The Illusionists Read online

  Her heart quailed. White had bowed his head, and his eyes were hidden from her. She could see tears slipping down his nose.

  He nodded. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Wren. I shouldn’t have run away. I should have stayed and made you tell me everything you thought, everything inside you that made you look at the world and want to punish it like that. I should have tried. I left you all alone.

  As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true. And she knew that White was thinking the same thing.

  ‘I thought you hated him,’ said Cho, in a cautious, frightened murmur. Rue wondered if she’d ever seen her brother cry before.

  ‘I failed him,’ White muttered. His voice was tight, wavery.

  ‘We failed him,’ Rue said.

  White held out his hand, head still bowed. Rue took it in hers, and they rode the rest of the journey in silence.

  CHAPTER 30

  ANGLE TAR

  FRITH

  It was too late to turn back. Jason had heard him approach, feet snapping over twigs.

  His head turned, showing Frith his profile, hair curls shifting against his collar. The sky was moody, but the clouds hadn’t broken. Not yet.

  Frith paused.

  The riverbank looked different every time he came back here. It was less familiar, too. The picture he’d carried in his head of a riverbank from years ago had faded, replaced by the shifting nature of the real version, the smell and sight and sound of it.

  ‘I thought maybe you’d gone back to Capital already,’ said Jason, over his shoulder.

  It had been two days since the night he’d stormed out of Fernie’s cottage. No one had come for him. He’d sat in the inn, brooding, picking over the ceaseless flow of memories that now trickled into his head. Writing letters of his return to the Spymaster, and then throwing them away, unsent. Eating alone. He’d packed all his belongings up, twice nearly sending for a carriage to take him to the train station.

  He didn’t quite know what stopped him. Only that he couldn’t let go of this place. Nor could he let go of the curiosity that was Jason. Not quite yet. He needed to know what Jason wanted from him. There had to be an agenda there. Everyone had an agenda.

  Frith hadn’t really expected for him just to be there at the riverbank. A part of him had hoped, perhaps.

  Yet here he was.

  Frith approached, stepping carefully down to where Jason sat with his arms on his knees and settling a few feet away.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he said.

  Jason shrugged. ‘Since yesterday morning. I stayed until it started to get dark. Then I came back this morning, just after breakfast. Until now.’

  ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

  ‘I made you wait for me here, for hours, once. It seemed only fitting that I wait for you.’

  What an insanely illogical thing to do. It made his heart kick.

  ‘This isn’t a poem, Jason,’ said Frith.

  ‘I know. It’s not as neat. You might still leave.’

  What was he doing? Why was he so raw all the time, pushing his soul forward in Frith’s face as if to say, ‘here, read me’?

  Frith threw his hands up. ‘I don’t understand what you want from me.’

  ‘I just … I just want to help you.’

  ‘Why? Why? I made you pretend you were dead. But instead of staying away and having whatever kind of life you wanted, you come to Capital. You deliberately pursue a career that brings you within my line of sight. Why?’

  Jason didn’t answer. He was infuriating.

  They sat in silence for a moment. The sound of the river came back to Frith. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, the noise put him on edge. He felt danger, but a quiet danger that he didn’t know how to fight.

  ‘How are the memories?’ said Jason, suddenly.

  Frith rubbed his face. He’d barely slept last night. ‘Still coming. With or without my consent.’

  ‘What are you so afraid of?’

  Frith’s first instinct was to lie, but he fought against it. Had that always been his first instinct? Who was the real him?

  ‘That I’ll be who I used to be,’ he said. ‘And I have no control over that.’

  ‘That’s just not possible.’

  ‘So you’ve met someone in my situation before?’ said Frith, drily.

  ‘Do you really believe that you’re simply the sum of what you remember?’

  Frith looked out across the water. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How can you not be? Experiences make a person. Take those experiences away and you’re left with just a shell. I know this. I’ve been this.’

  ‘Well, you just said it yourself – experiences shape you. So now you’re getting your memories back, you’d be those … plus what you are now. You’ll be a different person to before, Frith.’

  It was a really odd sensation to hear his name on Jason’s tongue. That Bretagnine accent he’d obviously tried so hard to shed … and it sounded like he’d succeeded until coming back here. Surrounded by the trappings of his old life, it came out every so often, soft and rounded. Old lives were hard to shake.

  But not impossible, maybe.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I saw in your head line that first night?’ Jason said, stealing a glance at him. He had a serious look on his face. Frith still had no idea what a head line was, but he shrugged acquiescence.

  ‘I saw a big hole where I used to be. And smaller holes, dotted throughout. Any connection to me, or to Talent, I think. It was all wiped, like a chain reaction that started off with the memory of that day, here, between us.’

  ‘Can you see what happened to me to cause it?’

  ‘No. I only see the absence. If you don’t remember, I can’t see it. But you may, in time. Or you may not. Trauma does funny things to people.’

  Frith sighed, releasing a weight he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Maybe it would come back in the dead of some awful night, springing into him fully formed. He had no idea whether he really wanted to know what had happened.

  ‘It was a giant hole,’ said Jason. ‘Where I used to be in your head line. It really surprised me when I first saw it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten all about me. That I was just some dim, distant childhood memory you were barely even conscious of. But apparently not.’

  Frith looked away. His heart thrummed.

  ‘If you could see my head line,’ said Jason, staring out across the river, ‘you’d see a big weight around that memory. And you’d see my life arranged around it, everything pulled towards it. I didn’t want it to be like that at first. I just wanted to forget you. But I couldn’t. So then I thought I’d find you again, as an adult, just have a look. And maybe that would remove all the mystery, the way I’d built you up in my head. I’d see you as just some man, and then I could dismiss you, and everything would be fine.’

  Frith stared at the grass as hard as he could. The problem with Jason was that he kept telling Frith things that he both did and didn’t want to hear. It was like being pulled apart.

  Jason picked up a little stone and turned it over in his hands. His skin had a pale gold cast to it, fingers long and nimble.

  ‘But it wasn’t fine,’ he said. ‘I found out how powerful you were. Still. I found out that you’d become obsessed with Talented. I wondered if it was anything to do with me. I just … See, I think we’re linked, whether we like it or not. I started something that day, here. And now I have to finish it. For both our sakes.’

  ‘What does that mean, Jason?’ said Frith, wary.

  Jason looked away. ‘You don’t trust me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t trust any Talented. Anyone with that much power is inherently mistrustful.’

  ‘Then we’re equal again. By your logic I should be at least as mistrustful of you.’

  Fernie’s words flashed into Frith’s mind: ‘I just gave you my son’s biggest secret. I’m trusting you.’ />
  ‘Perhaps you should be,’ he said, looking squarely into Jason’s face. ‘If there’s one thing I understand about myself now, it’s that I’m not a nice person, Jason. I never have been.’

  He expected Jason to respond with optimism. Something tedious like, ‘Oh, you are, you just don’t know it yet.’

  But instead Jason replied, simply, ‘Neither am I.’

  Frith felt a chill walk down his spine.

  It was not altogether unpleasant.

  And then the latest in a long line of ‘odd things that Jason does’ happened, because he saw Jason’s eyes flick down to his mouth.

  They stopped there too long.

  Then Jason looked away, across the river.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he repeated, as if to himself. ‘Come on.’ He stood, brushing his trousers off.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m hungry. It’s time for lunch.’

  Frith watched him walk away. There was a choice now. There was always a choice. Which one was the right one?

  ‘Are you coming?’ said Jason, as he turned amid the trees.

  Frith didn’t think. He got up and followed.

  CHAPTER 31

  WORLD

  WHITE

  ‘Um. Sorry to interrupt. But I think you’d better come and see the news.’

  Cho was hovering in the doorway. She had become muted over the last day or so – they all had. But with Cho there was another reason. He caught her watching his interaction with Rue sometimes, a curious look on her face like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  Rue was curled next to him, asleep. Her head was too heavy on his shoulder now, but he hadn’t wanted to move her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said in a whisper.

  ‘Just come and see.’

  He disentangled himself from Rue as gently as he could. She stirred but didn’t wake. He moved out of the room and closed the door.

  ‘Is she asleep?’ said Cho.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean … she’s not … gone somewhere, has she?’

  ‘No, just asleep. It’s too dangerous for anyone to go to the Castle right now. It might be overrun. I just don’t know.’

  ‘Oh. I always freak when I see her asleep. She does it a lot.’

  They made their way downstairs and into the social room. A screen, similar to Greta’s in the medical hall, had been stuck up on one wall like a poster.

  ‘Aren’t they ridiculously expensive?’ said White, in surprise.

  ‘Um, Livie’s rich. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed her house.’ Cho fiddled with the screen. ‘No one really needs them, anyway – they’re just for being a show-off. But, you know, without your implant I can’t share anything with you. That’s a really weird feeling, by the way, like you suddenly stopped being able to speak a language, or something.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is it … ?’ She hesitated. ‘Is it, you know … weird, not having an implant?’

  ‘It is here. In Angle Tar I got used to being without Life. Here it’s like being partially deaf and blind.’

  ‘I think about it sometimes,’ she said. ‘A lot, actually. I know I’m a hypocrite, you know. With what I do. Preaching about how awful Life is but still massively connected. But the truth is, most hackers are the biggest addicts there are. I don’t know if I can live without it. I wouldn’t feel like me any more.’

  White shifted, swallowed. He wasn’t sure what she wanted from him.

  ‘It’s hard,’ he offered. ‘But it’s possible.’

  Cho shrugged, like it didn’t really matter one way or the other, even though they both knew it did.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s happening?’ he prompted, trying to be gentle.

  ‘Hang on, hang on, I’m trying to show you. I just need to connect the screen to my account … Okay.’

  She stepped back.

  The screen lit up. It showed an aggregator feed, pulling in images and text and video based on a search subject. Cho had inputted the search term ‘arrests/teleporting/dreamers’.

  White felt a coldness squeeze his chest.

  He scanned the feed. There were photos of people being arrested, looking dazed. One had a sedative dart sticking out of him – still the weapon of choice for the police, it seemed. Fast, effective, more humane than bullets. There was a jerky video someone had taken with their implant recorder; the voice on the video shouting a string of curses as they watched a friend led into the back of a transport vehicle.

  ‘They’re rounding up Dreamers,’ said Cho. ‘Sorry, you say Talented, don’t you?’

  ‘Based on what evidence?’

  ‘Based on the fact that you’re all religious loons with ties to terrorists, and they can do what they like with that, remember? Also … ’ she hesitated.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Look, I never know how truthful this kind of thing is, but apparently, over the last couple of days, there’ve been a few cases of Talented suddenly attacking people – even their own families. Um. Disappearing into thin air. And then, you know, reappearing. So they started arresting them. I think now they’re kind of pre-empting, arresting any Talented they know about, just in case.’

  White put his head in his hands. So fast. So unbelievably fast. Wren had opened a crack, and now it was turning into a flood. More monsters had escaped, possessing the Talented, using them as their vessels, riding around in them like cars. How much havoc would they wreak? How many deaths would they cause?

  He thought they’d have more time. They needed more time. They hadn’t even talked about how they would go about finding the monster inside Wren’s body. He hadn’t counted on having to find more than one.

  He felt so small, suddenly, like the world was spinning out of control and all he could do was sit in the middle of it all like a frightened child.

  ‘I have to do something,’ he said, eventually. ‘I have to … I have to stop this, somehow. Somehow.’ He laughed, the sound a little too wild for his liking.

  ‘Jacob.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you … Is this going to happen to you? I mean, it’s the Talented this is happening to, not anyone else.’ She jerked a thumb at the screen. She was scared angry. ‘I mean, I really don’t want you being possessed or something, you know?’

  White opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  They needed the Talented, didn’t they? That was why the Wren thing had called him a vessel. That was why it hadn’t killed him. The Talented had the right sort of minds to be taken over. They were already displaced, half in other worlds. Untethered. It’d be so much easier to take over a mind like that than a mind rooted in reality.

  He’d thought of the Talented as weapons – the only ones who could protect the weak from the horrors waiting patiently in the dark spaces for their chance. But the truth was so much worse. They were the weak. They were the problem.

  If you got rid of all the Talented, you solved the problem.

  ‘Then we have to go back to the Castle,’ said Rue. She was awake and raring after they had filled her in. White had been afraid it would dispirit her. If anything, she was jiggling, impatient.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘How else are we going to find them? We can’t just roam around spotting Talented and then … what? Kill them?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave that to the police.’

  ‘They can’t even slightly get away with murder right now, Jacob,’ said Cho, impatient. ‘They’re just locking them up. We’re not completely fascist here, you know.’

  ‘Anyway, they have the right idea,’ said Rue.

  White swallowed a reply. They did have the right idea, and that was what galled him the most.

  ‘They’re cleaning up this end as best they can. But they can’t stop it at the source, can they? That’s up to us. And we have to do it before there’s none of us left.’

  White stared at his hands, trying
to think. ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But what do we do once we get there? I remember how it is there, Rue. Do you think you could face one of those things and not die? Do we even know how to kill them? We have no idea how … how he managed to open the Castle. So how do we close it?’

  Rue chewed on her lip for a moment. She needed to stop that. It did something to him that completely broke his concentration.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that a lot,’ she said. ‘It’s a question of perspective.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Well, when we go to the Castle, it’s just like another Talent dream to us, right? We visit it with our minds. All your lessons, all the training you did with us, it was about controlling our minds. Controlling where we wanted to go, and then controlling what we did when we got there. You know. “Move forward.” “Look around.” “What do you see?”’

  ‘Mind spying.’

  ‘Yes. And I always thought of mind spying more like “awake dreaming”. Well, you can take that control from awake dreaming into your sleep dreams, can’t you? I’ve done it loads of times before.’

  He stared at her. She was constantly, overwhelmingly, the most surprising person he’d ever met. Just when he thought he had a handle on her, she threw him again.

  ‘You’re talking about lucid dreaming,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Cho was frowning.

  ‘It’s when you can control what happens in a dream,’ said Rue. ‘If you’re having a nightmare, for example, and you manage to stop whatever it is chasing you. Or you turn it into a butterfly or something. Or you think, “I want to wake up now.” And then you do.’

  ‘Oh, that. Even I can do that. Well … I’ve only done it once or twice, maybe.’

  ‘Well,’ said Rue. ‘That’s what Talented do all the time.’

  ‘Jack,’ muttered Cho. ‘No wonder you’re all so weird.’

  ‘That’s how I pull people into my dreams, I think. I mean … ’ She glanced at White. ‘That’s how I pulled you in. I wanted to see you, so I made it happen. That’s how all Talented works, isn’t it? Maybe we just have more … lucid dreaming ability than everyone else. Our minds detach themselves, and they go exploring, and when we learn to control where we go and what we do, well – that’s lucid dreaming, except we do it when we’re awake.