Suited

by Jo Anderton

  “Nothing to be concerned about.” Was that the hint of a smile I caught? The splitting of a seam from mouth to nose?

  “Take your cards.”

  “Return home.”

  “New teams must meet in the morning.”

  As one, the puppet men stepped into the street. With a last glance, their faces on the cusp of some terrible smile, they walked away along Darkwater.

  The second technician fluttered around us, glancing at the backs of the puppet men, apparently uncertain of the protocol. “Your new rooms have been fitted.” He peered at cards, at faces, and passed them out with care. When he pressed the small square into my palm it tore at the corner. Cheap stuff. I peered down at it as though through mist, and struggled to make sense of the words scrawled in already-fading ink.

  Toplevel, 34 Ironlattice

  7th Effluent, Section 12

  Seventh Effluent? Close to the room I leased from an aging and rather food-obsessed woman. Too close to be a coincidence.

  Devich approached me on silent feet, and stood near. He leaned forward, and I stepped back.

  “You don’t need to fear,” he whispered. “They have invested so much in your suit they will want to watch you, constantly, so they won’t send you too far away.”

  Did he think – in his twisted, cowardly way – that made me feel better?

  “Breakbell,” the other technician was saying. “Breakbell tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

  “We know how this works,” Kichlan responded, his voice harsh.

  The technician flinched, shocked, before handing the last of his cards to the new, scarred collector and hurrying to follow the puppet men.

  Devich watched them go for a moment before grabbing at my arm. “Tanyana, listen to me, please I have to show you.” I yanked my arm from his grasp and stepped further away, hands raised and suit spinning. He didn’t seem to care, just began tugging up his own sleeve, all the while muttering and pleading. “Just look. And listen. You have to believe me, you have to–”

  “Get away from her!” Kichlan shouted. Devich’s fearful expression darkened into ugly hatred. But in the face of Kichlan so pale and furious Devich did nothing more than squeeze his hand into a frustrated fist, and turn into Darkwater after his fellow. I forced myself to look away from Devich’s hunched back, and the furtive glances he cast over his shoulder. He’d seemed afraid, genuinely afraid. But how could I possibly believe anything Devich said? So I pushed him out of my mind.

  “That got rid of him.” The scarred collector grinned at Kichlan, apparently undeterred by his haggard, grey-skin look. He cradled his card in his palms, strangely gentle. When Kichlan said nothing, the man turned to me.

  I found myself fascinated by the scar dividing his nose. Scars were rare in Movoc-under-Keeper; a healer can fix most wounds so they leave no trace. I knew that, because the left side of my face, from forehead to chin and my neck, chest, hip and leg, were riddled with scars of my own. So I smiled back at him and wondered how had he fallen into this low life, and what had given him that scar.

  Perhaps, like me, they were the same thing.

  “Breakbell?” He rubbed his nose, and I averted my eyes, hoping I had not made him self-conscious. “Well, that’ll take an effort. Come on then, Fedor.” He gestured to the second collector. A thin man, sickly-looking and staring blankly at the cobblestones. He didn’t even notice the card in his hand. “Early morning, I think.”

  Then he nodded at me, tried another smile on Kichlan, and steered Fedor out into the street. I realised I did not know his name.

  “Come on.” Sofia unlocked the sublevel door. “I’ll help Kichlan, you look after Lad.”

  Both Kichlan and his brother were shaking. Lad quivered with cold and fear. Kichlan, however, radiated fury. His hands clenched over the board, crushing it. As I coaxed Lad down the stairs, I was aware of Kichlan’s presence at my back like a wild and dangerous animal.

  Mizra, Uzdal and Natasha followed.

  The sublevel was empty. Gone were the couches we had lounged on, gone the shelves and tables for the debris collecting jars. Bars had been fitted to the windows near the ceiling. The fireplace Kichlan and Lad had uncovered, where they had cooked us kasha on cold mornings, had been filled in. All in a day, all while we were following the call of the Keeper.

  I did not know this place, not anymore. Lad began to cry.

  “They’ve split us into two,” Mizra said. His words echoed sharply in the empty room.

  “What?” Sofia was staring at Kichlan. She held her small scrap of board to her chest and her hands were quivering, like she was cold. “In two?”

  One by one, Mizra took our cards, read them, gave them back. “Two new teams. One’s still in the eighth Keepersrill, different street though. The other’s the seventh Effluent.”

  Kichlan jerked his head up at that. “We should have known this would happen.” His dark eyes pierced me, and I knew he and I were thinking the same thing. This was not chance. This was a message. “The veche wouldn’t just leave us be.”

  I approached him, careful and slow. “Show me your card, Kichlan.”

  He shook as he dropped the torn board into my palm. “What have we been doing, these past two moons?” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Pretending everything is normal? Listening to your Keeper, collecting the scraps he deemed to toss our way? Following his pointless instructions? We knew they would come, and we weren’t ready!”

  Gently, I pried the card open. I pieced the words together.

  “What more could we do?” Sofia whispered.

  “Eighth Keepersrill,” I read out loud, and my heart sunk somewhere closer to my stomach.

  “Oh no,” Mizra said, voice defeated. I looked over my shoulder. He stood beside Lad, and held his card. “They split up Uz and me.” He face was shadowed, almost expressionless. “They did the same to you.”

  “What?” Kichlan’s voice was little more than breath.

  “They split you and Lad up. You’re in different collecting teams.”

  Kichlan swayed. I grabbed his shoulder, terrified he would fall. Lad let out an injured wail and ran to his brother’s side. He wrapped arms around Kichlan’s waist and hunched over to bury his head in his older brother’s chest.

  Kichlan stroked Lad’s hair. I met his eyes and knew this was my fault. If I hadn’t been sent here, if I hadn’t disobeyed the puppet men and sided with the Keeper, then Lad would not be in this danger.

  “They can’t,” Kichlan murmured. “I’m supposed to be with him, always. I’m supposed to keep him safe.”

  “I’ll look after him.” I mouthed the words, not sure he would hear me even if I spoke.

  But Kichlan whispered, rueful, his voice bare. “And who will look after you?”

  The veche had divided us with disturbing efficiency. Mizra from Uzdal; Lad from Kichlan. Kichlan from me.

  Were we really so fragile?

  Kichlan, Uzdal and Sofia had been sent to the new address in the eighth Keepersrill. Lad, Mizra, Natasha and I were to go to the seventh Effluent. The two new collectors had to fit into that arrangement, but we didn’t know how.

  So we farewelled the sublevel a final time. Kichlan left the keys on the inside doorstep, locking the door before pulling it closed. Then we dispersed, quiet and broken.

  Was it really so easy for the puppet men to defeat us?

  My collecting team gave me strength. With them behind me I had stood up to the puppet men and refused to become the weapon they wanted. They were more than a substitute for my lost critical circle, more than a group of fallen people I had no choice but to work with. They had given me somewhere to belong, when the rest of the world felt alien.

  None more so than Kichlan and Lad.

  I watched their backs as the brothers disappeared down Darkwater. They huddled together, two damaged men. And I hated it. I hated that I could not be their strength, when they needed it.

  Hunched into my jacket, hands fists in my pockets, I returned home
.

  Valya knew something was wrong the instant I entered her kitchen. She was a large, old woman, constantly cooking, ever-aproned but with sharp eyes and an even sharper mind. She stood by her kitchen bench, holding a sticky-looking knife and watching the door. Sweetness cloyed the room.

  “Pudding,” Valya said. “Because I think you need it.”

  How could she have known that, before I even arrived?

  “Sit.” She turned back to the bench and I collapsed into a chair beside the large dining table that dominated the room. She fussed for a moment longer before placing a substantial slice of carrot, prune and apple pudding in front of me, dotted liberally with thick cream, and steaming.

  My stomach growled with appreciation, but I didn’t eat. I watched her serve herself a much smaller slice, then sit opposite me. Pudding for evenbell supper was odd, even by Valya’s standards.

  “Eat,” she said, and picked up her spoon. “Something happened today.”

  The pudding was moist and sweet, but I barely tasted it. “How do you know that?”

  “Knew it was coming.” She kept her eyes on my food, followed each spoonful like a cat with string. “Not blind. We have seen the signs.”

  I stared at her, blankly. “Signs? What signs?”

  She made a scornful little noise. “You are not a fool, so do not talk like one. The doors are fragile. We have all felt them.”

  The doors! “You’re talking about the Keeper. The door he showed me.” It should have felt strange to me, that the dissolution of our collecting team hurt more than the possible dissolution of an entire city. But it did.

  “Of course.” She scowled. “What else?”

  “How much do you know about him?”

  “What we need to know, to keep this world safe.” She pointed violently at my half-empty plate with her spoon and I hurried to keep eating. “But what else happened today, what could be more important?”

  I swallowed a too-large piece and my cheeks warmed. The scars along the left side of my face tightened, even now. “Those men, who work for the veche.” What had she called them? “Their creatures.” Creatures was a good term.

  She muttered something I was thankful I didn’t hear. She knew who I meant.

  “They split us up, our collecting team.”

  She did not look devastated.

  “Lad, and Kichlan, you remember them?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “They’re in different teams now, Kichlan can’t look after...” I trailed off. “It’s complicated.”

  I finished my food under Valya’s stern gaze. When she released me to my quarters above her house, I was full and feeling slightly ill from the heavy pudding. The warmth of the kitchen rose to fill my rooms, bringing cinnamon and prune scents with it, which did not help.

  I managed to hang my jacket and strip my outer layer of clothes before heavy steps rattled the unsteady iron staircase that led up to my door. I knew that step, and dragged a shapeless woollen shirt and pants over my boned, skin-tight uniform as Kichlan knocked.

  I wasn’t surprised to see him, but I hadn’t expected him so soon.

  “Eugeny is looking after Lad,” he said, as I opened the door and let him in. He sniffed. “Smells nice.”

  “Only if you haven’t had a piece big enough for three men force fed to you.” I smiled at him, but he only twitched the corners of his mouth in return.

  “What are we going to do?” He sat at my small, round table, still swathed in his patched-up coat. I guessed he wasn’t feeling the warmth from the kitchen below. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling anything at all.

  We’d been here before. Since we’d discovered the Keeper, and the puppet men had revealed themselves, we’d asked that question many times. Still, I didn’t have an answer.

  The only difference was that now we really needed one.

  What could we do? Those seamed, expressionless bastards were members of the national veche, Varsnia’s highest authority. We didn’t even know how many there were – and it was difficult to tell, they all looked the same. How was a bunch of bottom-of-the-social-rung debris collectors – who spoke to an invisible man most people believed was a long-dead superstition – supposed to prove the veche was putting the entire world in danger?

  So I hoped, instead, that Kichlan was talking about something I could answer.

  “I told you, I will look after him.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not his brother; I can’t be a replacement for you. I know that. But I don’t want him to suffer either, or be taken away.”

  Kichlan watched me. His eyes were guarded, mouth set in a heavy line teetering on the edge of a frown. It was always the same with him. He held so many walls around himself, he kept the world at a distance, all to ensure his brother’s safety. And after so many years he had trouble recognising the appropriate time to let down those barriers, or the right people to let in.

  “You know better than that,” he said, and I tried not to take offence at the rough edge to his tone. “He’s big, he’s strong, what will you do if he becomes violent?”

  Yes, I had seen it happen. Gentle, child-like Lad turned to a terrifying and furious man for no reason the rest of us could understand. But I unfurled a hand and allowed my suit to seep solid and silver to my fingertips. It caught the flickering of gas lamps as I slowly turned it. Valya, like Kichlan and Lad’s landlord, refused to rely on pion power to light her home, or heat her water, or cook her meals. So she tapped into the old gaslines that ran beneath the city – which couldn’t be safe, and surely wouldn’t run forever in this new pion-powered age.

  Kichlan looked away. He knew that with the control I had over my suit, I was stronger than Lad, and far stronger than Kichlan could ever be.

  “We know more about Lad, and what happens to him, now than ever.” I tried to sound reasonable, and withdrew the suit. “The voices he didn’t understand, the things that used to upset him. We know who that is. We can calm him.”

  “The Keeper.” Kichlan spat the word with the same vehemence Valya had bestowed upon the puppet men.

  “Exactly.” I tried to be the voice of reason in the centre of Kichlan’s storm. “And I can talk to the Keeper too. So I can look after Lad.”

  Kichlan rested his hands on the table, tapped hard with his fingers, pushed the chair out, stood, and began pacing. I should have known it was only a matter of time before the pacing started. “It’s not just voices, Tanyana. How will Lad get to this new address? I can’t send him on his own. It wouldn’t take much for him to get lost, and then scared, and maybe even angry. I don’t know what he’d do–”

  Two long strides and I was by his side. I touched his arm and froze him mid-pace. “We will work something out, Kichlan. I’ll come and get him, or we’ll meet half way.”

  “This is tomorrow, you realise!”

  “I do. And we’ll work it out, isn’t that why you’re here?” I smiled at him, and was finally able to pry one out of him. “What Lad needs most of all is the support of his brother, like he always has. And you can’t give it to him if you’re railing and panicking. He needs you to be calm.”

  “I’m not panicking.”

  I laughed and leaned back. “Oh really? Doing a good imitation then.”

  “I’m...” He paused, thought for a moment, then said with a grin, “fretting.”

  “Well warn me if that’s about to change. If this is fretting, I’d like to get as far away as possible before panic happens.”

  Suddenly his smile was gone. He gripped my shoulders, his fingers pressing hard into the strong, reinforced uniform beneath my woollen shirt. He leaned in close, eyes bright and intense. I wanted to back away, but couldn’t move my legs.

  “I can’t let you go either,” he whispered. His breath was hot. “Another team, where I can’t be. You and Lad, together. You don’t understand, do you? I need to be with you, I need to know you are safe. Both of you.”

  My heart beat too loud, too fast in my ears. My mouth felt
dry and my stomach knotted and something at the back of my mind chimed in with a quiet: “Shouldn’t you be more worried about the Keeper, Tanyana?” But I could hardly hear it, and easily pushed it aside.

  “Kichlan, I–”

  Someone knocked on the door.

  For a moment we remained frozen, Kichlan holding my shoulders, his breath on my face, our eyes locked. Then the knock again, harder. We broke away.

  Kichlan folded his arms, and turned his back on me as I hurried to open the door. The cold night air was welcome as it rushed inside. I felt too hot beneath my uniform, prickly and uncomfortable.

  Valya stood at the top of her unsafe iron stairs, wrapped in a padded jacket and shawl, as though the quick trip up one level required wrapping up. Yicor stood behind her and grinned widely at me as I gaped at them both.

  “Time to talk,” Valya said, and pushed her way inside. It was her room, after all.

  Yicor took my hand, pressed it between fur gloves. “If you would be so kind,” he said, an apology and a plea in his eyes.

  I let him pass. As I closed the door Valya was peering up at Kichlan – who looked just as shocked as I felt – and nodding. “You are here too, good.”

  Kichlan caught sight of Yicor, and his surprise slid into disapproval. “What’s going on?” He had never liked the old shop owner who had helped me find Valya when I had nowhere else to go.

  Possibly because, even though he could see debris, the man was not a collector. Neither was Valya. They had escaped the puppet men and the violence of being suited, when the rest of us had not. Kichlan said collecting was our duty, and doing otherwise was irresponsible. Somehow, I didn’t believe that was what truly bothered him about the man. Rather, I think he wished Lad could have escaped too.

  “Time for talk,” Valya said. She grabbed Kichlan and dragged him back to the chair. “Then time for action. Can’t wait any longer.”

  I fixed Yicor with a stern expression. “This is about the signs, isn’t it?”

  He gave a sheepish, guilty look. “Ah, I should have known you’d work it out.”