Hidden Faults (36 page)

“I’ll be tracking him, Jodi. Anyone pays too much attention to him, I’ll notice, and deflect them. He’ll be as safe as you will be back in the refuge.”

“I don’t want to be back there and safe, I want to be here. Protecting my friend.”

“You can’t do nothing. All you can do is risk him and you. You said yourself, someone might see you, recognise you. You need to go. Now move, will you? Put the wig back on, they don’t know you was in prison.”

“‘Were’.”

“Why bother pretending I’m better than I am? Least to you. You know what I am.”

“You sound like Ganwe when you talk like that.”

“That’s cos me and him come from the same streets. I could’ve been him, if I hadn’t been a spook. You think I use people same as him and you’re right. I do. Just not for the same reason. Stop worrying about how the fuck I speak. I can act when I need to. I don’t want to do it around you.”

Breakfast was a rushed, subdued affair. Meram and Terna had jobs to go to, lucky people, and clearly knew better than to ask about our mission. Meram had prepared a food package for our journey, and with that handed over, a last hug to Jeyle and a handshake to me, they sent us on our way.

There was no chatter this time. I hunched disconsolately in the backseat as familiar streets and landmarks passed me by. On the street, people rushed to their jobs, getting on with their lives. Vizinken sparkled in the cold sunlight, the snow where it lay undisturbed, a pure clean mask over any defects.

If Jeyle took a right turn here, drove down that road there, continued but a little way, we’d come to my old house. I wondered what had happened to it, whether my parents had sold it, rented it out, or maybe even donated it to Mam’s blasted temple. The loss of my little home hurt a good deal that morning. I missed this city so very much.

We drove back north on the main highway, the snow of yesterday cleared efficiently and not replaced overnight, though more would probably fall before evening. Two hours later, Jeyle took a side road and we came to one of the smaller stations on the main north-south line, only a matter of ten minutes or so before a southbound train was due.

Kir said nothing to Jeyle, but she kissed his cheek and smiled at him before he opened the door. I got out of the back seat and stood in the freezing, clear air, waiting to change seats with him. He nodded to me.

I could be a couple of weeks getting back to you all. Try not to fight with too many people.

Be careful.

He flashed white teeth at me as he grinned.
I’m always careful.

Of him.

That too. Go on, and don’t piss her off.

I’ll stop breathing then, shall I?

He shrugged and then walked off. I watched him for a second or two, then got back into the veecle. Jeyle waited only long enough for me close the door and fasten restraints, before she turned the motor over and we set off.

She wasn’t inclined to talk, and I, with all my miserable thoughts, was in no mood for more of her accusations. I resented her attitude, frankly. She had no right to it, however much she cared for Kir. But I wouldn’t argue, not on an icy road and her in charge of the only transport, mundane or paranormal.

But after an hour, I decided to ask. “I need a favour.”

She risked a glance at me, her mouth displeased. “And what makes you think I would grant one to you?”

“Because it’s not just for me. Do you need to be a telepath to teach those special shields you and Kir use?”

I’d clearly surprised her, for it took several seconds for her to answer. “Not for all of it, but to put the final touches.”

“You can teach me some of it and Dede can finish it?”

“We can try. Not everyone has the ability. It’s not easy. Why? Want to hide your nasty thoughts from him?”

“Yes.” Her expression shifted subtly, as if I’d surprised her but she would never admit it. “He explained...that there are strategic advantages to the special shields.”

“He’s never going to work with you covertly, Jodi. I won’t allow it.”

“Fine. I’ll just go find one of your telepathic friends and ask them to build the ordinary shields for me. Then the chance to take from his shoulders some of the atrocious burden you lot have placed on him will be lost. One way or another, I will have shields, and my privacy back. I’d have thought you would realise how much that would help him too.”

Her eyes narrowed as her hand tightened on the control stick. “We should have left you in prison.”

“
Agreed. At least I had a value there, even if only as a pathetic little cocksucker. But you and he took that away from me, so now you have to finish what you started. Teach me to shield, or get someone else to.”

She drove on in grim-faced silence. I was serious in my intention, but I’d wait until Kir could teach me the special shields, if she would not. I had so little else to do.

After nearly half an hour of ignoring me, she said, “It takes a long time.”

“I have plenty. How do I start?”

“A series of mental exercises. I doubt you have the discipline.”

“The worst that can happen is that you’ll be proved right.”

She refused to talk to me at all then until we arrived at the refuge, stalking off with Hermi as we came into the living area, and leaving me to the tender mercies of two elderly telekinetics whose names I couldn’t recall at that point. They clucked over me for being so skinny and insisted on my eating far more than I really wanted.

After lunch, a check in with Dede, and a session with Ronwe, I returned to my room and found a sheaf of printed notes on my bed, a handwritten one on top. ‘Do these, in order, and for the prescribed time. Dede can test you in a week. I expect you to fail.’

No signature—it required none. I wondered if she would ever stop hating me, and how Hermi could abide being with her if she projected such negative emotions.

The mental exercises involved such strange ideas as imagining myself in and behind a waterfall, concentrating on the inner surface of a child’s ball, and trying to see a piece of glass without looking through it. They appeared completely random to me, nothing related to what I wanted to achieve, but damned if I would ask Jeyle for help. Hermi probably would, but if I failed, I wanted it to be all my own fault.

So for the next week I either followed the shield preparations in my room or the daylight lounge, exercised physically to regain my fitness, or worked with Ronwe to perfect my control over my talent. I think the obsessiveness with which I approached the matter bothered him, but he’d had over forty years to learn how to precisely shape and control the mysterious fire, and I’d had less than a month in which to do so.

Maybe we weren’t supposed to use our powers to kill, but I wanted to be absolutely sure no one would capture me again without a fight. Besides, making flames shoot a quarter demidec from the ends of my fingers, hot enough to melt metal and rock, was better than orgasm.

‘Nights’ were hellish, and I ended up spending most of them on a sofa in the living area. My bedroom was too quiet, the air too still. The ventilation worked too efficiently and silently, and no other noises could be heard through the solid rock walls. The prison had been the opposite. There, the constant sounds of hundreds of other men had often disturbed my sleep. What I longed for was normality—the soft noises of my law-abiding neighbours going about their lives, distant flutters and squeaks and tweets and flappings of other living things, reminding me that the world existed. Here, once I closed my bedroom door, it was like being sealed in a pod, and I rarely fell asleep without surging to full wakefulness at least once with my heart racing and my thoughts panicking.

I didn’t know why the lack of windows bothered me more here than it did in prison. I supposed the sedative effect of the naksen or the overwhelming symptoms caused by withdrawal had masked my claustrophobia. Once, Kir could have masked it too.

I could only hope the panic attacks would die off, and spent as much time outside or under daylight simulation as I could. I doubted I would ever find this place as safe and welcoming as the others did. I was an outsider, and though I no longer had anything to hide from my companions, I still felt separated from them by upbringing, by history, and my own attitudes.

I couldn’t bring myself to attend the next greeting circle, held three days after we came back—another mark against me in Jeyle’s eyes, and disappointing to Hermi. A religion based on spirits allegedly visible to empaths offered no more comfort than Marranism did. I was jobless, faithless and homeless. I didn’t feel like sitting in a circle holding hands and sharing feelings about all that with people I didn’t know or particularly trust.

At the end of the week, I visited Dede and asked for her assessment of my progress.

“You understand I’m not the expert on these Weadenisi shields, don’t you?” she said.

“Do what you can,” I told her. “I want to know if the exercises are working.”

She closed the file in front of her. “Very well. Think of two balls, one red, one blue. Place the red one inside the shield, the other in your public thoughts.”

A week ago, such an instruction would have been nonsensical, but now I understood. I did my best to follow her command, and then she concentrated.

“Right. I can still read both but the red one is definitely fuzzy. I can’t tell if it’s a thought you’re having or a memory.” She smiled. “I think you’re on the right path. Keep working.”

“Can you do anything to speed it up?”

“
Not at this point. But you’re doing well. Your thoughts are far less intrusive. You think, emote, very loudly, but now what I’m reading from you is muted. Makes it easier on me.”

“That’s something at least,” I muttered. “Does that mean you’ll let me work with you now?”

“Yes, it does. We don’t usually need two physicians, but we certainly need a back up, as well as someone who can deal with emergencies. You can teach me what recent techniques I don’t know and I can teach you good old fashioned doctoring.”

She gave me some texts to read, but told me that I should concentrate on the shields.

As I stood to leave, I asked, “Any word from Kir?”

“No, but that’s not unusual.” The tightening of her mouth gave a slight lie to her words, though. “We’d get reports from his field contact if there was a problem. It’s how he works—alone.”

“By choice or by necessity?”

“A little of both.” She pushed her glasses back. “You’ve made progress on more than the shields. Your anger is muted.”

“
I can’t sustain the rage. I don’t want to. I feel I
ought
to, but...how sick is it to want my rapist? I even ended up liking Ganwe, in a strange kind of way. I didn’t hate him either, and I should have. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? There’s a name for that kind of thing, isn’t there?”

She nodded. “If you’re thinking of what we see in domestic violence cases, yes, but I don’t believe that’s what’s happening here. I'm no psych, but in my inexpert opinion, it’s a much more complex situation. There are similarities, of course. Ganwe and Kir were protectors as well as abusers. It’s natural you would want them as allies, not enemies. But do you feel the same about Kir as for Ganwe? Do you honestly believe the situations are the same?”

“They both raped me.”

“You were terrified of Ganwe. Appeasing him was the only way of staying safe. That was never the case with Kir. Think, Jodi.”

“I do little else these days.”

“
I know,” she said quietly. “As Kir’s friend, I want you to accept him, let the pain go. As
your
friend, I want the same. You don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t wrong, but he’s no Ganwe.”

“He keeps saying that too.”

“Because it’s true. Tell me, do you think Ganwe loses any sleep over what he does to people like you? He’s trying to survive, but does he even regret the choices he makes to do that?” I shook my head, knowing he didn’t. “Then maybe that’s the path you can follow to allow Kir to make amends, and yourself to heal.”

“Did you forgive your abusers?”

“I...try very hard. I try to understand. It’s difficult when I know their excuse was simply boredom, and the petty exercise of power over the powerless. The wantonness....” She drew in a breath, and I put my hand on her wrist, seeing how much this cost her. “The cruelty is very hard to understand or forgive.”

Kir had not been wanton, or cruel. “You’re a good person, Dede. Far better than me.”

“Just older, dear. Now, take it quietly and keep up the good work on those shields.”

I turned to go.

“You should come to the next greeting circle,” she said, rather abruptly.

“Why? I’m glad you and your friends like the feeling of communion, but it does nothing for me. I don’t believe in your spirits, whatever Hermi says.”

“
It’s not
my
spirits I’m concerned about. You have a soul which needs to be fed. I draw a lot of comfort from Spiritism.”