Splintered Sight (Shattered World Book 3), page 19
A moment of exasperation pinched Jasper’s lips together; he was annoyed with himself, Viv thought, for admitting to too much. “I have…inconvenient and necessary calculations to make,” he said, stretching one long leg almost unconsciously out into the sunshine. “I find it best to do so alone to avoid distractions—and you are steadily becoming more and more of a distraction.”
If she had been Luca—or BoRa—she probably would have grinned and thanked him. She was not, however; she was Viv, and she had a small, cold, logical voice in the back of her head that suggested now was a good time to ask questions that had a good chance of being answered.
This, in fact, was Jasper with his guard down somewhat. And that was a rare thing.
“Yes, you do seem a bit distracted this week,” she said, accepting the teacup he pushed towards her. “BoRa thinks you’re deliberately trying to distract yourself from something you don’t want to think about. Luca thinks you’re plotting how to get back into the good graces of Forex.”
Jasper smiled faintly. “He’s not entirely wrong,” he said. He stretched his leg a bit further into the sunshine, and Viv had the impression that he relaxed very slightly. He seemed far less robot-like in that moment. She wondered, momentarily, if robots liked sunshine as much as Jasper seemed to. “They weren’t happy about their agent, and they’re far less happy about losing Cora.”
That was answering half the question—or perhaps telling her that only half of her suppositions were correct. But it was telling her something, at least. She asked, “Are you happy about them losing Cora?”
Jasper’s eyes flicked back down to his tea, and then vanished into the reflection of his glasses as he tilted his head down to meet the teacup he had lifted to his lips.
“Coward,” Viv said, and Jasper choked on his sip of tea.
“For your information,” he said, clearing his throat, “there is less Forex oversight at the Tea House than there has been since we began to work with them.”
“But not less than since the Tea House started,” guessed Viv.
She was quite sure he really was on his mettle, because his face had gained the slightest touch of colour. Jasper was very good at controlling his facial expressions, but he was as unsuccessful at controlling his colour as most other people were.
She encountered his gaze—or thought she did, though she still couldn’t quite see his eyes behind his glasses—and straightened instinctively. She managed not to clear her throat, a triumph that pleased her a great deal, and added, “How do you manage to limit what Forex get to see here at the Tea House? And what exactly is it that they get from us? Cora said that they already have behindkind and humans working together—why would they need anything that we’re doing on a smaller scale?”
Now that she sat more upright, Viv’s back and neck were warm with the sun; it felt as though it was working out the knots in her neck. By contrast, Jasper’s face was now in the shadow she had created by her shift in position.
“Forex doesn’t do the same sort of things that we do,” he said. “They work with the same kind of resources, but their aims skew more towards a human direction than we do. They try to achieve safety through integration and understanding the worlds.”
That didn’t quite fit with Viv’s experience with Forex. She might be new to this world, but she wasn’t new to the world of management, upper and lower, or to the world of paperwork and red tape.
She said, “Don’t you mean they skew more towards power?”
“Power for human benefit, perhaps,” Jasper said. “You’ve got to give them that, at least.”
One of his hands was absently rubbing over the other, back and forth over the upper half and his wrist as though something had bitten him—or as though something very cold had touched and burned him. Viv sat back very slightly, allowing the sun to fall back on his face in waxy strands of warm light once again.
Perhaps that was what made him speak again when she thought she had wrung out of him all there was to wring. Perhaps that was what made his glasses clear enough to allow her to see his eyes again.
Jasper said, “We provide a more tailored and discreet service than Forex is able to provide. We can get closer, faster and more subtly, than a bigger company with the amount of staff and paperwork that Forex can get. We don’t have the same code of practise, either. And I have some…very good resources.”
“What do you get out of it, then?” she asked. “Because I know you say money, but you already have…a lot of money from all that I can see, and you also have other donors.”
“Money is only one form of recompense,” he said. “There are things that matter more with behindkind than money, and even human organisations have behindkind in them. And even humans are bound by agreements in one way or another. You just have to have the right leverage, and use it at the right time.”
That was certainly something that the son of a king would say, thought Viv. And now that she came to think of it, hadn’t Jasper told her once that his father had done…something to change the landscape of Melbourne? She had thought at the time that he had meant that his father had had a big part in commerce or industry—perhaps a blue-collar worker who had worked his way to the top and moved the world around him.
And he had certainly seemed to find his father both fearful and contemptible. Had he been speaking of a more…magical sort of change to Melbourne’s Between space? Was he still around, making changes? Jasper had spoken in the present tense when he spoke of his father, though he could have been speaking of the dream version of him.
That was another thing—how old exactly was Jasper? Did he follow the same kind of aging conventions as SooAh? Was the half of him that wasn’t human even fae? Viv suspected so—Luca had had far too many rude things to say in a pointed sort of way in Jasper’s direction for her to think that Jasper was anything else. And Luca had said that the human requirement for kings only needed to be a small amount.
Did that mean that the pictures she had found of Jasper’s grandfather in her original research on the Tea House and Jasper were Jasper himself and not his grandfather?
She became aware that she’d fallen into a thoughtful silence only when Jasper said rather wryly, “Luca is right; it’s somehow very worrying when a small woman is thoughtful for just a little bit too long.”
“I was wondering about how you’d grown up,” she said. “And how you got to think the way you do about relationships and partnerships.”
“I don’t think we’ll delve into my childhood today, Viv,” Jasper said, but his eyes had dropped and there was colour in his cheeks again.
The moment after she saw and realised that fact, his glasses flicked so quickly to their mirror-like gloss that it was almost startling.
“I thought you might say something like that,” she admitted. Jasper liked to maintain a mysterious air for the sheer usefulness of it, she was quite certain. That there was also something genuinely behind it, awaiting discovery, she had no doubt.
Was that why BoRa was sneaking around and getting into Jasper’s things? Was she trying to figure out exactly who and what he was? From how the chollima had spoken of Jasper’s lineage, Viv didn’t think that what he had said was common knowledge; BoRa didn’t seem to be the sort of girl to like secrets being kept from her, even if they didn’t directly concern her.
“While some inhabitants of the Tea House—”
Luca, no doubt, thought Viv with another fleeting touch of amusement.
“—feel themselves free to splash their nightmares around and on other people, I find that approach far too messy. It’s also dangerous to share your weaknesses about so broadly.”
“Is it?” said Viv slowly. She sipped her tea and considered that. Luca in his weakest moments had appeared to her most startlingly potent; his vulnerability and his willingness to cling to what could help him had brought them face-to-face in a way that she found mildly terrifying.
With Jasper, it was always going to be hard to grasp him—to know whether she was speaking with the real Jasper, who could and would laugh with her and, more importantly, be honest with her; or Tea House Owner Jasper, who would lie to, misdirect, and use any and all of the people he came across, including his employees and, she presumed, friends.
Anyone who used Luca was likely to find him spiky, angry, and potentially lethal. Anyone staying too long in his company might find themselves becoming far too fond of him, far too easily, and that was its own danger. No one would get close enough to Jasper to use him, because he wouldn’t let them; they were equally as unlikely to get close to him personally for the same reason.
“Sometimes weaknesses are better when they’re known and shared,” she said. “And sometimes you’re a stronger person for being able to admit you’re weak.”
“That’s not how weaknesses work in the world Behind,” Jasper said dryly.
“That’s how weaknesses work everywhere,” retorted Viv. “People are people, no matter where you go. If you know yourself and your own weakness, and someone else also knows and helps, you’re far less likely to be able to have that weakness exploited.”
Jasper leaned forwards across the table, his arms folded beneath him and his eyes glittering with something bright and…teasing? “I could say, Physician, heal thyself,” he said, his lips curving very slightly. “That was a very watery nightmare you had last night, and a very interesting Voice you have to go with it! But I notice you don’t use any of the resources at your fingertips to learn more about a certain parent you might investigate.”
Viv couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve never been very good at asking for help,” she said. “Touché!”
“Mind you, I’m not suggesting that behindkind blood is a weakness,” he said more seriously, sitting back again. He picked up his teacup again as he said, “A mix of blood is useful in a lot of ways, and sheer power and ability are a couple of those ways. It’s also a powerful magnet to both sides—which is why, Viv, the work we do here is so important. And why money is such an important part of life.”
“You talk about power and money a lot,” Viv said slowly. “But don’t you think that what you said just now is the more important part? If I have blood from both sides, I’m a bridge between the two worlds; if both sides can approach with integrity and understanding, I don’t see why we need to try to do things by sheer power. That sort of change doesn’t last very long, and it’s not particularly stable.”
“You’re wrong,” Jasper said, setting his teacup back in its saucer with a small, definite click. “There’s nothing more important than making sure humans and behindkind work together—anything else means death or dismemberment, or enslavement for humans. If we want to be part of the worlds, we need to adapt and overcome our natural shortcomings. And to do that, we need money. If that comes with some uncomfortable sacrifices or some hard decisions, then so be it.”
“Does it have to be death, or enslavement, or dismemberment?” Viv said, slowly. She was thinking of Denise. Denise, Jenny, Cora and Sascha—thoughtless Jazz and the other bright-spirited and well-connected humans who meshed together so well because they saw each other as friends and kindred minds instead of human and other. “I mean, I understand that it was like that in the past, and that there’s still a lot of that sentiment around, but there’s a lot of other sentiment, too. I heard that the new king is different.”
“They’re always different—at first,” said Jasper. “Then it comes to a choice between their kind and our kind, and it always comes right down to the choice, and it’s never the human side it comes down on. Perhaps wait until you’ve lived in this world a little bit longer before you judge, Viv.”
That, thought Viv, trying not to feel snubbed, was quite fair. She said as much, and added as she got up to leave him to his increasingly thoughtful mood, “You might be sorry that you encouraged me to use the resources now at my disposal. Just a warning.”
That made him look up, startled, and laugh. “I don’t think I’ll be disappointed at anything you do, Viv,” he said. “Startled, perhaps. Completely bewildered, almost certainly. If you’re looking for the selkie, by the way, you’ll find him further down the maze and sitting by the pond. I had the feeling he wanted to be alone, but no doubt you’ll know best.”
That was a jibe, but Viv only laughed and walked on. There would be time later to wonder about how a half-behindkind and half-human boy became so completely set against half of his nature when he had supposably lived as a prince due to it. Presently, Viv needed to find a selkie who was a little boy right now and discover what was bothering him.
As Jasper had said, she found Kyma in the garden with his legs dangling in the water of the decorative pond that had appeared in the tiny greenery maze just a bit further in. If she looked at the pool by itself, square and seemingly barely ankle deep with a mingling of dark blue and light blue tiles making up its interior, it seemed quite normal. But where Kyma’s skinny legs sank below the surface, there was a shimmer of water and velvety shadows that made it much harder to guess at the depth.
The boy’s face, freckled and faintly scowling as though that was his resting expression, had an expression of such complete absence and wild loneliness to the eyes that Viv felt tears sting her eyes. She had seen that look on Luca more than once. Even if she hadn’t, she knew what it meant: Kyma was missing home—and worse, he was missing it without any amelioration of hope that he would be able to return home in the future.
Kyma didn’t seem to notice as she came into the little courtyard, though Viv wasn’t sure if that was because he had no fear for her, or if he actually didn’t notice her. He didn’t make any kind of response, in fact, until after Viv had taken off her shoes and peeled off her socks, and was engrossed in rolling up her trousers.
Then he turned his head and blinked a little bit, and at last grinned very slightly, though there was still a sideways line between his young brows that made it look like a cranky grin.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to paddle,” said Viv. It was too cold for paddling, and she had the feeling that Luca would have told her not to sit next to any kind of selkie, young or old, beside a pool of water that was conflictingly deep and shallow at the same time, but there was something warm and inviting about the sunshine on the water despite that. “Why does the water look so nice?”
“The water always looks nice,” said Kyma, and there was an expression of such fierce longing on his face that Viv leaned over from her seat next to him, and hugged her arm around his shoulders.
“It does, doesn’t it?” she said, and with her feet in the water and the refreshing tickle of it around her calves, she felt that she could really relax into the sunshine. The gentle prodding about the phone could wait; right now, Kyma needed some warmth and companionship.
Kyma kicked his legs a little bit, and although he screwed up his nose and wouldn’t look at her, he didn’t pull away from her hug. “What’s wrong with your Voice?” he said, in a gruff little voice. “It never sounds right.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Viv said. “Jasper wants to know, too.”
Kyma muttered “Fish brains!” under his breath, then said aloud, “He wouldn’t. He doesn’t know what we know.”
Viv grinned. “Go on,” she said. “What’s wrong with my Voice?”
“I don’t know,” Kyma said, as though he had remembered that he ought to be Too Polite To Mention It. Was that one of the things he was supposed to learn in the Human World?
“I’m not going to be upset if you tell me the truth,” she said, in some amusement. “I know that I’m very far behind what I’d be expected to be if I were a full selkie. Kos told me that my Voice was rough, like a baby. What do you usually do to help that?”
“We just keep using it,” said Kyma, shrugging. “And there are lessons. And we make mistakes and have to learn not to make mistakes.”
He didn’t seem as though he would elaborate further, and there was still the pinched little triangle of worry above his brows that Viv would have liked to have asked directly about.
Instead, she asked, “What does my Voice sound like to you?”
“It’s not like a baby,” he said, and he said it with such certainty that Viv wondered exactly where his disagreement with his brother was. “Babies’ Voices are rough, but they’re really soft, too. Yours is…oh! it’s like that way your humans who can’t hear speak. Strong and sort of bold because they don’t know how to control it properly. It’s like you can’t hear your own Voice.”
“That’s pretty accurate,” Viv admitted.
“That was when you were trying to use it,” he added. “I heard you, in my dream—when you stopped the…the Nightmare. How did you do that?”
“I don’t know how I did any of it! But I do know that it comes out when I need it, so you don’t have to worry about the Nightmare.”
Kyma was suddenly very intent upon his distant, ripple-distorted toes in the pond. “You can’t stop it,” he said. “No one can. It said that I’m going to turn into dust and then it’ll eat me up. It said that nothing can stop it getting bigger and stronger.”
“The Nightmare lies a lot,” Viv said, her arm tightening. “Whatever it tells you, you can trust that it isn’t true. And you can trust that I’m going to be here to send it away; I know how it works, now, and I’m not going to let it get to you.”
Kyma didn’t look any less gloomy, and Viv couldn’t convince herself that he’d taken in her encouragement in any meaningful way. “Your Voice isn’t very good yet,” he said.
“What is it like now?”
“I can hardly hear it,” he said. “It’s there, but it isn’t all over or around or through the rest of your voice like it should be.”
