Debris (28 page)

  "Tan!" Lad leapt to his feet, opened his arms, checked himself visibly and compromised by patting me on the shoulder. "Good morning, Tan."

  "Good morning, Lad."

  He beamed, and crouched down to the fire.

  Kichlan and I shared a raised-eyebrow glance. "He's being good," Kichlan mouthed, before standing up, and passing me something wrapped in linen.

  "What's this?" I flipped open the cloth and found a cool pastry, about the size of my hand.

  "Eugeny and I have been talking," Kichlan said. "We decided you don't eat enough." He couldn't quite meet my eye.

  "Did you now?" I hardened my expression and fixed him with my gaze. I didn't need handouts, least of all from Kichlan, Eugeny or Lad. They who had hardly anything to share.

  "Didn't," Lad said, from his position by the fire, leaning so far into the fireplace I expected him to topple at any moment.

  "Lad!" Kichlan snapped. "Get your head out of there."

  His younger brother sat back, expression puzzled, verging on hurt. "But you didn't, bro. Geny said Tan was hungry and you said she wouldn't want to. You said she's too..." he screwed his face up. "Don't remember."

  With a sigh, Kichlan patted his brother. "Ever the diplomat, Lad."

  Lad grinned, and returned to his fire.

  "Too what?" But I couldn't feel angry, not at the embarrassment colouring Kichlan from neck to forehead. "What am I, exactly?"

  "Proud."

  I thought of the ball, of sitting alone in the shadows. "Then you don't know me as well as you think you do." I bit into the pastry. Potato, pumpkin, and turnip were soft. I tasted pepper and the faint dripping of lard holding it all altogether. Before leaving I had drunk my usual tea, and scrounged leftovers from a meal Devich had made on Rest: the crusts of bread he hadn't wanted to eat, and browning apple peel.

  I just had to hold on. Another night like the ball, more of Devich's important friends, and I would make someone listen. I would make someone understand. Or Tsana would wake up to her cowardly self and together, we would open a tribunal. We would tell the truth and the veche would find whoever was behind those pions burning fierce, and with the compensation – surely, I would be compensated – I would have enough kopacks to eat. To keep my home.

  Just a little while longer.

  "Thank the old man for me, won't you?" I sucked oil from the tips of my fingers.

  "I'll tell him you said that with your fingers in your mouth." Kichlan grinned. "Trust me, that will be thanks enough."

  As breakbell sounded above us, the rest of the team filtered in. Uzdal and Mizra were wrapped in extra scarves and knitted hats, their pale features nearly lost amidst the clothes. Sofia was so heavily layered she walked like a child dressed for the snow. A few strands of her dull hair escaped a large knitted hat, to stick against her cheek and nose. Natasha followed, brown hair tucked into a tight dark cap pulled down as far as her eyebrows.

  "Lovely day outside," Uzdal muttered. Even in the sublevel warmth he kept his layers on.

  "If we're really lucky it might snow on us again," Mizra added. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

  Kichlan collected metallic jars and filled his brown leather bag. "Then the sooner we fill quota, the better."

  "Other's oath," Uzdal muttered.

  We left the Darkwater sublevel and entered an outside world growing rapidly dim and cold. I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket, tugged my leather-lined cap down to cover my ears. The wind that had whipped the clouds along started whipping us as soon as we stepped into the street. It was funnelled by the buildings and careened down Darkwater with a scared-dog howl. Above us, clouds settled in like hounds for the night, dark fur raised and shaggy.

  It was hard to believe I had ridden the Tear in clear sunlight that morning.

  "The snow will start any moment," Mizra said as we turned the first corner in what I was beginning to learn was our usual Mornday route. "And then, if Lad finds another sewerage vent, the day will be complete." He clasped his hands behind his back in a fair imitation of Kichlan. "Because if collecting doesn't make us as miserable, as cold, and as dirty as possible, then we're simply not doing it right."

  I grinned at him and glanced at Kichlan. He was entertaining Lad that morning who, as usual, led us from the front. Together they were pointing at lampposts, rooftops, effluent vents. But at each one Lad just shook his head. Not a good sign, as far as the quota was concerned.

  "What is it with this place and brothers?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

  Mizra shrugged. "Don't know about those two, but twins always end up as collectors."

  "Really?"

  "Truly."

  "Other's oath," Uzdal muttered again.

  What had started Uzdal's sudden fascination with the phrase? I thought for a moment. "I haven't met many twins like yourselves." Had I met any at all? No binders that I could think of, not at any circle level.

  Both made identical faces of disgust. "Sad truth about the world, Tanyana," Mizra said. "Twins aren't particularly, how shall I put it? Desired."

  I did my best to appear perplexed, and assumed that it worked when Uzdal gave his head an exasperated shake.

  "Most twins end up like us." Uzdal pointed to himself and his brother. "Debris collectors. Fallen. So, most mothers, if they find out they're expecting twins, well, they do something about it."

  "They abort the children," Sofia, walking behind us, interrupted. "That's what these two are trying to say, although they obviously don't want to. Of course, if you'd just thought about it for a moment you might have worked that out for yourself."

  I ignored the criticism, and stared horrified at Mizra and Uzdal. I had heard that some healers could see a baby as it grows by the flow of pions between mother and child. What did a baby destined to collect debris – an Unbound baby – what did they look like to pion sight? Would the flow be interrupted, the womb dull compared to the rest of her pion-bright body?

  "That's horrible," I whispered.

  "We know," Mizra said.

  "That's real life." Sofia pushed past us, to walk with Kichlan instead.

  "Why do they kill them?" I asked the twins. "Why are twins, most twins, why are they like us?"

  Uzdal glanced ahead, where Lad walked between Sofia and his brother, laughing. "Why is Lad one of us? Because he is broken, Tanyana."

  "And we are broken, all of us, in some way," Mizra continued. "We're like that crack in the wall that fell on you. Debris likes broken things. It likes us."

  Likes? He reminded me of Lad, talking about debris as though it could think, as though it could feel. But I knew what he meant.

  Me, with my scars, with the bone Grandeur had knocked into my brain. Lad, with his crooked smile and childish laugh. But the twins?

  "Being twins doesn't make you broken. A shattered skull–" I swallowed "–that makes you broken. So I don't understand. And Kichlan isn't broken, Sofia isn't broken."

  "Nice of you to say so," Mizra said.

  "Yes, terribly nice," Uzdal said. "But we know what we are. And not everyone who is broken has the scars to prove it."

  "Although we–"

  "–are not among them."

  I blinked at them. "You're not one of the ones who don't... what?"

  The boys chuckled. "When we're somewhere warmer."

  "Less windswept."

  "We'll show you what we mean."

  Lamps spluttered into life as we walked, and as I tried to work out what under the Keeper they were talking about. Broken was a good word for it. Broken was the bones in my head, the skin on my left side. And Lad, yes, I could see how he could be broken. There was something in him that didn't work the way it should have. But what? I knew what had broken me. What had broken Lad?

  Could any of us be fixed?

  "Guess it's dark enough to turn the lights on." Kichlan had started to hang back as the twins, evidently tired of confusing me, moved forward to engage Lad.

  Thunder rolled above our heads, low and near. Lightning flickered against the dark sky.

  "We still collect in the rain, do we?" I glanced up at Kichlan, trying for an innocent and hopeful expression.

  He nodded. "Today we do. We just scraped above quota last sixnight, and that was with an emergency. But those are rare, we can't rely on another one and I will not risk something that close again."

  Lightning flashed, suddenly bright, suddenly plunging the street into darkness. In the heavy silence that followed Kichlan and I looked to each other and turned to the lamp we had just passed. In a moment it flared, so bright I expected the glass to break with the strain, then it cut off suddenly into the cloud-weary darkness.

  "That's not lightning," I whispered. As if on cue, my wrist sprang into brilliant light. "Again?"

  As soon as our suits lit up, then Lad, Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia hurried to Kichlan's side. Even Natasha, dragging further behind than I had noticed, ran to join us.

  "Where is it?" Uzdal asked. Kichlan drew his sleeve up, exposed his wrist and tilted it at the bare wall of a nearby building. It shone steady, sharp and bright, while down the street the lamps blinked on and off.

  "It must be near," Natasha murmured. She stood beside me, watching the lights.

  But Sofia shook her head. "No, I don't think so." She pointed at Kichlan's projected map. It was larger than the one Devich had helped me to produce, the ciphers clearer. I found Kichlan's
me
sign easily. It was solid, bright and purposeful. I remembered my own, lost in the jumble of images, and twitched the sleeve of my jacket to cover my suit. But as my fingers brushed the band, I felt the symbols move in short bursts of pressure and warmth. With a gasp, I flicked the sleeve up again and I saw it. The symbol, my symbol, throbbed beneath my fingers as if I had called it.

  "There." Kichlan pointed to his map, and soon the rest of us saw the debris cipher. It flickered in a far corner. Not bright, not steady, not close.

  "Why is it so far away?" Mizra asked.

  Something large and wet splashed on the top of my head. Then another on my arm. Even as I realised they were raindrops, I felt the symbols move again. They rolled beneath my touch, tugged and pressed, tilted and guided. I followed them, smoothed my fingers to the left and turned my wrist. When they stilled, and I peered beneath my fore and middle finger, the debris cipher was there, ready like my own. Beating. Living.

  I considered the path my fingers had followed. The crests, the dips and the corners. I looked at the symbols sprayed on the building wall.

  Didn't make any sense to me.

  "Why are they calling us?" Mizra continued. "We're too far away! There has to be another team closer than us."

  "That's why." Sofia gestured to the flickering lamps.

  Kichlan, who had been studying his map, turned to her. "Factory?"

  "Has to be." She looked grim.

  Kichlan said, "Then we need to hurry. Time to run."

  "Run?" Mizra's voice rose, in both tone and volume. "What, no horse?"

  "There's no time, Mizra. Shut your mouth and run."

  Kichlan grabbed Lad and pushed him forward. The big man easily outpaced us as we struggled to follow Kichlan. My legs and lungs quickly ached. Rain fell in ever larger, ever more frequent drops. The wet pavement was slippery, and in the darkness of the skies and the uncertain light of struggling lamps, I came close to losing my footing and crashing face first to the stones.

  Kichlan grabbed my arm and helped keep me steady.

  "It's raining!" Mizra yelled, as he ran ahead of us, breath loud and hoarse in the artificial night. "That's even better than snow."

  "What's happening?" I gasped to Kichlan as we skidded around a corner. He stopped long enough to flash his map against a nearby wall. My fingers itched to touch my suit, to follow the symbols like he was doing.

  "It's probably a factory." We waited as Sofia screamed at Lad, who had continued to run ahead, and the large man returned. "Hub of pions, large amounts of debris can collect unnoticed. If it's left long enough this is what happens." We both glanced at the dancing lights. "Someone hasn't been doing their collecting properly."

  I gasped in breaths, sagged against a wall and clutched at my chest. "What has that got to do with us?"

  "Problem like this could shut down the city. Imagine no light on the streets when night comes. No light at home. How do other factories work if the lights go out?"

  "Quite well, I imagine." I swallowed against a very unladylike urge to spit on the paving stones. "Don't need light to see pions. But I get the idea." And on a day like this, in the storm and the darkness bearing down on Movoc-under-Keeper. I couldn't think of a worse time.

  "They call in more than one team for work like this. For factories, construction sites."

  I knew too well what he meant.

  "Sorry!" Lad, only barely out of breath, ran to Kichlan's side. "Sorry, bro!"

  Kichlan shook his head. "Pay attention from now on. This way!" He pointed, and set off again. With a groan, I pushed off the wall and followed.

  This time, I gave in and I kept my fingers to the symbols at my wrist. They hummed with the pace of my running, jostling with the stones that threatened to slip me, with the hidden dips and sudden, uneven steps.

  That's when I realised that wasn't all they were doing. My fingers were guiding me. A moment before a loose stone came close to tripping me, a cipher pushed up against my touch. I knew a corner was coming before Kichlan took it because my fingers were guided that way first.