Traitors, p.37
Traitors, page 37
“Any troubles?”
“None at all. We are all free to go.” Santiago’s grin grew. “I was wondering if you were going to go without us.”
Diate smiled. He still needed the rebels, although they didn’t know how. They would find out that night. “I need you,” he said.
Santiago shook his head. “You did to get here. You’re here now. You don’t need us any longer.”
“But I do,” he said. “Getting here was just the beginning.”
Santiago smiled. “We have time then,” he said. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
Diate stared at him for a moment. He had thought to use these hours to get used to the Kingdom, to reaccustom himself to the way of life here.
The wind carried the familiar scents of pine and incense. The smells made his restlessness increase. He was still stuck in that panic that he had felt when he left the Kingdom. Still afraid that around any corner, someone would appear who wanted to kill him.
Good. It would keep him alert.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll follow you.”
Santiago led him through back alleys and a dozen quiet streets. The village was bigger on the ground than it looked in the air. Sometimes the houses were the size of Beltar’s store, the artwork decorating them more ornate. And sometimes, they were tiny boxes, with children’s drawings glued to the windows. The front exit from the ports opened onto a residential street. But the back, where Santiago led him, housed the pilots and the support staff.
Locked fences and barbed gates surrounded the compounds. These buildings were drab grays with no decorations at all. Some lawns had toys—apparently the pilots were allowed to have children—but the playthings were the only sign of disarray. A shudder ran down Diate’s back. The Kingdom walled off the foreigners for a different reason: it didn’t want to protect them; it wanted to keep them away from the community itself.
Just past the pilots’ barracks, a glass building stood three stories high. It overlooked the rest of the town, and towered above the trees that blocked a view of the ground floor. Diate had seen buildings like this before. As a boy, he had visited one for nearly a year. Governmental training centers. Talent Houses. The name varied from community to community, but the purpose was the same: to find and develop Talents, for the greater glory of the Kingdom.
“What’s here?” he asked.
“You’ll see.” Santiago led Diate down a narrow brick path. The bricks had been arranged by color—dark red near the sidewalk, tapering to a white by the door. Smart move on the designers’ part. Not only was the look attractive, but it made the gathering of footprints easy. Unwanted guests could be tracked. Literally.
Diate followed Santiago up two wooden stairs to the front door. A young woman, her body flowing in mid-jeté—legs spread above the ground, torso arched, arms in second position, head thrown back in pure enjoyment—was etched into the glass. She was opaque, but otherwise so real that Diate thought he could touch her.
Santiago ran his finger alongside the doorjamb. The door swung open, revealing a carved oak hall. They stepped inside. The air was cooler here. The interior was done in glass and greenery. All of the glass was etched, all of the plants artfully arranged. Even the tiles on the floor were made of glass. Diate looked down, and saw the rooms below them like a scale model of a building. He looked up, and felt as if he were a small child, hiding beneath the furniture.
As far as he could tell, they were alone.
“Come on,” Santiago said. He pushed on the glass, revealing a mirrored surface. With the flick of a finger, he touched the side of the mirror. It swung open, revealing a flight of wooden stairs.
Diate glanced around. No one could see inside this room. For all its surface openness, the building had hidden secrets. The smell of incense grew stronger, and voices echoed, deadened a little by the wooden walls.
The stairs creaked beneath his weight. As they got close to the bottom, Santiago reached up and took Diate’s hand. Something popped as the illusion disappeared around him.
He gasped. “Santiago—”
“We’re among friends,” Santiago said.
But Diate had no way of knowing that. Had Santiago betrayed him? To what end?
Three steps from the bottom, he stopped. A dozen people were scattered around a small room. The room’s walls were made of carved wood. The figures in the walls were all wearing long robes and had their hands reaching to the sky. The people inside the room also wore long robes, most a starry blue, and their conversation stopped when they saw Diate.
He scanned the faces. The ages varied, but they all had one thing in common. A silver dot on the bridge of the nose. He didn’t recognize any of them until he looked at the last face. Torrie, the magic user. An old fear rose within him. “I thought you said we were among friends.”
Torrie stood. She had been sitting on a cushion near the paneled walls. She looked the same as she always had. “I am a friend, Emilio. You just never realized it.”
“Friend?” He said the word with such force that spittle flew from his lips. “You had me captured on the Vorgellian ship.”
“Yes,” she said. “A ship that was taking you to Rulanda, the Kingdom’s favorite vacation spot. No one would have helped you there. They were all too afraid of losing their commissions. I knew Sehan. He wouldn’t kill you, and I trusted the Golgoth. He wanted peace more than any of us.”
Diate’s back stiffened. Santiago had stepped aside so that Diate could go the rest of the way down the stairs. Santiago looked like himself again. He felt no need to hide among these people.
“What am I doing here?” Diate asked.
“You’ll see.” Santiago sat on the steps, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Join us, Emilio,” Torrie said.
His heart was pounding in his throat. This was the kind of thing he had hoped to avoid. Being trapped in a small place, with people he feared. He walked down the remaining steps. The light was brighter at the base of the stairs. Magic Talents. He had heard as a boy that they all knew each other and worked with each other, but he had never believed it. Other Talents competed and tried to drive each other out.
“I can’t join you,” he said, leaving the sarcasm in his voice. “I am but a simple dancer, and nothing—not even Santiago’s illusions—will give me the power to join you.”
“You are not a simple dancer. You are the Rogue Talent, the only Talent to ever leave this place alive, and do something beyond your destiny. Do you know what power that gives you?” Torrie waved her hand. The sleeve on her robe wavered as if it were in a small breeze.
“Where does that give me power?”
Torrie smiled. Her face cascaded into wrinkles. Suddenly her age appeared. She no longer had youth to buoy her up. “You have the power of romance, the power of legend, the power of myth. We’re prepared to help you use it, Emilio.”
“What do you gain from that?”
Torrie turned. A man sat on a stool in the back, one foot on a lower rung, one on a higher. Diate hadn’t noticed him before. The man had long silver hair that flowed to his waist, and a beard that matched it in length.
“We are the underbelly of the Talent system,” the man said. “The secret, misunderstood group that takes what bones the government throws us. We make no tangible art objects, we write no books, we give no performances. Our Talent is subtle and feared.”
Diate knew that. He remembered the conversations, the hushed whispers as Magic Talents walked through their public displays. His fear, when Torrie unmasked him, his fear that the Magic Talents would find him anywhere. And—
You didn’t tell me you could shape-shift.
I can’t! It’s just an illusion that breaks with touch…
You fooled me.
—His own anger based in fear. These people could be anything they wanted, do anything they wanted, hurt anyone they wanted.
“See?” the man said, a smile tugging at his beard. “Even you fear us.”
Diate opened his mouth to deny it, then thought the better of it. He didn’t know the level of Talent in the room. He had avoided Magic Talents all his life until Santiago. And Santiago had not explained to him all that Magic Talents could do.
“I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“We have sideways abilities,” the man said. “Some have the ability to see the future; others the truth of the past. A few of us can persuade, gently and convincingly, so convincingly that the subject believes it is his idea. And some of us can see into the corners of other people’s minds.”
Diate crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t care that his body showed his fear. If they could read minds, they would know it. “Who are you?” he asked the man.
The man smiled. “I am you.”
Diate peered at him. The resemblance was there: the slenderness, the dancer’s strength. The silver hair.
His shaking grew worse. “I have no magic talent.”
“You have never been tested for them,” the man said. “Your father feared Magic Talents more than anything else.”
With justification. He would have feared them more had he known the kind of power they had in his son’s life. “You cannot be me,” Diate said. “I am standing right here.”
“And you cannot touch me,” the man in the corner said. “For we are in different planes and different places. But I figured only I could be the one to convince you.”
Diate didn’t want to be convinced. He didn’t want to talk to this man any more. “Of what?”
“To follow the path chosen for you. To stay in the light. If you go alone, you will die. If you go directly to the palace, you will lose yourself. Go to Rico’s tonight. Listen to the others, here. They want to help you.”
Diate walked past the other Magic Talents. Their robes brushed against his feet. He tried not to touch anyone. He didn’t want more surprises. A few people cleared out of his way as he approached the man. Diate placed his hand on the man’s shoulders, but his fingers went through as if the man weren’t there at all.
“So now you believe,” the man said with a laugh. He raised the sleeve on his left arm, revealing a crooked silver scar.
“This is magic. Someone else is doing this.” Diate said. He whirled. “Who is creating this illusion?”
No one answered. The man chuckled. Diate faced him again.
“It is magic,” the man said. “But magic I control. Your eyes lie, Emilio, and they always have.”
The man faded like darkness before light. Even the stool was gone. Diate stood in the vacant spot. His shaking had grown worse. “That made no sense,” he said to Torrie. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“We’re trying to get you to follow destiny.”
“In my father’s footsteps?”
Torrie shook her head. “Your father was a fool. He defied the authority of the state without understanding it.”
“Now you want me to defy it even though I understand it?”
“We want you to take it over.” Her voice was soft.
Diate leaned against the paneled wall. The curved wood dug into his back. He had never had any intention of ruling. “You can see the future. You have sideways power. Why don’t you do it?”
“Because we don’t have your power. Santiago explained this to you. When you dance, Emilio, you woo the crowd. When you speak, you can do the same. It is a special kind of Talent, one that goes unrecognized here because if it were acknowledged, the competition for leadership here would grow even stronger. But the Minister of Culture always tests for charisma as well as everything else. Your family wasn’t singled out just because of your father, Emilio.”
The wood supported him even more. “What do you mean?”
Torrie shrugged. “You had Talent in the dance, but you also had Talent in leadership. If the government didn’t separate you from your father, you might have tried to topple them as you realized your power. They thought, crudely I might add, that slaughtering your family would frighten you and make you do as they say. They didn’t understand your strengths. They still don’t.”
“If I work for you, what do you gain?”
“We gain a future,” Torrie said. “Right now, we are bargain-basement talents, our greatest skills ignored by the people who need them most. You would not rule as a dictator, but as part of a team. That team, for the first time in this country’s history, would include us.”
“So I would become your figurehead.”
A man stood beside Torrie. She put a hand on his arm, as if to restrain him. “No,” she said. “You would do what this country has needed for a long time. You would change its economic base. You can’t do that without us.”
Diate let out a small laugh. This situation had gotten too strange for him. The fact that he was listening to her babble frightened him. “One man can’t change the economic base of a nation. You realize that even if I could, it would mean economic collapse, poverty, starvation, not to mention the threat of takeover from Golga and other countries nearby.”
“We can prevent the takeover,” Torrie said. “A country is vulnerable when it looks weak to the outside. We can raise an illusion, make this country look strong to visitors until the crisis is over.”
“But that doesn’t solve the internal problems. People would starve, Torrie.”
She shook her head. “Some of us can see various possible futures. We can prevent the bulk of the starvations. And the Kingdom has a treasure trove that the current government is unwilling to sell.”
Diate’s hands were clammy. He pressed them against the wall and felt them stick. “What?”
“The artifacts we have stolen over the years and made our own. Most countries have offered sizable rewards for those goods.”
“They wouldn’t give those rewards to the people who stole the goods in the first place.”
“It wouldn’t be the same people,” Torrie said. “New government, new people. We would return them to show the corruption of the previous regime.”
“You’re crazy,” he said.
“No. We’re determined.”
“Why me? Why now?”
Torrie sighed. She ran a hand through her white hair. “You have always been our greatest hope, Emilio. You and Sheba. We do not see the future. We see possible futures. Until Rulanda, we thought you were going to rule together. Then when the Golgoth accepted the bid for the Peace Festival, the old Queen would have died, you and Sheba would have taken over, the Golgoth would have lived, and there would have been peace between our countries, and a future for the Kingdom.”
He forced himself to breathe slowly. The strangeness, the manipulation, the interference in his life, was almost more than he could bear. “Your meddling caused that,” he said. “You said, ‘your woman is dying,’ and I went to Martina, and Sheba thought I didn’t care for her.”
“I meant to bring you closer. I meant Sheba. She was losing herself. She has lost herself.” Torrie started to say.
Diate stared at her for a moment. “You’re so effective, Torrie. If you can see the future, then you should have known that would throw us apart.”
Torrie looked down. “I can’t see everything.”
“No, you can’t. And you make things worse,” Diate said. “You went to see Martina, and I wouldn’t let you in. You said, we’re glad she’s finally doing her job. What was her job, Torrie?”
“Martina no longer matters to us.”
“Well, she matters to me!” Diate took a step toward Torrie. Immediately four Magic Talents surrounded her.
“You’re not going to touch me, Emilio,” Torrie said.
He stopped, and clenched his fists. “So I do scare you.”
She nodded a little. The Talents moved away. “I know what you can do.”
“Then tell me about Martina.” He was breathing heavily.
“All right.” Torrie leaned against a cushion. “She left us. She had been a part of this group—we need all the Class-A Magicians we can get—but she repudiated us. She didn’t like the way we focused our energies on you. Ironic, isn’t it, the way you became friends?”
“You planned that?” His voice came out as a whisper. “You planned our friendship?”
“No.” Torrie clasped her hands together. “I should have seen her on Rulanda. She warned you away from us. She was a true friend to you, Emilio. If you had listened to her, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Where you want me. Where you tried to manipulate me.” His tone rose with each word. “You thought you could control me, but you were so inept that you ruined everything. You’re the one who destroyed my relationship with Sheba, Torrie.”
“I think you did that on your own,” Torrie said.
“No,” Diate said. “She betrayed me, Torrie, and left me to die because of you. Because she thought I loved Martina.”
“Do you really believe that?” Torrie asked. “That she left you because of love?”
Her words stopped him, even though he didn’t want to hear them. “What else could it have been?”
Torrie smiled. “For all your living, you are naive, Detective. She left you because she had business. She left you because you found her smugglers. She left you because, at that time, she didn’t know how to use you.”
He was shaking. She had come back for him. That proved that she loved him.
“I had nothing to do with her,” Torrie said. “I take credit for my successes—and my failures.”
Diate swallowed. He had to make himself move forward. “You want me to believe that?” he said. “You want me to work with you, with all of you, so that you can meddle with this country? I don’t think so. The only examples I have of your work are bad ones. I see no reason to work with you.”
“We saved your life,” Torrie said softly. “Twice.”
Diate made himself breathe. “You saved my life once, Torrie. And I would debate your intentions. For all you know, the Golgoth would have killed me.”
“Believe what you want, Emilio,” Torrie said, “but we need each other.”
“We do? You want me to agree to that based on the words of an old man who disappeared?” Diate laughed. “That man wasn’t me. That was one of you, casting an illusion.”
