Kirev's Door (6 page)

Kirev smiled at him, hoping he looked significantly more flattered than he felt.

“I did not know that, sir,” he murmured.

“Well, now you do.” Dan frowned again, glancing briefly at the female seer by the balcony as he tugged again on Kirev’s coat. “Be careful about your curiosity, Kirev,” he said then, his voice softer. “It is understandable…but it could be taken the wrong way.”

Kirev made his face blank, borderline puzzled, but only nodded. “Of course, sir.”

“I understand you might miss interacting with your own kind,” Dan added, his voice a bit sharper. “But Marcous is possessive of his seers. He’s also not someone I can afford to make an enemy of.” Hesitating, Dan met his gaze, his expression strangely devoid of guile. “I got you for the work I did on the old man’s pet project,” Dan admitted. “I’m not as senior as most of the people here…and Marcous is more senior than any of them. Well, any but Bilford himself. He and Bilford…they founded Black Arrow together. They met in Korea.”

Kirev nodded. “I see.”

“He’s also intended to be successor when Bilford retires,” Dan said, his voice still low. “He could also destroy my career if he wanted, Kirev…and he’s got a mean streak a mile wide.”

Kirev nodded, making his expression and light repentant. “I understand, sir. If I have done anything at all to cause offense…”

But Dan was already waving him off.

“No, no…you’re fine, Kirev. You’re perfectly fine. I meant it as a caution, only. While we’re getting to know one another still.”

Dan smiled at him then, almost shyly. Something in that expression made Kirev wince, on the inside at least, even before the human next spoke.

“You’re more than fine, Kirev,” he said, softer. “You’re perfect…absolutely perfect.”

Kirev didn’t have any answer for that at all.

Even so, when he used his light to pulse a warmer flush of affection at the human standing next to him, he almost meant it.

Really, how could he truly feel anything but pity for a creature such as him?

Sometimes, Kirev didn’t know how to even be angry at them.

KIREV FELT SEVERAL sets of eyes on him as the older male seer swung open the door in front of him. That same seer made a polite gesture in seer sign-language with one hand for Kirev to enter the fire-lit room.

Kirev couldn’t help staring at those midnight-blue eyes, or the tattoo that covered one half of his scarred face. He knew that diagonal scar.

Many of the older seers had it from the camps during the war.

Realizing his stare bordered on impolite now, Kirev jerked his eyes off the other’s face, noting the nondescript black suit before he forced his attention on the room he currently entered. He heard Dan make a few friendly remarks to the other two seers standing outside that door, but Kirev didn’t hear those seers answer him.

They didn’t feel like owned seers in the usual sense…and they wore no collars.

Kirev guessed mercs owned by Black Arrow itself. Not stock, but actual assets. It put them in a different category than the seers like Kirev, who were either too young or too unskilled or both to be used in such a way.

Kirev stood just inside the door, looking at the high-backed leather chair in front of the fire, and the legs stretched out in front of it. He saw leather slippers on those feet, with sheep-skin linings. He also felt as much as saw another seer there, without reaching out at all.

Swiftly, he cased the room.

Two more guards in here. Human. Armed.

They wore their guns openly, hands clasped in front of their bodies where they stood by the velvet-curtained window on one side and a long bookcase on the other. Kirev wondered at all of the security, even as his eyes scanned over the spines of hundreds of leather-bound books, tinted a reddish hue from the fire. On the mantle over the fire itself, Kirev’s eyes stopped on an ancient-looking stone relic that depicted the sword and sun.

A religious symbol of the seers, and likely original, from the look of it. He wondered if that had been plundered from the Pamir itself.

The thought hit him with a dense flush of anger.

Dan walked in behind him and the door closed.

Clapping his hand on Kirev’s shoulder, Dan spoke to whoever sat in that leather chair.

“Sir? I hope you don’t mind us bothering you. Kirev wanted to meet you…and I wanted to thank you personally for the honor you showed me, sir…”

Dan sounded nervous, Kirev noted. Moreover, he sounded unsure if his visit would be welcome, now that he was here.

There was a slight pause before the man in the chair answered. In it, the guard by the bookshelves motioned for Dan and Kirev to move closer, to get within visual range of the man in the chair.

At the human’s prodding hand, Kirev moved in that direction, stopping once he was just in front of the leather chair.

He found himself looking down at a human older than any he had seen downstairs, maybe sixty-five or seventy, again assuming Kirev was accurately estimating human ages in chronological years. So nearly twice Kirev’s own age, although for a seer to look like that, they would need to be past the six hundred year mark.
 

The human looked up at him, holding a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other, a bottle and an ashtray sitting on a low, ivory-inlaid table to his left.

A female seer knelt at his feet on the carpet, entirely naked.

Kirev flinched a little when he saw her, stepping back before he could control his reaction. The seer herself, however, did not move. Her head remained slumped, dark hair obscuring her face where she leaned against the leather chair. He could plainly see that she was naked however, even apart from her unclothed back. Her breasts were just visible in the shadow by the chair along with the V where her legs met where she knelt.

When Kirev glanced up at the human’s face, he saw those milky blue eyes watching him, a thinly veiled scrutiny living there as smoke coiled up from the end of the cigar.
 

He also saw a bare thread of amusement.

Kirev noted that the human wore only a robe. He looked to be naked under it.
 

Kirev wondered if he was excessively drunk to receive them like this…or perhaps high on some harder substance.

Then he realized that the human simply did not care.

In either case, it was definitely the same human whose image he’d been made to imprint in his light, the one he’d spent most of the earlier part of the evening looking for among the crowd downstairs.

Now that he stood so close, Kirev recognized his light, even apart from his features.

Taking a breath, Kirev let out a soft ping, hoping like hell Wreg would feel it past all of the seers standing outside that door…hoping like hell it wouldn’t be noticed by those same seers.

The human’s eyes slid from Kirev’s face, even as he did it.

“It is good to see you, Daniel,” the human said, taking a drink from the glass before setting it on the low table. “So this is your new prize, eh?”

He folded his arms, his eyes drifting back to Kirev. He looked him over with an appraising eye, crossing his ankles in the slippers.

“He looks very…fit,” he said presently. “Do you know his sight rank?”

Dan nodded, his voice still nervous. “Yes, sir. Well…the approximate they could give him, considering his young age. They believe his potential is quite high. At least a 7. Actual they gave him a 2 ranking, but they said he could be trained up fairly easily once he’s fully of age…”

“Seven?” the man in the chair said, exhaling smoke from where he’d been puffing on the cigar. “That’s high for the pens. A little too high, frankly…I might have to have a talk with my acquisitions specialist.” He gave Dan a harder smile. “You sure you chose from the regular stock, Daniel? You didn’t pillage my premier holdings?”

“No, sir!” Dan said, his voice sounding shocked. “No, sir, of course not! I was surprised too, but they had him in with the others. I thought perhaps his age accounted for it…”

The man in the chair smiled again, but that harder look never left his eyes as they slid back in Kirev’s direction. “Well, he is pretty, Daniel. I’ll grant you that.” His mouth thinned, even as his voice turned shrewd. “Let me know how he trains up. A rank that high, I could use. I might want to contract him out on occasion…I’ll even throw in the training sessions, if you’re willing to have it done at the main campus in Palo Alto.”

“Of course, sir. Of course…”

Dan’s voice sounded openly relieved.

Glancing at him, Kirev found himself thinking he’d been afraid the man in the chair would take Kirev from him altogether.

As for Kirev himself, his heart pounded in his chest, even as he fought not to fidget. He had no idea if Wreg had heard him…if he should send the ping again, or even how long he should wait before trying something more drastic. He knew he couldn’t let them see him react, particularly not in his light, not where those seer guards might feel it.

Shoving the thoughts out of the forward part of his mind, he refocused on the gray-haired man in the leather chair, feeling his eyes on him again. That time, Kirev couldn’t get out of the way of a flicker of the human’s thoughts. He was thinking about putting Kirev with the female seer…the one on the floor. He wanted to do it as much to screw with Dan’s head as anything that might titillate him personally.

It was a power play. It was also a way of putting Dan in his place for taking a seer out of his price range.

The old human had no way of knowing that Kirev had been strategically placed in those pen groupings by Wreg and his people. Dan himself had nothing to do with it.

The old human was also a sadist, from what Kirev could feel.

Kirev felt a distinct pulse of anticipation and enjoyment not so much around the idea of witnessing the sex but the look on Dan’s face while it happened. He also liked the idea of Kirev being forced to take the female seer, who he’d already injured earlier in the evening.

He’d felt the squeamishness on Kirev around her condition already.

The combination of all of these things, hitting Kirev at once, made him nauseous almost to the point of being unable to hide it from his face. Remembering Wreg’s warning, he bit the inside of his check, forcing his expression smooth even as he aimed his stare towards the burning logs in the giant fireplace.

As he did, he heard the human in the leather chair chuckle.

“I think he might be shy, your new friend,” the man in the chair remarked shrewdly. “What do you say we help him overcome that shyness a little…?”

Kirev felt his shoulders tense.

He made up his mind to ping Wreg again, to hell with it…

When the door to the corridor slammed open.

The loud noise made him jump, and Dan jump next to him.

Both of their heads swiveled towards that door.

“No one
fucking
move!” a familiar voice growled.

Kirev could have cried out in relief.

Instead, he flinched violently again when Dan collapsed into a heap on the carpet next to where he stood. The human fell silently, his eyes rolling up as he collapsed without fanfare right before his head cracked audibly against the stone hearth. Although the sound made him grimace, Kirev barely managed to suppress his grin as he turned back towards the door, seeing three suit-wearing male seers standing there, along with a fourth seer who walked in last, a female.