Chapter Seven: Beginning

A fly was staring at me. I stared back. Vaguely, I had the feeling I was waking up. But I wasn't breathing. I tried to remember why that was a bad thing. Breathing meant pain, didn't it? Suddenly, my heart contracted horribly and my diaphragm clenched. With a ghost swirl of pain in my veins, my pulse was hammering through me again, and I had drawn in the most painful breath I could ever remember.

Of its own volition, my hand grasped my stomach where the knife had been. All it found was smooth skin. My reasoning caught up with my senses, and I looked down at myself. My stomach was covered with dried blood. My blood. So was the ground underneath me. But there was no cut, no wound. No knife. No Ari. Ari.

I had to find him. He had to know I was all right. I had to tell him it was okay, that I loved him. It would be okay; no one else knew I was dead. Had been dead. Was I still dead? I was breathing. My heart was pounding. My legs moved. I touched my thigh with my fingertips. I felt solid, warm - human. I wasn't a spirit, was I? Did spirits know they were spirits? I wasn't a ghost that took over a dead body, right? If that happened I wasn't supposed to be able to remember my life. I hoped so, anyway.

My tunic was still by the remains of the fire where I had taken it off. How long had I been asleep? The coals underneath the ashes still glowed. It had only been one night. It was mid-morning. Where would Ari be? Coming back to the main camp for lunch, probably. I was supposed to be with the women. Well, I might get a few smacks for being late, but they wouldn't really mind. But I had to find Ari first. Well, I decided I ought to wash the blood off first and then find Ari.

Heading back to camp, I started looking for him. No one was around, but that was to be expected. We had spent last night pretty far from anyone else specifically to avoid people. A fleeting thought made me worry that I hadn't gauged the time correctly, and that the whole tribe would have moved on. But no, there was our camp, exactly as I'd left it yesterday. A few people were milling around. When one of the children saw me, he screamed in terror and ran back towards the campfires to find his mother.

That was odd. I had checked my reflection in the creek when I washed; I had had some blood around my mouth, but otherwise I looked like myself as far as I could tell. No sign of death. With rising fear, I continued through camp until one of the adults saw me and started. She stared and stared as if I were a foreigner. Embarrassed, I didn't come any closer to her.

"Umm, have you seen Ari?" I asked hopefully, trying to hide my embarrassment.

She jumped as though scalded and backed away. Was I a spirit after all? One of the young men, approaching, saw me and gave a cry, then turned tail and ran back down the path that the hunters use. He was going to get my father.

Turning to the woman next to me, I said, "Please, where's Ari? I need to find him."

She shook her head and backed away towards the trail where the young man had gone. No help there. I made a split decision and raced towards the trail. Maybe I could find Ari before the kid found my patriarch.

I had barely started down the path when I caught sight of the young man and the primary hunters. The kid was speaking faster than a brook and gesturing back towards camp. Ari was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, I was, and it was my father that spotted me. If I was in trouble, I had best get it over with sooner rather than later. So I took a deep breath and walked down the path to face them. As I approached, I saw uncertainty and fear lurking behind my father's stern countenance. That was a sight I had never seen in waking life, and it was this more than anything that told me something was wrong.

"It can't be!" I stopped. That was Ari's voice! But it had come from among the primary hunters; my father's favorites. He strode between two of the others, coming closer to have a look at me. Apparently he had been there, I just hadn't been able to see him behind the others. Pointing at me, he turned to my father and said, "You saw her body! She was dead! You saw!"

My father silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Yes, I saw. This is not Aiar."

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. "What!" I said, despite myself. They thought there was some sort of evil spirit in my body. "Ari! Ari, please, you know it's me!" I stepped towards him and the whole lot of them recoiled, fear on all their faces. Ari looked both enraged and petrified. I felt like my heart was breaking and the whole world tumbling in on me. Denial was only going to carry me so far. "Please, Ari, I love you. It'll be alright, please." I think I was trying to convince myself.

I advanced towards Ari again, pleading. He was so terrified that he picked up a stone and threw it at me. It was small, and it only cut me, but it broke through what remained of my denial and hurt more than the knife. My father was saying something, but I didn't hear. The first of my intrusive memories began then, and I relived Ari stabbing me. Killing me. Panic took over, and I ran away. How long I ran for I really couldn't say. When I finally stopped, I collapsed on the ground and cried for what seemed like days. I realized only later that what frightened the others most about my appearance was that the cut Ari's stone had given me healed itself practically before their very eyes.

My PDA beeps, alerting me that I've received Tiresias' latest Watcher file. I really want to know what he's up to. Plus, I want to see if he's been interacting with anyone I know is affiliated with Rji. If I can establish that link, I don't need to know anything else. He becomes public enemy number two in my book, followed shortly by whatever common affiliations he has with Rji. I can't help but hope that nothing turns up. If Rji and Tiresias are working together… Suffice it to say it doesn't bode well for me, Pao, Ben, or even Frank.

We're almost to base, but I decide to have a cursory look. Two names jump out at me - Katie Patricks and Li Bu. Patricks is a student of a student of Rji's, which is suspect but not necessarily incriminating. Rji is like me in that she likes her privacy, so Patricks could be a message runner who doesn't actually know Rji. Li Bu was a contemporary of Rji's back in the day. But I thought they had a falling out and swore eternal vengeance? Oh well, things change. Not exactly conclusive, it could indicate Tiresias could actually be working against Rji, but could just as easily be in bed with her.

I decide to read the report more fully when we get inside. I've taken the agents tailing Pao back to the house upstate. There's nothing else for them to do, I might as well let them sleep and shower etc before sending them back to their other lives. Frank is waiting up, still working the phones. He should probably get some R&R, too, before we have that talk.

Frank seems to think it's a party, though. The four spies were in a sober mood after loosing Pao, but they're getting to go back to whatever they were doing before I called on them, and they get to spend their last night away in a corporate party house and diminish its stores of alcohol, so between that thought and Frank's cheery attitude they brighten right up.

Much more subdued, I follow them into the house and immediately settle in at the computer to continue the slog. The spies are bickering good-naturedly about who gets to shower first, and Frank is breaking out the expensive imported beer. Checking over what Frank's been up to, I see the quality of work I've come to expect from him. Good, but I still can't help but feel that if I'd been doing the work, I would have gotten better results. Returning to my PDA, I read over Tiresias' file more carefully. The encounter with Li Bu was a fight, but neither killed the other. The encounters with Patricks were of a more friendly nature, but seemed to involve a third named Porthos. No one I know. Could be a pseudonym. The phone line is still secured, so I call up someone in Crete to relay another Watcher request for me, this time for Li Bu, Katie Patricks, and Porthos. As soon as I hang up the phone, I curse myself for requesting all three together. I should have made three separate calls so no one makes the connection. I really ought to get some sleep.

Instead, I get up and make coffee, a substance I do try to limit but always seem to abuse anyway. While it's brewing, I get back on the phone to give some advice to the people trying to locate Ben. A little annoyed at Frank, I have to bite my tongue a few times to keep the ire out of my voice. It's not really Frank's fault. He's done a good job, just not a great job. I'm really only annoyed at myself for leaving my post and at Tiresias for getting to Frank.

Frank comes back in, bringing the coffee.

"This place stocks some good imports."

"Yeah, it's for office parties."

"You burning the midnight oil?" He gestures with his chin at the phone.

I take a cup of coffee and raise it in a mock toast. "But of course. You should get some sleep, Frank. Oh, and, uh, don't get drunk, alright?"

I guess he hears some of the coolness in my voice. "Come on now, Aiar, just-"

"We should talk about it tomorrow. When you're not so tired." He may try to deny it, but I can see the circles under his eyes.

"What's wrong with you? You shouldn't take what that guy said so seriously."

I give him a wry smile. "I thought that's what I was supposed to say to you."

To my surprise he doesn't smile back. "Seriously, Aiar, what's wrong."

I pause and look down at my coffee. "I don't like loosing friends. Especially not this way."

He sounds a bit defensive and irritated. "You haven't lost me."

"Yeah, yet." I look him in the eye again. "What could I possibly say to you to restore your trust in me? I have no tangible way of proving to you that I've changed. If I were you, I wouldn't believe me. I'd be suspicious of me. I am dangerous, there's no getting around that." I let out a frustrated grunt. "But we shouldn't talk about this now. Have some fun with those kids before they leave. Get some sleep. We're probably heading to Canada tomorrow."

Disappointed but amenable, Frank gets up and leaves me to the phones. As he's about to shut the study door behind him, he turns and says, "Oh, I almost forgot. Apparently Michelson's riding a desk job, which is why he's had the time to come after you. And why he's not in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever your unit is these days."

I grin. "I'll have to see if I can catch him misusing his resources. Another misstep and I just might get the bastard demoted. How'd you find out, anyway?"

He gives me a mock offended look. "I have my pet spooks, too, you know."

Normally I would roll my eyes and make a sarcastic comment, but I'm too demoralized. I give him a thankful grin as he leaves and return to the computer.

I was nervous about returning to the mainstream. But some big things were going down in the walled city, and I had to do something with my time.

All I had to go on to start with was a few rumors about the rulers of the city and third hand reports of suspicious deaths. Even though my instincts weren't as refined then, I still had a good sense of where to find out more and who the major players were. It took me less than a week to make contact with the underground, which at that time wasn't being hunted by the major powers yet. They weren't exactly freedom fighters, but they were decidedly preferable to the ruling aristocracy. Their stranglehold on the city had gotten worse in recent generations, to the point where they were destroying the trade and markets that were their source of wealth. People have an impeccable knack of working against their own best interests in the name of an idea or power or whatever, and they were no exception. The aristocracy was atrophying, but I was hoping to save the city from dying the slow death that lay in store for them if things continued as they were.

The resistance needed help, a lot of it. At first, they were highly suspicious of me, but I finally got a meeting with the leaders; two young sons of merchants who thought the world belonged to them and not the aristocracy. One of them remained forever suspicious of me, mainly because I was a known hired sword in some parts of the world, and rumors had preceded me. The other recognized an asset when he saw one and immediately took me up on my offer to help. First they tried to persuade me to kill a few key aristocrats, but I flat out refused and offered an alternative.

So it came to be that I was standing on the inner wall one fine spring morning with the less suspicious leader, who had been named child's light, and a peasant who knew every secret passage and every crack in every wall in the city whose real name I never caught, but went by little spider.

"The caravan will be coming in the inner gate in about ten minutes," little spider said.

"Just so we're clear," I said to both of them, "no one gets killed."

Little spider gave me a skeptical look. "A lot can happen in the heat of battle that we can't prepare for."

"This isn't battle," I said, thinking rather ruefully that of all people a thief should know that. "This is a lightning strike. We're gone before they realize what's happened."

"Little spider has a point," child's light said. "We must be prepared for this to go wrong."

I shook my head. "These people are not our enemies. We hurt them, we give our enemies another ally. That's much worse than this shipment getting through."

"They'll be our enemies anyway. We're stealing their shipment," little spider said.

"No, they knew they took this risk doing business despite the embargo. The loss of a shipment and the loss of family members are two different things. We've had this discussion. No one dies this day."

Child's light nodded, but little spider looked doubtful. Not liking his resistance, I turned to him. "Your assistance has been invaluable. Your aid in this endeavor is not necessary."

He looked shocked and affronted. "You requested my assistance."

"Yes, for your ability to get us here quickly and safely. I think you should stay out of the melee. You will still be given the shipment to sell or distribute, or whatever you wish to do with it."

He gave me a baleful look. He always resented taking orders or "suggestions" from a woman. Glancing at child's light, but finding no support, he looked back at me. "And leave a little girl and a wine seller to take on trained guards?"

I was about to retort when child's light laughed out loud. "A wine seller and a girl child?" Worried about being heard, I tried to hush him, but he waved me off. "Small insects can hardly compare! Come now, little spider, let her run the show. Your skills are incomparable and we won't be forgetting that any time soon."

Little spider grinned lopsidedly and conceded. "I'll meet you at the archway, then."

Watching him go, I couldn't help but admire child's light's diplomacy skills. "That was well done," I told him.

Child's light smiled and dismissed my praise with a gesture. "I've known him a long time."

I spotted the shipment coming up the road from the outer city. "Here they come."

Our lightning strike struck true, but after that the underground was being hunted.

Frank let the agents out in the morning, wishing them a safe journey. My nerves are fried from a long night of caffeine and unsuccessful wrangling. For a while, we seemed to be closing in on Ben's location. I now know that Ben was in Ontario as recently as two nights ago. The problem is, no one has been able to figure out where in Ontario. There's been no activity on his credit cards or checking account accept for his wife's. No one can find any properties that they can link to Ben. I don't have enough time to send someone checking around all the hotels in Ontario. For the last hour, I've been inspecting Ben's financial records, hoping to find something to lead me to him. But like Pao, except for a substantial cash withdrawal before he left home, I've got nothing.

Frank comes in, obviously still tired, but in a good mood. "You should get some sleep. You've been at this too long."

I sigh, and lock the computer. "We need to talk." I hope I don't sound like too many of his girlfriends.

He raises his eyebrows. "Nothing good ever followed those words."

"Sit down, Frank," I say, trying not to sound as tired as I feel.

He pulls up a chair. "I'm listening."

All night, I tried to figure out how best to explain all this. In the end, I gave up and decided it'd be best to be as candid as possible. "How much do you know about my past, Frank?"

Frank shrugs. "Only what I need to know. You're pretty good at dodging questions."

"I know. There's a reason for that. The more you know, the more danger you're in. Now I'm stuck between keeping you safe and keeping your trust. But now I think I ought to tell you something that I – I've only told the shrink." I hear his intake of breath. I keep my eyes resolutely on my coffee and plow ahead. "Remember when I told you I didn't, well, like guys, and you bugged me about why not? Well, I didn't exactly lie, but I didn't exactly tell you the truth, either." I take a steadying breath, trying to shut out the intrusive memories. It doesn't work, so I try talking over them. "When- when I was young, before I died the- the first time, I was in love with someone. A boy. He- I thought he loved me, but he was- was- playing me. Not just playing, completely and utterly deceiving me, for nearly a year. Eventually, I- well he- he stabbed me. K-killed me." My voice is shaking beyond control. The intrusions are getting worse. I clamp a hand over my eyes, hoping but not really expecting to block them. After all this time, I still can't accept that it was what really happened. "It- it screwed me up for a r-really long time." Diverting my thoughts to later times and places, the intrusive memories finally faded. I let my hands, which I now realize are trembling, fall from my face. "I did a lot of self destructive things. I hurt and killed a lot of people. But there are few left to remember it. I took a vow, long ago, not to kill another mortal, and not to permanently kill another like myself."

I glance at him, finally. He stares at me, thoughtful, sympathetic, but speculative as well. Feeling unmasked and off balance, I curse myself for revealing so much. I should know better. As despair tugs at me, I see their faces again, and curse aloud this time.

"That's why you wouldn't carry a piece," he finally says.

I'm still dealing with a barrage of unwanted memories, but I manage to nod. It's eerie how recent all these memories seem, as if only a week or two has passed. I wonder if he thinks all this is an act. I wouldn't blame him for wondering, but this is why I hate showing anyone, even trusted friends, my true feelings. The curse of a professional liar. Worse, he's seen me pull off some spectacular lies, bluffs, and acts. He knows, better than probably anybody alive, what I'm capable of. Another problem I can't circumvent. Feeling utterly defeated, tears press at my eyelids and I don't bother to fight them.

Suddenly, I feel Frank's hand on my shoulder and nearly jump out of my seat. Heightened startle acting up again. I really need to regain some self-control. But I guess the whole point of loosing it in the first place was so Frank could see the real me. I don't know if it worked, but he looks genuinely sympathetic, even a little concerned for me.

"We'll find your kid, Aiar," he says.

I shake my head. "That's not what I'm crying about. Well, it sort of is, but…" I don't know how to explain. I've been fighting depression for a long time.

"What do you mean?"

In for a penny, in for a pound. I have to whisper so my voice doesn't shake. "I see their faces. I remember them all. I can't- I can't forget. Part of me wants to, but part of me wants to keep their memory alive so they don't die twice. I owe them that much at least." I have to stop to control my breathing. I pull my legs up to my chest, hug my knees, and lay my forehead on the desk. I hate days like this.

"Aiar, you've got to stop doing this to yourself."

I try to laugh and sob instead. "Not until I've paid for it."

"Paid for it? You look to me like you've paid plenty. When is it enough?"

I feel my heart lift at his words. Maybe I haven't lost a friend, after all. But I frown and look away. "A life for a life. My children are my redemption."

Frank goggles at me. "That's why you adopted Pao! Karmic balancing or something?"

"Something like that."

"Isn't that, like, transference or something? Surely you see how screwed up that is!"

I shake my head, aware that normally I'd be more offended. "It's bought me peace of mind. Sometimes, anyway. Someday, it'll be enough. Someday."

"So… if she dies, you loose that bit of redemption?"

"No. When Pao dies, I will mourn her. I gave her what I could. A childhood and the best start to life I could manage. I'm just protecting her from my past."

Frank shakes his head. "You really need to go back to that shrink. Have you told him any of this?"

"Well, I told him about being stabbed by my lover. He doesn't have the necessary clearance to know much else. I have to be careful to be unspecific about the timeline. You're not even supposed to know, you know." I grin at him wryly, feeling much better talking about something other than the past.

He gives me a lopsided grin. "Why are you entrusting me with all this, anyway?"

I shrug. "Lots of reasons. You found out I don't die easily when you weren't supposed to, and you handled that really well. I dunno, Frank. You've always proven yourself trustworthy and capable. It's nice to have someone to trust. I don't have many friends, in case you haven't noticed."

He nods, but something else is on his mind. "So, where does that guy, Tiresias fit in to all this?"

I shrug. "I'm not entirely sure. Ray's never been an enemy of mine per se, but he enjoys… collecting other people's close friends. He's done this to me before. It's his way of provoking a fight, I guess. I'm good at modulating my voice and hearing the tells in other people's voices, but it's from long practice. He has a natural ear. And he's a natural manipulator. I don't know if he's taking advantage of my situation or if he's actually involved. I think it's more complicated than either, but-" Something's not right.

Frank looks puzzled at my sudden alertness. "What?"

"Shh!"

Someone's outside.