Suited

by Jo Anderton

  “Signs?” Kichlan allowed himself to be seated – though I couldn’t see what choice he had – and scowled at us over his shoulder.

  “You might know them as being nearly crushed in a collapsing sewer,” I explained, as Yicor and I obeyed Valya’s imperious gestures, and joined Kichlan at the suddenly crowded table. “And what the Keeper’s door did to my suit.”

  “The Keeper. Again.”

  “Watch your tone,” Vlaya snapped. “Be thankful for him. Without him, we would all be lost.”

  Would we, I wondered? Could the Keeper really help us now?

  “The Unbound have always been guided by the Keeper,” Yicor said.

  In the old tongue, in a time of legends and stories and myths, that was what we would be. Unbound by pions. Unbound by society. Unbound and outcast. Now, we were debris collectors. I was still struggling to work out if that was an improvement.

  “Our predecessors saw the world changing,” he continued. “When Novski and his critical circles harnessed the true power of pions and upset the balance, they knew it would be trouble. Since before history our kind has worked with the Keeper to hold the doors closed. And they knew, the more pions are manipulated, the more debris is created. More doors. But the veche would not listen to our pleas.”

  “Turned us into refuse collectors instead,” Valya said with frightening venom.

  “They broke us up, they mutilated us.” Yicor pointed to the suit bright on my wrist. I fought an urge to cover it with my sleeve. “Silenced us. But some fled, took what relics they could, and hid. Two hundred years we have hidden. So much was lost. Elders discovered, taken away. Halves experimented on, their voices silenced.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Kichlan shiver.

  “We few do what we can. Keep the texts, and look for those who can listen.”

  “Such as you,” Valya said.

  “We have tried to keep some small memory safe, some small part of a lost history. But with each year there are fewer. With each year, the veche men grow stronger. And now it is too late. If we do not stop them, the doors will be open.”

  “Fear for everything,” I whispered. And shifted my gaze to Kichlan. “Which leads us back to the same problem.”

  He nodded, grim. “It does.”

  “What can we do against the veche men?”

  Valya smacked the table. “We must do something.”

  “I know.” I rubbed at my eyes and only then realised how tired I was.

  “The veche men know about the Keeper,” Kichlan said, and all attention turned to him. “He told you, didn’t he–” he glanced at me, and I nodded “–and Tanyana saw it with her own eyes, heard it with her own ears. They know, they hear him, they speak to him, but they don’t believe him. Or they don’t care.”

  But Yicor and Valya didn’t seem to hear. Instead, they both stared at me, almost reverential.

  “You have seen the Keeper?” Valya whispered.

  “You have spoken with him?” Yicor murmured.

  I nodded, wary.

  They shared a glance. “Then it was good, that we found you.”

  Kichlan and I shared a glance. Didn’t they understand? What exactly, did they think we could do?

  “We will help you,” Valya said. “We are already working against them, moving in shadow, infiltrating. Readying to attack. You will join us.” She scratched yellow nails across the tabletop to clutch at my hand. Kichlan stared in horror at her wrinkled, bony talons and drew back. “And this time, with you here, this time we will win.”

  2.

  I leaned against a newly repaired brick wall and watched a flock of Strikers glide by. Dressed in white leather, hooded, and surrounded by a ring of crimson-clad Shielders they were a splash of colour against Movoc’s grey streets. I could only imagine what they would have looked like if I could still see pions. Solid colour, fierce lights; proud and deadly.

  While this area of the city had not suffered as much as others in the debris outbreak two moons ago, it still bore scars. The wall I was leaning against was one. The puppet men had released a powerful fiend created by twisting and torturing a large amount of debris. This creature had critically interfered with the pion systems throughout the city, blocking sewerage ducts, shorting out heating and light streams, and ultimately undoing the foundations of the city themselves. The resulting damage was terrible, and still being repaired.

  Several buildings on this street had collapsed when their pion systems unwound. There was still a gaping hole in the ground two blocks away, where a thread of heating pions had torn, backed up and eventually exploded in waves of heat and pressure. I’d eavesdropped on the few people who walked passed me, and learned that light had still not been restored to two large, bland apartment complexes across the road. No matter how many critical circles the veche sent to restore the buildings’ systems new bindings refused to take. The pions were shallow and few.

  “Unusual,” Kichlan murmured, as he and Lad arrived. Lad watched the military men pass with wide eyes. Kichlan and I tried to be less obvious about it.

  I straightened, and dusted sand and tiny stones from the brickwork off my shoulders. The veche needed better architects than whoever had constructed this shoddy piece of work. “Maybe there is more trouble on the border with the Hon Ji?”

  “Isn’t there always?” Kichlan gave a tight little shrug. “Still, Strikers. Seems like an overreaction.”

  Varsnia’s relationship with her largest neighbour had always been fraught. Since Novski’s critical circle revolution, few nations could compete with our pion-binding strength. But as the centuries passed, the others were catching up, and the stronger they grew, the braver they became. Hon Ji had established a coalition to lead the push against us. I’d heard of skirmishes in the frontier colonies – arguments over mining land, mostly – spies and intrigue I’d never fully understood, even the odd attempt to assassinate a low-ranking, new-family member of a colonial veche.

  But this had been going on for years. It did not justify Strikers. I ran a light finger over the solid silver on my wrist. Neither did it justify the weapon the puppet men had created from me. After all, wasn’t that what I was? A weapon that no other nation had, a way to wrest military and technological superiority back into Varsnian hands? That was why they had destroyed my life, my world, why they had tried to break me and very nearly succeeded. All for the glory of Varsnia.

  Kichlan touched my elbow, ran his hand down my arm and pried my worrying fingers loose. “Time to go.” Just as gently, he placed Lad’s palm in my own.

  The Strikers glided around a corner. Breakbell was fast approaching. “Yes, we’d better hurry.”

  “One day at a time.” Kichlan patted his brother’s back. “Be good for Tanyana, won’t you.”

  “Will, bro.” Lad squeezed me for emphasis. I tried not to wince. “You be good too.”

  I turned my face to hide a smile, as Kichlan’s jaw slacked open.

  “Let’s go.” I tugged Lad along. “Duskbell, right here?” I asked his brother over my shoulder.

  Kichlan jammed fists into his pockets, hunched against the early-morning chill, and watched us leave.

  I couldn’t think about him like that, looking so lonely, so lost. I needed to concentrate on Lad.

  “Wish we didn’t have to do this, Tan.” Lad pressed his body against mine. It made it difficult to walk in a straight line, but at least he was warm. “Don’t like it.”

  “Me too. Me too.”

  With Lad attached to me, I headed back to the seventh Effluent. I noticed more rebuilding along the way. Effluents were generally poorer areas, and the buildings here reflected that. None of the graceful towers found in the wealthier Keepersrills – woven from steel and great shards of light-catching crystal – mostly squat apartments built with cheap blocks of rough stone and lathered with colourless cement. We passed a small factory struggling to produce furniture with most of their roof and half of one wall missing. The entire structure looked terribly u
nstable, given that we were unable to see the sturdy mesh of bright lights that was no doubt holding it up. Lad slowed, fascinated by the chair legs floating above several six point circles as they were carved by apparently invisible hands.

  Thirty-Four Ironlattice lived up to its name. A tall, thin building with long, narrow windows, all wrapped in wrought iron topped with nasty-looking spikes. I baulked at it. Not only because it looked uninviting and almost impossible to get into, but because the old architect in me – never dead, despite Grandeur’s best attempts – cried out for a merciful demolition at the very sight.

  Lad quailed. “Doesn’t look nice,” he squeaked.

  I craned my neck back to try and find the toplevel. All I found was more iron, and more spikes. “Help me look for a way inside.”

  Why did a building need so many windows, and why bother with them if you were just going to bar them all up? Together, Lad and I paced the thin strip of street, looking for something other than a ridiculously secure window that might be a way inside.

  “Ah, I tried that,” came a voice from my lower left. “I don’t think it’s possible.”

  I looked down. The scarred collector sat hunched against the dark wall of a neighbouring building. I had missed him. With his knees drawn up and his head lowered and his entire outfit the same kind of mud-brown as the cheap bricks, he was nearly impossible to see.

  “Hello,” Lad said, peering around me with evident curiosity. “Why are you sitting down there?”

  The new collector laughed. He unfolded himself, grasped the rough brickwork behind him and dragged himself upright. “Seemed better than standing.” He brushed his dirty-coloured coat, and held out a hand. “Aleksey,” he said, with a wide smile that only emphasised his scar.

  Lad released me long enough to grab his hand and give it a far-too-vigorous shake, before reattaching himself to my arm. “I’m Lad,” he said, as Aleksey blinked, probably confused and not a little sore. “And my br–” Lad hesitated, and looked down to his toes. “My bro’s not here.”

  Ah well, there went any attempt at pretence. But if this Aleksey was going to be collecting with us he would work out pretty quickly that Lad was not a normal man. Whether we tried to hide it or not.

  “Tanyana,” I said. “And no, I’m not his brother.” Lad chuckled at my attempt at humour. Aleksey just lifted his eyebrows. I couldn’t loosen my right arm from Lad’s grip, so resorted to twisting my left around and touching Aleksey’s fingers, smiling ruefully. “You’re with us, are you?”

  “That’s what the card says.” I caught the roving of his eyes, the way they touched on my eye and cheek, then dipped to my neck between cap and coat collar, following the track the scars on my skin. I tried not to mind. After all, I had done the same to him. “But it doesn’t look like the right building.” He turned, placed hands on his hips and tipped back to look at the uppermost heavily barred windows. “Oh, actually–”

  “Tanyana!” I looked up as Mizra’s voice echoed down the street. He was waving a suit-bright hand out of a high window, between two of the bars. “Around the back!”

  Ah, the ever-helpful veche and their light-on-the-details instructions.

  Aleksey, Lad and I headed down a small side street and discovered a heavily barred – but helpfully unlocked – door. Natasha and Mizra waited for us in the toplevel. It was a wide, carpeted room with a low ceiling and no couches. Apart from the bare shelves awaiting full jars, and a table laden with empty ones, it looked nothing like the sublevel we were used to. Strangely, even with sunlight streaming in from windows that took up most of one wall, it felt darker and colder than the underground ever did.

  Perhaps because Kichlan wasn’t here.

  “They gave her the keys,” Mizra said in a disgusted voice as Aleksey opened a door at the top of the stairs and we all filed in.

  “You can have them if you want.” Natasha span a set of iron keys hooked into a ring around her right index finger. “I couldn’t care less.”

  “It’s the principle,” Mizra snapped. He folded his arms, cast about for a place to sit, found none and resorted to hunkering against a wall. “Even on my bad days, I’m a better collector than you. I could be asleep and still collect more debris than you do!”

  “No offence taken,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

  “Tan,” Lad whimpered. “I miss my bro.”

  Well, this was starting well.

  “They also gave me this.” Natasha threw a poly-wrapped parcel at Aleksey, who fumbled with it, dropped it, and sheepishly bent to pick it up.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Uniform.” Lad finally let go of me. He hiked up his right sleeve to show Aleksey the black, boned material underneath. “You need to wear it under your clothes, and all the time. Even when you’re sleeping.” He smiled at me, and I nodded encouragement.

  “Why don’t you and Mizra help Aleksey into his uniform,” I offered.

  “Have you been shown how to use your suit?” Mizra asked, as he and Lad stood between the new collector and Natasha and I.

  “You mean these bands?” Aleksey said over the sound of torn poly. “Why do they call it a suit?”

  “Here, let me show you.”

  Natasha and I turned our backs and stared out of a barred window in an attempt to give Aleksey some privacy. I felt his confusion keenly. Hardly four moons ago I was just like him. Scarred, alone in a new team, with a new life, and a living suit drilled into my bones.

  “They should have given the keys to you,” Natasha murmured.

  I blinked down at her. Natasha was not usually so loquacious.

  “Despite what Mizra thinks, you’re the most capable collector among us. He might have been doing it for longer, but you’re better at it.”

  “Ah, thanks.” I’d never heard Natasha string so many words together before.

  She shrugged. “Like I said, it doesn’t bother me.”

  We stood for a moment in silence.

  “Other’s farts!” Aleksey hissed behind us, and Lad started giggling. “How did you do that? Where did the metal come from?”

  I thought of cables wiggling beneath my flesh and tiny insect legs kicking between my bones. I resisted the urge to touch the silver notch at my ear, or trace the lines of metal beneath my uniform and clothes. They were all injuries the suit had healed, sewing them together with its wire until there were hard and solid.

  My old scars were ribbed, white skin. My new scars were suited.

  “So, do we have a new quota?” I said, more to hide the sounds of the conversation behind us, and busy my mind, than any real desire to know.

  Natasha nodded. “Sixty jars every sixnight and one.”

  “Not as much.”

  “Not as many of us.”

  “Ah, but they don’t realise how much Lad is worth,” I tried, with false cheer.

  Natasha said nothing.

  “The metal won’t come out.” Disappointment in Aleksey’s voice was clear, even with my back turned to him. “Does it normally work the first time?”

  “For most people, no.” Natasha turned abruptly, and approached the men. I followed her.

  “Tan did,” Lad said. He was tearing the discarded poly wrap into thin, transparent strips. “Hers was big when rocks fell on her and she was all right, even though it was a whole wall.”

  I smiled briefly, not really sharing his enthusiasm for the experience.

  Aleksey’s frustration became worry. His dark, tight uniform stretched over broad shoulders and an even broader stomach that I hadn’t noticed when he was wrapped in layers of clothes. It looked uncomfortable on him, like it wasn’t really designed for someone so large. “That’s not likely to happen, is it?”

  My smile broke into something genuine. “Not if you’re lucky.”

  Mizra snorted. “Don’t take Tanyana as an example. The woman has the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met.” His eyes met mine briefly. We both knew it wasn’t luck. It was veche machination and an overly en
thusiastic Keeper that had dragged me to this low ebb in my life.

  But we weren’t about to explain the actual truth to Aleksey. And in a way, it was nice to pretend that this was all one big accident.

  “Get your clothes on,” Natasha said, collecting a thick shirt from the floor and passing it back to Aleksey. “We have a quota to fill. Can’t stand around talking about Tanyana all day.”

  Mizra and I shared a shocked glance. Natasha actually wanted to head out and start collecting? Maybe the Keeper was right, and the world really was ending.

  Natasha saw us and scowled. “Try not to act too surprised.”

  Lad chuckled softly.

  We left Ironlattice and stood aimless in the street while Natasha locked the door. A few wrapped-up citizens of Movoc-under-Keeper hurried past. Movoc might be poor this far from the Keeper’s Tear River and the city centre but it was not destitute, not shuffling toward death in a haze like the run-down areas at the very outskirts of the city. These were people with some pion-skill, but nothing special: cleaners, factory workers, underpaid and undervalued. We debris collectors rather belonged here.

  “Bro normally works out which way we should go,” Lad said, trying to be helpful, as Natasha peered along the street.

  “Kichlan isn’t here though, is he,” she snapped.

  Lad hung his head, so I took his hand.

  It did feel strange to be doing this without Kichlan. He organised us, he kept us going even when the debris was hard to find and the day cold.

  “Why don’t we start with places that look broken?” Mizra offered. “We can work out a route later. Right now, we should at least get moving.”

  “This way.” Natasha gestured down the street, away from the river.

  Movoc-under-Keeper was built around the Keeper’s Tear River, and spread out from it in a fan. The further you went from the river, the less kopacks its inhabitants earned. The less kopacks, the less the pion systems were maintained. And it was at poorly maintained pion systems that we were most likely to find debris. Without Kichlan’s organisational skills – or Lad and the Keeper guiding us – it was the best plan we had. “Let’s do it,” I said. I meshed my fingers with Lad’s and pulled him into a walk.