Hidden Faults (29 page)

I heard footsteps, but before I could look to see who it was, I found myself flying through the air and hurled against the rock wall, all the breath knocked out of my body. Jeyle stalked up to me, her face a mask of loathing, her hands extended as if she wished they were wrapped around my neck—they may as well have been for all the air I could pull in.

“
I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate you,” she spat. “You little
shit
!”

Invisible bands crushed my burning chest, and my vision dimmed. I was dying, and maybe I didn’t care too much that I was.

But then I dropped abruptly to the floor. I gasped and heaved, dragging air back into empty, tortured lungs. Jeyle and Hermi were arguing, him pleading with her to calm down. I was too busy trying to breathe to listen to the specifics—something about how he couldn’t let her kill me, but she didn’t understand why not.

“Look at me, Jodi.” I blinked up through watering eyes at Jeyle’s furious features. Hermi stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to him?”

“
What I did to
him
?” I coughed, incredulous at the unfairness.

“
Yes. You call
him
a rapist? Do you have any idea how many times he really was raped in prison?” I looked away. The two things didn’t negate each other. “You little shit—do you know how hard he worked to get you out? He wouldn’t rest, would barely sleep until he found you. Nothing in his life was as important as getting you free. And this, this is how you repay him.” She actually spat at me, spat at my feet. “You make me sick.”

“He forced me to have sex with him.”

“He did no such thing. You didn’t even ask, did you? You made assumptions, screamed at him, accused him of a filthy crime, when you don’t know the full story—”

“Because you’re hiding everything from me! You’ve lied, he’s lied, I’m supposed to trust you and all this time I’ve been manipulated and manoeuvred and...you make me sick too, Jeyle. All of you. Just leave me the hell alone.”

She hissed in a breath, and I felt sure she’d lay into me again, but then Hermi muttered something to her and with an angry snort, she stomped away down the corridor.

I coughed and rubbed my aching chest. It felt like someone had been whacking it with a hammer.

“Jodi, are you all right? I'm so sorry about that. She shouldn’t—”

“I don’t want to talk to you, Hermi. You’re as bad as the rest of them.”

“Yes, that’s quite true. May I sit?”

I turned my face away from him, not wanting to look at him and be fooled by his so innocent expression. “Touch me, do anything to change my feelings, and I’ll hurt you.”

“I only want to talk, Jodi. I love Kir as my son, but I know you suffer too.”

I didn’t answer. Anything I could do in this situation played into their hands. People surrounded me who could make me think what they wanted, feel what they wanted. They altered perceptions of reality as easily as breathing. For all I knew, I lay dying in a cage. They could make me believe anything.

He said nothing, but I heard him shuffle and ease his portly body down onto the ground with a soft groan.

“He’s been in agonies, wondering how much to tell you, and when. He knew you’d take it badly, but he didn’t think it would be this badly. Rather, he hoped you wouldn’t.”

“
You honestly think that this could ever be
good
news?”

“
I know, I know...but you and he seemed to be reaching an understanding. He didn’t want to damage that, and we didn’t want to damage you. He wanted to build something with you, something clean, before he burdened you with the past. We tried to advise him, but no one of us knew what would be best, since he was the only one who knew you well. For months as he kept you under surveillance, his feelings for you became very strong, even though he knew—we knew—it was hopeless. You surely have seen how much he cares for you.”

It was Ajeile all over again. Except...I did know Kir’s feelings were involved. Or had seemed to be. As had mine, or they’d started to be. But how could I trust what I felt or thought? How much was normal attraction, how much manipulation?

“
I don’t know what to believe any more. I thought...I thought it was completely natural, how this started. Now I don’t know what’s going on. You should have told me.
He
should have.”

He put his hand on my arm and I flinched, but he didn’t withdraw. I couldn’t detect any attempt to use his talent. “You’re right to be angry and hurt. We’ve handled this badly.”

“You really have. Jeyle has no right—”

“No. That was quite wrong of her, what she said and what she did. But then she’s as damaged as the rest of us. To us, rape is...what we endured in prison. What Kir endured as a child.”

“I was raped in prison too. Only difference with me is that someone I...I like...liked...did it to me as well. Who do I turn to now? Who do I trust?”

“I would hope...in time...you could trust us.”

“Not a hope in hell, Hermi.”

“I can’t blame you for that, but what alternative do you have?”

I glared at him. “Would you stop me leaving?”

“My dear boy, where could you go?”

“Tsikeni? Leave the country, go to Darsino? Dindornes, even. Surely....”

He shook his head. “Tsikeni isn’t that liberal that we can find safety there. The Darsinis are Pindone’s allies, and you’d never make it to Dindornes. Not on your own.”

I gritted my teeth. “Prison would be better than this. At least I knew who the enemy was.”

“We’re not your enemy. Kir isn’t, I swear to you. Blame us, blame me, but he did our bidding because he’s trying to help us. He’s a soldier, following distasteful orders. He’s been brave enough to do what others of us are too frightened to attempt, and for that, some have censured him. He’s even killed for us, to my great sorrow—but in doing so, he’s saved many lives. He does terrible things to keep us safe. Some of us are so nice as to judge him for that. I say to them, he’s given you the luxury of being here to despise him.”

“The hair thing is to do with that.” I should have realised it sooner. I remembered reading about it now—cutting one’s hair had been a Dar-sen custom, to show grief or ostracism. And these people imitated them in so many ways, or tried to.

He nodded, grey eyes solemn. “Yes. There was a disgraceful scene and some thought he didn’t have the right to call himself a Spiritist or to be part of this group. So he cut off his braid and refused to grow it again.

“
Charming people you have here.”

He nodded again, mouth turned down sadly. “We’re deeply flawed, I acknowledge that, and our actions are reprehensible. We’re the ones at fault. He’s not to blame.”

“Did you force him to do what he did to me?” Hermi’s silence was my answer. “Then he shares the blame.”

“Jodi, what you feel is quite justified. The harm’s been done, and you’ve been hurt by us. By me, by decisions I was part of. But...can you not try to forgive? Our intentions were pure—you’ve seen what we’re rescuing people from, how large and powerful the enemy is.”

“Do you know how much evil’s been done in the name of ‘I only wanted to help’? Even I....” I clenched my fist, thinking of Neim. “Where is he?”

“In Ferige’s workshop, but please...he has no armour against you. You feel deeply wronged, with good cause, but...he’s been through so much. Please, Jodi.”

I drew in a breath and held it to calm myself down. “I just want to talk,” I said, trying to unclench my teeth. “You and your creepy friends will have to wait until I have a chance to do that.”

“Of course. Help me up, could you? I’m too old and fat to be sitting on stone floors.”

I did so with difficulty—he really
wasn’t
good at sitting on floors. His knees clicked as I got him upright. “The workshop?”

“Down there, first right. Please, just—”

“You don’t have the right to ask favours of me.” Yet his eyes still mutely pleaded. “I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you. And...I'm sorry.”

There was no point in repeating my complaint, so I only nodded. Holding my bruised back, I walked stiffly in the direction of Kir’s friend’s workshop and hoped I wouldn’t encounter any more angry telekinetics on the way.

He was alone, working in the corner, planing a piece of dark wood down with slow, concentrated movements, red curls of shavings surrounding his feet. I wondered if he was making something or whether he only sought the action itself. He looked like shit. If he hadn’t been crying it had been a close thing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, standing in the doorway.

“I didn’t know how. I guess I hoped you’d never find out.”

“
How were you going to keep something like that from me? Kir, you forced me to sleep with you as certainly as if you’d put a gun to my head.”

He stared up at me, his expression dead. “I never made you sleep with me. I didn’t have to, and I didn’t want to.”

“I wouldn’t have slept with you if you hadn’t fucked with my mind.”

“You were looking for sex each and every time, Jodi. All I did was help you have it with me. You wanted me. I didn’t make that happen.”

“
The problem is that I can’t dispute that because I can’t bloody well
remember
, can I?”

He set his tools down and hugged himself. “I ain’t lying.”

“How do I know?”

“You don’t. But you’re so caught up in what I done to you, and don’t even care why. Guess you think I like doing this kind of shit to people. I love being a rapist for these guys. Makes me feel all glowy inside. ‘Specially seeing how they order it and then hate me for it.”

I stepped closer. “Why do you let them? What could possibly justify this, Kir? I'm not Pregar Noret. I'm not a criminal, a villain. All I wanted to do was help paranormals. Why...why treat me like that?”

“I never planned...see, I have to do it all the time. A lot of the guys we’re trying to track, keep on top of, have shields. I can’t read their thoughts. Sex is one time that the shields are weaker, so I get them into bed, read their minds, then make them forget. We have to. Noret’s got telepaths.”

“But why me? Why track me?”

“Because of your research. I wasn’t looking for you that night though. I followed someone into a medical conference, and found you by accident. Your team was on our list, but not actively, if you see what I mean. Just there as a possible. Since you were right there, I figured I could find out what I could from you, but when I started to read your mind, I realised someone had been playing with it. And you didn’t know. I knew right off this wasn’t something Noret’s guys could do—hardly any Pindoni telepaths could—so I needed to find out more.”

“You tricked me into bed.”

“You wanted me before I did a thing to you. You wanted me after you got out of prison and I didn’t have to do a thing there neither.”

I walked to the far side of the room and stood against the wall. I wanted to sit, but I didn’t want to be so vulnerable. “I can’t trust my instincts, my memories, even trust my trust. I want you, but what if that’s you making me think that?”

“I ain’t.” I kept looking at him and he slumped. “It’s the same for everyone and me. Am I fucking with their heads or not?”

“Surely you can see that by doing what you have, I haven’t any reason to believe you. Do you actually want me or is this another one of Hermi’s games?”

He raised his head to glare furiously at me. “Hermi’s nothing to do with it! He hates all this. He takes the blame, but it ain’t him most of the time. I told him how I felt about you. I’d got to know you, and you were like...so clean and bright after some of the people I’d had to fuck, your mind felt so good. I hoped one day maybe.... He told me it would be real hard to make it work with you, if you knew. I just...yeah, I wanted you. You wanted me too. It wasn’t a lie.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. I had two realities in my brain, two images of Kir, two images of Kir with me. One was so seductive, so much what I wanted. Him, brave, caring, loving, and me caring a great deal for him, grateful for what he’d done to rescue me. The other image was of a coldly manipulative agent, who’d thrown me to Noret’s thugs and the prison system, brought my fate upon me for an agenda I had little sympathy with.

“The talent thing was an accident, I swear. I didn’t know what the block was on you for. I freaked and ran. I could have done more, but I was afraid of being picked up, and then that’d put the whole operation in danger. All I could do was a quick mindwipe on you and get out.”

“
How big a price are these people prepared to pay for their happiness? A price others have to pay? You do, I have...how many others, Kir? Why do you let them do it to you?”

“
I got no one else,” he said quietly. “Hermi and Jeyle are my family. All I got now. They saved my life. I’d have nothing if it wasn’t for them and Wesejne and the other Weadenisis. I owe them, big time.”