The Illusionists

by Laure Eve

  She stepped into the hallway.

  It was dim and cool.

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  Gods, that had sounded loud. Like no one was home. She checked every room and all the shared areas, just in case. But she was all alone.

  Rue felt a hot unease start in her chest.

  She should never have thought what she’d thought about Wren earlier. She should never have been so ungrateful to him. She should never. Because what if?

  She slid into Wren’s bedroom. For a split second, she wondered if the box would be missing, or maybe even exploded into messy pieces from the attack, unusable.

  But it was there.

  She switched it on, the familiar hum trilling into a whine. The blue glow crept upwards, a screen of light. Rue put her head into it.

  Then nothing, for one heart-stopping moment.

  Then her account gathered around her.

  And there. The bouncing icon of an unread message, waiting.

  She opened it.

  Rue – am all right.

  Apparently we got warned it was happening, but endlessly stupid government said it was a joke and ignored it. Keep that to yourself. Anyway, wasn’t jacked in.

  Home soon.

  Rue read it twice through, then began a third time before stopping suddenly, irritated.

  Yes, okay. She’d been worried about him. But hadn’t he been even slightly worried about her? A ‘how are you?’, though a bit trivial, would have been better than nothing.

  Rue – am all right.

  As if that was her first concern. Of course. As if she had nothing else to worry about. Nothing else like –

  Just what the hell happened to everyone?

  Or I think I dreamed about this, and then it came true.

  Or I’m friends with a girl who might be linked to actual terrorists, and oh yes, I dreamed about her before I met her, even though that’s completely impossible.

  According to him, all she had to think about was Is Wren all right?

  No caring about her in that message. Not even a bit.

  Rue dumped the message in her account bin and sat, hugging her knees, watching the wallpaper across from her play its little stories. The girl at the well. The Pake lookalike as he rubbed his head. She sat, and she watched, and she thought of everything that she had done in her life that had brought her to this place. All those turns, all those decisions. All the moments that had built, brick by brick, into a prison, hemming her into the here and the now.

  She thought of the undeniable fact – a fact she now woke up to every morning with a burning sickness – that she’d made the wrong choice.

  CHAPTER 13

  ANGLE TAR

  WHITE

  White had found three more cameras in his rooms.

  A quick search of his classroom revealed five, tucked into shadowed corners.

  People followed him. It was discreet, and almost invisible. Now that he saw Worlder kidnappers in every corner, he could also see his shadowers. Had they always been there? Maybe they had. Who would trust him enough to let him loose without being able to put him down any time they wanted?

  Every second of his life here was already mapped out for him. He couldn’t decide he suddenly wanted to be a farmer, or a shopkeeper, instead of a tutor. He couldn’t leave the city, or even the boundaries of the university. The only thing that he still had of his own, that they couldn’t find a way to control, were his dreams.

  His head was full of Rue, and of Frith. Where was Rue, and what was happening to her? Did she still hate him? What the hell would Frith do next, and just what was he going to do about it? He chased questions around and around again, but had no answers. It was driving him mad.

  Everything was driving him mad.

  There was a knock on his door.

  He stood. His heart crashed and pounded in his chest. It was Frith. Had to be.

  The knock came again.

  ‘Mussyer White? Syer? It’s Lufe. Are you there?’

  Lufe.

  White stood for a moment.

  ‘Syer?’

  The knock came a third time.

  ‘Come,’ he called out. Their lesson wasn’t until tomorrow. Why would he be visiting now, this late at night?

  The door opened and Lufe craned his head around it.

  ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘I know that you weren’t expecting me.’

  ‘Please, enter.’

  Lufe slinked into the room. He had changed considerably since White had first met him. He had the distinction of being one of the most Talented students White had taught so far. He could now Jump fairly accurately, though his dreaming skills were less disciplined. So it came as little surprise to see the telltale golden sparkle of a brooch pinned to his lapel in the shape of oak leaves spraying from a single branch. The sign of a student being groomed for a government department.

  Lufe hovered. ‘May I sit? I’ll be quick.’

  ‘Please.’

  Lufe looked around the room. ‘It’s odd,’ he said eventually. ‘Having the authority to call on you in your private rooms now. I feel like I’m being rude.’

  ‘Not at all. You are a government man, and may do as you wish.’

  Lufe touched his brooch self-consciously. ‘Yes. It’s all happened rather fast.’

  ‘You are very Talented,’ said White. ‘This makes you extremely useful.’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that,’ said Lufe, and gave an awkward laugh. ‘But we will still have lessons, right?’

  ‘Of course. I teach many older Talented who already work in government. Not only students.’

  ‘Yes, I forgot.’

  White offered him a drink, wondering at his strangely shy behaviour. What was he here for?

  They sat together in silence. Lufe took a long pull from his glass.

  ‘Lea and I are getting married,’ he said, in a rush.

  ‘Ah, I see. Felicitations,’ said White.

  ‘Thank you. I can’t stay long; her parents are waiting on me. We are all to dinner this evening.’

  ‘What are they like?’ said White. It was comforting, sometimes, to hear of others’ personal matters.

  ‘The mother is Lea but older, and much less attractive,’ said Lufe. His face had taken on a peculiar mix of happy thunder. ‘The two of them together are unbearable. The father is convinced I’m not high born enough, as if he doesn’t even know my family name. He glares at me when I kiss her. Because kissing in public is so incredible nowadays!’

  Lufe ranted. White listened, watching the young man’s face. It was a sweet thing to see him pretend to detest them so. They were the parents of his beloved and he would do nothing to deter them from him. He seemed to enjoy the head butting, as if it presented a challenge to be overcome. He and Lea would have a life. It would be many things, both good and bad, but it would be together.

  ‘So things are going well for you,’ said White.

  ‘Yes, they are.’

  Then Lufe was silent, looking into his drink.

  ‘Lea’s aiming to teach here, eventually,’ he said after a pause. ‘Her Talent has never been up to much. She’s gifted in other areas.’

  ‘Will you have children?’ said White. It was the kind of conversation where he should say the right things about all the possible bright futures ahead.

  ‘Lea wants them. I don’t know. It seems selfish, doesn’t it? Bringing them into a world like this. All the secrets and spying.’

  ‘People have been bringing children into worlds like these since the beginning of humanity. Life never changes. People never change. You must make your happiness while you can and enjoy every second of it.’

  Lufe was watching him, his expression carefully constructed.

  ‘Lea wants to know where Rue is,’ he said in a rush.

  White crossed his arms. He was annoyed at himself – his heart still stopped briefly whenever her name came up.

  ‘I’ve asked around. But I keep getting shot down. I’ve been to
ld in no uncertain terms to drop it.’

  ‘Then you should,’ said White sharply, but his tone didn’t seem to bother Lufe.

  ‘It’s not just Lea,’ Lufe continued. ‘We all want to know. I mean, she can’t just leave like that without anyone even bothering to try to get her back.’

  White was silent.

  ‘So,’ Lufe hesitated. ‘I said I’d ask you.’

  ‘I have no idea where she is,’ White said.

  ‘Haven’t you tried to find her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But … I thought you … ’

  White watched him. ‘You thought what?’

  ‘You were, you know … involved.’ Lufe blushed scarlet. ‘Weren’t you?’

  White was silent, his jaw clenched tight.

  ‘No,’ he managed, finally. ‘We were not.’

  Lufe had a deeply confused expression on his face. ‘Look, I understand why you might not want to confirm it to someone like me, but I think I should tell you that we all know about you and Rue. We’ve known ever since the moment she fell for you. It was like a match being struck.’

  There was a part of White that couldn’t bear to listen to this. In a violent rush, he remembered that feeling that he’d had when she had danced with him; that she could like him, that there was a chance. He tried to push it away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. His voice was snappish. ‘Are you playing some sort of idiotic trick?’

  Lufe held a hand up, his face shocked. ‘God, no. Honestly. I mean it.’

  White looked away.

  ‘Didn’t … you realise?’ came Lufe’s voice, his tone curious. ‘Didn’t you see it? We all thought you were having an affair. She practically smelled of you. A couple of times, we shared her dreams. Did we ever tell you that? We didn’t mean it, though in Marches’ case I think he tried his hardest to do it all the time. I think it only happened twice, but –’

  Lufe paused, searching.

  ‘But it didn’t start happening until Rue got here,’ he said finally, firmly. ‘It never happened before that. It was Rue. That was her Talent. I’ve never been able to pull people into my dreams; I didn’t even know you could do that. And I know none of the others can.’

  White stared at him, astounded.

  Lufe carried on, oblivious. ‘One time we all got pulled into Rue’s dream. It wasn’t that long after she first got here. It was you and her in a room together. You were talking about something or other. Psychology, or art, or something. She was asking you how you saw her. And then she told you that she didn’t think of you as a teacher, and she was blushing. And then you … ’

  Lufe stopped, his mouth spreading into a sly smile. There was no mistaking what he meant.

  No. No, not possible.

  Kill me now. Earth, swallow me whole.

  ‘That was my dream,’ said White, his voice a horrified croak. ‘That was mine.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think she pulled you into hers. Because she was definitely dreaming it. I felt it from her point of view, not yours. It was very … You understand? Very powerful. And that was the moment that I knew she’d fallen for you – and you for her. I was jealous, actually. You were the one we wanted to impress the most, but it was Rue who had all your attention. We fell out with her about it. Well … we never told her why. I feel bad about not telling her.’

  White was still and silent with shock. That had never happened with anyone before. Never, he was sure of it. He’d never shared his dreams with anyone, had he? How could he know, without asking everyone he had ever dreamed about?

  What did it mean? He remembered her pressing into him from the floor. Her little teeth on his neck. Had she really done that?

  What about the last few dreams he had had of them together in a dark room? He’d thought it was his own longing that produced those embarrassing, secret scenes.

  Now Lufe was telling him that it was really her.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything,’ said Lufe, with the cheery demeanour of someone who meant exactly the opposite. ‘But if I’ve made you want to go and find her, then it’s for the good, and Lea will be happy.’

  White felt his bewilderment sour into anger. ‘Why would I wish to find her? She left. She betrayed and left everyone behind her, like they meant nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know’, said Lufe quietly, ‘if it’s Rue you’re really talking about there.’

  White didn’t reply. Inside his head, he had punched Lufe in the face for that. Because it was true, and because it hurt.

  Silence fell like a heavy blanket.

  After a moment more, Lufe stood, and made a short bow.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mussyer,’ he said in a careful, formal tone. ‘I spoke out of turn. I must go to Lea. I hope that you won’t think badly of me, and that we’ll see each other tomorrow with no ill will.’

  White said nothing at first, his throat too tight to speak.

  ‘Give Lea my best wishes,’ he managed.

  ‘I shall.’ Lufe hesitated at the door. ‘If you do try to find her, and you succeed … will you tell us? Please?’

  White managed a stiff nod.

  The bottom of Lufe’s coat frisked grandly as he left, shutting the door behind him. White watched him go. And as soon as the door clicked closed, he stood up, agitated.

  There was no point trying to prove it the next time he dreamed of her. His dream version of her would say yes if he asked whether she was dreaming this too, somewhere in World. Dream Rue would say yes and he wouldn’t know whether it was the truth, or whether it was because he wanted her to say it.

  And it was no good thinking about anything, or planning, because Lufe had opened the gates again with his casual remarks, and it was all decided the moment White realised that the life he had when he was asleep could be the life he had when he was awake, too.

  There. He had made the decision, and it had only taken a moment. One innocent conversation.

  Everything has been coming to this, he told himself. It would have happened anyway. You know it. Don’t think about it. Don’t argue it.

  It was Rue that filled his vision, Rue the reason, the excuse he needed to cross a line he had never dared cross, until now.

  He knew what he had to do to escape.

  He had to kill Frith.

  CHAPTER 14

  WORLD

  RUE

  Rue woke.

  The dream ran its fingers through her once more, soft and wet, before fading.

  That one had been about Wren. But not a Wren she knew. This Wren had been fake, a puppet being made to dance. Something else was living behind his eyes. Something that made her want to be sick.

  Wren was an idiot, but he was also the only Talented she knew here, and she needed to talk to him about these dreams she kept having. Either, she decided, she had somehow developed the ability to see the future, or she was just dreaming. Something like that had never even been mentioned in connection with the Talent. It had always been about trying to see the now, elsewhere. About moving across, not forward. Surely White would have told them about so monumental a skill if he had known of it?

  No. No one could see the future. This was beyond ridiculous.

  And not all of her dreams were of the future, were they? She couldn’t exactly see herself going to that nightmare castle with Cho, with awful things that slithered in the black spaces. She certainly hadn’t been dreaming of a future time with White, had she, in the last two dreams she’d had of him? There was no way she was ever going to see him again. And a Wren that wasn’t Wren, with something crawling inside him? Just how possible was that?

  But she remembered Cho’s face so clearly in that castle dream. And then a few weeks later there Cho had been, suddenly, a stranger at a party they both happened to be invited to. Wasn’t that too much for coincidence?

  And the Life signal attack. That horrible, vague night. She had dreamed that too, hadn’t she, way back in her old home with Fernie? People falling down around her li
ke rain, nothing in their eyes, their mouths stretched open.

  Maybe she was connecting dots that weren’t there. Maybe she was making her dreams fit future things to suit her. Maybe she could drive herself mad with trying to reason it on her own.

  She would find Wren and talk to him about it. He would take it seriously. He’d help her know what to think.

  Rue waited all day, until it was way past the time he was usually home, and Wren still hadn’t materialised. She hadn’t seen him since last night. She checked his room, but he wasn’t there.

  She began to feel the first chest-burning itch of anxiousness. Her dream of him still lingered in her mind, its taste tainting everything.

  Maybe he wasn’t all right.

  She switched on the Life box and jacked in, descending to Surface Life. Cho had given her a little trick piece of code, a game hackers played where one would try to hide their Life signal and the other would try to find them. She rifled through her messages, and then opened up the code that Cho had sent her.

  When the search box came up, she painstakingly tapped out Wren’s Life signal code. He’d given it to her when she’d first arrived, in case she needed to prove to anyone who asked that she was living with a World citizen. At the time she’d dismissed the incomprehensible string of symbols and numbers as something she would never be able to understand. Now she was learning to stop underestimating herself so much.

  To her surprise, the search indicated that he was in the building. But where? She looked at the little blip of his signal, and then, suddenly, she knew.

  It was only two doors down.

  Rue slipped out into the corridor and to the room Wren was in. She pushed on the open button on the wall outside, thinking it would be locked, and then she’d have to knock, and what if she was just ignored? Would she stand there looking like an idiot for a while, and then slope away?

  But it wasn’t locked. The door slid open.

  Sabine had her lights set to dim, so the room was lit well enough to see them both outlined in her bed.

  ‘Who’s that?’ a voice came, half whispered. ‘Wren, there’s someone there.’

  She watched them disentangle themselves.