by Jaine Fenn
Guilt because of her lover. Someone here was the true object of this girl’s affection. She made this match only to please her family. It would not work out. Nual sensed the future course of this union as a wrongness, a certainty of pain - no details, just a feeling as sure as knowing that a dropped glass would fall, a plucked flower die. The realisation came with a strange physical sensation, hot as ginger in the back of her throat.
This was not knowledge she had read in the usual way. At this distance she could only pick up a stranger’s overall mood and immediate intentions; to uncover such a deep deception as a secret lover from someone she did not know she would normally have to go deep into their mind and tease out the knowledge. This information had arrived in Nual’s consciousness fully formed, a flash of certainty about what had been, was now - and would be.
This was prescience, the rarest Sidhe talent, which manifested in only a few revered elements amongst the unity.
Nual watched the ceremony without seeing it. The bright colours and piercing light combined to give the scene an air of unreality and she felt a faint and disturbing echo of the wrenching dislocation from the universe that was shiftspace.
When one of the other servers asked if she was all right she realised she was grasping the edge of the table for support. She nodded, and let go.
With the formal ceremony over the servers dispensed coco-nut shells of kava to the guests so they could drink the health of the newlyweds. Nual used the task to ground herself, and she managed it without mishap.
After that people drifted down to the beach where some of the men were holding races in sleek wooden outrigger canoes. Nual found herself focusing on the guests as they wandered past, both hungry for and fearful of another flash of unprompted insight. She got no more than the usual sense of their emotions and the occasional more coherent strong surface thought.
The next hour or so left little time for introspection, as she and the others worked to clear the chairs away, then to set up tables for the wedding feast, and finally to help carry great platters of meat, fish and root vegetables from the earth-ovens where they had been cooking all day. The servers were given their own portions behind the screens once the guests had their meals; the food was smoky-sweet and deliciously tender.
After the meal, with the light-globes glowing in the trees, some of the tables were moved back to make space for the dancing. The servers had an easier time of it now, required only to make occasional forays out amongst the guests with jugs of fruity cocktails or bottles of imported wines.
Following a couple of show-pieces by the professional dancers, the guests formed two lines, men and women opposite each other, with the bride and groom each heading a line. Nual focused on the bride, but could pick up only her current emotions: she was more relaxed than she had been, quite tired, still a little apprehensive. Nual scanned the men, trying to discover which one was the bride’s lover.
She was so intent on the dancers that she almost missed the figure getting up from the top table. The woman had been sitting between an older man and a girl of about twelve, both of whom she spoke to briefly before she left. Nual switched her full attention to the woman as she headed down the path back to the aircar pad. The woman was agitated, her mind reeling from having received unwelcome news. Nual tried to dig deeper, but at this distance she could not read much detail, though she did deduce that whatever had prompted her to leave now was unrelated to the wedding and not an entirely unexpected development, though the timing had taken her by surprise.
Then the woman moved out of sight up the path, and someone was pressing a tray into her hands and telling her to go and top up the guests’ glasses.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There was no easy way out. Though Taro was kept busy all day fetching and carrying plates and glasses, and loading and unloading the dish-washing machines, he still had plenty of time to consider what Nual had said. He couldn’t see a way to avoid getting hurt. She was the most amazing person he’d ever met, but she was capable of terrible things. To not love her was unthinkable - but she’d admitted she was likely to hurt him again if he stayed with her. Since he’d met her he’d defined himself by her, based most of his adult decisions around her - but was that really the smartest thing to do?
Would he be better off without her?
He had no way of knowing, nothing to compare against. He’d never felt his own ignorance so keenly.
The only thing he knew for sure was that she’d caused the feelings he had for her, replacing one addiction with another. She’d done it with his consent, but this love was still Sidhe magic, not a real, genuine, normal, human emotion. Jarek’s view of how far Nual had influenced Jarek’s own feelings was smart and practical: he didn’t know, and he believed she wouldn’t mess with him on purpose, so he’d saved himself a lot of trouble by not worrying about it, just going with the flow. But Jarek was just her friend.
By the time they were back on the boat, he’d made his choice, and he needed to act quickly, before he changed his mind. Before he came to his senses? As soon as they reached their room in the blockhouse he said, ‘I want you to cure me.’
She didn’t question or argue, but said only, ‘Sit on the bed.’
He did as she asked, his heart pounding. A small voice in his head was telling him not to do this. He wondered if it was his voice, or hers.
She sat down opposite him and took both his hands in hers. ‘When I tell you, look up,’ she said. She sounded nervous.
‘What happens if this goes wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, I hope.’
‘You hope?’
‘This is not something I have ever done before. All I can promise is that I will be careful, and gentle.’ She hesitated. ‘We do not have to continue if you do not truly want to.’
He wasn’t sure he did - but he never would be sure, not while he was under her spell. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’
‘You may lose some of the memories associated with . . . what I did back in Khesh. In some ways that might make it easier on you, but it is still wrong.’
‘But you can’t . . . damage me?’
‘I will not enter the areas that define your personality, just those that hold the memories that bind us.’
The memories that bind us. When he heard her say that he almost changed his mind—No. He had to know how much of what he was feeling was really him. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
He looked up, and fell into her eyes at once. He was instantly back in Khesh City, or maybe it was a dream of the City. He remembered meeting Nual, and how she’d rescued him from himself. He remembered the choice she’d given him: she would cure his dependence on the drug his enemy had forced on him and dull the pain of the torture he’d undergone, but the healing would link them. She hadn’t known then about the deeper union they’d share later, and how that would strengthen their love.
The love that was a lie - is a lie. The love that is no love because it’s not about choice.
That’s not love at all: that’s adulation, obsession.
Violation.
‘Get out!’ He didn’t realise he’d shouted out loud until he opened his eyes.
Nual was instantly gone from his mind. She drew back physically, but he was already scrambling off the bed. He ran from the room without looking back.
That night, he slept outside, on the beach - or rather, he lay on the warm sand, sobbing, drifting in and out of uneasy sleep. He wasn’t sure what he was crying over - lost chances, his own stupidity, or simple self-pity, maybe - but whatever the reason, he didn’t stop until he was sure he’d washed everything away. When he came back to the blockhouse in the morning he felt as though something had been ripped from deep inside him, leaving a great, gaping hole.
He met Nual in the kitchen. She was a stranger, a beautiful stranger, no more and no less. The way the space in his chest contracted and threatened to stop his breath would pass soon, he knew it.
They weren’t al
one, so neither of them said anything, but she followed him out and whispered, ‘Are you all right?’
How odd, that this beautiful stranger cared about him. ‘I will be,’ he said, and turned away.
The only way to get over this was to live his life, live it hard and full. And he was in the perfect place to do just that.
Mo and the others who’d stayed on were full of suggestions as to how to have the most fun for the least credit. The beach was free, of course, and most days started and ended with a dip in the blood-warm sea. One day they walked inland to a low waterfall with a deep, frothing plunge-pool. The next day they went foraging for coco-nuts; no one had the skill or nerve to climb the tall palms, and Taro wasn’t going to let on that he had his own method of getting up there, so they just took the fallen ones.
A pair of buses - there were just the two - drove around the coastal road all day, providing free rides for both the tourists and the workers who served them. The one road had just the one town on it: Anau, the settlement Taro’d glimpsed when they first arrived, but the road also passed through five other resorts on the far side of the island. They weren’t as smart as the offshore resort, being for normal families or honeymooners, but the nearest was happy to welcome day-visitors, and Taro had a go at kayaking, body-surfing and diving in the lagoon, all pastimes he’d never known existed a few months before.
Diving required goggles and fins, and a contraption rather like the mask Jarek had been wearing when they first met him at Elarn’s house. These masks had a tube at the side: flick it up when you swam on the surface; flick it down and you could breathe underwater for up to ten minutes. There was an earpiece too, so the leader of the group could talk to you, and it buzzed to tell you when you needed to surface for more air. The sea was a whole new world to Taro: he’d thought the bush was prime, but this was pure blade. There were swaying plants of green and gold and red, and fans and towers and walls of coral in every colour from pale flesh-pink to a blue so deep it was almost black. And it was alive, all tiny mouths flicking and thin streamers trailing, home to thousands of animals, from tiny translucent critters that bounced round on puffs of water to violet-and-black sea-snakes with bodies thicker than his arm. Some of the plants looked like animals, with false eyes and fins that turned out to be leaves moving in the current; some of the animals looked like plants, like the painfully bright flat patches that draped themselves over the coral, only to jet off at a touch, revealing an underside peppered with star-shaped mouths.
Taro’s personal favourites were the carpet-worms: a pair of half-metre long blue-green snakes lying side-by-side on the sand - unless you stirred up the water around them, when they instantly snapped straight while levering themselves up and out, and a living, sparkling mesh fanned out between them, ready to snare any passing small creatures. Once they’d caught their prey, the worms toppled over and slammed the net back down into the sand. He’d been tempted to try and touch one of the nets, until the dive leader warned him it could deliver a painful shock.
Life on the reef was simple: the world was divided into things you ate and things that ate you. If you were lucky enough to be the thing that nothing ate, then your life was perfect, and you didn’t have to worry about having a hole where your heart had been, or waking up crying sometimes.
Once he’d got used to the water, his implants gave him an advantage, though he avoided using them where anyone else could see.
Mo was impressed at how well he’d taken to diving, and suggested, ‘Sure you don’t want to try deep-diving?’
Deep-diving was what you did outside the lagoon. It needed expensive equipment, was potentially dangerous, and you didn’t get to see so much pretty stuff. ‘Not really,’ said Taro.
‘I’ll see if I can sort something else for your special day, then,’ Mo said with a grin.
It took Taro a moment to work out that Mo meant his eighteenth birthday, which would also be their last day on the island. Birthdays hadn’t been much of a cause for celebration in his life up till now - he wasn’t even sure of the exact date; when the Minister had issued his ID, Taro had just picked a likely day. He’d been ignoring the upcoming birthday; it reminded him that he wasn’t in some bubble of paradise that would last for ever, that soon he’d have to leave this beautiful place and work out what to do with his life.
Though he’d like to think he hadn’t been pondering the future, he knew he was kidding himself. When it came down to it he’d probably carry on Jarek’s mission, even if that meant staying with Nual. She might not rule his choices any more, but that didn’t change the fact that there was nothing for him in Khesh - and, more importantly, he hated the Sidhe. Shit and blood, he hated them more than ever now. Sometimes he thought he hated Nual, because she’d fucked him good, and hurt him bad, and she was pure Sidhe, then he’d catch a glimpse of her, or hear her voice, and realise he could never in a thousand years hate her, no matter what she’d done, or did do, to him.
They’d reached a strange unspoken agreement where neither of them said anything to criticise or hurt the other one. For the first few days after he let her break their link, they were tender and careful around each other, like distant relatives brought together by loss. After a while Taro felt the numbness start to lift. There was still pain, but he was sure it would fade in time. He took to testing his ability to survive without Nual; not exactly avoiding her, but not going out of his way to find her either, and focusing on other people whenever she was around. Clearing up alone in the kitchen one night he looked up at the same time as she walked in. She stopped dead in the doorway, then turned on her heel. He started to call out to her before realising that he had no idea what he’d say. After all, if he was staying clear of her, he could hardly blame her for doing the same to him.
Sharing a room was hard, so they altered their sleep patterns, he coming to bed after she was already asleep; she rising before he awakened. When, despite all their efforts, they did find themselves alone they talked business, never anything personal.
For the moment, they were getting by. Taro was looking forward to the day when they’d be over the whole love thing and ready to restart their friendship.
All the while Taro was getting his head straight, Nual was actively pursuing their mission, spending time in Anau, getting to know the locals. Her cover story, that she was studying their culture, combined with her own innate abilities to ensure doors quickly opened to her. Nual befriended the old and the young, who were around during the day when most people were working at the resorts. She soon discovered that there were islands that weren’t marked on the tourist maps, though not even her unnatural powers of persuasion could find the locations, for the locals themselves didn’t know. She did get close to an old lady whose grandson was a security guard on one of the islands owned by Tawhira-ngai; if he knew what went on there he had never told her, but he had let slip that whilst some of the hidden islands were for the ngai execs and their families, others, like the one where he was based, had research facilities - built underground, to avoid aerial surveillance. He was due back on leave in a couple of weeks, and after Nual had planted the idea in his grandmother’s head that there might be a good match to be made here, she agreed to introduce Nual when he came home.
Taro listened to her findings and tried to ask useful questions, though two weeks felt like an improbably long time in his current state. When he asked if there was anything he could do to help, she shook her head.
‘Enjoy yourself while you can,’ she said. She sounded like she meant it.
He said, with a grin only slightly forced, that he’d got that covered.
The evening before his birthday he went with the others to the bar in the nearest resort, where they met a girl, on holiday with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. She was out for fun, and she wanted Taro to be part of that fun. So when the others left to catch the last bus, he stayed, thinking that if he didn’t get lucky, he’d have a long journey back - though he could always fly home. In fact, the idea
of flitting across the darkened sea was quite appealing.
When it came to it, he didn’t need to worry. She didn’t plan on letting him go before dawn.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The first databreaker Jarek hired had told him that the encryption on the files was like nothing he’d ever seen before, and there was no chance he could break it. Another, more expensive, operator gave him the same response, leaving Jarek with only one alternative, though he was wary of it. He’d initiated contact, but given his previous dealings with the individual in question he expected to be waiting a while for a result.
Meanwhile, he might as well see what he could unearth in the Alliance archives. Sifting data wasn’t his idea of fun, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, but he didn’t have anything better to do right now. He’d delved into the Freetraders’ records before, following up leads to current Sidhe activity, but this time he focused on the past. Unfortunately, so much had been lost when the Protectorate fell that the past was a real mess. Human-space was like the shadow of a greater empire; an empire that had not, contrary to popular belief, been dead and gone for a thousand years.
