Page 227 of Hunters and Prey

“They’re with her.”

Black nodded. Then, making as polite of a gesture as he could muster, he gave the taller male an old school bow, something he hadn’t done in as long as he could remember––definitely not since he’d fallen through a portal and left Old Earth behind.

“Lead the way,” he murmured. “I’ll defer to your judgment, as to whether we should wait for your family here, or try to find them in the village… brother Syrimne.”

The seer looked at him at that, his glass eyes mirrors, glinting like harder crystal.

“Revik,” he said, blunt. “I don’t go by that name.”

Black studied his eyes.

Again, he felt as much as saw the warning there.

Keeping his expression still, he nodded, once, seer-fashion.

Noting the scowl still present on the other’s face, he made his light polite.

“Revik, it is,” he said, giving him another half-bow.

The other male stared at him, his expression openly skeptical.

Rather than argue with Black, or even finish assessing whether the younger seer was being sarcastic or not, Revik turned on his heel, walking abruptly away.

Sighing a little, but silently, so the other wouldn’t hear it, Black followed, pacing the tall, black-haired male with the broad shoulders and those piercing, glass-like eyes as he walked Black around to the front of his two-story house.

REVIK OPTED TO wait for his wife.

Black ended up in their kitchen, sitting on a squat, strangely-shaped but shockingly comfortable chair that stood in one corner by a low table. The chair sat nearly on the floor, but as the table was close to the floor as well, it ended up being the perfect height for him.

Revik cooked.

Black watched him, curious in spite of himself.

It crossed his mind that Dalejem knew this seer.

So did Mika, Yarli, Jax, Holo.

So did that seer Raven who defected to Charles’ team.

They’d all known him back on Old Earth. From the gossip Black had heard, including from his own wife, Dalejem had even slept with him.

Black found himself wanting to ask the seer questions, but he didn’t.

He didn’t have to think very hard to know the ones he really wanted the answer to probably wouldn’t go over well. Questions like: Are you really telekinetic? Is it true you killed thousands of humans during World War I? Did you really come out of hiding like a hundred years later, and kill a bunch more humans? Were you the one who destroyed Old Earth, or did your wife do that? Oh, and why the fuck did you do that?

Instead, he settled on something he figured would be fairly innocuous.

“We’re cousins,” Black said, resting his arm on the low table. “Did you know that?”

The seer froze.

Looking up from where he’d been stirring something in a wok-like bowl, he stared at Black for what felt like about fifty seconds too long.

Then the seer broke into a half smile, clicking humorously under his breath.

“Gaos,”he said, going back to stirring plant matter and what looked like meat over the green-blue flames. “You’re Miri’s husband.”

Black sat up, his whole body, light and mind suddenly on high alert.

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