Pasha’s voice in my head. You taught me that, that this is what we are and we should be proud of it. So stop thinking otherwise. We need these kids, all of them, and they need us to show them. It’s us, all together. This is your way back into the world, instead of being apart from it. Remember that.
Yes, Ma, I thought back and he laughed. But he was right, and I knew it.
“So, you saw all that,” I said to Allit, “and that shows to me at least you really do see true, at least some of it. I thought only I knew what happened between me and my father, but you saw me join him too and that didn’t happen.” I pondered on that for a moment. “So you saw when I, we, took the pain factory down?”
Allit shook his head. “No, before, a couple of days before, I think. Then I saw you and Pasha do all these different things, and it was blurry, but they were all… real? Only I didn’t know what it was I was seeing to start with so I didn’t know what it meant. Then I saw you and the Glow, and that was clear as anything, like I was there. At first I thought it was some dream perhaps, but then we came Upside and everyone was talking about mages and what had happened to the Glow so I knew it had really happened. I saw things after too, a couple more times when I hurt myself. So I thought maybe it was, you know, magic, only I didn’t want it to be, because of the mages at the factory. Because of when I saw you.”
“Show me,” Pasha said. “Remember it and show me.”
So Allit shut his eyes and Pasha twisted a knuckle and cocked his head as though he was listening.
“Well?” I said when Allit opened his eyes.
“Odd – I’m not sure he saw you from a distance, exactly, but he saw you all right. Goddess’s tits, I never realised – no wonder he was scared of you. I’m starting to think I should be.”
I shrugged that away. “So is he farseeing? Or what? What about all those things he saw that didn’t happen? If he isn’t farseeing, then what is he doing? What’s he seeing?”
“Look, I’ve known a few mages, more than you perhaps, from the ’Pit. I’ve seen men who could fly, men who could control fire, men like your father who could make others do things by the power of their voice, all manner of things. Who knows if there are any limits to what can happen, what we can do? Each mage is different, you know that. He saw you in the factory, but he saw you before you did it, and he saw lots of things that might have happened, how it might have turned out only it didn’t. What if… what if…”
I knew what he was about to say and opened my mouth to say something cutting, like that was stupid thinking, but stopped just in time. What if it wasn’t stupid?
“What does it mean?” Allit sounded panicky.
“Goddess’s tits,” Pasha said.
Quite. “What it means, I think,” I said, “is that you’re not just seeing far away, sometimes you’re seeing a different when. You can see the future.”
Chapter Seven
“So what you’re saying is, yes, he can farsee, but then again, it might not be now that he’s seeing?” Perak asked.
“That’s about it,” I said, though the latest boom-shudder almost drowned me out.
We were holed up in the lab again, and Perak kept fiddling with the pain rig as we talked – he might be Archdeacon but he was always going to be an engineer first. I was beginning to wonder when he was sleeping, when he was doing anything at all except be Archdeacon. He had a daughter, a niece I’d still not met, and I had to wonder if he ever saw her either.
I was pleased to see this news energised him though, brought a bit of life back to his eyes. “So those machines are definitely on their way, or will be, but we can’t say for sure when? They might be further away, but then again they might be closer?”
He stopped fiddling and started to pace, his hands gripping his hair like he was trying to pull the answer out of his head.
“Namrat’s bollocks, Rojan.” When the Archdeacon uses words like that, you know you’re in trouble. “All right. This can still work – mine and Lise’s little plan. We need to be sure how close the machines are. Is there any way Allit or anyone else can pin it down? Are they coming over the pass now, next week, or did they come yesterday?”
“We can’t give you anything reliable,” Pasha said from where he was leaning up against the pain rig and watching Jake with that contented smile on his face. She caught him watching and there was a hint of a blush on her cool façade, which just made him smile more. At least someone was happy. “I can’t reach that far, I’ve tried. Allit – maybe in time he’ll be able to be more precise. For the moment, he thinks it’s either now, or very close to. Things seem to get blurry and vague when they’re too far forward, from what I can tell.”