The Smudger

by Angeline Trevena

  “Who’s ‘we’? Because perhaps her parents should have been involved in that discussion.”

  Tokai bowed her head. “The training of Kumonayo children is a matter for the whole community. As representatives for that community, we took the weight of this difficult decision upon ourselves.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t make it sound so selfless of you. This wasn’t some kind of burden. This is you doing what’s best for you. Not best for us, and certainly not best for Omori.”

  “It is my job, as brood mother—”

  “You’re not our brood mother.”

  “Like it or not, I am now. Okaporo is gone, and Narata with it. She put you into our care, and we’ve taken you in despite the terrible danger that’s put this colony in.”

  “You want the vessel as much as anyone else. The danger is more than worth it to you.”

  “Whatever your thoughts on it, the decision has been made. Omori’s training will begin as planned.”

  I looked at Saji. He crossed the kitchen and stood beside me.

  “Then we’ll leave,” he said. “We’ll take Omori, and we’ll go and get Kioto.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Tokai said. “The world is crawling with rogues that want to see you all dead.”

  “We made it here just fine.”

  “You made it here on pure luck.”

  “We’ve already lost one daughter. You’re not taking our other one away too.”

  Tokai tossed her head. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’m not taking her anywhere, we’re simply starting her training a year early. Honestly, you people.”

  I slipped my hand into Saji’s. “We’re going to walk out of here tomorrow, and you can’t stop us,” I said.

  “You’re right, I can’t. You’re not prisoners here. But you have no idea of the layers of protection this place has.”

  “You mean all of your little secrets?”

  “Little secrets that keep your daughter safe.”

  “Only one of them,” said Saji. “Our minds are made up.”

  “Kioto has a life of her own now. She’s being trained in Kagosaka, and I hear that she’s settled in well there. If you turn up, you’ll put her progress back by years. You’ll upset her entire future. Is that what you want? She thinks that you’re dead. She’s mourned for you, she’s said goodbye. Do you really want to throw her entire life, her entire future, up into the air like that?”

  “She’s better off with us,” I said, silently cursing the emotional crack in my voice.

  Tokai grabbed it. “You’re not thinking clearly. When you wake up in the morning you’ll see that this makes sense. That this is the best thing you can do for both of your daughters.”

  “We should never have come here.”

  Tokai threw her hands up in the air. “Fine. Leave. These hills are crawling with rogues, and it’s my little ‘secrets’ that keep them at bay. Just see how long you last out there alone. Because once you step out of the colony I cannot protect you anymore, and I will not be responsible for whatever fate finds you.”

  39

  KIOTO

  We were given a bedroom upstairs; a proper room, with a proper bed. I’d expected a mattress on the floor of a damp basement room, but Dai kept pointing out that we weren’t prisoners. He only asked that we stayed long enough to hear what he had to say.

  In fact, we’d been offered two rooms, but we’d both said, without hesitation, that we’d share. The double bed was large and luxurious, and by lying on either side of it, it felt like there had been a void between us. We’d gotten used to sharing single beds in safehouses, or huddling together for warmth in barns.

  We woke to sunlight filtered through the white curtains, and the sounds of the city outside. But not the parts of the city we were more used to waking up to. I heard no sirens, no drunken shouting, no screams, no cursing. It was just the hum of auto cars, and the sounds of normal, everyday people waking up to their normal, everyday lives.

  I sat up and looked at Malia, who was still sleeping soundly. I quietly dressed, and then went in search of the kitchen.

  It was easy enough to find by the smell of bacon and cooking oil that hung heavy in the air. There was only one other person in there; a rogue probably only a few years older than me. He was sat, cross legged, on a worktop, eating a bacon sandwich. He nodded to me, his mouth full of food.

  I didn’t respond. I spotted a coffee machine and started opening cupboards to find some mugs.

  “Wanna hand?” he asked, slipping down to the floor. “It’s not very well laid out in here. Not very intuitive. You’ll never find anything by yourself.”

  Behind the fourth cupboard door I opened, I finally found mugs. I held one up to him. “I’m fine.”

  “Ok.” He hopped back up onto the worktop. “You’re Kioto,” he said.

  “How observant of you.”

  “Dai’s been following you for a while. I could teach you some stuff about covering your tracks, if you like.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  I poured myself a coffee and splashed in a tiny bit of milk. I needed the boost this morning.

  “You’re not very friendly, are you?”

  I shrugged and turned away from him.

  “So, I heard that you’re pretty good at what you do. I also heard that you’re from Okaporo. And that you’ve got a smudger. I’ve never met a trader with a carrier before.”

  I looked back at him. “I’m surprised you hear anything at all, seeing as you never actually stop talking.”

  He nodded with a smile. “Not a morning person, eh?”

  “Actually, I am a morning person. Just not a rogue person. Making small talk with a ruthless killer isn’t my idea of fun.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone. Well, unless you count house plants. I’m not very green fingered.”

  “Is this a joke to you?”

  He laughed. “Is what a joke?”

  “Okaporo? What your kind have been doing to traders for generations?”

  He held his hands up. “Be careful, that chip on your shoulder is growing even bigger. It must be hard work having to carry that around with you all day.”

  I stared at him.

  “Ok, still a touchy subject then. Do you know why I’m a rogue? Because my mum is. I was born into it, and I’ve never known anything different. I’ve never met a trader, or a carrier, or even a merchant before. But I’ve learnt about them all. And I’m sorry about what’s happened to you, but it has nothing to do with me. You look at me, and all you see is a killer. I would have thought that a trader, of all people, would be less quick to judge seeing as everyone just looks at you and sees your scars. That’s all you are to them. But that’s not fair, there’s a lot more to you, right? Yet you look at me, and you do exactly the same thing.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Because I do it as a survival instinct. Not just because I’m prejudiced.”

  “And what am I going to do? Beat you to death with my bacon sandwich?”

  “I’m sure you have a knife hidden somewhere. Or a gun.”

  He patted himself down. “Damn, must’ve left it in my other jeans.”

  “I’m glad this is funny to you.”

  He shoved the last bite of his breakfast into his mouth and spoke through it, with half a crust protruding.

  “Why’ve you got a carrier anyway? I thought you guys didn’t agree with that.”

  “I don’t agree with it. She’s not a slave.”

  “So, what is she? Your pet?”

  “She’s a human being. She’s my friend.”

  He frowned at me. “Are you always this serious?”

  Tian’s face flew into my mind then. I tried to push it away, but the image persisted. I couldn’t work out what annoyed me more; the fact that this rogue reminded me of Tian, or the fact that I really liked that he did. I shook my head, and managed to dislodge the thoughts with the motion.

  “Good morning,
Kioto,” said Dai, walking in. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Well enough”

  “I hope you’re not bothering our guest, Finch. And get off there, that’s so unhygienic.”

  The boy uncrossed his legs and slid off the worktop.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said. “At least shorten it to ‘Fire’.”

  Dai gave him a stern look. “Firefinch. Your presence is no longer required. Go and find somewhere else to be.”

  With a glance at Kioto, Firefinch loped out of the kitchen.

  “Can I make you something to eat?” Dai asked. “Or do traders survive on coffee alone?”

  “I’ll have whatever’s going,” I said.

  “Sit down then.” He gestured to the small dining table.

  I sat down and watched him busy himself.

  “How can you go from being a colony trader, to being a rogue?” I asked him.

  He stopped moving and stood with his back to me, his head bowed.

  “I don’t remember the colony much. I was taken from there when I was three. I don’t really remember my parents. I have nothing that ties me to the colonies. I don’t even know which one I was taken from.”

  “What about your blood? That ties you to the colonies.”

  “My blood?” He turned and looked at me. “No one ever came looking for me. So my blood obviously didn’t mean very much.”

  “But your roots...” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. I could barely lecture someone on the importance of clinging onto your roots. It was the foundation of the trader culture, and I’d turned my back on all of my roots. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the sound of the sea. Once upon a time, the sound of the waves was as familiar to me as the sound of my own breathing.

  He placed a plate, brimming with fried food, in front of me. Then he sat in the chair opposite.

  “Are you going to watch me eat?” I asked.

  “I just want to talk to you. About your sister.”

  “I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about my sister. I don’t even know where she lives.”

  “You do. You had exactly the right building.”

  I leaned forward. “Have you seen her?”

  “Many times. She looks like you.”

  “What do you want with her?”

  Dai looked at me intensely. He let the silence hang for a moment. “Do you know what she is?”

  I nodded quickly.

  “Once upon a time vessels were rare, oddities, genetic mutations. They showed up about once every other generation. Just one. Here or there. Easy to track down. But now, there are lots.”

  “Lots? What do you mean, lots?”

  Your generation, we know of at least eighty having been born.”

  I whistled. “I had no idea.”

  “Not many people do. We’ve even met a merchant vessel, and that’s never, ever happened before. The traders are doing what they can to keep it quiet. You realise how many people would want to get their hands on a vessel. You know what carrying other people’s memories for too long can do to you. Your friend certainly knows it. To have someone you can just pour memories into, someone they just flow straight out of, like a drain, that’s worth a lot. Even more if people realise how rare it is.”

  “But the rogues are hunting them down to kill them, aren’t they? I mean, aren’t you?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Yes. I am.”

  “You admit it, just like that. Like admitting you broke a mug?”

  “You don’t know what these vessels can do, Kioto. They’re not just someone to offload unwanted memories into. They’ve developed, evolved, if you like.”

  “Evolved how?”

  “Look at this.” He drew a screen out on the table between us.

  “You’ve got implants?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t resist.” He gestured to the room around us. “As you can see, we’re not your traditional band of rogues.”

  “You’ve evolved too, huh?”

  “Look at this.” He spun the screen towards me.

  It was a news article, but he gave me no time to read it before he continued.

  “Now, you tell me, what would make a man who’s never been in any trouble before, with no strong political leanings, your absolute everyday, average Joe, what would make him wake up one morning and decide to assassinate a reader? A member of the council. What would prompt a man to do something so out of character? His wife says he left for work as normal. But instead of going to work, he went and bought himself an illegal gun. And then he went to the city hall and put four bullets into a reader’s head. Explain that.”

  I looked up at him. “I don’t know. People do crazy things all the time. Maybe his wife burnt his breakfast.”

  “Or maybe someone put the idea in his head.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is what the vessels can do. They can implant thoughts, impulses, desires, compulsions. They can make people do whatever they want them to. Just imagine the possibilities of that. They could start wars, genocide, massacres, mass suicides. They could change the political landscape beyond measure. They could influence anyone they wanted in any way that they wished.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s what we thought. But we’ve been researching this for years, and these kinds of cases are becoming more and more common. What’s more, the people being apparently randomly killed, it looks like not only are the vessels doing this, but they’re selling their services. They’re becoming contract killers.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to. All the evidence is here.” He tapped the screen. “There’s story after story after story like that one.” He scrolled through the articles. “You see. There’s loads of them.”

  “But this could be anything. This could be air pollution sending people crazy, or something in their drinking water. Or just the sudden realisation that their lives are totally shit. Don’t you ever wake up and wonder what the point is? I know I often wake up wanting to kill someone.”

  “These aren’t random events. I could believe your theory if they killed their spouses, or their neighbour, or even a random stranger who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But these are people purposefully crossing an entire city to specifically target someone in particular. They aren’t random killings, their victims have been chosen.”

  “By who?”

  Dai shrugged. “That, we don’t know. Yet. But we’ve been following these stories, going to where they happened, talking to people. And we’ve been hunting down vessels. And we’ve found them almost every time.”

  I stared at his hands. Hands that dealt out death.

  “So if you’ve known where my sister is, why haven’t you just killed her?” My heart seemed to slow as I asked the question, my blood cooling to ice.

  “Because we have a job for her.”

  “But she’s not even trained.”

  “Not yet. But she will be.”

  “You want her to be trained as a vessel? But she’s no danger to anyone right now.”

  “And she’s no use to anyone either. You see, the other thing about vessels is that they’re somehow linked. They can find one another. The closer they get to another vessel, the more painful it becomes for them. If they touch another vessel, it can be fatal for them both.”

  “And you want to use her to find other vessels.”

  “Exactly.” He folded his arms and smiled smugly.

  “Not going to happen.”

  He raised an eyebrow. His arrogance made me want to crawl across the table and scratch his eyes out.

  “Because,” I continued, “she can’t be trained. She doesn’t have all of her memories.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Of course. But I have a feeling you know where her missing memories are. You see, I asked myself what a trader would be doing with a carrier. Particularly a smudger, and especially a topped out smud
ger. Now, there has been a growing trend in traders buying topped out smudgers, but they don’t tend to travel the country with them. They get rid of them pretty quickly. Which means your smudger has something valuable in her. Something valuable to you. And, if I’m right, something incredibly valuable to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Because the look of panic in your eyes tells me a totally different story.” He leaned forward. “I know what she’s carrying just as well as you do.”

  “I’m not going to let you do this.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Omori’s no threat to anyone as long as she’s not trained up. Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

  “And what are you going to do with those memories of hers? Surely you want to give them back. That’s why you’ve brought your smudger all this way.”

  I calculated things quickly, my thoughts tripping and stumbling over one another.

  “Then I’ll kill Malia. Omori’s memories will die with her.”

  “I can’t let you do that. We want Omori. That means we need Malia. And to bring all of this together, we need you.”

  “But you said that we weren’t your prisoners.”

  “You’re not. You can leave any time you want.” He leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. “But if you do, I’ll kill you, your smudger, and your sister.”

  We both turned as Narata cleared her throat in the doorway.

  “Dai,” she said. “Let me speak with Kioto. Alone.”

  40

  KIOTO

  I paced the kitchen as I relayed mine and Dai’s conversation to Narata. My hands flew around wildly, and I had no resolve to hold them still. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I would not cry. I needed to be strong.

  Narata grabbed me by the shoulders, giving me a little shake.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked.

  My mind was a whirlwind; I could barely even trust myself.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked again.

  “In the last few weeks, everything I thought I knew about my life, about myself, has turned out to be wrong. I don’t know what to trust right now.”

  “You need to trust me, Kioto. Well, really, you have no choice. I am Omori’s only hope. Dai trusts me completely, I have his ear, he listens to me. We’ll restore Omori’s memories, I’ll train her, and then I’ll get us out of here. I know everything about this place, about these rogues. You wouldn’t be able to escape without my help.”