Page 211

He felt that pain in his light worsen, heating knots in his belly.

It had been so long. So long since he’d seen his brother, since he’d laughed with him, been with him in any way. So many things had happened since then.

So many changes…

So many things had been broken and lost.

Revi’ needed him. They needed each other.

“They will come,” Feigran assured him.

He looked at the aged seer, his voice holding a harder certainty.

“They will come, father. I will make them come. I will make the pain so bad, they will come just to end it. They will come because they cannot help themselves.”

Menlim nodded. Once more, his expression grew difficult to read.

Feigran felt the approval there; he felt the old seer’s wariness, too. Not quite skepticism, like before. It was more that it wasn’t enough; the old seer wanted something more concrete.

He wanted certainty.

Absolute certainty, without a doubt certainty, that Revi’ would come.

No waggy, smiley dogs. No pretend nicenesses. No speeches with swelling music and pounding cannons. No emotional catharsis and tearing eyes.

He wanted science. Mathematical probabilities.

Perceptual shifts based on hard data and reliable equations.

“How do you plan to do that?” Menlim asked, as Feigran thought these things. “What do you intend, my brother? Do you know?”

Feigran did know.

He knew exactly what to do.

He knew Revi’. He knew what Revi’ cared about, what motivated him. Even that prescient bitch with her lying words and whispers wouldn’t get in Revi’s way, not if Feigran went after what his old friendreallycared about.

Feigran knew something else.

Something he wouldn’t tell the Father.

He knew what the little bird would do.

He knew she would do it soon, and when she did it, it would give him the opening he needed. He wished his sister, Alyson, no harm. He loved her very, very much, almost as much as he loved Revi’. She was his Bridge. She was the precious, precious Bridge. That bitch cunt Kali had hurt her too, maybe more than she’d hurt Terian.

Heloved-loved-lovedsister Alyson––

A colder anger whispered off the old seer’s light.

Feeling it, Feigran suppressed his thoughts, burying them in piles of black sand.

Daddy didn’t like sister Alyson.

He hated her with the coldness of stones.

“You know she cannot be allowed to live?” Menlim stared at him coldly. “We are clear on that, Terian? Because we have discussed this before, too.”

Feigran nodded, smiling to Daddy.