by Laure Eve
‘You can’t,’ said the Spymaster.
‘Can’t I?’
‘It’s all nonsense. I can have you detained, and you know it. You have amnesia, Frith. You’re ill.’
The Spymaster regarded him. He always seemed as though he was looking at you with his moustache. It bristled with the slightest movement of his face, alive.
Frith remembered him, but not well. He knew, now, that he worked for the Spymaster. He knew that he lived in Capital. He knew his own name. He knew certain things. But there was no detail, no whole. It was like trying to see through fog. He strained and peered, but glimpsed only the ghosts of memories, vague shapes. And there were still whole chunks of his life, of himself, that were missing, as if hidden behind a locked door.
He needed a key.
He thought, perhaps, he had a key.
‘Penhallow,’ he said. ‘It’s a name. One of the few things I can remember clearly. Did you find anything?’
‘It’s rather hard to simply conjure up information from so little to go on.’
But Frith hadn’t lost everything of himself, it seemed. Some things were like muscle reflex, close to the surface and automatic. He knew the Spymaster was lying.
‘Just tell me,’ he said, sharp. ‘My reports. You said that I’m a meticulous notekeeper. Did you find the name Penhallow in them?’
The Spymaster looked at him. The look said that normal Frith wasn’t so expressive, so emotional. That he was behaving unusually. It maddened him. Everyone around him knew more about Frith than Frith did.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly.
‘Well?’ said Frith, after a pause.
‘You really don’t remember, do you?’
Frith wanted to scream.
Do you think I’m making this up, you ridiculous idiot? Do you think this is fun for me? What possible motive could I have?
‘As my doctors have already attested to you,’ he said out loud, his voice clipped with anger.
‘It was only a few months ago.’
‘Time apparently means nothing in my case. There are whole swathes of my childhood that have gone. Neither can I remember anything that happened just a week ago. So, please, enlighten me.’
The Spymaster shifted on his chair, and took a look around the room. His distaste for hospitals was clear. In another life where he was a whole person, Frith might have wondered why. In another life, he might have known why.
‘Very well,’ said the Spymaster. ‘Penhallow is the name of a hedgewitch you recruited a girl from. Her apprentice, Rue – she came up here with you a few months ago for the Talent programme.’
‘Recruited?’
‘Good gods, Frith. Your programme. Your obsession, I might add,’ he said, with a puckering of the lips. He clearly didn’t like Frith’s programme, whatever it was. ‘The Talent. You can’t have forgotten the Talent.’
That was it. The last straw.
‘Well, I have, haven’t I?’ Frith said, his voice rising. ‘I obviously have, otherwise I wouldn’t have to keep asking you what the hell you’re talking about. Will you please just assume that I’ve forgotten everything pertinent and get to the damn point?’
The Spymaster’s expression was one of pure shock.
I don’t normally lose my temper, thought Frith.
‘Calm down, or I’ll have the doctor back in here with a sedative,’ said the Spymaster.
Frith closed his eyes.
Just hang on. Press down on the constant waves of fear that you ride, up and down and up and down until you feel permanently sick, your stomach full of poison balls.
Press down on that voice that screams at you, tells you you’ll never get your memories back. That this half-person is all you can ever be now.
Ignore that feeling of vertigo like you’re falling over, again and again, even though you’re perfectly still. Press it all down. Press it away.
He opened his eyes.
‘I apologise,’ he said. His voice was even. ‘This situation has been a bit of a strain. I just … I need to know. I think you can understand that. Some piece of the mystery. A lead to follow. I just need something. Anything.’
He watched the moustache in front of him twitch and huff.
‘Penhallow,’ the Spymaster repeated eventually, and Frith silently rejoiced. ‘It’s the only thing you remember?’
‘No, not the only thing,’ said Frith. ‘But the name is very clear to me, when everything else feels grey. The name … and a forest. A forest by a riverbank.’
And a horrible, sick feeling when he thought about that riverbank. Something had happened there.
‘Well, she does live in a rather rural area. The two might be connected.’
Frith leaned forward. ‘Where?’
‘Why? So you can go there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you think I’d let you?’
Frith looked at him for a long moment. He may have had the appearance of a benevolent walrus, but he hadn’t got to Spymaster without being extraordinarily clever and determinedly ruthless.
‘I think you’d let me have a sabbatical,’ said Frith at last. ‘For my health. Considering what state I’m currently in, I can hardly go back to work at the moment. I think you’d want me to try any means necessary to restore my full faculties.’
‘In which case, I think the best course of action would be to keep you here and let the doctors have a good look at you, Frith.’
‘The doctors don’t even know what happened to get me in this state. They can’t even tell me why I was unconscious. The doctors haven’t a clue and you know it, because undoubtedly that is the exact same thing they’ve reported to you, albeit probably in somewhat less truthful language.’
‘That doesn’t mean they won’t.’
‘Then give me two weeks. Two weeks to get there and see what I can unlock. If I come up with nothing, you can send whomever you like after me. You can come yourself to drag me all the way back.’
It was an interesting way to test just how important an asset he was. Evidently very, because the Spymaster seemed to be contemplating his offer quite seriously.
‘Fine,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t have the time or the energy to argue with you. I have to get back to Capital before it all falls apart without me.’
He levered himself off the chair and stood, looking over Frith. ‘But if anything goes wrong down there, just know that no one will be coming to rescue you. A hedgewitch is not a doctor. You’ll get no proper medical care. When the two weeks is up, if I haven’t heard from you, I’ll start sending people, Frith.’
‘Fine,’ said Frith. ‘The address?’
The Spymaster’s moustache twitched sluggishly. ‘A village called Tregenna, on the west coast of Bretagnine. Ask anyone you like for the hedgewitch Penhallow once you get there. They’ll all know their local hedgewitch. You can get down to the Bretagnine border by public train, then hire a private carriage to Tregenna.’
‘Do I have money?’ said Frith.
The Spymaster seemed about to laugh, but checked himself. ‘Do you have money?’ he repeated. ‘Yes. You do. But you won’t even need that. Just tell the public train staff your name. You’re a de Forde. They’ll fall over themselves to give you credit.’
He nodded stiffly, then moved to the door.
‘You weren’t unconscious, you know,’ he said.
‘What?’
The Spymaster lingered in the doorway. ‘When they found you. I don’t know what they’ve been telling you, but you haven’t been unconscious this entire time. You’ve been awake. But gone. Vacant. The way people look when they’re daydreaming, only it was impossible to snap you out of yours. They tried everything.’
Frith felt a feather touch of sickness in the pit of his belly.
‘I’m telling you this because I don’t believe it’s a medical condition. I believe it’s something else. And my advice to you is to brush up on the Talent on your way down there. It’s something to do with that godsdamned Talent
. Read your notes. You have extensive research on it from your prized possession, White.’
The Spymaster regarded him carefully, as if expecting to see his face change.
Frith just looked back at him.
‘White,’ the Spymaster repeated, raising a brow. ‘Who mysteriously vanished around the time this happened to you. No one’s been able to find him yet.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Frith replied, annoyed. ‘I don’t remember who that is. Why is he so important?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Let me worry about that. I have people out on the hunt.’
The Spymaster watched him for a moment more, his gaze calculating something. But what?
Then he left, mercifully closing the door behind him.
Frith settled back against his pillows, his mind working furiously.
The Talent.
Penhallow.
A key.
Tregenna looked positively dreary in the rain.
Vaucresson had been bad enough. This was backwater hell. The roads weren’t even gravelled properly. The private coach was a ramshackle thing, its horses plodding and bowed. Still, his name had got him all the way down here without a hitch, and the bank in Vaucresson had been only too happy to loan him enough to live on like a king for a month or more. Because if he didn’t have the answers he needed in two weeks’ time, he wasn’t coming back. As long as it took.
The private coach dropped him off in the village square, and the driver, who was local, had given him directions to the river. He had no idea which spot of the river it would be, but it made sense to head for the nearest bank to the village and go from there until the picture in his head matched the view in his eyes.
His bags stored safely at the best room in the local inn, he set off, walking briskly under his shade while the rain tried to batter him into submission.
It only took about half an hour to find it, a little way down from an obviously popular spot where the grass was worn thin. It was a scrubby bit of the bank, well hidden with wild tangles of vegetation and tall sentry trees. It looked lost and forgotten. This was it. The place he could remember so well when all else was locked away.
Frith stood on the bank, hugging the handle of his shade to his chest, watching the rain chop at the surface of the river. He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. Each part of the scenery he let his eyes rest on for a few moments. He didn’t force anything, allowing it to sink into him. Releasing him.
But it didn’t come.
The fog didn’t lift. Not even a little bit.
Desperation reared its head. He felt it crash through him. He screamed in pure frustration and threw his shade at the nearest tree. It bounced off and fell onto the mulching leaves, and he let himself stand in the rain, welcoming the way it soaked him and made his shoulders shiver miserably.
‘What in seven hells are you doing here?’ came a voice.
Frith turned, heart pounding.
In between two trees stood a woman. He guessed in her sixties or seventies, round of body, with masses of dark hair caught up in a fat messy bun and a cutting gaze. From one arm dangled a lidded basket and her cloak was fastened tight around her neck. She was obviously wet through and should have looked bedraggled, but somehow she didn’t.
There was something about her eyes.
‘I know you,’ he said. But his voice wavered with uncertainty. He was pretty sure he’d never been the uncertain sort before his memory loss, which was probably why he hated the feeling so very much.
The woman said nothing, but her face changed.
She’s surprised. Now she’s suspicious.
She knows me, too.
‘What are you doing here?’ she repeated. ‘Has something happened to Rue?’
Rue. The Penhallow hedgewitch’s apprentice girl that he’d apparently recruited for this Talent programme he was supposed to be running.
‘Are you … Are you Zelle Penhallow?’ he said, not quite daring to believe his luck.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
He held up his hands. ‘This may sound strange, but I’ve lost my memory. Something happened to me, and I have selective amnesia. Please … you’re her, aren’t you?’
The woman watched him. ‘I don’t like lies,’ she said flatly. ‘And I don’t like games. And you was always so very good at both, Mussyer Frith. What’s this game you’re playing now?’
And she doesn’t like me.
Frith held himself back. This had to be carefully played.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘If you’re her. Just a minute or two of your time.’
‘The last time you took a minute or two of my time I lost Rue to you,’ she said. ‘And the time before that I lost my son. So you’ll forgive me if I ain’t happy about doing it again.’
Frith shook his head, desperate. ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t remember those things. I really don’t. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you in the past. But I need your help. Please.’
The woman gazed at him for a long moment as the rain pattered around them. He felt speared to the tree behind him, opened up and examined like a frog under those eyes.
‘Sorry, Mussyer Frith,’ she said, finally. ‘But I don’t want to help you.’
She turned and walked away, squelching over the forest floor.
CHAPTER 20
ANGLE TAR
WHITE
‘I need something removed,’ said White into the keyhole.
‘What?’
He hesitated, glancing around. It was early evening and the Border City street this grand little townhouse sat on was quiet enough, but this was not a normal request he was making, and the man on the other side of the door not quite a normal doctor.
‘An implant,’ he said.
Silence.
He had left Fernie over a day ago – it had taken that long to travel up to Border City, first by several different trains, and then coach. He’d never been this far north before, and couldn’t Jump somewhere he’d never visited, or at least not consciously. Not yet. It had only served to remind him how lucky he was that he could Jump at all. Having to use public transport was risky, if people were looking for him – but more than that, it was just so tediously godsdamned slow.
‘How did you find me, please?’ said the voice through the door.
‘Someone gave me your name and address a long time ago.’
‘You will give me the name of this person, please.’
‘De Forde Say Frith.’ As White said his name, his stomach dropped to the ground. If the man needed him to be vouched for by Frith somehow, he was screwed.
But then the door clicked as the key was turned on the other side, and then White was shuffling into a narrow hallway.
The man before him scrutinised White keenly. He was short and round, with a balding head and pleasant features.
‘If they come from Frith, I do them for free,’ he said.
White was silent. Frith had said as much when he’d given White the doctor’s name, not that long after recruiting him.
So much had happened since then.
‘Come into the office and let’s have a chat.’
He led White down the corridor and into the room at the end. It was small, the walls violently decorated with a mishmash of paintings and words and impossible colours.
The doctor sat behind a polished trewsey wood desk. He noticed White staring at the walls and smiled. ‘One of my eccentricities,’ he said. ‘I do miss it still, you see.’
‘Miss what?’
‘Life.’
White studied him. ‘You are a Worlder.’
‘Not any more. Got my Angle Tarain citizenship a few years ago. Now,’ he said, and steepled his fingers, ‘you wish to have your implant removed.’
‘Yes,’ said White, but maybe there had been something in his voice, because the doctor raised a brow.
‘You understand what you’re doing, don’t you? I apologise if I seem patronising, but if you
change your mind afterwards and want another implant, there are places in World – illegal, rather unwholesome places – but it will be much more painful an operation and the new implant will never be as fully immersive as the one you have now.’
‘I understand.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve heard about it already, but it’s actually a fairly simple procedure. Have you been living without Life for a year yet? I generally say a year before I’ll even consider removal.’
‘Longer,’ said White. ‘I have been in Angle Tar a while. I was given your name when I first arrived here, but I did not think –’ He paused, trying to understand it. ‘I suppose a small part of me thought, somehow, that it was too far a step to take.’
‘Of course,’ said the doctor, with some sympathy. ‘So now you’ve decided to remain in Angle Tar permanently?’
‘No,’ said White. Rue flashed in his mind. ‘I wish to have my implant removed because I am going back to World.’
CHAPTER 21
WORLD
RUE
Rue sat on Livie’s spare bed, hugging her knees, and stared at the wall opposite.
Now, in the night, when everything was dark and still, and everyone else was asleep. When it was all so real. Morning brought light and clatter and breakfast and music, and things that pushed the dark away. In the morning she might not understand any more.
Now. Now to think about what it all meant.
I’m you from the future.
The voice echoed in her head.
The things the Ghost Girl had shown her. Her memories, played out in Castle rooms, room after room, her secrets, watching her own body and voice act out a play she remembered from inside her head. So many things that no one else could possibly know about her. Little things she barely remembered. Big things she couldn’t forget. But then other things, too – memories that had never happened to her, but had clearly happened to the Ghost Girl.
At some point, the girl said, they had begun to diverge. Lead different lives. It was on purpose, she said. She had come back, through the Castle, to change their past.
‘But,’ said Rue, still struggling with the enormity of the truth. ‘But I don’t … If you’re me, what happened in your future? And how could you possibly change the future? That’s not … You can’t do that.’