The Illusionists (5 page)

Rue's first World party was in full swing.

It was at a house much like Wren's, but at the end of a half-hour walk. Wren had complained the entire way of how far they had to go, and how unfair it was that they had been forced to attend a so-called local party that wasn't even local. Rue had found this both amusing and stupid. But then, World had almost no way to travel around except your own feet, and Worlders never needed to consciously stay healthy; their doctors did that for them. Life gave them everything else. It was surprising, perhaps even alarming, how acclimatised Wren seemed to have become to World.

Rue looked around the room. The Worlders surrounding them, that cocktail of strange hair and clothes shapes she was slowly getting used to, were laughing and kissing and waving their hands in the air. There were a number of different drugs on offer, spread across the table in the middle of the room like a child's banquet, in the form of tiny cakes, sweets and pastries. A list of holographic instructions shimmered at one end of the table, listing what could be mixed with what and what should be kept separate if you wanted to make sure all your fluids remained inside your body for the duration.

So people here liked to sit in a house together, carefully unscrewing their awareness with various different methods and seeing what happened. She knew quite a lot about plant drugs and their effects from her witching lessons with Fernie, way back when. At first the thought of it was much like sitting around and taking medicine when you weren't ill. She had been drunk before; but drinking was for celebrating. Wren told her that drug parties celebrated being alive. It was a pretty thing to say, and she couldn't really argue with it. She wanted to be one of these wild Worlders, and learn their love of losing control, didn't she?

She leaned against a wall with Wren. ‘What do you have?' she said, looking at the little cream puff he held in his hand.

‘It's an old favourite,' he said airily. ‘It's a higher-than-sky. It makes you feel like you're flying, like everybody is flying. It's pretty good. You should try it.'

‘One thing at a time, jack,' she said, and Wren laughed. She liked to make him laugh; he thought her attempts at slang hilarious.

‘You're getting used to the language fast,' he said, through a mouthful of cake.

‘I still sound like I'm stumbling about,' Rue said, swirling the drink Wren had procured for her.

‘Not at all. Sabine said only yesterday how much better your conversation had become. She said you're starting to lose your accent, now.'

‘Good.'

They were interrupted by a statuesque girl with short white hair and neon green paint around her eyes. ‘WREN!' she bellowed, taking his arm. ‘Where have you BEEN?'

Rue watched as he was pulled away into a small crowd. No one took any notice of her. She clutched her drink, feeling suddenly exposed, and looked out across the room, her eyes skidding along the backs and faces of the party goers. Such exotic faces, so many colours. It was almost too much, especially when set against the bland background of the room.

One girl in particular caught her eye. Her skin was a lovely lily-white colour, which reminded Rue inevitably of White, and brought a sharp pain to her stomach. But thankfully there the comparisons ended. The girl was round of face with large, soft lips, and had a small number of silver dapples painted on her cheeks. Her eyes were a sharp, startling shade of purple and her ears were encased in silver-coloured cuffs.

Her gaze shifted, catching Rue's, who looked away.

But not before Rue's heart had started to thrum. Realisation ran cold, prickling fingers over her.

I've seen her before.

Stone walls. Humming dread. Things that ate.

The girl who had come into the room with the hole in the floor.

No.

There was no possible way she'd dreamed a girl first, and then seen her in real life. She'd made it up somehow. Remembered it wrong. That had to be it.

Because the alternative was just too much, even for a Talented.

The girl was stood at the far end of the room, talking to a man wearing trousers so brightly, cheerily orange it looked like his legs were on fire. The girl was playing with her hair as she chatted. She was sweet and delicate looking.

‘Hi,' said someone close to Rue's ear.

A man had appeared, leaning against the wall. He had reptilian eyes, and was bulky and wide in the fashion that some people seemed to like to augment, projecting an imposing, almost ugly kind of air, rather than a beautiful one.

‘Hi,' she said.

‘That's odd. I can't access your name.'

Wren had warned her about this. Worlders would automatically try to sync with her Life account to look up her name and details. It was their way of greeting.

‘I don't have an implant,' Rue said.

‘Oh, really? How extraordinary.'

She shrugged.

‘No augmentation. No implant. Bit of an accent,' mused the man. ‘You must be from Angle Tar.'

Rue looked at him. ‘How did you know that?'

He laughed. ‘Well, it must happen all the time, Angle Tarain coming here seeking citizenship. I mean, it's hardly surprising, given the conditions you have to live in over in that tiny place.'

Rue bristled at this.

‘It works the other way, too,' she said.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Worlders come to Angle Tar.'

The man laughed again – the kind of laugh that seemed specifically designed to irritate.

‘I don't think so,' he said, with an indulgent smile. ‘Why on earth would they, for a start. Secondly  …  in all practical terms, they wouldn't be able to live unconnected from Life. The idea is  …  horrible, and just ridiculous. Who would voluntarily want that kind of existence?'

‘I knew someone from World,' said Rue. ‘Quite well, actually. He seemed to manage it just fine.'

‘He was obviously deranged,' said the main airily. ‘Worlders don't go to Angle Tar. But Angle Tarain apparently come here in droves, you know. I think World is a little too generous, sometimes. It's a wonder we haven't accepted half the population of Angle Tar into World – I'm sure they've tried.'

‘What a big bag of jack,' said a voice behind Rue.

She turned. The girl that had caught Rue's eye stood next to them both, her face full of scorn.

‘You don't know what you're talking about,' she said. ‘As usual. A Worlder giving opinions that aren't even their own, just something they've found in the news feeds. You don't even know if what they tell you is true, and you just accept it. Typical.' She said a word then, something that the World language data stick obviously hadn't included, because Rue didn't understand it at all. It sounded like
mudak.

‘You're quite aggressive  … ' the man paused, ‘ …  Cho, aren't you? But I suppose I should expect nothing less from someone with
your
interests.'

‘Whatever that means,' said the girl called Cho, ‘coming from a man who likes to spend his time at the animal pits.'

The man snorted and walked off.

‘The animal pits?' said Rue, fascinated with everything that had just been said, and picking that one subject randomly.

‘Making artificial animals fight each other for entertainment. It's stupid, and so of course everyone loves it.'

‘Do you know him?'

‘Of course not. It's on his personal profile, that's all.'

‘Oh. What was that word you said to him at the end?'

‘It was just a word in another language.'

‘What language?'

‘
Ehkitay.
It was the language of URCI, back when we were independent. It's sort of this insane mix of two old languages, Russian and Chinese.'

‘Aren't you from World?'

Cho shrugged. ‘Sure. But we were all separate countries before World happened. URCI was one of the last to join World, only a few decades ago. That's why a lot of us can still speak our original language.' She leaned back against the wall, her eyes darting over the crowd. ‘What's your name, then, implantless girl?'

‘Rue.'

‘Short and sweet, like mine.' Cho paused. ‘What? You're staring.'

‘Sorry. It's nothing. Um. Have you met as many Angle Tarain as he seems to think he has?'

‘Tuh. It's all jack, like I said. These pitying images of poor Angle Tarain flocking to World like refugees. You could give a perspective. Does that seem true?'

‘In honesty,' said Rue, ‘I was taught that there was nothing much outside of Angle Tar except backward countries and wastelands. And unless things have changed much in the time I've been gone, I expect most of the population is still under that impression.'

Cho smiled properly – a wry smile, but one nonetheless – and it transformed her face. ‘That's what I keep saying, but no one believes it. No one ever wants to know stuff unless it suits what they already think.'

Rue felt Cho had got it somewhat backwards, but kept silent.

‘I heard you say you knew a Worlder in Angle Tar.'

‘Yes,' said Rue, hoping her face hadn't betrayed the sudden spike in her heartbeat.

‘What was this Worlder like? Had they come to escape?'

‘I believe so,' said Rue, thinking of the old news feeds she'd found on White.

‘That's usually the case,' Cho replied. Her voice was both bitter and smug. ‘I had a brother, you see. He left because of what World is, and went to Angle Tar. He couldn't stand it here any more. But I decided to stay and work from the inside. That's braver than just leaving.'

‘What do you mean, work from the inside?'

‘I'm a hacker.'

‘What's a hacker?'

Cho raised a brow. ‘Seriously? Sorry, I forgot where you're from for a moment there. It's just another word for a coder. If you can change anything in Life, you can code, and if you can code, you can hack. It's really not hard. And it's just stupid stuff, you know – breaking into someone's Life account and changing their avatar to a pig's head, or something. There are hacking
championships
, for jack's sake. It's practically a sport. And all the most famous artists are hackers. It's just that hacking can sometimes lead to, you know  …  more nefarious activities.' A tiny smile hovered on her lips. ‘Like being able to access information the government doesn't want you to see.'

‘It sounds dangerous.'

Cho shrugged, turning to the food unit in the wall next to them. The hosts had unlocked it for the guests, and Cho took her time procuring something multicoloured and sparkling for them both that she called rainbow water. Then she dragged Rue over to a corner of the room where no one was sitting. They sat down together.

Cho took a sip of her drink, staring out across the room.

‘I was told about you,' she said, suddenly.

Rue stared at her. ‘By who?'

‘Oh, you've been doing the rounds on the local chat feeds. Most people have never met an Angle Tarain, there was bound to be talk. Anyway, then I got the invite for this party and I saw your name on the list, and, well  …  I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to talk to you.'

‘Why?' said Rue cautiously.

Cho grinned. ‘You don't have to look so worried. It's just, being Angle Tarain, you're sort of naturally Technophobic. I find that interesting.'

‘Should we be talking about this?'

‘Oh, don't worry. You can't get in trouble just for talking about Technophobes. You should never hide your opinions, anyway.'

‘So are you saying you are one?'

‘Not necessarily. But maybe I know some.'

Rue took a big gulp of her rainbow water. It was like drinking liquid cherries.

‘How much do you know about the Technophobes?' said Cho.

‘Not a lot. I've seen some stuff in the news feeds.'

Cho leaned back. ‘Well, you might have heard the rumours of a whole network of them, all spread across World. One group for each major city, living off-grid. Unconnected from Life, outside of civilisation, totally cut off from everything technological. It sounds like fantasy to me, but it's a nice idea. And people say it's impossible to live off-grid.' Cho grinned. ‘But then I've never really believed anything people say.'

Rue resisted the urge to point out that everyone in Angle Tar lived without technology just fine, but she supposed if you were such a creature of it like those in World, living without it might very well seem near mythical.

They spent the next couple of hours talking together, Cho exclaiming at all that Rue didn't know about World and talking animatedly, her agile mind jumping from one thing to the next.

Rue began to realise how much she liked this girl. Cho was brash and confident, awkward at times, but she didn't hide anything. Everything else fell away for the time that they shared, and Rue found herself lost in the pleasure of such a back and forth with someone – a simple, vibrant connection.

Eventually, Wren came to find her and take her home. Cho sent her a Life message with her details so they could meet up again. Wren seemed pleased that she'd made a friend, but other than that was uninterested in talking. It didn't annoy her for once, though, because Cho occupied her thoughts now.

She really was the girl from Rue's dream. Same hair, same eyes. The more they had talked, the more certain Rue had become. Part of her tried to quash the feeling, insisting that she'd confused the whole thing. No one could foretell the future with their dreams – even White, the most Talented man in the world, had never been able to do that.

But a voice inside urged her to keep Cho close, because it felt like something deeply strange was flexing its wings.

Starting to take shape.

For everyone else, life went on.

For White, there was an interrogation masked as a friendly chat in a small room. Questions barked at him by unsmiling government men about how he had allowed a rogue Talented to infiltrate campus and steal away one of his students.

About the exact nature of his relationship with that student.

There were rumours whispered, and looks thrown at him, but they might as well have been trying to cut ice with cotton for all he could rouse himself to care. Shutting everything off in such a fashion was his best refuge from pain, and it was almost fine.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he would have to surface eventually. But for now, the disconnection helped him get through the day. If he didn't think, he couldn't care. So it went.

And then it all changed.

He was with Tulsent in a Talent lesson. The smallest and most nervous of his students this year – a mouse of a boy. White went through the mechanics of the lesson bit by bit, working on automatic. This step. The next. Thinking of nothing more than curling up in bed in his rooms as soon as this was over and losing himself to some blank, undemanding sleep. He'd had no Talent dreams since Rue had left. In fact, he hadn't had any kind of dream at all. The last one he remembered had been the night of her departure, and it had been a particularly horrible nightmare. He'd been in a castle, with an awful monster big enough to end worlds, and a girl who looked like a ghost. An echo of it slithered in his head in unguarded moments, but he hadn't dreamed of that place again.

Tulsent was talking through his recent dreams. There weren't many – the boy had a particularly bad memory for them. But this one had obviously stayed with him, because he said, ‘ …  And he had silver eyes, which I thought was weird.'

It took a few seconds.

Silver eyes.

White stirred. Tulsent must have sensed his sudden shift, because he blinked rapidly.

‘Who had silver eyes?' said White.

‘The boy in my dream. Silver eyes. No pupils, you know? Just  …  Just all shiny in the middle.'

White felt like someone was pouring scalding coffee into his veins. He strained, suddenly, his neck so stiff it could snap.

‘What was his name?' he said.

Two days later, he risked a quick glance with his mind into the dining room of Red House, home to his Talent students. Tulsent had said they would all be there tonight, with no plans of going out on the town.

And there they were. Sat together, chirping to each other sleepily and cleaning the last of the sauce from their plates.

This was it.

He pushed his body there.

A black moment.

Then he squirmed his way out into brilliant light and heat, into the dining room, and appeared two feet from the end of the table where they lounged.

The popping air from his entrance knocked Lufe's glass over. Liquid splattered across the table and dripped over the edge. No one noticed.

‘Threya take us!' Lea squealed.

The boys were silent, their mouths round.

He was gratified to see their shock. It powered him.

He said, ‘I have a question for you, if you please. How many of you have been dreaming about a boy with silver eyes?'

‘I didn't know you could do that,' said Lufe accusingly.

‘What you do not know would fill Capital City,' said White. ‘I interest myself in what you do know. Put up your hand if you have ever had a dream about a boy with silver eyes.'

No one moved.

White spread his arms wide.

‘Here is what will happen,' he said. ‘If you do not tell me what I want to know, I am going to follow you. I am going to follow you and spy on you, and you will never even know I am there.'

He sucked in a breath.

‘I will choose a moment when you are asleep to Jump next to you,' he said. ‘I will take you to a room. I will lock you in the room. It is a small room. I will keep you there until you tell me what you know. You have very little idea of what I am capable, but I am sure you may begin to understand. You will tell me about this boy. He has been coming to you in dreams. Put up your hand if you have seen him.
Now
.'

Lufe put his hand up first. Admirable. Lea followed shortly afterwards. Marches stared at them both. Tulsent had his eyes on the table.

White looked at Lufe. ‘You – self-elected group leader. You will tell me everything about your dreams of the boy.'

Lufe looked around. Seeing no help from anyone, he licked his lips.

‘It's nothing, syer. Really. Just a boy. I thought he was just someone I'd made up, at first. Then I thought he could be a Talent dream. But we were always just in my bedroom, so it didn't seem like Talent. I didn't know about anyone else dreaming of him.'

‘How long?'

‘Not long. Only a couple of visits. No more often than that, otherwise I would have found it odd.'

‘You will now tell me why you have never once mentioned him before this,' said White.

Lufe swallowed audibly.

‘There was no need for it, syer,' he said.

‘An integral part of your lessons with me involves speaking to me of every dream you have, so that I may determine if they are of importance or not. Why did you not mention all the dreams you had involving the boy?'

‘Not all, just one or two,' said Lufe.

‘Why?'

‘It was just two!' Lufe protested.

‘You will tell me everything that happened in each one of these, with detail.'

‘But nothing happened in them!'

White put out his hand to touch Lufe's shoulder. His speech had evidently worked, because Lufe shrank back from him.

‘Fine,' he said crossly, to cover his fear. ‘You told us not to mention anything that was just sex, right? You said sex dreams were to do with physical responses and weren't important!'

White took his hand away. ‘It was that kind of dream?'

Lufe crossed his arms, his face a mask of furious, embarrassed thunder. Lea was looking at the table top, her cheeks flushed. So was Tulsent. Marches was staring at everyone with an expression of utter shock.

‘Is this true for all of you?' said White.

No one spoke or moved.

It was small wonder none of them had told him about Wren. That manipulative bastard had made sure they never would. And he was the one who had told Wren about disregarding those kinds of dreams, hadn't he? Wren had laughed at him for it at the time.

And now he'd used it against him.

‘That's enough,' said a soft voice behind White's shoulder.

He turned.

Frith had appeared without a sound and was lounging against the wall.

‘How long have you been there?' said White.

‘Long enough to see what an idiot you're making of yourself.'

‘Then you heard them. You will not let him have this. You will not let him meddle like this. You will not let him ruin
everything
again!'

His voice had risen to a shout. Frith appeared not to have noticed, for he merely waited for the noise to subside, and then spoke in the same quiet voice as before.

‘I'll have no more idle talk of punishment. You would be imprisoned for less and you know this.'

‘I am never idle,' said White. ‘I mean every word.'

‘You may feel like you do now,' said Frith, detaching himself from the wall and coming closer. ‘Of course you do. But you must think on the consequences. I cannot, and will not, allow you to harm these students. Do you want to test that? Their parents will scream for your blood if you so much as smack any of them across the ear. Do you want to test that, too? I'm trying to protect you.'

Protect
, thought White,
with white-hot bile. Yes. Protect your little turncoat Talent pet.

But Frith had deflated him. He was too tired to keep this up.

You win again.

One day, I'll win.

He looked at the group. They were slouched miserably in their chairs. Tulsent was actually trembling. He felt his wrath fade. They hadn't understood what Wren was. Sometimes they were sweet, and clever. Sometimes they were arrogant and stupid. But they were not treacherous, and they had never meant to cause harm.

They were not like White.

Frith moved in front of him, blocking his eyesight. White could hear him speaking to the group gently, herding them up towards the door.

‘Is that what happened to Rue, then?' came Lea's voice.

White stared hard at the wall opposite.

‘No one told us why she left,' said Lea again, nervous, defiant. ‘She was my friend. No one even bothered to tell me. Was it  …  Was it because of this boy?'

‘I am sorry,' White said. It was all he could manage.

He heard Frith talking to her quietly, but not what was said.

Together they slunk out of the room. He watched Frith turn towards him. Incredibly, Frith had a wary expression on his face.

‘You need to eat. And sleep,' he said. ‘You don't look good.'

‘Why were they not interrogated, like me? If you had done so, we would have found out about this sooner. He was trying to
recruit
them!'

Frith took a moment.

‘I'm sorry about the questioning,' he said, eventually. ‘But you have to understand, after I reported that Rue had gone, there were some concerns from my superiors. Concerns only you could address. It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that it is you in particular who Wren seems to enjoy attacking.'

White folded his arms, trying to hold himself in.

‘Did you know he could do that? Infiltrate people's dreams.'

‘No,' said White, exasperated. ‘I told them in the interrogation, no. I had no idea. He never told me about it.'

‘So I take it that it's not something you can do.'

‘No. I did not even know it was possible.'

Silence fell for a moment.

‘You are not attempting to find Rue, are you?' said White. ‘Despite her treason?'

Frith regarded him. His face was a careful, inscrutable mask.

‘All you need to know', he said at last, ‘is that she won't be coming back to Angle Tar. Ever. Which I think is for the best, don't you? Considering your recent history with her.'

‘You do not even
care
that she has betrayed everyone?' White said, his voice rising, rising without any way of pulling back. ‘You will just let her go? Just like that? You JUST –'

He stopped. The world swayed, and he swayed with it.

‘Sit down, White.'

He felt his back slap against the wall. His thighs bunched, trying to stop him from falling, and he managed a half-slide to the ground.

Frith was watching him. Frith was thinking how pathetic he was. But it was impossible to stop. Thinking of something else didn't help. He bit the inside of his cheek, took hold of a pinch of rib flesh between his fingers and squeezed as hard as he could. It hurt. He could feel it. But the pain was just a flash, just an instant, and the more he did it, the less it helped, until all it did was bruise his skin.

And then he felt a hand on his arm. And then Frith was pulling him, and he felt himself slide into Frith's arms. Frith held him in silence.

It was very strange to feel him. Head resting on his chest, casually, as if it was supposed to be there. Frith's breathing was regular and soft, and it helped. He was a small man, but his arms were tight and unyielding – it was like being wrapped in iron bars instead of flesh.

White calmed. Slowed.

A sudden memory flashed into his mind, of the day Frith had told him about his past, and a boy named Oaker. He stiffened. He had a head-pounding urge to rip those arms away and run, but the arms had felt him change and let him go, carefully.

Frith was gazing out over the dining hall when he spoke.

‘You need to forget her, White. She chose Wren.'

That round, passionate face of Wren's, laughing with him. Ready to change the world. Then twisted with violent hate. White had often punched that face to nothing in his head. Pounded it until it disappeared.

‘Do you think he will come back?' he said.

‘He won't Jump here again. I've upped security. He won't be able to try his little dream trick again, now we know. And he sticks out, of course, so he can't go roaming. The only thing we should worry about is whether he can mind spy on us.'

White had thought about this. It was easy enough to tell when a Talented was spying on him with their mind. An insistent tickling at the back of his head, like someone running their fingers lightly through his hair. And the feel of it was always particular to each person. He knew Wren's feel very well; they used to try and mind spy on each other all the time, as a kind of game, though Wren had only got any good at it just before he'd left. Wren's mind was a kind of sharp, tangy lemon-coloured haze, spray-painted into the air. He couldn't explain it better than that.

‘I would know if he was here,' said White.

‘You didn't know he was visiting Rue.'

‘That is different! I cannot just smell where he has been, like a dog. The only way I would have known about him is if she had told me. Which she did not. But I would know if he was anywhere near
me
. I would feel him.'

Frith would know, as well. He had asked White for training, once, to see if he could tell whether someone was mind-spying on him – but he hadn't needed it. Even without Talent, Frith's senses were freakishly tuned. White's own tests had shown that a lot of un-Talented could feel it too; they normally attributed it to an air draft, or even a ghost.

Frith sighed. ‘All right,' he said.

‘What are you doing about Wren?'

Frith was silent.

White turned his head to look at him.

‘What are you doing about him?'

‘Not a lot.'

‘What?' said White. ‘Why not?'

‘He didn't do this by himself, White. He's just a boy, and he's a coward. He was put up to it by his Worlder superiors. They're trying to poach from us. It's a compliment, in a way.'