Suited (36 page)

“When did the Keeper start caring about Kichlan?” Mizra spat the words at me.

That was cruel
.

I made my way back to the Keeper statues. Fedor watched me leave, but did not intervene. Eugeny and Valya remained in the domed building. After a moment, Uzdal, Mizra, Sofia and Volski followed me out. It hurt, when Zecholas did not appear through the rubble, that he would prefer to remain with veritable strangers than trust in me. And yet, after everything I had put him through, was I really that surprised?

“The Keeper can hear you, you know.” I leaned against the rock and slid down. “And he doesn’t think that’s particularly fair.” Back against the Keeper’s marble thighs, I drew my knees into my chest, wrapped my arms around them and tipped my head back.

Something protested in my stomach at the squeeze. I ignored it.

Mizra hunkered down before me. After a moment’s hesitation, the rest of them joined him. “You can hear him, can’t you?” Mizra murmured.

I opened an eye, fixed it on him. “Yes.” As simple as that.

“Without the suit on?” Uzdal asked.

“Just like Lad used to,” Mizra answered for me. “Isn’t that right?”

I gave a half-shrug, half-nod.

Sofia reached a hand forward, her palm hovered above my knee but she could not bring herself to touch me. “Can you find Kichlan?” she whispered.

“So what does that mean?” Volski asked. He must have felt like an outsider here, amidst whisperings of disembodied voices and mythical beings. Maybe he was used to it by now. “Are you like Lad was?”

I shook my head. My hair caught loose grains in the rock and sent them down the back of my shirt. “I am not a Half.” I was certain about that, and not because I had not suddenly grown child-like, simple and prone to violence. Because I was missing something Lad had, something that made him a Half. He had never truly belonged in this world, not all of him, at least. And while I might be able to step between the light and the dark with the loosening of my suited bonds, it was not the same. Lad had lived both worlds. I merely visited.

“Is it because…” Uzdal glanced meaningfully at my stomach, hidden behind my knees.

Suddenly, three sets of very bright eyes were fixed on me.

Only Volski appeared confused. “Is it because of what?”

I stretched out my legs before me. They were too tight to straighten. Even a metal as fluid as my suit had to have some toughness in it, I supposed. “They are talking about the child I’m carrying.” Even as Volski drew back, even as Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia shared scandalised looks, I remained calm. There were more important things to worry about now. Everything felt like it was settling into place. Amidst the chaos and the fear and the decisions, I was calm.

No thrills and fighting, this time. No bargaining, no desperate bids for freedom – either by killing the puppet men, or simply running away. Kichlan needed me. It was that simple.

“Sofia, Mizra and Uzdal think my child might be a Half. And if it is, that could be why I can hear the Keeper now.” But I shook my head. “I think they are wrong. I have heard him before.”

You did
.

“Before?” Uzdal whispered.

“Child?” Volski choked over the word. “My lady. I… I don’t know what to say. Who–” He caught himself. “Um, congratulations.”

I laughed softly. How long had it been since I’d done that? Sofia muttered, “It’s not Kichlan. Not him.”

Before? Yes, I had heard the Keeper even before the puppet men had twisted me with their weapon, before Lad had sacrificed himself, before I had known about doors between worlds and the danger on the other side.

I had heard him on Grandeur’s palm, when those crimson pions broke me. Even before I had fallen. But why was that? Had I been so connected to the pions, so deeply linked in my desperate fight to bring them under control, that when debris had taken their place, I had reached out to it, instinctively? I had linked to debris before I’d known what it was. The darkness that replaced the lights, the Keeper, the doors, the only thing between our world and nothingness. Was that why it had listened to me? Why, when I touched it with a suit designed as a weapon, built to destroy, it had calmed, it had obeyed? Because the debris knew me, the Keeper knew me. From the beginning.

I stood, slipping my back up against the statue. Mizra, Uzdal, Sofia and Volski hurried to follow. This was pointless, hiding in the dark while Kichlan needed me, discussing things with people who could not hope to understand.

It didn’t matter any more. The knowledge was hard; it was like the throb low in my belly. I was not part of a collection team or a critical circle. Not any more. And I had to admit to that, I had to give it up, and acknowledge that I was different. More so than what the puppet men had made me. I was more than my suit, more than a collector, than a binder or critical centre. Not quite a Half, yet similar. Close to the Keeper. Touching the dark.

What did it matter if I didn’t quite know what I was, or what I was becoming. Not everything needs a word.

You must hurry
.

I nodded, to myself and to the Keeper invisible beside me. Volski watched me quizzically. I saw sadness in his eyes, something long-suffering. And again I wished I had not caused him that.

It was time to end it.

“I need to hurry.” I smiled at them. “I need to save Kichlan, you see.”

“Let me help,” Sofia said. “Let me come with you. Please.”

I closed my eyes against her pleading expression. “I don’t think you can.”

True
.

“But I will bring him back. I promise.”

Sofia didn’t look entirely convinced.

I stepped closer to Volski, and held my palm against his cheek. A muscle jumped beneath my touch, but other than that and the darting concern of his eyes, he did not move. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I whispered.

He softened. “Don’t be, my lady. I am only grateful that I could help.”

I backed away, until I was again against the Keeper. “Go back to Fedor and the others, stay with them, do whatever they do. And be safe.”

“What–”

“I am going to help Kichlan.”

And with that I urged the suit to run over me. The street fell away, the buried domed building with it; the faces so worried about me went, these people trapped in conspiracy. There was nothing but the darkness and the doors, and the Keeper. No faces materialised in the wood, there was nothing of the landscape from the real world. Immersed in darkness, in doors, I did not need them any more.

“Finally.”

I turned. The Keeper stood beside me. Hands on his hips, chest thrust out and head tipped back, smiling broadly. It was the strongest I had ever seen him. His skin was white and solid, his eyes darkly fluid. Only the faintest flutter of a pulse showed in his neck.

“You look well.” It was a strange thing to say to a being that was not physical, a being whose body was built of debris. Strange, but fitting. “Solid.” If not a little awkward.

He nodded. “I have been closing doors.” And his smile faltered a little. “It will not last, though. The strength you gave me, the debris Lad bought me, it is but a tiny piece of everything that has been taken from me.”

“Yes.” I understood. But what could we do about it? What would it cost to release another basement’s worth of vats? I didn’t think I had what it took to watch another loved one die.

“Which is why we must hurry.”

I frowned, as always unsure if he could see my face beneath my mask. “I thought this was about Kichlan.”

“It is. They are, at the moment, linked.”

Pressure in my chest. “What are the puppet men doing to him?”

The Keeper’s dark eyes averted. It was hard to tell. Only in the shifting of my own reflection did I know his eyes had moved. “We need to hurry.”

I turned to head down the street. He caught my wrist and prevented me.

“I do not pretend to understand what has happened to you,” he said. “What they have done to you, how it has changed you. And why. But I know that you are a part of this world, Tanyana, as I am. As Lad was. I have seen you close a door. That is proof enough for me.”

I stared at him, unsure.

His smile returned. Half-hesitantly, half-bold, more like a boy than an eternal guardian. “And if you are of this world, then walk it with me.”

“Walk?”

“You follow the paths of your old, light world, but you do not belong there; at least, not entirely. Not as much as you once did.” Still holding my hand he gestured to where in that bright world he spoke of I knew rock and an ancient statue stood. There was no door there. It did not look like marble and rubble fractured by the weight of a city and time. It looked like darkness, empty as a starless night.

I lifted my free hand. Part of me was ready to graze rock with my silver-strong fingers. But I did not. When I stretched forward I touched only the darkness. Nothing else. The rock, the statue, they did not exist here. Not any more.

“Can I walk that way?” I asked the Keeper.

Smiling, he said, “Let us, together. Because it is too easy to get lost among the doors.”

Still holding hands, the Keeper and I set off along the dark passageways, and I left the underground street behind.

Darkness closed around us. I was glad for his company and could believe, truly, how easy it would be to lose oneself here. Doors flickered in the distance like landmarks, or stars.

“This is the way it used to be. Empty, calm.” His grip was reassuringly tight as we walked. “I like it down here. Reminds me of a time when I was enough. When I could keep the doors all closed.”

The doors we passed were insubstantial, distant. They did not threaten to open.

“But we cannot stay down here.”

I had the strangest sensation of ascending, that we were climbing even though there were no hills in this place, no variation in the darkness except the doors. But I felt pressure in my ears and added weight on my knees.

The Keeper did not have to tell me when we left the old city far below and entered Movoc-under-Keeper as it was now. The doors did it for him.

A step, and they appeared, shimmering indistinct and distant one moment, then solid and all-to-real the next. The vast and empty darkness narrowed to thin and winding paths. Doors crowded over us, as solid and straight as the sides of closely made buildings, as threatening as a dense forest. They rattled beneath our feet, encroaching on the dark paths like destructive roots beneath a street.

Could I see more of them now because I was deeper in this place, because I truly did belong? Or were they spreading like concrete rot?

“Do you see now, why I cannot keep them all closed?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

Hesitant glances my way, warmth through his touch. Had I ever sensed warmth from the Keeper before? Had he ever seemed so human, so familiar? “I wonder if you can help me?”

My heart dropped. “Find more debris to release? I… I don’t know if I can risk that again.” I sounded so cowardly.

“No.” The Keeper stopped and brushed my cheek lightly. Odd, how strongly I felt his touch. “I mean stay here, with me, and help me close the doors.”

“Stay here?” What was he asking?

“I have never had a friend.” He dropped his hand, turned ahead and tugged me back into walking. “The Halves – they weren’t always this bad, but even back then they didn’t talk to me the way you do. I was accustomed to loneliness.” He let out a deep and sighing breath. The doors around us rippled. “I would like a friend.”

A friend. Sometimes he reminded me so strongly of Lad, and now, that could only set my heart to sorrow.

“We must help Kichlan,” I said. Not a real answer. At least, not a whole one.

A silent nod, an averted gaze.

The Keeper took me through a Movoc-under-Keeper I did not recognise. The only signs of buildings, of factories, of life and pion activity were the doors. Some stretched tall, their wood heavy and thick, hinges straining. I could have opened those with a touch. Others remained faint, tightly locked, or small. Strange to see the city this way, as markers of its activity rather than its physicality. But then wasn’t that just like seeing the city as a pion-binder? Watching energies rather than entrances, the deep movement of lights instead of the rattling of wood?

“Can anyone see us?” I whispered. “The circles? The Mob?” What must I look like in that other world? A figure of silver walking through their buildings like they were as substantial only as mist? Or was I a flicker of light, a half-imagined image on the edges of their vision?

“No. As they cannot see me, they cannot see you.” The Keeper lifted our clasped hands. “I told you, you belong here. It only takes a little effort, this connection between us.”

So, I did not exist? At least, not to the citizens of Movoc-under-Keeper. Strangely, that did not unsettle me. “You are stronger than you were before.”

“But still not strong enough on my own.”

The doors were changing again. It was subtle at first. The faint ones, the distant and ghostly ones, disappeared. And those closer to us – solid, looming, large and frightening – shed their skins of wood. These doors hardened into smooth metal riddled with lights, with dials, and with symbols I could not read but looked so similar to those inscribed on the bands of my suit. Like the debris storage vats we had found beneath the technician’s laboratory, yet so much larger, towering over me, closer to buildings than doorways. They did not rattle, these metallic doors, they did not battle the wind of nothingness at their backs with the cracking of wood and the creaking of hinges. They rusted instead. Copper flakes like scabs on skin weakened the doors, diseased them. In places whole sections had been eaten through, so I could see what lay on the other side, that in-between emptiness, that unreal darkness. And the distant curve of flickering lights.