The Illusionists Page 15

  ‘I need … I need somewhere to stay. Not here. But maybe you have a friend.’

  Cho snorted. ‘Huh. What makes you think I’d help you, jack?’

  Rue looked about, as if she didn’t know what to say. Then her face hardened.

  ‘Because I know about the kind of people you’re friends with.’

  Cho laughed, a jagged sound. ‘Oh, lovely. Blackmail. I respond really well to that kind of thing.’

  ‘Please, just listen!’ Rue cried. She pushed her hair back from her face, her slim wrist flickering in and out of her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it. You’re my friend, Cho. You’re my only friend here.’

  Cho raised a brow, trying to look unimpressed.

  ‘Maybe if I tell you everything I know, then you might – you might believe me,’ said Rue.

  The poor girl looked miserable, and confused, and a thousand other things. She seemed so unbalanced. This was wild Rue, all flying hands and darting eyes. It was unnerving.

  Something bad had happened.

  Cho shrugged, cautious. ‘So tell me.’

  Rue sat, plaiting her fingers, rubbing the nails together in an anxious gesture.

  ‘I first saw you in a dream,’ she said.

  ‘A dream.’

  ‘Yes. It was before I ever met you. In the dream, we were in a castle. Big stone rooms.’

  Rue swallowed. It didn’t look like it had been a good dream, by the expression on her face.

  ‘Then, weeks later, I … I met you at that party.’

  ‘Okay, well … ’ said Cho. ‘So what?’

  ‘What?’ said Rue, astonished. ‘Weren’t you listening? I had a dream about you. Then I met you. I dreamed of your face, your name, before I ever knew of either.’

  Cho shrugged. ‘Well, you’re Talented; I get that. My brother was too, okay, so I know all about it. I mean, he could do things that would terrify most people. What you’re saying is that you had a dream of the future. Well, I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do that, but fine. Say I believe you. What then? What do you want me to do about it?’

  Rue looked away.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said, staring at the floor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What was your brother’s name?’

  Cho bit back her irritation. ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘You told me that he left World to go to Angle Tar,’ said Rue, slowly. ‘And that he was Talented. Right? So what was his name?’

  Her face was carefully constructed, waiting for a response she was obviously looking for.

  Cho gave it to her.

  ‘His name was Jacob,’ she said.

  ‘Jacob Yun?’

  ‘Well … yeah.’

  ‘But your last name isn’t Yun.’

  ‘We had our family name changed a few years ago.’ Cho fixed her with her best stony stare. ‘That is allowed here, by the way.’

  Rue stood up so fast that Cho flinched back, her hands automatically flashing out behind her to stop herself falling.

  The girl was trembling. She was actually trembling. She turned away from Cho and stared at the door.

  ‘What the jack is the matter?’ said Cho, feeling a curious, nervous burning start in her chest.

  She wondered afterwards if some part of her knew, before it all fell out of Rue’s mouth.

  ‘What?’ she said again. ‘Come on!’

  Rue spoke to the door. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘I know your brother. Only he didn’t call himself Jacob when I met him. He called himself White.’

  There was a deafening pause.

  White. That stupid nickname he had always insisted on using.

  ‘You know my brother,’ said Cho, her voice flat with disbelief.

  ‘He was my tutor. In Angle Tar.’

  ‘Your tutor.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rue snapped, glancing at her. ‘Are you just going to echo everything I say?’

  ‘Jacob. Tall. Pale skin. Dark hair. Cold, condescending prig.’

  Rue managed a laugh. ‘That’s him.’

  Though the girl looked shaken, Cho couldn’t be absolutely certain this wasn’t a trick. Her natural inclination was always to distrust, even though her instinct told her that Rue was telling the truth. Still. She had to be sure.

  ‘Tell me something about him.’

  ‘What?’

  Cho spread her hands. ‘For all I know, you’re lying,’ she said. ‘So tell me something you could only know if you’d met him.’

  Rue looked wild. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something personal.’

  ‘He never talked about himself! Ever! I didn’t even know he had a sister!’

  Well, that sounded about right. It still hurt, though.

  ‘Wait,’ said Rue, suddenly. ‘I know about your mother. Her … Her disability.’

  Cho scoffed. ‘You can get that crap from my Life files. Medical files, social files. That information is everywhere.’

  ‘White was … he was in prison for a while, before he came to Angle Tar.’

  ‘Files, Rue. You can get that from files.’

  Rue stared hard at the floor.

  Cho shook her head.

  Rue looked up. She looked straight into Cho’s eyes.

  ‘When he talks,’ she said, ‘you absolutely believe him. He could make fairies sound so real, they’d almost seem boring. He sometimes wears his hair back in a plait, but bits of it always escape. He hates social things. He must have hated the parties here. He makes you feel stupid, almost as an afterthought, as if no one he’s ever met could possibly understand him. But then when you’ve got his attention, you feel like you could drown in it. When he opens himself up, it’s overwhelming.’

  Cho looked away. Underneath her folded arms, she took a pinch of rib flesh in between two fingers and squeezed, until her eyes were dry again.

  ‘Fine,’ she managed. ‘So you know him.’ She laughed.

  Rue turned and leaned against the door, arms folded tightly to herself.

  ‘You’re his sister,’ she said, soft. ‘I really didn’t believe it until now.’

  Rue looked at Cho, and Cho looked at Rue, and the longer it went on, the harder it was to break. No one really looked at each other. Not truly. It must be because of how much was revealed through a gaze, and how disturbing it was to have someone see you, really see you.

  ‘You do look like him,’ said Rue, finally.

  Cho tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled little cry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rue. ‘I didn’t know. I would have – I don’t know – said something.’

  Cho picked at her trousers, trying to straighten her face out. It felt crumpled.

  ‘This is screwed up,’ she said, eventually. ‘Do you know what the chances are?’

  She was about to break, and ask her how Jacob was. If he looked different now. What Rue thought of him. A million things.

  ‘Gods,’ said Rue to herself. ‘Wren was right. It is all about him. It’s all been planned, somehow.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ But there was something in her eyes. Something she held back.

  ‘Rue. You tell me what’s going on, right now. Or you go.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Truly.’

  Silence fell.

  Rue came and sat on the bed beside her. Cho felt her heart flutter. Their eyes locked.

  Cho dropped hers first. ‘Just because you know Jacob, you think I trust you now?’

  ‘No. But you should. I just need … I need some time. I need to stay somewhere tonight. Please. Is there anyone you know?’

  Cho fidgeted.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, finally. ‘There’s someone. But you’d better tell me everything before I let you anywhere near her house.’

  Rue nodded tightly.

  Cho surfaced from HI-Life beside her with a little sigh. It looked so easy, as if she’d just taken a little nap.

&nb
sp; ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got someone. Livie – you’ve met her before. She’ll let you stay tonight. In the morning you’ll probably have to go. We’ll see.’

  Rue breathed out. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  Wren would never find her. She had no implant to track, and he couldn’t Jump straight to a stranger’s house.

  Now she just had to get there.

  They left Cho’s apartment building together a few minutes later, and began to walk down the road. Rue glanced around anxiously, raking her gaze across the streets, expecting at any moment to see Wren stepping out of thin air, come to drag her back and lock her up again. She didn’t know if she could panic Jump twice.

  ‘Okay,’ she said after a while, feeling the other girl’s stare burning a hole into her cheek as they walked. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Cho’s first question took her by surprise.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, strangely uncertain. ‘Was it – I mean, you said you were Jacob’s student … ’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rue. ‘For a while.’

  ‘And he taught you the Talent. That’s what he does there, is it? Teach.’

  Rue’s shoulders moved uncomfortably. ‘Yes,’ she managed.

  ‘What’s he like? I haven’t seen him in so long. I want to know how the Angle Tarain see him.’

  It was astonishing, considering she had been the one to bring him up, how little Rue actually wanted to talk about him. The dream him and her memories of the real him had merged somewhat, forming a strange and divided picture of the White she remembered.

  ‘When I first met him, I hated him,’ said Rue.

  She felt Cho’s eyes on her.

  ‘He was cold and pompous. He made me feel stupid, so I made fun of him. He didn’t like that. We argued.’

  Cho was silent, swallowing it up.

  ‘I was told that I had to give him a second chance; that White was the only one who could unlock my Talent. So we continued our lessons. He was annoying, and I disliked him. And I thought about him all the time. And, I don’t know … Something happened.’ Rue sighed. ‘I had this … dream about him. I just forgot about it, afterwards. I’ve had dreams about a lot of things. But then he took my hand at the ball, and he danced with me.’

  Silence.

  ‘Were you sleeping with him, Rue?’ came Cho’s voice eventually, hard and hot and accusatory.

  ‘No!’ Rue squirmed. ‘I’m not really sure. Maybe a part of me did.’

  ‘What on earth is that supposed to mean?’

  She stared at Cho, helpless in the face of her. ‘I don’t know. It’s complicated. I thought he liked me, just me. And I got angry – someone told me things about him. And I believed them. Now I’m not sure they’re true. Even if they are, I don’t care any more. I wouldn’t mind about any of it, if he … if he liked me.’

  ‘But he’s a complete bastard,’ said Cho. ‘How can you talk like that about him?’

  ‘He’s not!’

  ‘You haven’t had the benefit of years of experience, so it’s no good getting snippy with me. Sisters and lovers will never see someone the same way.’

  ‘I’m not his lover,’ said Rue, growing hot. ‘Well –’

  She faltered, remembering the last dream she had had of him.

  ‘He doesn’t think of me like that. I’m sure I’m just an idiot to him.’

  The words were sour in her mouth.

  ‘Did he say that?’ said Cho.

  Rue was silent.

  ‘I mean, did you ever ask him how he felt?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ said Rue, glaring at the scenery.

  ‘You didn’t, did you?’

  ‘What would you know about it?’

  ‘I know my brother. He might be a Talented genius, but his ability to interact with people on a normal level has always been crap. I’m positive it’ll only have become worse since he left.’

  ‘I wish I could see him again,’ said Rue, softly. ‘Just to be sure.’

  Cho didn’t reply.

  An image of White, his hair sliding forward across his shoulders, flittered across Rue’s mind. Saying her name, low in her ear. His thigh, pressed and straining against hers.

  ‘Oh gods,’ she blurted in Angle Tarain, her face hot. ‘Go away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Rue said. She cast about desperately for something to say, something to distract her and dislodge the very clear memory of the way his nose had touched hers as he had tilted his head to kiss her mouth. ‘Tell me more about the outside, where your Technophobes live. You call it off-grid, don’t you?’

  ‘They don’t all live there.’

  ‘Okay, some of them. Some of them live outside. What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s like … outside, you know? It’s hard to describe. Our cities have their own power grids, environmental controls. Everything’s regulated. My dad used to say that the first environmental controls caused mental problems, because people were used to seasons, and the weather inside a city was always the same all year round. So they made it colder in the winter and warmer in the summer, with more light, but never, you know, extreme. And of course the Life signal only works inside a city. Once you’re out of it, you’re away from the signal and the environmental controls, in the filthy open air, weather throwing everything it has at you, the place crawling with insects and stuff.’

  Rue’s heart fluttered, hardly daring to believe.

  ‘You mean … there are trees outside?’ she said. ‘Real trees? Birds? Animals?’

  ‘And real sun to give you skin cancer, and airborne disease, and all that crap,’ Cho replied.

  ‘Gods,’ Rue breathed. ‘I’ve missed it.’

  Cho glanced at her in surprise.

  ‘There’s no environmental controls in Angle Tar,’ Rue said. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘You mean you all live in the open air? I always thought that was kind of a joke. What about disease?’

  ‘There’s disease. There’s always disease, everywhere. It’s natural.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Cho. ‘Oh, gross. Jacob’s probably riddled with viruses. He’s probably halfway dead by now.’

  ‘Not when I saw him.’

  ‘He wasn’t, you know, ill, or sickly, or anything?’

  Rue couldn’t help it. She laughed, a robust snort of contempt.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘He was fine. Everyone’s fine.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cho replied, moodily. ‘I’ve heard stories. We’ve got weak immunities in the cities. I’ve heard about people going off-grid only to die within three days in the outside air. I’ve met people who said it was all fine, but what do they know, really? None of them were doctors.’

  That struck Rue as an extraordinarily similar story to the one she had always been told about everything outside of Angle Tar being nothing but dangerous wastelands.

  They walked. Cho seemed lost in thought. Rue’s mind swam back to poisonous waters. To Greta. Had she really orchestrated all this, just to get Rue and Cho together? To get White back to World? But Rue had met Cho by chance, at some party. You couldn’t orchestrate that.

  Could you?

  Except the parties were controlled by civil government teams. They chose who went to which parties. It wouldn’t too hard for someone like Greta to make sure two people were at the same one, would it?

  Everything fell out of her head when they arrived at the house. She had been here before – the beautiful mansion with the gravel driveway.

  Cho hopped up the steps and waited. Rue looked for a bell or a knocker, or even a retinal scan panel, but there was nothing she could see.

  The door opened, and the same striking girl from last time with the chocolate skin and cloudy hair appeared. She looked Rue up and down.

  ‘This is Livie,’ said Cho. ‘You met before.’

  ‘Not really,’ Livie sniffed. ‘You never even introduced us properly. Come in, then. My parents are away seeing my grandmother
for a few days, so you’re lucky, otherwise they’d be all about the questions.’

  Rue followed them both inside.

  ‘So,’ said Livie over her shoulder, ‘Cho says you’re hiding from someone, which frankly sounds fascinating.’

  Haltingly, as best she could, Rue began to explain.

  CHAPTER 17

  ANGLE TAR

  WHITE

  It took all his courage to raise his hand and knock on the door.

  It was raining. He had come through the woods, and the trees had kept the worst of it off, but he was still soaked. He hadn’t minded at first. There was something cleansing about it. But now the cold crept in, lying on his skin. He hated being cold.

  He stood on the doorstep, his shoulders jerking in a shiver now and then, and waited.

  She wasn’t in.

  He looked about, wondering if it would be too dangerous to go around the back and find some shelter. But then the door opened, and his heart stopped, just for a moment.

  The woman who peered back at him was exactly the way he’d pictured her from Rue’s descriptions. The cottage seemed to bend around her frame, rolling your gaze towards her. She was round, draped in a shawl, and in her hand she clutched a lantern. Her hair was mussed and she looked like she’d been sleeping – except for her eyes. They were bright and piercing.

  When she saw his face, she inhaled sharply.

  ‘Zelle Penhallow?’ said White, trying not to shiver.

  She looked at him for a long, long moment; too long to be comfortable. Her eyes roved over him, unreadable. He opened his mouth to speak, do anything to stop her stare.

  ‘You look like a ghost,’ she said, soft.

  White was taken aback. He struggled. ‘I wished to speak with you for just a moment.’

  She didn’t reply. Just gazed at him.

  ‘My name is White,’ he tried.

  She sighed. It was a strange, sad little sound.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said, and stepped back, motioning him inside.

  The door shut behind him.

  He stood in the hallway, dripping gently onto the floor.

  ‘I am sorry it is so late,’ he said, trying to sound contrite.

  ‘Never mind that.’ She turned, walking off down the hallway and elbowing a door open.