard his next words. …Sincerity is always a valuable trait in an officer of Seer Containment. One I may have to explore at greater length to ascertain its limits. Perhaps once this briefing is finished, na?

  I felt my separation pain spike higher.

  I fought to keep it out of the forward part of my light, even as I struggled with my accompanying physical reactions.

  When I answered, my thoughts came through more charged.

  Whatever you require, sir, I sent.

  Whatever I require? Really? Indeed… that is promising.

  I averted my gaze, feeling the seers around me watching us surreptitiously.

  Gaos. What in the hells was I doing?

  Was I seriously flirting with one of the highest ranked seers in the Org?

  How fucking stupid was I?

  I told myself it was just harmless back and forth, the kind of joking about sex and sex-pain that was common among seers, especially in military environments.

  I told myself Terian didn’t mean anything by it, that I’d simply let my separation pain go for too long with the back-to-back assignments of the past six to eight months––that Terian could feel that and found it amusing to screw with me. I tried to remember the last time I’d gotten laid, then pushed that from my mind, too. Not only would Terian likely hear me thinking about it, but remembering specifics would only make that pain worse.

  It wasn’t the first time Terian addressed me directly in the space since we’d come inside the brick building.

  The higher-tier seer prodded me a few times before now, perhaps looking for specific reactions, or perhaps simply trying to learn more about me and my light. I felt a fair bit of that teasing, game-playing flavor to the male’s jabs, along with a more humorous form of sexual innuendo.

  I knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything––and yet, a few times, I swore I felt a kind of seriousness underlying his attentions. That didn’t mean he was angling for anything specific from me, of course, but it did make me more cautious in being overly dismissive of his casual-seeming words and questions.