Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Truth

I reached out, but he simply stepped into a gap in the air. He was gone, and my mind went blank of his presence. I reached out with my mind, but he was blocking me. I could feel the barrier, but Draco was hidden. I howled like an animal, and flung myself melodramatically to the ground. Apate sat up, still shaking, and put her hand to my shoulder. I turned my tear-stained face to her.

`What happened?´ she whispered.

`He´s gone,´ I choked.

`What is this?´ she asked. `Do you know him?´

`Yes,´ I said. There was no point in lying.

She shook her head, and took it in. `What happened then?´ she asked, pointing to where Malfoy had thrown her off.

`He´s a little touchy about his father. I haven´t found out much,´ I told her, fighting the little demon inside that wanted to throw me on the floor and have a tantrum.

`I gathered,´ she said. The poor girl looked very shaken. I was hardly in a sympathetic state, though. `What did you do to him? Why has he gone?´

God she was full of questions. `I took control of his body,´ I said. `I think that pissed him off.´

`It would piss me off,´ she said reasonably, but I wasn´t feeling very empathic at that moment. What had I done to him that he hadn´t been doing to me for ten years? He had no right to storm off like that. It was from him that I had originally got the idea. Could I tell Apate?

`What´s wrong?´ she frowned. We were both sitting with our legs over the edge of the wall now.

`Can I trust you?´ I asked flatly, looking right into her eyes. She swallowed and nodded. `I mean really trust you. This isn´t some game.´ She nodded, harder this time. She was really sure.

`Okay,´ I said. `Well, it´s a little complicated.´

I told her everything. It may well have been a mistake, but she´s never used it against me. I don´t know if she really wanted all that thrust upon her, but I trusted her more than I trusted myself. Someone had to know. Malfoy was already a part of me, and I held no tales aloof. He could use whatever he wanted, but I couldn´t control that. Somehow the thought that I could tell Apate whatever I wanted, and leave out that which I never wanted her to know made me feel better. I could control her knowledge, and I needed to control something pliable at that point.

She listened, not exactly avidly, but with attention. She took in what I said. She may have judged me, but she never let on. Even when I told her about all the people I had killed, she stayed quiet. There are no words to thank her for that.

`You have been busy,´ she marvelled when I was done.

`I´m so sorry for lying to you,´ I said. It was the best I could do in place of all the lies and pain I had caused.

`I wouldn´t have said either,´ she told me, smiling. `It´s good of you to say at all.´ She patted my shoulder. `I can´t hate you for what you´ve done. If you´re looking for someone to hate you and punish you, look elsewhere.´

`Why?´ I frowned, lifting my face to look at her.

`Because none of it was really you,´ she said fondly. `We´ll reverse this,´ she assured me fervently. `You can get rid of all he´s done to you.´

`I love him,´ I said. I couldn´t hold off the glee at what she said. Someone didn´t care. Someone wanted to help.

`We all love,´ she said. `We all love and we all hate. We all have the urge to kill people sometimes. It´s not an important division between acting and thinking. People will tell you otherwise, but then they say that it´s the thought that counts. You can love someone in your mind, and you will love him no more or less than if you were married to him. You can hate a person in your mind, and you will hate them no more or less than if you hit them in the face. You can want to kill them, and you can want them out of your life, but when they are it doesn´t heal anything. You still feel the same. Acting is nothing to thought.´

She was so wise. I cried, I´d admit it clearly here. She wrapped me in her arms and held me while I cried my soul out.

`You killed them because of your thought,´ she told me softly. `Your thought was planted by Malfoy.´ I had never thought of that. I thought it had been me, but I wasn´t at that stage attuned to the feeling of planted thoughts. He used me. A fresh wave of rage surged over me like a hot flush. I clenched my hands and my nails dug into my palms.

`We´ll go to your father,´ she said, lifting me to my feet. `He´ll know what to do. Are you up to telling it all again?´

I shook my head. `He already knows.´

`And he did nothing?´ she asked incredulously, raising her eyebrows.

`He was busy,´ I shrugged, weakly fending off the feeling that no one really had time for me.

`He should never be busy when you need him!´ she shrilled. `Come with me!´

She marched me down from the wall and across the court into the main building. We pushed past the guards; I was starting to get into the swing again. The ceiling suddenly vanished, and we stood in the main hall. Rhodry stood by his throne, talking to one of the bodyguards, Balthasar, I think. Isn´t it odd that I´ve never thought of him as `father´? I don´t know him enough.

`Kelwaedd,´ Apate yelled. She´s never been one for titles. `We need a chat.´

He turned away and came to the rail. `Who are you?´ he asked rudely. We had clearly interrupted something.

`Apate Reynard, EKD1. You should know this person,´ she said, touching a hand to my head.

`What are you doing here, and no, who is she?´

`She´s your daughter, Rae Kelwaedd, EKD3. We need to talk about something privately.´ She was pouting indignantly now, and I was embarrassed.

`Oh yes. Well, I´m busy right now,´ he dismissed us.

`Are you?´ she said blandly. `Shame.´ She turned us right around and walked out again. I was puzzled beyond reason until I heard him shout after us.

`Wait! I´ll just finish here, then I´ll talk to you.´ He was leaning firmly on the rail looking very guilty. `Show them to my quarters,´ he told Balthasar.

I had an odd feeling, a sort of pressing in the back of my throat and a tingle along my shoulder blades. Nothing really profound, but when I think about it I can remember it very clearly. We followed the silent bodyguard up the frozen escalators and out of the noisy hall. He led us wordlessly down a grey, smooth and empty corridor. You know the sort of thing I mean? The ceiling´s so high in such a thin space that it looks as though the walls will cave out and anything could be up at the top because you sure as hell can´t see. There´s a glimmer that might be heating pipes and an accompanying buzz, but the light that dazzles you in reflections from the shiny dark grey floor doesn´t reach far enough to tell. The walls are a pale grey that makes you think you might have turned colour blind. The only splash of true colour in the room was my ginger-brown hair and even that wasn´t real. That´s what it is. Unreal. The whole place feels like something that´s not quite right.

The feeling of suspended reality followed me, with the prickling shoulders and now a tight chest, all the way down the humming corridor. We were only twenty or so feet from the end of the hall when the prickling became a stabbing and it was more than I could brush off. I grabbed Apate by the scruff of the neck and flung us both to the ground. Balthasar threw himself against the wall and I heard a whistling of sliced air, then a thud. Balthasar growled and ran past us, leaping effortlessly over our heads and away.

I laid low for a minute, allowing the numb tingling throb in my cheek to cool itself against the lino. I licked around my teeth to check all was present and correct and tasted the metallic tang of blood on my tongue. I swore and pulled myself to my knees. I spat angrily and a glob of spit hit the floor, marbled with red. I cursed and wiped my lips with a cuff. Apate looked at me strangely and sat back on her heels.

`What was that?´ she whispered, looking around us.

But I had already seen. I stood up slowly and walked to the wall at the far end. I reached out a shaking hand to close around the cold hilt of the dagger and jerk its tip out of the plaster. I didn´t have to turn and sight the line of the dagger from the spot on the wall. I knew already at whom it had been aimed. My position, marked by the spot of blood, lined perfectly with the chip in the plaster and the smear of rubber from the shoes of one making a hasty retreat. It was not Balthasar´s; his shoes had tapped on the way up. Steel-toed and brown soled: regulation for members of the Guard. I hefted the knife in my palm and made my slightly shaky way over to the smears. Black rubber.

I don´t intend, at this point, to sound like some kind of cheesy detective. You don´t spend ten or eleven years running from the police and not learn a few tricks. I licked my finger and touched it gingerly to the smears. They didn´t peel up. It was a fresh one. The person who threw this had made them. My heart was thumping and stopping as it pleased. I knew what I would see as I looked down at the knife: I had seen it before, but I knew it. It had been pressed to my throat in an alley on the outskirts of the Waste, where a canal of dank water lay on the uneven road surface, and grimy washing hung from the windows. The dagger had had a curved midline and a hooked point. The hilt was wire-bound but slightly unravelled near the top. It had been wound up again and tied with strips of twine. I knew the knife, and I knew the shoes, and I knew who owned them both. I knew, also, that he would never let anyone else have them.

`Always do a job properly, Meggy. If you can´t do it yourself, it isn´t worth the hassle.´

Yes, Meggy. Not worth the hassle. Obviously I was. I fingered the sharp ends of the wire that poked through the orange nylon string. I recalled the brush of that against my skin as I pulled the blade away from my throat.

I recalled its owner lying in the dirt. I recalled Malfoy sneering at him as we stood in the hall...

`Rae?´ Apate tapped my shoulder, jerking me out of my reverie. `Rae, what is it?´

`Someone tried to kill me,´ I said feebly, then collapsed under a wave of tears. I fell against her, and she held onto me as I cried.

`How do you know?´ she asked.

`It lines up,´ I said, pointing to the line on the wall, my blood and the point we stood on.

She didn´t bother reasoning with me. I had always been right when I got those `Tinglers´, even when we had lived in the sewers. If someone had unfriendly thoughts about me, I could always feel it and I had never yet been wrong: one good thing about me that really was my own. Malfoy wasn´t here to plant it this time. That thought set me off crying again, and it was a while before they subsided.

`Do you know who it was?´ Apate pressed.

`Yes,´ I mumbled. `My father.´

`If I didn´t know you, Rae, your life would be so fucked up it´s funny,´ she smiled. I grinned, forcing back the notion of one´s own family wanting to murder one.

There was no conventional way to go back that wouldn´t pass through the hall, but we were born to improvise. I broke into a room with a window overlooking the court and pulled the latch open. I stuck my head out and found it buffeted in a gentle breeze. I pocketed the dagger, not sure how to use it yet. There would be some clever way to get my own back, and if not I could always resort to killing him.

I glanced up and found a wide ledge. There would be no trouble at all to climb the window frame from the sill and get up there. Then one could make one´s way to the end of the building and go down the guttering. I´m sure you can picture the process, and I´ve done it all before so there´s no need to comment. It isn´t the task at hand.

We dropped to the floor on the other side and went immediately back to our spot on the wall without even discussing it. I sank down to sit on the dusty stones and peer over the parapet at the entranceway. It was a long, massive shaft slanting slightly down into the city. I sighed theatrically, although unintentionally, and slumped against the little barrier.

`What are we going to do with you?´ Apate smiled, patting my hand. I was fingering the dagger point, wiping it clean, and didn´t notice her.

`Do you mind if I go to sleep?´ I asked her suddenly, looking up. `I´m really tired.´

She blinked, then nodded. `Do you want someone to come with you, protect you? You could ask around EKD3,´ she offered. I nodded. I felt like I needed someone to talk to who didn´t know me inside out. `There´s a girl I know who calls herself Alethea. She´s nice.´

`I think I know her,´ I nodded.

`I´ll take you,´ she said. It was essentially an order, and she immediately took my arm and marched me to EKD3 Hotel while she stared around suspiciously. I blushed and crumpled mentally. This was totally unnecessary.

I tapped the code into the door and it slid open. She dragged me into the lobby and went straight to the desk.

`Can you tell us where Alethea´s room is?´ she asked the porter, leaning over the wide desk and hiding her mouth. She obviously thought it was much more serious than I did.

`Level four, tenth room,´ he said promptly, and went back to shuffling his files importantly. Apate nodded once and took me to the lift, checking the corners for bombs or homicidal assassin mice before allowing me to step in. I went to press the metal buttons but she blocked my path and I had to stand in the very centre of the dark veneered box while she jammed `4´ hard with one finger and checked the light fittings and handrail for concealed murderous oddities.

I made a grunt of protest but she sh-ed me, and I stood in total silence all the way up to the fourth floor. Now she seemed to think it was dangerous I started getting scared. If it was bad enough for Apate to be worried, maybe I should be too. We advanced along the hallway with our hands subconsciously on our weapons. Door ten loomed and Apate knocked it twice sharply. The moment it opened she shoved it through and hurled me behind her, slamming the door. I stumbled across the room and fell over the chair.

A tall girl I instantaneously knew to be a Warrior like me stood against the door, listening with rapt attention to Apate´s account of what happened. She was incredibly pale with waist length black hair wrapped into a plait and eyes the colour of snow clouds.

`Apate, you overdo things,´ she said in a low, quiet voice once Apate was done. `Nice to meet you,´ she smiled to me, holding out her hand. I stood up, put the chair back the right way up again, and extended my own. She shook it firmly, and grinned. `Alethea,´ she said, by way of introduction.

`Rae,´ I replied.

`Kelwaedd,´ she added simply. I liked her minimal speech. It was just what I needed now.

`Yes,´ I said. `It trails after me like a sick puppy.´

She smiled, but didn´t laugh. I felt a little crestfallen, but shrugged it off.

`I don´t have any lineage that anyone remembers,´ she shrugged.

I chose not to ask questions. If she wouldn´t ask them then nor would I.

`I´ll leave you to it,´ Apate excused herself, peering through the keyhole to ensure that no one saw her leave.

`Apate,´ Alethea laughed. `Never know what she´ll do next.´

`That fits,´ I nodded, grinning. `How do you know her?´

`I was helping out, special department, when the Diagon Rebels were invaded,´ she told me, showing her wristband with its silver crest.

I felt a wave of guilt like freezing water rush over me.

`Where were you?´ she asked. The question I had dreaded. `I thought you were one of them.´

`I was,´ I said quietly. `When was it?´ I had never heard anything.

`Oh...´ Her eyes grew distant. `It must have been about February.´

`I was away,´ I said. I didn´t mention where. To be honest, I couldn´t remember. It was August now, too long ago.

`I heard you killed Malfoy?´ she said suddenly, her eyes alight.

`I did,´ I winced.

`But he´s here?´ she said coldly, her eyes going flat.

`No,´ I said bitterly. `He went away today. He was here, though.´

She grunted. `What made him leave?´

`Me,´ I muttered.

`Good on you!´ she said, clapping me on the back.

I couldn´t be bothered to explain, so I pleaded tiredness and borrowed a huge T-shirt to wear to sleep. Alethea, without comment, helped me set up a bed from duvets and cushions on the floor next to her. It was dark outside now, and I was fairly tired. She smiled to me, then went into her bathroom to change into her pyjamas. I curled up in the blankets, resting my head on my hand. I turned my back to Alethea and tried to close my eyes. I couldn´t. The day raced through my head. Draco had been right there, and then I lost him by some stupid mistake. Why had he gone, and where? Was even here safe for me anymore? What was I? Why did people want to kill me? Why did they use me for the spell? There was any number of urchins wandering around. I was full of questions, but the only one who knew enough to answer was me. Everyone else had gaps as wide as an estuary in their knowledge. I was the only one who had been there all the way. Even Malfoy didn´t know as much as me, and I only had life in me to ask one person. If I asked the wrong one I could be killed. I wasn´t sure who it was, but I thought it was my father. I couldn´t risk that, though. Malfoy could have done it. I didn´t, don´t, pretend to know him fully. No one ever could.

But why did I have to be the one who needed to know him most of all?