Suited (8 page)

For a moment there was nothing but rubble to squeeze through. Then the doorway opened up and I stepped into a circular, domed room. Well, it had once been domed. Now only the skeleton remained: thick iron curving above us, gaps between the bones filled in by tightly packed earth. More supports had been set up in here, from a flat steel plate securing an unsteady patch of wall, to a tall, gangly fixture of metal and wood obviously designed to buttress the roof. If the city ever decided to come down on us, I didn’t think anything that rickety-looking could have done more than simply fall with it.

There was little left of the structure of the room, but what I could make out was odd. A raised, circular section around the edge of the walls, barely wide enough for a single row of people to sit on, with the rest of the room sunk below what would have been street level. The ground was gritty, layered now with stone and earth. It made me think it might not have been sealed, that even grass could have grown. Had windows stretched between the skeletal iron fingers above our heads, filtering the sunlight and warming this strange place?

Half a dozen people, maybe one or two more, filled the domed room. Most were Valya and Yicor’s age, some younger like Lev, only a few younger still. All but one were unsuited, that rare kind of Unbound who had escaped the puppet men, the technicians and their needles.

They milled around on the sunken floor, faces tipped up to watch Kichlan as he squeezed through. He scanned their faces, started to dust off his clothes and paused to say, “Fedor?” in surprise.

Fedor? Then I realised why the single, suited man looked familiar. Not so sickly-looking now, though still thin and pale, he was the second new collector. “Kichlan?” he sounded just as shocked.

“You know him?” Lev asked.

“He is in my collecting team.”

A moment of subterranean tension before Fedor stepped up beside us. “We have heard that Eugeny vouches for you.” In the sure lift of his head and the firm command in his eyes I saw none of the quiet man who had allowed himself to be herded by Aleksey. From Kichlan’s continued surprise, I gathered he was seeing a different side of his new team member as well. “So you are welcome.” He introduced his Unbound group, names I was sure to forget: Egor, Kirill, Yan, Anna... I stopped listening after a while. “We thank the Keeper for bringing you to us.”

Kichlan snorted, instantly shattering the fragile calm. “The Keeper? That must be a joke, surely. He’s led us around for moons now. If he cared about any of you I think he’d have introduced us earlier, don’t you?” The scorn in his voice was a too clear, his utter disrespect obvious on his face.

Ah, Kichlan’s ever-absent tact.

Fedor tensed, as the Unbound behind him muttered darkly. “What do you think you know about the Keeper?”

No point even trying for diplomacy now, was there?

“I know he doesn’t look like those statues out there.” I jerked my thumb back at the doorway. “Though they got the eyes and the mouth about right.”

A moment of silence, of puzzlement. Then understanding sunk in. “You have seen him?” Fedor asked me, his expression a mixture of hope and disbelief.

“We brought her here for a reason,” Yicor murmured, and almost sounded affronted. “You should have more faith in your elders, Fedor.”

“But that’s impossible,” one of the Unbound gasped – Egor, I thought.

“Not even Halves see the Keeper, though they hear his voice,” another, older woman, said. Anna?

“How is it you can see him?” Lev asked. He remained calm.

I lifted an arm. The suit spun faster, glowed brighter, and all voices within the ancient chamber died.

“The suit?” Fedor peered closer, and then glanced down at his own quiet, dim wrist. “But how does that work–?”

I shook my head. “Our suits are not the same, Fedor.” When he looked up again hope had turned to jealousy. Such foolishness. “You’re lucky not to have a suit like mine, trust me. Anyway, all that matters is I can communicate with the Keeper, and he with me.”

Lev studied me for a silent moment. “So you say. Then you already know what we must do.”

“We must close the doors,” I whispered.

“We must do more than close them.” Fedor grinned, and there was something unhinged in his expression, something that made me shiver and wish I’d never even mentioned the doors. “We must ensure they cannot be created, we must destroy the tools with which they are built, we must splinter the wood, melt the iron, burn the–”

“How, exactly will you do that?” I interrupted and wondered if he realised the doors he was so enthusiastically destroying weren’t physical at all and wouldn’t, I was fairly sure, catch fire.

“With these.” He lifted his hands, and nodded to the bands of suit on his wrists “I chose to be shackled with them. Of all of us, I volunteered. To become a collector, to lose my freedom.”

“Why?” I choked. Memories of lying on a silver table, of great needles suiting me with living fire, threatened to overwhelm the dimly lit chamber. Why would anyone willingly give themselves over to the veche and their torture?

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lev gripped Fedor’s shoulder, possessive, protective. “Fedor is infiltrating the veche.”

“The veche?” Kichlan asked, sounding just as sceptical as I felt. “We’re not the veche, you know. Debris collectors are nothing. We have no status, no power, and barely any kopacks. What could you possibly hope to learn by becoming one of us?”

It was the first time I’d heard Kichlan speak so harshly about us. He’d always said that collecting was our duty, the part we had to play in Varsnia’s complex tapestry. Of course, I’d also wondered if he said that only to justify his own choices, and maybe to stop himself resenting Lad. Kichlan had not been born a collector like his younger brother was. He had chosen to fall, he had dashed himself against the rocks, to keep Lad safe. To be there, always, watching over him.

So, while I tended to agree with him, it was a shock to hear Kichlan speak so clearly.

Fedor shook his head, clicked his tongue, and donned an offensively pitying expression. “You can’t begin to understand the opportunities these suits afford us. But that is only because you have not been looking.”

“Then why don’t you explain it to us,” Kichlan said, behind clenched teeth. I touched a light hand to his back, and he seemed to calm a little.

“This is my way inside the technician’s laboratories, and the very workings of the debris collecting system. Already, I have seen so much. Already, I know when the full jars are collected, where they are transported, and most important of all, where the debris is stored.”

“Fedor will find the debris the technicians hoard,” Lev explained. “And together, we shall release it. All of it. When too much debris is collected, too many doors are opened. So we will undo that.”

But we had all seen what happened when too much debris was released all at once. Movoc-under-Keeper had nearly been torn apart but it. “That’s dangerous,” I whispered.

“We understand why you might not wish to help us,” Fedor finished. “We will undo all the work you have done, we will wreck havoc on the pion systems of this city and cast its people down into chaos. But that is the price, is it not? For their lives.”

“A moment?” Kichlan asked, with an upraised hand. Then he took my arm and led me out of the domed room.

“What are you doing?” I asked, once we’d managed to squeeze our way through the rubble.

He blinked, surprised. “Discussing this with you. I refuse to stand there and be pressured into making a decision. I thought you’d agree with me.”

“Actually, yes. That’s a good idea.”

Kichlan shook his head at me, but his expression was warm. “Well, I don’t trust any of them. Particularity not Fedor. I think this is a terrible idea and we should leave. Now.”

“But he’s in your collecting team.”

“Exactly.” Kichlan glanced over his shoulder. “Doesn’t that seem a little too convenient to you?”

I was not convinced Fedor was any less trustworthy than the rest of them. And it wasn’t trustworthiness that worried me. It was the overall sanity of their plan that had me concerned. It sounded like they wanted to let debris run riot through the city. Didn’t they care about the lives of the people who lived here? Did they want more to die in flames, to drown in effluent, to be crushed beneath the weight of buildings that could no longer stand?

That was just what happened when the puppet men let their debris monster loose in the streets. I had fought so hard to contain that creature, and return the city to calm. We all had. Did these Unbound really expect us to help them do it all again?

And yet, if I could convince the Keeper to come with us, and if he could be there as these hoards of stored debris grains were released, he could absorb them just as I had seen him do before. Would that help him close the doors, and keep the city safe? Would that plug some of the holes the puppet men had torn in him? And, perhaps, make him a little more whole?

“I think what they are planning to do is dangerous. It could be disastrous. But they will do it anyway, whether or not we help them. If I am there, however, I can ensure the debris they release goes directly to help the Keeper. And he needs all the help we can give him, before he leads us down any more dark–” I nearly bit my tongue.

“Leads you where?”

“Sewers, like last time.”

Kichlan regarded me with a long, level gaze. I didn’t think he believed me.

“We should do this, for Lad,” I said. “Because until we help the Keeper, he will not leave Lad alone. How much can Lad take, before he snaps again? If this actually works, then the doors will close and he won’t need Lad any more.”

But even as I said it, I doubted. Would that really quieten the Keeper? Now that he had found me, now that I had seen him, would he ever really leave me alone? And Lad was his key to me. How long had he existed, with no one to talk to except the poor Halves who could never truly understand what was going on?

“For Lad?”

I nodded. “We don’t have to trust them to join them. We don’t even have to agree with them – but we can, at least, monitor them.”

Kichlan’s shoulders slumped. “If you say so, Tanyana.”

“Are you sure–”

“We are doing this for Lad. So yes, I am sure.”

We pushed our way back through the rubble.

“Done?” Fedor, arms crossed tightly, did not seem to appreciate being walked out on. I couldn’t imagine why.

“We will help you,” Kichlan answered. “If that is what you want from us.”

“I am glad you understand.” Lev nodded. He appeared pleased. “More collectors can cover more ground.” He glanced back at Fedor. “And I think we already have an assignment for you.”

I didn’t think the Unbound would let Kichlan and I leave without a commitment signed in blood and sworn before the Keeper himself. But in the end they seemed happy with our word. Or, perhaps, Eugeny’s reassurances. Still, we were glad to finally leave, so much we almost ran back to the surface. Valya and Yicor remained there, with their Unbound revolutionaries, in their trapped-in-time world.

Somehow, while we were underground, it had grown to late afternoon.

We passed a group of children, hurried along by governesses in rich dresses. I wondered what they could be doing this far from the Keeper’s Tear River. An excursion to learn how poor, less-skilled binders live? Kichlan and I were forced closer to each other in order to walk around them. He slipped an arm through mine in the process, and even when the children were long gone, he did not let me go.

Kichlan headed for Eugeny’s house. Arms locked as they were, it seemed I was going with him. I wasn’t about to untangle us.

Only when Eugeny’s squat building came into view, did Kichlan slow down. “Another few days?” he whispered. “Let me think up an excuse to give Lad first. I do not want him involved in this.”

“I agree.”

Fedor had given us a scouting mission. Something nice and easy to start us off. Simple. He didn’t know where and when yet, but would tell us soon, so we should be ready.

I hoped our role remained that way: simple.

“Let’s hope Fedor does not expect us to follow his commands blindly.” Kichlan placed a hand on the door’s handle, and hesitated. “I’m willing to go along with this, but not if it puts my brother in danger.” A pause. “And not if it puts you in danger either.”

My heart did a strange little flip. “I know.”

But even as Kichlan turned the handle the door flew open. He staggered and almost fell against Eugeny’s chest. The old man looked wild, the edges of his face lit by the oil lamps behind him, eyes shining and fearful. Great purple bruises darkened his eyes, his chin, and his cheek was deeply grazed and oozing blood.

“What–?” Kichlan grasped the doorframe to keep his balance.

“Lad is gone,” Eugeny said. “He’s gone.”

“I don’t know what happened.” Eugeny sat at his kitchen table, in front of a popping fire, cradling a badly bruised arm. “After you left, he seemed happy, his usual self. He helped me with the chores, mucked out the stable – you know he loves that horse.” Eugeny sucked air through his teeth as Kichlan tested his wrist.