The Illusionists (12 page)

She felt herself start to choke on thick, rich disdain.

‘You're not worth dirt to anyone,' she said. ‘Things are happening to me. Things I would've talked to you about if you weren't so bloody up yourself. I needed you. But you'd rather go to parties and sleep with Sabine and keep all your little secrets. Well, you're not the only Talented around here, even though you act like you are.'

He just stared at her.

She snorted in disgust and turned back to the door. She'd tear it down if she had to. She'd bite bits off him if she had to.

‘And where exactly are you going?' he said behind her, his voice low and taut. ‘There's nowhere for you to run to.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘You child. What do you have to be angry about? What have I done to you, except be your friend? And more than that. I took you away from the life you hated. Are you just going to
forget
all of that?'

‘Yes,' she said sharply, examining the door panel, her fingers scrabbling in desperation. ‘Because I didn't hate my life. You just made me think I hated it. You're just a big fat liar, Wren. You've no honour.'

He laughed. He'd come up behind her. She flinched and turned around, her skin crawling between her shoulder blades.

‘Honour,' he echoed, his voice a sneer. ‘Jesus. You think your precious friend Cho is honourable? She's friends with terrorists, Rue. That practically makes
her
a terrorist. Do you know the kinds of things they do? And god, her brother is worse, much worse. People with so much power can never be good people. You think your White is so high and mighty, but he's broken a few rules in his time. Done a few nasty things. How do you know he hasn't been watching you? He can do that, you know. He could have been watching you all this time without you knowing. Those moments when you thought you were alone. You know. The secret, embarrassing ones –'

She hit him. She'd meant to just clip his face, just – gods! – to shut him up, but she caught his cheekbone with the edge of her hand, and it buzzed in pain. She rubbed it, watching him.

‘You're the child,' she said softly. ‘And that's all you are. I don't ever want to see you again.'

He was clutching at the side of his face.

‘And how about this for you? I like the idea of him watching me. I
like
it.' She looked at him distastefully. ‘If I ever found out
you'd
been watching me like that, I'd hit you again. Then I'd throw up.'

His eyes flickered. For a moment, he actually looked hurt.

It's just an act.

‘Fine,' he said. ‘So what are you going to do now? Run straight to Cho? You've got nowhere else to go.'

‘Shows all you know, doesn't it?' she said sharply. ‘Let me out. Now.'

He made a sudden grab for her, but she'd seen it in his face and dodged out of the way, her heart kicking in fear. She turned to the door but he was on her again, pulling, and she fell. He crawled over her, using his body weight to pin her down, and she bucked and she bucked but she couldn't get him off – GODS more than anything she just wanted him off if he didn't get OFF she would die from white hot anger she opened her mouth to SCREAM in his face but he pressed his mouth to hers. It was a painful kiss but it wasn't about a kiss, it was about power, it was about shutting her up, and control. More than anything else this seemed to break something free in her. Snapping like rotten wood, she rose up inside, her whole being bent towards escape, escape, escape.

Wren's face was sucked into black. The room blurred and poured into her, dimming. A kick in the middle of her chest told her this was a panic Jump, no thought or direction.

Cho filled her, Cho with her silky blunt-cut hair, her purple eyes and pale skin. Cho filled the black, dominating it until there was her instead of nothingness.

Cho

She thought, and suddenly, she was there.

She was in Cho's bedroom, and Cho was in front of her, clutching a T-shirt in one hand. Looking straight at her.

Cho opened her mouth and screamed.

The whisper had gone round.

Frith was back.

It was long into the fourth day of his return before the knock came on White's door, though. He steeled himself.

You can do this. See it through.

‘Come,' he called. His door opened and Frith's familiar head appeared around it. He slid his way in and closed the door behind him.

They watched each other.

‘You are returned from your trip,' said White.

‘Indeed.'

‘Was it all right?'

‘Fine. Just fine.'

There were no specifics. There hadn't been for a long time. The trust was all gone. Frith told him nothing any more.

There was a pause.

‘You're looking tired, White,' said Frith, eventually.

White shrugged, trying to make light. ‘Too many dreams.'

‘Dreams you should report to me?'

‘No.'

Silence.

Frith lingered just inside the closed door.

It was such a delicate game. How to get him closer?

‘I wonder', said Frith, moving off to the side of the room, ‘if you ever dream about me.'

White's heart lurched.

Frith walked, his feet noiseless on the rugs. Moving in a wide circle towards the fireplace, never within arm's reach.

He knows. He won't come close, so he knows.

‘No,' said White. ‘Never.'

‘You dream about a lot of people. What they're doing, where they're going. You must know some of my secrets, mustn't you?'

‘I don't,' said White. ‘The dreams are random, even for me. I cannot force them to a subject. You know this. I have tried.'

‘But you could be there without me knowing, while you're awake, couldn't you? Watching me.'

The way you watch me?

‘No,' he said out loud, stubborn. ‘You would know I was there.'

‘I'm not Talented. I wouldn't feel you.'

‘Yes, you would.'

‘Sometimes I think you are there,' said Frith, his voice dangerously quiet. ‘But perhaps that's more my imagination.'

White said nothing. He would not be drawn into this. Whichever way he took, it would be wrong. All roads led to the centre of Frith's web.

‘You'll need to be investigated in the next couple of days,' Frith continued, effortlessly changing tack. ‘Routine questions. Just a follow-up after the Wren and Rue debacle.'

White stared at him.

‘You suspect me of treachery?'

‘No. I'm the only one who doesn't. The Spymaster's dogs have been itching for an excuse to take you in.'

‘Wren. It was all Wren. You know this!'

‘The dogs see a different truth. The dogs see you conspiring with the only other Talented remotely equal to you – your former best friend. How former, though? They think perhaps you're still working for World. You and I know that isn't true, but truth isn't always defined just by its participants. Is it?'

White felt his fear surge. Is this how Frith would ruin him, after all this time? Would he die in a prison cell somewhere in the bowels of Capital, alone and skeletal?

‘Frith,' White said finally. It was his only card. He prayed it would work.

Frith watched him.

‘Frith,' he repeated. It was not hard to sound weak. He
was
weak, and tired, and scared. All he needed to do was to let go a little, let it sink through his voice. ‘I would never leave. Do you understand?'

He swallowed.

‘I will never leave you,' he managed. The words sounded forced, but then they would, even if he meant them.

Frith was stood by the fireplace and hadn't moved.

‘And how am I to know that?' he said finally, his smile pleasant.

‘I cannot lie to you. No one can lie to you,' White pleaded.

Just come a little closer!

Frith was silent.

White took a risk. He made his way to the fireplace, carefully, as if Frith were a bird and quick movement would startle him away. He stood in front of him, close enough to touch, but he didn't reach out, not yet. Too soon and it would ruin everything.

‘We seem to be bound to each other, you and I,' said Frith.

White's blood ran cold.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘We are.' It was an awful truth.

Frith half turned, his eyes flickering briefly over White's face. White dreaded what Frith saw but tried not to hide it, which would only be too obvious. Instead he let everything show – a confusion of emotion. Too many signals.

Then, there it was.

There.

It was the moment he had been waiting for, when Frith held his gaze. Inviting him. White moved his hand forward and clasped his wrist. Frith did not push him away.

It would take just a moment.

He wormed his way into Frith's unguarded mind.

He thought of green, dim coolness. Wheeling bird song. He thought of love and hurt, and cruel laughter. He thought of Oaker's downy brown skin, dappled with sunlight. He found Frith's tail, the line inside that tracked Frith's everything, stretching all the way back and all the way forward along his life. He could hear Oaker's voice, if he listened hard. He could see Oaker's presence on Frith's line, bending it like a rock balanced on a piece of stretched ribbon, distorting everything around it, drawing everything to it.

White felt the wrist in his grip move as a vague feeling back there, somewhere. He pushed forward, holding on as tightly as he could to every sensation of the place he was trying to get to – the smell of damp earth, the tiny scratches of claws on bark, the way the grass would spring back against his hand if he pressed his palm against it.

And then the grass was there, tickling his fingers.

Frith was beside him in the clearing. He sprang apart from White like a startled dog, looking about him.

‘What the fuck did you do?' he screamed.

White stared at a Frith unmanned, too grey and sick to wonder at the sight of it. Frith out of control was embarrassing, and horrifying.

‘Where the fuck is this?' came another scream.

White only shook his head. He watched Frith stalk closer, knowing he didn't have the strength to move.

‘Tell me now, or I'll slit your throat,' said Frith.

White felt a panicky laugh rising, and the end of him if he should let it escape. He forced out the words.

‘Woods in Tregenna,' he managed. ‘From your childhood.'

Frith looked around again. ‘You can't Jump someone without Talent,' he said, eventually.

‘We haven't Jumped. Not  …  in that way.'

‘You're making no sense. Make some.'

‘We are in your memory.'

Frith laughed. ‘Don't be absurd.'

‘We are in your memory,' said White again, levering himself up to a sitting position. Would this greyness ever dissipate? He had never felt so tired; it had sucked everything out of him. Cho had always loved it when he'd done this trick with her. It never used to be so hard to do, as a child. It used to be as easy as thought. Perhaps because children's lines and memories were so simple, made up of such easy colours and smells and tastes. They hadn't yet learned to complicate things.

‘So you're saying that physically we're still in your room, by the fireplace?' said Frith.

‘Yes.'

‘But that somehow we're now in a memory? That this  … ' he indicated the trees. ‘This isn't real?'

‘No.'

Frith laughed, threw up his hands. ‘How many other things can you do that you've been keeping from me?'

‘A few,' said White. Frith watched him speculatively. White hated that look. It was an experimental look, the look of an engineer itching to take a machine apart to find all its secret workings.

‘You still do not believe me.'

‘I believe you,' said Frith. ‘You wouldn't claim such an incredible thing that you couldn't prove. So prove it.'

‘If you go to the riverbank,' said White, ‘you will find yourself there, and Oaker, at age fifteen. I do not know which moment it will be. Perhaps the moment he disappears. Perhaps in one of the hours you spend waiting for him to come back afterwards. I think it is dependent on which moment affects you most.'

‘Why did you do this?'

‘Because I want to hurt you,' said White. He hesitated. ‘And I thought about killing you. But I cannot. I cannot do it. I am not built that way.'

Frith laughed. ‘I see. Why now?'

White was silent. He was reluctant to say her name, but Frith saw it anyway. His face darkened like a sky pregnant with storm.

White said, simply, ‘You took Rue from me. When you knew how I felt about her, you took her away from me.'

He wanted Frith to deny it. He wanted that very badly. But it was so wearily unsurprising to see that he had no intention of that.

Frith sat himself back down beside White in an imitation of companionship.

‘Very well,' he said. ‘If you want to know what happened, I made a deal with the Worlders. I said that if they promised to leave you alone, they could have any of the new students. They just had to choose. So they sent Wren off to see which of them he thought was most Talented. I may have told them of your thing with Rue.'

Thing
was said with the utmost venom. White recoiled from the sound of it. Why did it still surprise him when Frith showed him the depth of emotion he hid so successfully from the world?

‘I met with Wren's manager,' said Frith. ‘He had apparently begged her to have the chance to take Rue, when he learned that you felt something for her. He really does hate you. Do you know why?'

White sighed. He ached. Everything ached.

‘It's because you're far more gifted than he is. You were the first person he ever met whose Talent absolutely outstripped his own. I wonder if you'll ever experience that in your lifetime.'

‘I have wondered myself.'

‘I doubt it,' said Frith. ‘And that's a dangerous thing.' His composure was back, wrapped around him like a cloak.

‘Perhaps.'

Frith was looking out across the clearing they were sat in.

‘Are we going to fight?' he said. ‘I have a knife with me, memory or no. I can still feel it in my boot. I have several ways to kill you on my person. Can you die here?'

‘I do not know,' said White. He collapsed as Frith leapt on him. The ground smacked against his back and shook his bones. He could feel the muscles in Frith's thighs twisting and bunching as he was squeezed close. He could feel the prickling of the knifepoint at his belly. Frith was over him, on him, fingers pressing on his throat. He wheezed. He looked up into Frith's eyes.

‘I don't know what to do about you,' said Frith, his face inches from White's, his eyes carefully searching, as if he could find the answer he wanted. ‘You're too unpredictable but too valuable. I argue and counter argue, I weigh the pros and cons of keeping you alive. I have done ever since I first met you. I'm good at decision making, but you fog me somehow. Do you see?'

‘I see,' said White, his voice raspy. ‘Will you try to make
me
love you, too?'

Frith recoiled. It was enough. White punched him in the face, as hard as he could.

He couldn't Jump about in the space of someone else's memory – it wasn't his to manipulate. He could only move into it and out of it, and right now was far too soon for out. He hoped that Frith would not realise in time what power he had here in his own mind.

Frith was sat back, shaking his head. He would be up in a second. White dragged himself to his feet and leaned back against a tree, watching him. His hand was buzzing in shock. Soon enough it would hurt, even in a memory. The mind replicated whatever it could.

Frith stood up slowly. He touched a finger to his nose and it came away smeared in blood.

‘Why are you throwing
everything
away for her? What the hell is so special about her?' he said. The words were muffled and numbed.

White just shook his head, too weary to try to explain.

‘She tried to sleep with me,' said Frith, his voice thick and cold. ‘She came to me just before she left and she tried to sleep with me. She cares nothing for you.'

White could see the child Frith used to be, so clearly. Frith's weapons were leaving him. He had only child cards to play. Maybe, trapped in a memory from his childhood, he couldn't help but revert backwards, growing smaller and less controlled.

‘No, she didn't,' said White.

‘How do you know?'

‘I know.'

Frith paused.

‘She'll never understand you, White,' he said, finally. ‘You're something else, a creature apart. She's just an ordinary girl with a bit of Talent. You'll grow out of her. You'll leave her behind. You'll cause her pain. Do you really want that?'

White closed his eyes, trying to will that poison voice silent.

‘What do you think will happen now?' said Frith, after a moment.

‘I just want you to leave me alone. I want everything to do with you to go away.'

‘Will you go back to World?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘You'll go back to prison.'

‘Perhaps.'

Frith stared out past White's shoulder.

‘This place is exactly how I remember it,' he said softly.

White heard the breeze setting branches far above them dancing, the noise like the sound of the sea.

He asked the question before he could stop himself.

‘What happened to that boy? The hedgewitch's son?'

‘He's dead,' Frith said, and laughed. It was a sharp, tangled noise. ‘He got run out of the village, eventually. His mother tried to hold the other villagers back, but it didn't work for long. They said he was a demon, and that he'd use his gift for spying on them and reporting back to her. So he went up North. Used his talents to turn thief, and sold himself to buy food. He lasted a few months. There was a brawl one night between local criminal gangs. He got caught in the crossfire. He died. I don't know why he didn't just Jump out of there and save himself. Perhaps he didn't see it coming.'