Fearsome Dreamer (24 page)

Frith got up smoothly, as if all were normal, and bowed.

‘I'm sure you'll think on it,' he said, his tone polite.

White tracked him to the door with his eyes. Watched him close it behind him.

What would his life be like, without Frith? Would it be better, without the constant feeling of unwillingly belonging so completely to another? Would there be someone else instead, controlling every part of his existence? Could there be someone else like Frith? White didn't think so.

Once, a while ago, White had wondered in a vague, fanciful sort of way how hard it would be to kill Frith. Just once. Then, by chance, he had seen him in a fight. They had gone together to meet a contact from World in a fairly seedy part of the city. The contact had promised some sort of vague exchange of information deal. The reality had been no such thing, and the situation had turned sour fast. The contact had pulled a rod, the kind of weapon inconceivable in Angle Tar, and there should have been no possibility of escaping that.

The impression White had had of a striking snake had never left him. Frith was horribly fast, but his true advantage lay in being able to predict exactly what you would do next. His ability was frightening. The contact had stopped before he had the chance to think about firing the rod.

Without Frith, White would still not be free. He'd heard that things had started to change after his departure from World, not least its covert acceptance of Talented people as useful rather than dangerous. Wren was proof of that. But they would always, always see White as a traitor and a spy.

Frith had a way of killing you with the truth. He used it as a weapon. White understood everything he had said already. Hadn't he used the same arguments with himself over the last few weeks to try and reason a way out of his ridiculous situation with Rue?

But it was too late for all that. It was too late the moment she had put her hand in his. If there had been a way back, it would have been before that, in the weeks when he was sure she felt nothing for him. Now that he was not sure, he clung to the hope like a dying man to a miracle cure. Nothing he could come up with, nothing Frith could threaten him with, made him even consider the possibility of backing down. If she truly wanted him, he would do anything to have her.

It would be bad with Frith now. It would be bad because of so many reasons. Because White wouldn't obey. Because he wouldn't stay in his place. And because of a secret part of Frith's soul that he had revealed to White, not so long ago. They had never spoken of it again between them; gone and forgotten, as if it hadn't even happened.

But it had happened.

It had been a few months ago; the night before Frith had set off to the south west to recruit Rue.

White had been alone, as usual, sitting at his desk in his teaching room. His last student had just left for the evening, and the letter he had in his hands had been burning a hole in his pocket all day.

‘Bad news?' Frith had asked. He stood in the doorway, lingering hesitantly.

White folded up the letter and put it away. It was from his sister, Cho. There might be a lot of trouble for both of them if her letters were ever intercepted. No need to panic and try to get it out of Frith's sight as quickly as possible – it would only draw his attention to it.

‘You look very tired,' said White. It was shocking how much concern he could force into his voice. Or was it more shocking that he no longer tried as much to feel friendship towards Frith, because now it was second nature? Frith was his friend. His only friend.

‘It was a long trip,' Frith replied, mashing the palms of his hands into his forehead.

‘But successful.'

‘I suppose you heard. She's older than I'd like, but already quite Talented, from what I hear.'

‘Who found her?' said White.

Frith came forwards into the classroom.

‘Sedar, my youngest recruiter. He has an old friend in Border City who is acquainted with her father.'

‘Border City.'

‘You'd know it as New Lyon. Colloquially it's called Border City, just as Capital should officially be Parisette. Or London, as some would have it. Take your pick.'

‘There have been a few from Border City, have there not?'

‘Second largest city after Capital – a higher probability.'

White watched Frith. He really did look tired.

‘Not very many this year,' he said.

‘No. There doesn't appear to be a reason for it, at least not one I can uncover and prevent. There's another I've just heard of. Another girl, apprenticed to a hedgewitch I used to know. She sounds promising, but the situation is delicate.'

‘Why is this?'

Frith gave him a wan smile. ‘The hedgewitch despises me. It will need some careful handling.'

White had a glimpse of Frith's past, a past he did not want to know about. It was one thing to try to puzzle Frith out based on anecdotes and stories – it was another to have it related from the man himself, when he wouldn't even be able to understand Frith's reason for telling him. Because there was always a reason.

‘What about this one that Sedar has found?' White said, carefully attempting to sidestep. ‘She will come?'

‘God, yes. She can't wait to get away. Fortunately for us, her home life is less than satisfactory. Her father is a drunken idiot who might possibly have ruined her. You will see if there is anything to salvage.'

‘Her name?'

‘Tresombres Freya.'

‘That is an old Angle Tar name, no? She must be aristocratic.'

‘It's an Empire family. Unfortunately now fallen to disrepute and a faint sort of poverty. Their house is lovely, though. Almost as large as mine was, growing up. They live out of a tiny corner of it, and the rest of it is rotting away. It's a shame.'

White leaned back in his chair.

‘Are you hungry? You may tell me of it over supper,' he said.

‘No. Do you have a drink here?'

White leaned down and unlocked the deepest of his desk drawers. He kept a stunted bottle of flowered quintaine in there for fainting and vomiting emergencies – unfortunately not that uncommon, especially with students learning to Jump on their own the first few times.

‘I have only one glass,' he said.

Frith produced a cap glass from his person in reply. White couldn't imagine what he was doing with it. There was no possible reason you would walk around with a cap glass in your pocket unless you were an alcoholic.

White poured. Frith talked.

‘It was odd, at first,' he said. ‘There we sat, attempting to tell this pickled fool what exactly the Talent is and why exactly he should let his only daughter go to study with us. It was much like talking to air. I didn't have to tell him about the compulsory law, he already knew, and that was why he was being so unmoving towards us. Loss of power, you see, over her. Unfortunately, Sedar became emotional and pressed the issue. The father had thrown Freya to the floor and drawn a knife before the poor boy could finish his outraged sentence.'

Frith took another pull from his cap glass. He had finished the shot in two swallows, and White silently poured another. It was becoming obvious that Frith had been drunk when he'd arrived here. He was, of course, the sort of man on whom drunk sat as normally as sober. His only tendency, which gave it away, was to talk. White was starting to suspect that when he drank, it was because he wanted to talk, and being drunk was the only way he could do it.

‘What happened?' he said.

Frith said nothing for a long moment. Then he shugged.

‘A bit of a fight. The man managed to get the knife almost to my throat before I disarmed him. We left him tied to the kitchen table. The maid would find him in the morning.'

White watched him.

‘That is very … unusual,' he said. ‘That he got so close to you.'

‘Yes, I suppose so. I reacted too poorly; I had allowed my mind to be somewhere else that evening.'

Frith fell silent again, staring at his cap glass.

‘Will you visit the other?' said White, after a pause.

Frith looked up. ‘I'm sorry?'

‘The other. The one in the care of the hedgewitch.'

‘Yes. Yes. I must do it. I'm going tomorrow morning.'

Frith stared into the fire.

White wondered. Frith had never hesitated in recruiting someone before. Neither had he ever mentioned some country hedgewitch with such apparent power. Frith had never been one to show his fear like this, or his weaknesses.

Out loud, he said, ‘What is her name? The witch apprentice?'

‘Vela Rue.'

‘You are finding more commons, these days.'

‘I suppose they were always there. My network is spread a little thinner in the country, as you might understand. It's more difficult to gauge out there – there are no recruitment halls, as there are in the cities. Communication is poorer. It's a very different life.'

‘You sound like you know it well,' said White, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I had thought you were from Parisette.'

‘Well, yes, but our main house was out in the country, though that's not quite the same thing. But I used to summer in various backwater villages, on occasion. My mother had decided it would be good to broaden my experience of life. In other words, she wished me to live with common folk, to understand them better.'

White said nothing. He suspected the quieter he became, the more Frith would talk.

He was right.

‘And so, one place she sent me to, I would have been about sixteen, was a little village in Bretagnine. Do you know Bretagnine?'

White shook his head.

‘It's an area in the far south west of Angle Tar. Its original name, back before the French, was Kernow. The village was called Tregenna, a very old name. During the French years it was officially changed to a French designation, as with everywhere, but the locals completely ignored the new name and it remained Tregenna. And probably will for ever after.

‘I had become used to these summers by now, if not happy about them, and I went for a month, which feels like a lifetime when you're young. I lived with an old Kernow family – this family was particularly old, they could trace their lineage for many hundreds of years. If they had money they would have had the status of my own family, but they didn't, so no one cared. My mother always placed me with such families, her thinking being that I would at least be mixing with the very best sort of commoner.

‘Poltern, that was their name. I helped on their farm – they had pigs, cows, chickens. Their produce was quite famous, locally – people visited most days to buy eggs, or dried ham, or milk and cream. It was very hard work. It was the first time I understood the gulf between those such as I and the rest of the population. How we depended on all these unknown people for our survival. That was the lesson my mother wanted me to learn, and I did.

‘I took my books and studies with me to work on the rare times when I had an hour or two to myself. They were not unkind, you understand. They were practical. In their eyes, you worked to live, and you lived to work. Books were distractions. Fanciful learning was pointless. It produced nothing of value. So they could not quite grasp my frequent need to be alone and read about subjects they had never heard of and couldn't care for at all. Most of the village was the same. The only person who interested me was the local hedgewitch.

‘I'd never encountered one before. Our family had its own doctor, of course, and hedgewitches are ten a franc in the cities, but by reputation alone they're reserved for the poor or desperate. You know how they're seen.

‘In the country it's completely different, I assure you. With your local hedgewitch rests the future health of you and your family. They help new mothers give birth, and are often last call for those on their way to death. They keep the village secrets, and know more about everyone than everyone else does.

‘The Tregenna hedgewitch was called Penhallow Fern, and whenever anyone spoke of her it was with a variety of emotions, but it was also always with respect. To have such power over swathes of people naturally drew my intense curiosity. I tried very hard to find an excuse to visit her, but one does not visit a witch's house unless one has need, and I never did.

‘Then I had a touch of luck, if you like. I was working in the cow stalls, clearing them out while they were to pasture. One was sick and wouldn't be moved from her stall, no matter how anyone tried, so I had to work around her as best I could. She stepped on my hand as I was shovelling hay on the ground, and had sat back to rest for a moment.

‘The pain was intense. I kept screaming and brought a worker running, one of the Poltern sons. Hammet; that was his name. He was enormous – they all were, like men made out of boulders. He stood me up and forced me to walk the mile or so to her house, even though I cried and protested the whole way. I wasn't a brave child, I must confess. Eventually we reached this small cottage set back on its own. He hammered on the door, and it opened, and there stood this boy.'

Frith paused, then. The sudden silence was startling. White realised he had been leaning forward, fascinated, and sat back.

Frith poured himself another drink, took in a deep breath of its scent, sipped, and continued.

‘This boy was about my age, I supposed, and even slighter than me. He was brown, nut brown, and had big, glittering eyes, like an animal. He looked us up and down with an amused face and asked us what was wrong. Hammet told him my hand had been crushed by a cow hoof, and the boy laughed. Have you ever been laughed at while in pain?'

Yes, thought White.

‘It's a very humiliating experience. The boy led us inside and explained that Zelle Penhallow was not there at present, but that he could mend my hand, and what would we be offering as payment? Hammet said that the boy's mistress could have her pick of their newest crop of hens, if she wished. The boy agreed that it was a good price and then he sat me down. I'd only been half-listening to their exchange. I couldn't concentrate on much beyond the pain in my hand. But what I had heard made me want to strangle this cocky boy in front of me, treating my pain as if it were a childish phase I was having.