Authors: Jo Anderton
“I don’t–” I narrowed my eyes, and stopped myself. Could I really believe anything Devich was saying? Was this all just a ploy to get information out of me? His fear an act, the metal little more than foil wrapped around his arm? I wouldn’t put it past him. But why bother? What could I possibly know that he, or his puppet men masters, didn’t? “Don’t pretend ignorance.” I pulled away from him. “I know better than to trust you.”
That seemed to wake him up. His eyes sharpened – still too big and heavy with sleepless shadows but much more the Devich I thought I had known – and he laughed, dry and bitter. “Trust? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Tanyana. You don’t understand any of it. You don’t understand what they, what they–” He waved his torn sleeve in my face and for an instant, in the bobbing, unsteady light, his arm was longer that it should have been, slender, and elastic like a whip attached to his shoulder.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He clutched his wrist to his chest, and sucked in loud, painful-sounding breaths. “I told you, already. But you won’t listen to me. Not any more.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kichlan snapped. He clutched my shoulders and tried to turn me around. “He’s lying to you, can’t you see that? Manipulating you all over again. This is just another of his twisted games. Don’t fall for it. Don’t trust him.”
A flush of crimson rose from Devich’s neck, followed by what looked like ripples beneath his skin. “I promised, didn’t I? That I wouldn’t lie to you.” He released his arm, shook his tattered sleeve free. “There, can you see? I am their tool too, and that’s all I ever was. Just like you, Tanyana. And when I failed to complete my task – you, of course, made that impossible – they found another use for me. Piece by piece.” As he spoke, eyes wild, mouth loose and dribbling, he scratched violently at the top of his head.
I strained against Kichlan’s guiding arm and tried to see. Yes, there was something beneath Devich’s shirt. Suit metal? It could have been. But what did that mean? I drew a deep breath, clung to my cynicism, and held the memory of his betrayal close. “No matter what you say, it doesn’t mean I can trust you.”
A hissing breath, “Is there nothing I can do that will change that?”
“Oh, this gets better and better,” Kichlan sneered.
“Why won’t you listen to me?”
More tearing, more groaning, and Tsana’s circle finally managed to repair the ground. But the work was poor. Instead of the smooth stones the rest of the square was paved with, they had resorted to uneven cement.
“Why won’t I listen to you?” I couldn’t believe he would even ask that question. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten manipulating me, lying to me, and tossing me to the veche like so much meat for a pack of rabid dogs! I trusted you, Devich, and you betrayed me. Do you really expect me to make that mistake twice?”
Behind him, Tsana was trying to rebuild the lamp and failing abysmally. A steel pole sprouted, uneven and knobbled, from the iron frames reinforcing her weak repair job. Giant globes like misshapen fruit grew from the top, quickly lost their integrity and slid wet and shapeless to the ground.
Devich laughed at my words. “Trust? I will not, Tanyana Vladha, allow you to lecture me on trust. I have never known anyone with such poor judgement as you.”
“What do you mean?”
He was so pale, so gaunt, so much less than the beautiful man I had fallen for so easily. But still he managed to look down on me, to sneer. “Honestly? None of the things the veche have done to you would have been possible if you hadn’t placed your trust with people who did not deserve it.”
I drew myself up, trying not to feel Kichlan’s supporting arm. “Like you.”
“Me? I told you, I am just another tool.” He jerked his thumb at my once circle. “Think about this, will you? Do you honestly believe Tsana was promoted to the centre of a nine point circle through skill alone?” As if on cue, the makeshift lamp collapsed entirely and ironic applause broke out from the crowd. “You know who her father is; you know who his friends are.” Old family veche representatives who were obsessed with debris, and who had orchestrated everything that had happened to me, from my fall from Grandeur to my role as an experimental weapon. Yes, I knew. They lurked in the shadows, pulling the puppet men’s strings. “So think about it, for just a moment. Think about everything that has happened to you and how it all began.”
I scowled at him. “She has contacts, yes, but that doesn’t mean–”
“Glass?” Devich cut through me, just as sharp. “You really think she panicked and accidentally created glass?”
Ice travelled down every scar on the left side of my body. A cold memory of the mistake Tsana had made, when I fell from Grandeur’s hand eight hundred feet high and landed on glass. My stomach rolled again, and only Kichlan kept me upright as I swayed.
“That glass gave her the circle centre, as surely as it gave you those scars,” Devich continued.
“That’s enough!” Kichlan turned me around, started me walking. “Keep away from her.”
“Who do you trust, Tanyana?” Devich’s voice faded. I felt distant, cold, sick. “Ask yourself, who?”
Behind me the newly stitched ground tore with a long and terrible moan.
Who do you trust
?
Devich’s words echoed in my head, however much I tried to wish them away.
I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home. Probably under Kichlan’s watchful eye. But when the sun lightened my attic room and dawnbell echoed cleanly down from the Keeper’s Tear River, I was already awake and unsure if I had even slept.
I dragged myself from my bed. I couldn’t stomach Valya’s food or perceptive, ever-watching eyes for dawnbell supper, so tempted a later lecture and headed into Movoc-under-Keeper with an empty stomach; an empty, fragile stomach.
The city felt just as strange as I did, like spun glass in the crisp morning light. Maybe that was because I had almost destroyed it the night before.
Or maybe not. The seventh Effluent was not a wealthy area and as such was never particularly well maintained, but that morning it looked even worse than usual. Weakness ate away at the buildings and roads like a fungus, clear even to my pion-blind eyes. Patchy holes in the cobblestones revealed rusting, unused pipes beneath the street. Cracks ran through walls, and the mortar dissolved between stones. I witnessed two evacuations on my way to meet Kichlan and Lad – enforcers leading poor families out of crowded rooms while three point architect circles fought in vain to keep their homes standing. A small girl, carried by her weeping mother, met my eyes solemnly. That steady gaze seemed to look right through me, to the door I had opened and the Keeper’s scar that would never heal, and I hurried away feeling hot with guilt. I paused again at a corner to watch two lamps on opposite sides of the intersection soften and bend forward in a disconcerting, synchronised bow.
Perhaps I was just more aware of the city, of its stones and invisible pion-bindings, since the night in the market square. Or maybe the veche needed to invest in more architects instead of spending kopacks on Strikers, Mob and the puppet men.
Or maybe the pions really were disappearing in the face of the opening doors.
When I arrived Lad and Kichlan were already waiting for me on the corner, which was odd, because I was far earlier than we had arranged.
“Tanyana.” Kichlan held my shoulders and searched my face. He didn’t look pleased with what he found there. “Did you sleep?”
I started to rub at my eye, but quickly stopped. “Not sure.”
“Tan looks very white,” Lad whispered to his brother. As usual, his attempts at subtlety failed terribly.
“How is Eugeny?” I asked, trying to head-off the clouds gathering on Kichlan’s face.
He softened, for a moment at least. “The old man is tough. Stubborn too. Woke before us, was already cooking kasha when I got down the stairs and wouldn’t let me take over. Typical.” He rubbed Lad’s back, and some of the guilt eased from his younger brother’s expression.
“But what about you?” Kichlan’s frown returned with force. “Are you certain you’re all right? Maybe you should stay with Valya today. She’ll look after you, I’m sure.”
I grimaced. “I don’t think I could take it. And anyway, who would look after Lad?”
A moment more studying, and Kichlan turned to his brother. “Lad, will you look after Tan today?”
Lad brightened like the newly risen sun. “Oh yes, bro. Yes, I will!”
“You know you have to be careful with her, don’t you?” Kichlan continued, as though I wasn’t standing right there with them and certainly didn’t have any say in this new arrangement. “She might act like she’s strong, but underneath she’s fragile. You know that, right?”
Lad nodded, expression serious. “Oh yes, bro. Heard you and Geny talking. She is all crystally, right?”
Kichlan coughed, and looked away.
“Crystally?” I asked, an eyebrow raised.
“That’s right,” Lad explained. “Heard Kich telling Geny. Tan is like crystal but doesn’t know it is crystal. But Geny said no, she’s too tough. But Kich said, only on the outside, it’s so deep even she doesn’t–”
“Lad!” Kichlan interrupted, face bright red. “That’s enough, Tan understands. Don’t you?” He cast me a pleading expression.
Expressionless, I held his gaze. “Oh, I think I do.”
“Good.” Kichlan, attempting to salvage his dignity from the situation, placed my hand in Lad’s and folded his fingers over mine. “Then I will see you both here this evening.”
“Yes, Kich,” Lad said, eyes shinning.
As we left him, I watched Kichlan from over my shoulder, and maintained my irritation, even in the face of his flushed, slightly pleased with himself grin.
Lad led us to Ironlattice. I was a little surprised that he remembered the way so well. But then, he’d never been given the opportunity to lead before. Perhaps he was more capable than any of us gave him credit for.
“Here, Tan.” He opened the back door for me. “Careful on the stairs.”
I gripped the wall for support, and focused on not tripping. I suspected he would try to carry me if I showed the slightest hint of weakness. Lad took his responsibilities seriously.
Natasha waited alone in the toplevel. When we reached it, she looked up, her expression hard. “We’re in serious trouble.”
Silver debris collecting jars were spread out on the floor around her. Four in one neat pile, a good three dozen, probably more, scattered with their lids open. Stones and dirt made up a third pile closer to the windows.
“Morning!” Lad said, and his chest seemed to swell. “I’m looking after Tan today.”
“Oh?” Came a voice behind us. I moved further into the room to allow Mizra up. “And why would that be?”
“Tan isn’t feeling well and Kich said I should.”
“Unwell?” Mizra’s expression was a little too knowing, a little too pointed. It unsettled me.
Who do you trust
?
“Last night was difficult.” I tried to look unconcerned. But my mind spun webs around Mizra, rolling him over and over, wondering. Could I trust him? Or Uzdal? Even Natasha?
“And she didn’t sleep,” Lad chimed in. “Said so.”
Lad, I could trust Lad. And with him, Kichlan. Maybe that was all I needed.
“Oh dear, looks like I’m last,” Aleksey called from the stairwell, his voice echoing. “Sorry about that.”
What about Aleksey, this new collector I didn’t even know? Could I trust him?
“Not late,” Lad told him. “The bell hasn’t rung yet.”
“That’s good.”
“So, you were saying.” Mizra still watched me, hawk-like. I tried not to feel like some poor rodent about to become supper. “You didn’t sleep? Why was that?”
“Why do you think?” I grated out the words, even as my stomach flipped into a knot. “Or did you have your eyes closed all night?”
Metal rang against stone as Natasha, her expression dark and furious, threw one of the empty jars against the floor. We turned to stare at her in shock as the sharp, splitting noise echoed around the close room. “Do any of you even know I’m here?” she growled.
Mizra and I shared a look, stunned that Natasha –
Natasha
– could care enough about anything to interrupt us with such a noise.
“Do know you’re here,” Lad whimpered. And I didn’t blame him. She was just a little frightening, standing over her devastated collecting jars, feet planted wide, arms crossed, face red and scowling.
“Then maybe you didn’t hear me,” she continued, voice still deep and predatory. “We are in a lot of trouble.”
Aleksey cleared his throat. “Ah, excuse me for asking. What kind of trouble?”
One of her arms whipped loose, and pointed sharply at the four neat jars. “Because that is all the debris we’ve collected. The rest of these jars,” she waved that accusing finger wildly at the floor, “are empty. Or were filled with rubbish from last night.”
“We have only been collecting for two days,” Mizra offered as an explanation.
“We don’t even have enough to cover those!” Natasha’s tenor and volume rose, apparently in tandem. “Put an emergency in the middle of that and we are very, very behind on quota.” She paused to take a long breath.
“And that’s a bad thing?” Aleksey ventured again, brave individual that he was.
“It is,” Lad said, voice almost too quiet in Natasha’s echoes. “If we don’t keep up, the veche will punish us.”
“They could break us up again, send us away,” Mizra clarified.
“Either way,” I said. “We don’t want that kind of attention. Not from the veche.” And not from their puppets. I straightened. “That means we have to work very hard and very quickly. We have no way of knowing when the veche will come to take the jars away. We’d better make sure they’re as full as possible.”
Natasha crossed her arms again. Lad nodded. Mizra maintained his watch on my face, and Aleksey looked uncertain. All in all, it wasn’t particularly reassuring.
“Well, we’d better get moving if we’re going to have any chance.”
While Natasha scooped some of her empty jars into the bag, Lad helped me down the stairs. Mizra hovered at our backs like a curious fly.
“Which way?” As Natasha secured the door behind us, Aleksey hunched into his jacket and wound a scarf around his neck. It was a cold morning for the middle of spring – although even in mid-summer Movoc-under-Keeper longed for winter, and spring always struggled to make itself known – the sky clear but the sun insipid. Worn, like the city. Like me.
“Doesn’t matter.” Natasha ploughed on ahead. “Just walk.”
We followed without argument. Lad did not offer to guide us to dangerous and hidden debris, and I was glad for that at least. In fact, it seemed that the Keeper was upholding our hastily made bargain, and was leaving him alone. Instead, Lad held my hand and warned me about landmarks coming up that I should be careful of.
“There’s a hole in the street, Tan. Careful.”
I avoided a small crack between cobblestones.
“Oh, water. You could slip. Careful.”
I stepped over a small trickle of wastewater from a broken drain.
On my other side, Mizra was just as attentive, though silent. If I so much as blinked, he made a worried face, reached forward to touch my arm, seemed to catch himself and let his hand drop. Between the two of them, I knew I should be finding the whole thing very irritating. But perhaps because Lad was not talking to invisible people and being lured into untold danger, I didn’t really mind.
I couldn’t say the same for Natasha. She crouched at a broken pipe, scowled inside, lengthened her suit finely and probed. “Nothing,” she spat. “Mizra, get over here and help me look!”
Aleksey took his place beside me. He shot uncertain glances between Lad and me before murmuring, “Last night, that was... something. Wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Was bad,” Lad said.
Aleksey’s bruises were clear and dark, the cut on his lip swollen. Perhaps he deserved an explanation. But could I trust him? He had helped me, hadn’t he? But then again, I had once believed Devich was on my side, and Tsana too. So that proved little. “Lad,” I said, with a squeeze. “Would you help Natasha and Mizra look in the pipe?”
“But Kich said–”
“Aleksey will look after me. Only for a moment?”
With a purse of his lips that made him look uncannily like Kichlan when he disapproved of something – which was, after all, more often than not – Lad released me and joined Natasha and Mizra. They had followed the broken pipe to an abandoned heating system, shoved between a rusted gate and the degraded wall of an old building. It looked like the perfect place to find a cache of debris, but Natasha’s constant muttering, and the tension I could read in Mizra’s shoulders and back, did not fill me with confidence.
“I should thank you,” I said to Aleksey. “For helping me last night.”
“Not at all.” He tried to smile, ended up wincing and touching the cut on his lip. “I’m one of the team, right? It’s what we do.”
Part of the team, already? Tsana had been part of my circle for years, yet still I had not known her. Not truly. How long did I need to know Aleksey before I could trust him? Before I could tell him what really happened last night, the Keeper and doors and Devich and all.
We watched, in silence, as Natasha pried grains of debris from the old heating system and dropped them into jars Lad held open.
“So,” Aleksey said, finally. “I guess you’re not going to explain last night to me.”
“You were there. You saw what happened.” Even as I spoke, I realised how much I wanted to trust him. Scarred, just like me, but smiling and good natured, helpful and concerned. Was I being too cautious, had I let Devich get to me?
“Well, I suppose that’s understandable.” He even took such rejection with good humour. “Then at least tell me this. What was Fedor was rambling about?”
I blinked at him. “Fedor?”
“After Kichlan and the big one here took you home. He was frantic, kept talking about ‘him’ and how could she – by which he meant you – how could she treat ‘him’ like that?” He rubbed his palms together, breathing warmth over his gloves. “Upset the short woman, the one on the other team.”
“Sofia?”
“Guess so. She told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. It went on like that for a while. I was glad to part ways.”
“Ah.” Yes, Fedor. Just how much of Yicor’s secret books had he read? He knew about the Keeper, but did he know what Halves were too? How much had he heard last night? And could he put it all together? If he’d worked out that Lad was a Half – an intermediary between the Keeper and the world he guarded – surely he would want to involve him in the Unbound revolution. Would I have to protect Lad from Fedor now too?
“Well, as you said, I had left by then. So I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
Aleksey worried at the cap pulled tight over his head. “Fair enough. Still, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. You’re right, I was there. And I certainly didn’t have my eyes closed. But, you know, there are still some things I don’t understand.”
“Oh?” I said guardedly. He had a gentle way of pressing me for information, true, but he was still persistent.
“Like Lad and that body. I mean, I know you said it wasn’t normal, debris isn’t usually like that. So why was it attacking that dead person? And why did it turn its attention to Lad–”
“Got it all, Tan!” Lad bounded down the street, jar in one hand, looking both proud and relieved all at once. “Were you all right without me?”
I smiled at him, thankful for the distraction. “Yes, Lad. Aleksey has been looking after me.”
“Thank you Aleksey.”
Aleksey shifted under Lad’s warm regard and rubbed the scar on his nose.
“Other’s hells.” Natasha took the single jar from Lad and glared at it in disgust. “Not even enough to fill one.”
“Better keep going then,” Mizra said, shifting the bag slung over his shoulder. “Unless, Tanyana, you don’t feel well enough.”
“Of course I do.” I pulled Lad into walking and ignored the twinges in my stomach. Hunger, thirst, only those.
Aleksey fell in beside me, but I did not allow him to try that question again.
“Your scar,” I said. “How… How did it happen?” I touched my cheek with a free hand, bringing attention to my own web of scarring. “They are unusual, after all.”
His rueful smile returned, and he began to stroke his nose again, an unconscious movement quickly stilled. “I’ve been building the courage to ask you about yours.”
“Tan fell,” Lad answered for me, expression glum and his grip tightening to the point of hurting. “She fell very far down and got cut when she landed.”
That pretty much said it all. So I said, “Exactly.”
“Ouch.” Aleksey winced, and Lad nodded in serious agreement. “Well, mine? Someone hit me.”
Lad blinked. “They must have hit you very hard.”
“They did indeed.” Aleksey was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he would elaborate. After all, “someone hit me” was about as detailed as Lad’s explanation.
“Oh this is just ridiculous!” Natasha and Mizra had stopped at a sewerage vent steaming into the cold air. It certainly looked like a clogged system; perfect debris collecting ground. But, again, all they found was a small handful of loose grains. “Is it going out of its way to make us look bad?” She almost threw her collected debris at Mizra, who pointed an open jar toward her at arm’s length.
“It was a skirmish,” Aleksey said as we continued, his voice quiet, his head low. “I was an enforcer, not Mob or anything like that, but we were guarding an old family member of the national veche on a tour of the colony. We must have strayed too close to the border. The Hon Ji got us.”
Lad gasped, theatrically.
I patted his hand. “What happened?”
Aleksey cast us another of his self-effacing looks. “Ah, well, we did what we were trained to do. We sent a call along an encoded pion stream for backup and did what we could to protect the old man. But enforcers aren’t strong the way Mob are strong, even Hon Ji Mob. They carried these big… I don’t even know what to call it, like a hammer. But so huge, only someone with pions working overdrive in their body could hope to lift the damn things, let alone swing them. One tried to destroy the old man’s coach with it, and it looked like it was going to work. Except I got in the way.” He traced the gash across his face. It ran from his left eyebrow, across his nose, deep into his cheek and down to the right jaw line.
Following his finger, I couldn’t help but imagine the impact, the crush of bone and the slashed flesh, and I shuddered.
Lad stared at him mouth gaping in a wide
O
.
“All I really remember is red. Like the world was full of it, bright crimson like blood. Healers tried to explain brain trauma and hallucinations to me after I recovered, but I didn’t want to hear it. So I don’t really know what happened after I went down. Only that our call must have been heard, because Strikers darkened the sky and wiped the Hon Ji Mob from the earth. Not that I saw it.” He sniffed, ducked his head lower. “When I woke up, my face was a mess – much worse than it looks now, let me tell you – and the pions were gone. But then, you must know what that is like.”
I knew, all too well. I remembered that moment of confusion, of terror, of emptiness, when I realised I was alone in a world that had once been full of companions. And then the disgust, when I saw the dirty little specks of debris that had taken their place.
“The healers saved your life though. Scar or no.” I knew what that was like, too.
“Yes, the healers.” A flicker of a glance from beneath his eyelashes. “I had no face left, Tanyana. No face at all, but still, they, they are the most skilled in the military.” He hesitated. “The rest of my Fist were rewarded. Kopacks, status, medals.”
“Fist?” Lad asked, voice quiet and expression overawed.
“That’s what we are. What they are. A group of enforcers.”
“Oh.”
“While I had my face stitched up, the suit put on, and was sent here, to collect rubbish for a living and wallow in Varsnia’s scum... they were rewarded.” And before Aleksey turned his face away I caught a darkness there, a shadow across his eyes. There was rage, hidden somewhere beneath his usual unassuming smile.