CHAPTER EIGHT
Jei
I pressed my fingers together, forcing my mind into meditation, reaching out past the cool darkness of my bedroom.
Don’t check the Diebol-channel.
I opened one eye. That was weird.
Don’t check your channel to Diebol, the thought repeated in the whoosh of the air conditioning, and the beat of my heart. Don’t do it.
I shook the thought off my shoulders. That couldn’t be Njande—seemed so illogical. Had to be just my own self arguing with me.
Diebol
Jared Diebol awoke, sweating and clutching his sheet.
Someone was trying to enter his mind.
He blinked in the darkness of his sleeping pod for a moment. No light. No noise. Nothing but his own breathing sounded in the capsule buried beneath the prairie. After the long day sorting out crisis response, he needed sleep, and no one in the Growen Army dared disturb him here.
No, someone else had awakened him.
Oh, yes.
Diebol smiled. “Haven’t heard from you in so long, Jei,” he murmured, laying back down to stretch and fold his hands behind his head. “I’m not even sure I still remember how to do this.” He closed his eyes and dreamt of the color green …
Diebol’s consciousness blinked into his “brain-radio,” the mind-channel he shared with his worst enemy and only friend. It was as if he’d never left. The same ivory walls graced the long hallway that led out of Diebol’s mind and into Jei’s; at the end of the white hall floated the same dark space of nothingness, and, beyond the darkness, the same wooden cage gathered dust.
Diebol’s smile grew. He could just feel the glowering from Jei’s hallway on the other side of the cage. Diebol stood, brushed himself off, and straightened his black leather vest with a snap. “So many memories,” Diebol growled, cracking his knuckles as he walked.
The hallway had healed. Last time they’d talked, the wall’s cracks had oozed blood, smoke graffiti’d across every surface with dark scenes, names, and codes. Now Diebol could almost see his own scarred face gleaming in the polished white; his boots didn’t even squeak on the clean floor.
No squeak … hmm, too quiet. Diebol blinked, and changed the sounds in the channel so Jei could hear him coming. There: the rustle of pants, the soft thwup, thwup of bootsteps. Good.
It was Jei. It wasn’t a false alarm. Something pounded in Diebol’s chest with each soft footfall. Something stole his breath. He refused to doubt; it wasn’t in his nature, he told himself …
And at the end of the hallway, oh sweet universe, Diebol was not disappointed.
In the cage, grinding his teeth and spinning an illusion of his mace, paced Jei Bereens.
Oh, a stressed Jei Bereens, the best kind. His flaxen hair clung wet to his bronze forehead; anger marred almost every feature in his bitter mutt face, from hard chin to soft nose to rudimentary teenage five-o-clock shadow. Jei always kept something of the miserable eight-year-old whelp he’d been back when Bricandor captured him the first time.
Diebol opened his side of the cage and stepped inside.
Jei charged before Diebol could even close the door behind himself. Diebol slipped to the side. Jei raised his mace overhead—
Then stopped himself, as if suddenly remembering where they were. He stepped back with a restrained curse.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” Diebol laughed.
“Where is she?” Jei snapped.
Oh dear. Bricandor the Mind-Reader said he’d heard that question in the ether a great deal lately; the Growen couldn’t afford to expose Her.
Diebol pursed his lips and chose his words carefully. “You don’t expect me to just tell you like that.” He nodded toward the game board scratched onto the floor in the center of the cage. “Sit down. Let’s play.”
Jei scowled.
“Bricandor’s not torturing me this time, Jei,” Diebol added with a soft laugh. “You can’t just overhear sensitive information from me anymore.”
Jei’s glare could’ve started wars. He stepped away, over the game board, and sat down cross-legged by the pile of twigs on his side of the cage. His suspicious eyes never left Diebol’s face.
“You say that like it was my fault. Don’t try to play me,” Jei said.
“Oh, but it is your fault. Every time I’ve been whipped, electrocuted, cut, or burnt, it was because you’d shown up.” Diebol sat across from him. “And I thank you for it. I wouldn’t be the man I am today if my Teacher didn’t use the lash to inculcate his lessons.” Diebol nodded toward the twigs, and the game board. “Go ahead. Make the first move.”
Jei dropped the first stick diagonally across the middle square on the floor. “What are you doing to make her like this?” he asked. Make Her? Ha, as if Diebol could have created Her. He wished. Bitterness surged between his clenched teeth like sour spit—my new favorite, Bricandor had called Her. Bricandor, the father of them all, who betrayed his loyal sons by cavorting with invisible monsters like a common Contaminated fool …
Diebol responded with another stick, diagonally, across the space beside Jei’s. An aggressive move, for sure: the goal was to rope off the most territory while making diamonds and triangles to rack up extra turns, and when Diebol felt happy, he almost always played his pieces close to Jei’s side. Goodness … how long since anyone had played with him? He would ask Jei, but the Paradox Warrior was busy prattling on with inane questions about Her as if game time was snitch time.
“Are you drugging her?”
Six months, at least? His life had been work, sleep, eat, for six months? Did he just ask if we drug Her?
“Is it blackmail?”
No, seven months. Goodness. Diebol really needed to get out more. For his health. Let’s see, if Jei put his piece there … Diebol could then …
“I know if anyone could convert her you could. I just can’t believe—look, I need to know how.” There was pain in Jei’s voice.
Diebol crossed his arms with one brow raised. “Will you take your turn or not?”
“Answer at least one question!”
“You know this doesn’t work like that.” Diebol wasn’t about to discuss sacred Stygge affairs with his mortal enemy. He was here for one thing, and one thing only: to play the game.
“Come on, like you don’t want to gloat,” Jei prodded.
“Why would I gloat? We’ve only just started,” Diebol laughed. With a nod toward the board: “Take your turn or I’ll take it for you.”
Jei slapped down another stick, going for a triangle to buy an extra turn. “Playing dumb isn’t your style, Diebol,” he growled.
“No, it isn’t.” Diebol sighed as he laid his twig in the far-left corner, near Jei’s foot. It wasn’t Her Jei wanted, it seemed, after all. Diebol tested a theory … “Remember when Benzaran played this with us?” he asked. “Your hurry reminds me of her.”
“Benzaran? Didn’t you always call her Lem?” Jei’s eyes burned. His hand hovered just above the game board, clenching around his next stick like a knife.
Eff. Diebol looked away into the nothingness and rubbed the back of his neck. He hated himself for the knot in his throat. It was nothing: over the past year he’d learned to swallow it. But that was because she was Benzaran, not Lem. “Distance, Jei,” Diebol said. “I need distance.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Jei scoffed.
Ah, there it was. Well, that was what you got for being distracted. Diebol saw Jei properly now: the spoilsport glowering, the grouchy hurry, the violent mental construct of the mace burning into the floor beside him—the Paradox Warrior was jealous. And the soldier who’d stolen the Frelsi codes, and then lost his helmet?
I knew it.
How delightful. Diebol suppressed the urge to chuckle. He rubbed his hands together with reserved glee instead, because not only did Jei know nothing about Her, Jei was miserable enough to betray his hidden partner.
Wait. After all that spectacular teamwork, Jei would betray his undercover partner?
Possibly a trap, then. Best play this next move carefully … let Jei keep talking until all the cards hit the table. Diebol placed his next twig closer to his own side. “Are you falling for your partner?” Diebol teased.
“Funny question coming from her boss.”
“I wonder what my ‘employee’ did to make you so angry,” he said.
“Oh man, I wonder,” Jei growled. “Guess that riddle just really meant a lot to me, and I couldn’t stand to share the joy. What do you think Jared?”
“I think it must’ve been one good riddle,” Diebol said. “She didn’t pass it along. Mind sharing?”
“If you win. We won’t be re-using it, and you’re three moves away anyway.” Jei slumped against the cage wall with another growl. “I guess I was looking forward to your evil monologue of triumph, or whatever,” Jei said. “It would end things. Maybe you know that. Maybe the worst thing you could do is what you’re doing now, leaving me in the dark, so I’ll never know what happened to my friend.” Jei sat up and dropped another stick on the board, leaning toward Diebol.
Diebol didn’t lean away; Jei’s teeth flashed in his face like the glint off the barrel of a murderer’s gun. His voice lowered: “But at least we both know what’s going to happen to you.”
With that last threat, Jei vanished, leaving Diebol alone with the burning mace on the floor.