Suited (20 page)

Eugeny hesitated, eyes riveted on the band at my wrist. “Your suit frightens me. The fact that you can see the Keeper frightens me.”

I nodded. “It frightens me too.”

He glanced at the hanging linen, but I knew that he was looking further, to the kitchen and the collectors he cared for. “Can we really trust these people you have brought?”

That word “trust” again. “Yes,” I answered, even as I thought of Devich, of Tsana, and began to doubt. Maybe this hadn’t been a very good idea.

Too late now, though. Too late.

“I will hear what you have to say.” Eugeny wove his way with expertness through the drying sheets.

I stared into the embers for a moment in his absence and wondered what I was supposed to feel. Should I mistrust myself the way he seemed to? Given recent history, it was starting to sound prudent. Should I detest the suit that was becoming more a part of me, day-by-day, scar-by-scar? I would never give into it, never become the weapon the puppet men wanted. But, no matter how I turned my back on it, and no matter how much it fought me for control, I had to admit one thing.

The suit made me strong.

It gave me the physical strength of a machine. But there was more. The suit gave me the Keeper. This was surely an unintended side effect, but it gave me truth, it gave me authority, and it gave me a reason to be. I was no longer able to build beauty into my city and my world, yes. But maybe I could make sure no more of this beauty was destroyed.

I followed Eugeny, aware of my suit through every last inch of my body, and feeling strong.

Volski and Zecholas were looking decidedly less comfortable than they had a moment ago. Kichlan shared a rueful look with me, fully aware of just how much he had taken away from these two men I trusted so much. Lad hummed happily at the back of his throat and tugged at a wide splinter lifting from the tabletop. Eugeny had resumed his place by the fire.

Volski looked up at me as I returned. “So what do you want us to do?” His voice cracked a little. I could see how much he wanted me to tell him this was all a vastly inappropriate joke. I would have liked to do that for him, and take that weight from his shoulders. I knew how it felt. The Keeper, after all, had placed it first and firmly on mine.

I glanced quickly at Lad. Well, maybe not first.

I smiled at these two points of my old circle, and wasn’t in the least surprised that they would offer to help, even after everything they had just learned.

“We need to help the Keeper hold the doors closed.” If only it was that simple.

“Which is what the Unbound were going to do all along,” Eugeny murmured.

I nodded, acknowledging him. “Sabotage a technician’s laboratory, yes. Fedor’s sacrifice and Lev’s grand schemes.”

Kichlan frowned, but kept quiet.

“So why do we need your binders?”

What I was about to ask could ruin Volski and Zecholas. It could devastate their careers and possibly cost their lives. But this was the strength that came with my weapon, wasn’t it? This was the purpose I needed so much.

“Because without their help, the Unbound are going to fail. And when that happens, a lot of them will die. Just like last time.”

“You’ve certainly thought this through, haven’t you,” Kichlan said, as he walked me home. I had lost track of the bells, wasn’t even sure if it was still Rest anymore or very early Mornday.

We had left Lad soundly asleep on the couch in Eugeny’s drying room. He had tried to stay awake with us and follow the conversation, but more than once I caught him hiding a yawn behind the back of his hand or distractedly picking at a loose thread on his shirt. By the time Volski and Zecholas had called for a landau and been driven away, Lad had well and truly lost the battle and snored softly, a soothing undertone to our words. He’d looked so peaceful, so contented, that I wished I could join him. But never had I felt more awake, more sharply focused, more ready and needing to do something.

“Not really,” I answered with a grin. “I haven’t thought it out at all, actually.”

Kichlan blinked at me, eyes bright in the light from a streetlamp as we passed beneath it. “For a such an apparently wonderful circle centre you’re not exactly inspiring me with confidence.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that.

Kichlan and I walked slowly through the night-heavy streets, comfortable in our silence. I wasn’t entirely sure why he’d deemed it necessary to accompany me, what exactly he thought he was protecting me from, or why I needed it, but I was happy for his company and had not complained.

“You were a technician once,” I said, before I could stop the words and allow myself to simply enjoy his quiet presence. “Do you know what the suit is made of?”

Another surprised blink. “It’s a metal alloy, intricate, complicated and highly charged. Quicksilver, I’m certain, iron too. And more. Clay is mixed in at an early stage. But the details…” He shook his head. “I’m not sure of them all. It is developed through several different nine point circles in many separate stages. The metal that is finally strapped to us has travelled most of Varsnia to get here: it is dug from quarries at the very edges of the colonies, melded in one city, shaped in another.” He clasped his hands behind his back in his classic lecture pose, and I averted my face before he could see me grin. “It is a convoluted process. Technicians study and apprentice themselves for decades simply to become one point in one of those many, many circles.”

Complicated, I could believe. But it seemed strange that a department directly supervised and funded by the national veche was not more centralised. Was it truly necessary to ship half-formed suits from city to city? If I’d tried to construct a building like that – one wall here, the other in Karakov-by-Sea, the roof in a colonial border town – I’d have been dismissed in a less than a sixnight and one. “So no one person, no single technician, sees it from beginning to end. From convict-dug rocks to the glass tubes?”

“Of course not.” He frowned down at me. “Why?”

I slowed the spinning on my wrists, sped it, soothed it. The suit was responsive tonight, perhaps as eager for activity as I was. “I’ve just been thinking about the suit: wondering what it actually is. Why can it touch debris when nothing else can? And the jars, they’re the same, right? So what are they, where are their pions sourced from and how are they bound?”

Kichlan looked to his own wrist. He had to concentrate harder to get it to respond the why mine did. “I told you, I was not a technician for very long before Lad– before I had to stop, to look after him. So I didn’t learn much. I filled tubes, I set the machinery, I measured width and depth and volume. The suit came to me already made, packaged and ready for implantation. I just kept the machines working.”

Well, there went that particular avenue of information. “And say, if I went to a technician from each stage of the process, from the supervisors at the mines, to a machinist like you, each of them would tell me essentially the same thing, wouldn’t they? They could only tell me about the part they play. The way the suit arrives in their care, and the way it leaves. They couldn’t tell me about the whole.”

He nodded, slowly. “Yes. What are you getting at?”

“That means that no one actually understands how the suit is created. No one knows everything that goes into it. No one, really, understands what they are made of.”

A hesitation. “There are a few people.”

I glanced at him, tingling with a sudden and unexpected hope. “Who?”

But his expression banished it instantly. “Those who oversee the whole process. The veche. More specifically–”

“The puppet men,” I breathed.

“Yes, your puppet men.”

I had the certain sensation we were going around in circles. And I was getting damned sick of that.

For a moment I considered explaining to Kichlan why I had broken our pleasant silence. My fingers twitched to touch the hard scars I knew were padded beneath coat, shirt, and uniform. Something stopped me. A self-aware suit was one thing, but what would he think of me if he knew I carried Devich’s child? Would I lose him, when I had only just realised how much I needed him in the first place?

“Lad told me something was wrong.”

“He looks after me,” I whispered.

“Is that why you ask? Is it the suit?”

I realised I was holding my breath and tried not to release it in one gasp.

“He said the suit was hurting you, he said it was fighting you.”

Lad could be far more observant then any of us gave him credit for.

“Listen to me, Tanyana.” Kichlan stopped, held my shoulders, and turned me to face him. His touch was light but seemed to burn through my many layers of clothing. When I looked up into his eyes he was fierce again, bright with that breath-catching look. “You are not a weapon. You are not theirs–”
theirs
carried such weight “–to use as they want. And I know you are strong, I know you could carry this burden on your own and not let the strain show. But you don’t have to. Tan, you have me.”

His hands slipped from my shoulders, his arms wrapped around me and his strength pressed my face against his neck. I breathed in smoke and food and drying clothes and closed my eyes.

“Please tell me you understand that.” When Kichlan spoke, his voice rumbled low. It vibrated right through me and shook away all those questions I knew I had to answer, but couldn’t. “I hope I am enough for you. I am not a pion-binder, not like those two you brought tonight. I am not powerful or wealthy, and I don’t have much to offer you except Eugeny’s food and drink. But I will give you what I can. I will give you everything I am.”

I looked up without leaning back. Fine, pale hairs roughened Kichlan’s chin, not as haphazard as Lad’s tended to be, all short and even. I ran a soft finger along his jaw line. He shuddered, a movement that felt as deep as the one his voice had elicited from me. His breath was hot on my forehead. Movoc-under-Keeper’s night chill receded into insignificance compared to his warmth.

Did he really think I needed anything other than him? Did he really think that was why I had brought Volski and Zecholas to his home tonight? Kichlan wasn’t that stupid, surely.

“Tan,” I whispered against him. “You called me Tan.”

His chuckle was just as resonant as his voice, only richer, deeper, quivering and full. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I lifted my face. He lowered his. We rested cheeks together, as I slipped my arms around him in response. “I do understand. I didn’t want to think about it, just in case I was wrong, and you didn’t feel the same way. You have done so much for me since we met, and I have brought you chaos in exchange. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d rather get as far from me as possible.”

I felt him smile. “How could you think something as foolish as that?”

“Oh I’m the foolish one, am I? How can you say that after the way you behaved tonight?” I pulled back. “And you’re not exactly mister ‘here, let me express my feelings clearly’, you know.”

Kichlan chuckled again, and kissed me. This time, he tasted like salt and ash. “What about that, then? Is that nice and clear?”

I pressed my face against his chest. “Well, it’s a good start.”

“A start?” He breathed deeply. I listened to the rush of air in his lungs. “Well, you know, I don’t like to leave things unfinished.”

“Neither do I.”

But the scars.

“How deeply does that old woman sleep?” Kichlan whispered against my hair.

“Deeply.” Actually, I had no idea. And the scars. But Kichlan was here, Kichlan was warm. He wasn’t Devich, ready to betray me. He trusted me with his brother, his only beloved brother. I looked after them and they looked after me and this was right, so right. This was all I’d wanted for a very long time, longer than I had even admitted to myself.

Kichlan bent to kiss me again. In this, I could forget it all. The veche, the puppet men, the Keeper and debris. In Kichlan. For a moment I worried that was selfish of me. But his hands pressed against my lower back and his mouth moved down to my neck and I decided he probably didn’t mind. Not really. Perhaps he needed the same thing. A way to forget his constant worry about Lad, his mistrust of Volski and Zecholas, the pressure of Fedor, and his new collecting team.

Maybe we both deserved nothing but each other, for a little while at least.

We climbed Valya’s rickety stairs one at a time, just to be safe. I asked him to remove his boots and we crept across the floor on soft and silent feet. I had no way of knowing whether Valya was even asleep. Considering the amount of food that woman prepared I wouldn’t have been surprised to find she stayed awake for most of the night to cook it. But I decided to take the chance. I wasn’t going to stop now.

Kichlan hung both our coats on the hooks on the other side of the door. He arranged our boots neatly beneath them. Then I took his hand and led him to my small bedroom.

“I never liked this place,” he whispered, as I sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside me.

I ran a hand through his soft curls. Always shorter and neater than Lad’s, they were still tangled and knotted around my fingers. I eased them open, gently. “Yes, I remember. Changed your mind?”

He extricated my hand. “No, not really. I always thought you deserved a place to yourself. Without Valya downstairs constantly monitoring you.”

“Really?” I grasped his shoulders and swung myself over to straddle him. He started undoing the buttons of my blouse, his expression serious.

“You used to work for the veche. You were the centre of a circle of nine.” He slipped the blouse from my shoulders and hooked his fingers beneath the hem of my uniform. I stopped him, started undoing his shirt instead. The scars. I could not let him see the scars. “I know what that means. You don’t need any old woman to look after you. You don’t need anyone to do that at all.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

Kichlan lifted his arms and allowed me to remove his shirt. The dark, boned uniform was tight across his broad chest and I had trouble taking it off him. I shuffled back so he could squeeze himself out of it, then laid a hand on his bare chest and pushed him down against Valya’s patchwork quilt. I traced the faint pink lines the boning left on his skin with gentle fingertips, and he quivered.

He held my waist, but again I stopped him from removing my uniform. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I don’t care about your scars.”

For a moment, I panicked. He knew, how could he know about the child and the suit? And it shattered my certainty, my need. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“I’ve seen those before, remember?” He tried to sound reassuring. “All collectors have their scars.”

I released a large breath. He was talking about the raised, white lines Grandeur had given me, not the silver the suit was steadily filling me with. So I smiled, and slid down the length of his body. I flicked out the mismatched buttons at the top of his heavily patched pants, and drew them and his uniform down together. He protested, but I kissed him on the way down, small licks with my tongue and gentle touches with my lips until he dropped his head and all he seemed to be able to do was breathe. Great full, long breaths.

I stood, and drew curtains over the lamplight flickering through the single small window. Not as dark as I would like it.

“No,” Kichlan said from the bed. “I want to be able to see you.”

“Why don’t you feel me instead?” I slipped out of my pants, pulled off my uniform top and bottom, and fingered the strips across my stomach. I could see them, if I peered hard enough, glowing their dull suit metal glow and seeming to gather every loose beam of light that made its way inside. With a little thought I dimmed the light shining from the slowly spinning bands on my ankles, wrists, waist and neck, and hoped it was enough.

“Tan?”

I returned to Kichlan, and straddled him again. I tried not to feel guilty as I took his hands in mine and guided them. Not because I didn’t trust his touch, but because this way, and only this way, I could be sure he wouldn’t find hard metal where he expected soft skin.