Suited

by Jo Anderton

  As the nausea rose again I scrambled up to the top of the bed. I lay above the blankets, not feeling the cold, not feeling anything but ill and thin. Taut, and unreal.

  3.

  Thankfully, the Keeper did not disturb us the next day. It gave Natasha a chance to drag us around in a panic of her own until we had filled all the jars we could carry. She was worried about quota. I understood that. Failure to meet our debris quota would bring nothing but veche attention, attention we did not need. Another excuse to break us up, and take Lad away from even my pathetic supervision. I knew we had to do everything in our power to make sure that didn’t happen.

  But that didn’t make it any easier, or me any less exhausted. So when I returned home that evening I was pining for Rest – so I could, well, rest – but Valya met me at the bottom of the stairs and I knew it was not meant to be.

  “Tomorrow, we will leave early.” She held a pot out in front of her, hands protected from its heat by several layers of towel. It steamed in the cold evening air, giving her a ghostly halo.

  “We will?” Or I could sleep. Actually sleep seemed like a much better idea.

  “Of course!” She looked shocked. “There is no time to waste. I thought you understood.”

  “Yes. I do.” But my legs were weak and my stomach rolling and all I wanted to do was lie down. “Tomorrow then.”

  “You must meet the others. We must begin.” She forced the heavy, lidded pot into my hands. Even through the cloth it was so hot I fought the need to drop it. “Must eat.” She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Can’t fight if you don’t eat.”

  The pot was full of a thick vegetable soup. I managed a few spoonfuls, fought the need to be sick, lay on the bed, ate a few more. It became the evening’s unsettling routine.

  Dawnbell, Rest morning, and Valya dragged me from my warm blankets with her knocking. She would not leave until I had returned the pot – empty, and she made a point of checking – then promised to dress. We were outside and walking down the bare, icy streets before breakbell had even sounded.

  The old woman did not speak, which was good, because I didn’t feel alert enough to hold a conversation. I did, however, slowly realise where we were going.

  “Are we going to Kichlan’s house?” I asked, slurping the words with frozen, half-awake lips.

  She made a sour-taste face. “Eugeny’s house, you mean. Your team members merely board there.”

  I rubbed gloved fingers together, breathed hot air into my palms and cupped them against my cheeks. “So, you know Eugeny.” I supposed I wasn’t that surprised. Eugeny had sent us to Yicor, when I needed kopacks and somewhere to live. Yicor had sent us to Valya. Eugeny and Valya were similar in some ways. They both seemed to believe soup could cure anything. They both watched and understood from their quiet place on the sidelines, and provided warm beds when they were the most needed.

  But Eugeny was not Unbound. He was a binder – an old man who did not like to rely on pions, true, but he could see and manipulate them all the same. He just chose not to. What was he doing with Yicor and Valya?

  Valya’s expression pinched further. I hadn’t thought that possible. She did not deign to answer.

  We approached the small house of stone and wood, surrounded by monstrous concrete slabs of apartments on either side. I noticed Yicor loitering beneath a still-lit lamp on the corner. He nodded to Valya.

  “Are you well, Miss Tanyana?” he asked, searching my face.

  I made a rueful expression. “Would be better if I was still asleep.”

  “Ah.” He dipped his head. “I apologise for the early morning. But time is of the essence.”

  “I know.” I supressed a sigh and tried to forget about sleep for the day.

  “Wouldn’t be so tired if you ate properly,” Valya muttered as she knocked on Eugeny’s door. I ignored her.

  “There you are,” Eugeny greeted us with a smile. His unlit pipe dipped at the corner of his mouth. “I was beginning to worry you weren’t coming.”

  Breakbell toned, drowsy and mournful in the distance. Valya pushed me inside. “Some people are slow.”

  Eugeny’s house smelled of cinnamon, tobacco, and wool drying by the fire. Those smells wrapped warm and pleasant around me, touching my face and filling my lungs, easing the morning cold from my skin. I understood why Kichlan and Lad lived here. It was more than just accommodation cheap enough for debris collectors to afford. It felt insulated from the harsh city outside, protected from the puppet men and the Keepers of the world.

  “Tan?” Lad stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes. The buttons down the front of his shirt were mismatched and his hair was an explosion of tangled blonde curls. He launched himself down and enclosed me in a brief hug, before stomping into the kitchen and whatever food Eugeny had prepared for dawnbell supper. I assumed it was making that wonderful cinnamon smell.

  Kichlan followed him down the stairs, already wrapped in his scarf, hat, gloves, and wearing suspicion like a heavy jacket. He glanced between Eugeny, Yicor, Valya and me.

  “We go.” Valya was already at the door, ready to leave. “Must hurry. Much to do.”

  “Kichlan is coming with us,” Yicor explained. “Eugeny will care for his brother.”

  But Kichlan, still standing by the stairs, crossed his arms and pinned Eugeny with a flinty glare. “I will not leave Lad with a person I cannot trust.” His voice was heavy and dark and drew Lad to his side almost instantly.

  Spoon in one hand, porridge on his chin, almost-empty bowl cradled against his chest, Lad blinked his confusion at us. “Bro? What’s wrong?”

  Eugeny drew a small, leather bag from a pocket hidden in his quilt-like clothing. He gently pinched dried tobacco from its folds and sprinkled it into his pipe. The whole action was slow, calming, and completely at odds with Valya who had began to rock on her heels and lean toward the door. “I think,” Eugeny pressed the tobacco down with a soft fingertip, “Kichlan deserves to know.”

  “No time,” Valya snapped.

  “Then I will stay right here,” Kichlan snapped back.

  “Geny?” Lad caught the front of his shirt into a ball and wiped his chin.

  “They can wait a few more moments. After all,” Eugeny breathed air in through the still-unlit pipe, “they have waited this long already.”

  Valya scowled, Yicor shrugged like he didn’t really mind how long it took. I crossed my arms and hoped Kichlan would take it as a gesture of solidarity.

  “Want me to get your light, Geny?” Lad, porridge now smeared down to his neck as well, glanced at the warm glow of the kitchen fire.

  “Wash your face too,” Kichlan murmured. Lad blushed – the colour heightened by the warmth of the flame – and hurried back into the kitchen.

  Eugeny tapped his pipe against his wrinkled cheek. “I was never a strong binder, too weak even for a light factory, too clumsy to weave calico cloth.”

  I lifted my eyebrows in surprise and he caught the look. Eugeny chuckled softly. “Hard to believe? As a young man I was employed by the veche as well – but only because no one else would have me. I tended horses, cattle, pigs, and chickens for the city markets. It was dirty, poorly paid work. But at least I didn’t starve.”

  “Doesn’t make you a debris collector,” Kichlan muttered.

  “No, it didn’t.”

  Lad returned, face clean, with a thick twig flickering a small flame on one end. Eugeny took it from him with a nod and touched the light to his tobacco. He drew a few short smoke-filled breaths, and shook the small flame until it went out. “Ah, Lad. My light has died. Fetch me another?”

  Lad, who had watched the whole process fixedly, hurried out of the hallway.

  “But I was there, dragging a sow through mud and pig shit to the slaughter, when I found them.” At this, he glanced at Valya and Yicor. Neither met his gaze. “Hurt, the lot of them. Two were dead, one died as I tried to help him. This one,” he gestured to Yicor, “almost joined them.”


  “What?” Kichlan’s intense gaze lashed between the two old men. “I don’t understand.”

  “This time we will win,” I whispered, remembering what Valya had said. “You have fought the veche before.”

  Lad returned with a bigger stick, a bigger flame. Eugeny lit his pipe again, breathing smoke deep into his lungs, and sighed satisfaction. “Thank you, Lad. I think that deserves more porridge, don’t you?”

  But Lad, for all his shortcomings, was not as blind as that. His eyes narrowed. “Could stay here, with everyone. With Tan.” He shuffled to my side and wrapped his large hands around my arm. “Tan is here.”

  “That’s very true.” Eugeny puffed more heavy smoke, and Lad sneezed loudly. “Suppose you don’t want any of my stewed rhubarb then. Fresh. Still warm.”

  I could feel Lad’s indecision through his clutching hands.

  “And there’s sugar, in the jar. Won’t last long.”

  That did it. With a sigh and an almost inaudible mutter, Lad scrambled back into the kitchen. Part of me wished I could follow him. For the first time in days the smell, the very mention of food wasn’t making me feel ill. It figured Eugeny’s cooking could do that.

  “So why–” Kichlan tried, but Eugeny held up a hand.

  “I helped the poor bastards. They’d been beaten, badly, and I couldn’t just let them suffer.” He smoked, expression thoughtful. “And they came to trust me, even if I was a pion-binder, even if I worked for the veche they hated so much. I learned things from them: how to heal without healers, cook without heat generated by pions, see without pion-created light. I also learned the veche had Mob out looking for them – Mob, for the Keeper’s sake – and enforcers roaming the streets. I kept them hidden, and kept them safe.”

  “Eugeny might not be Unbound, as we are,” Yicor said. “But he is strong and trustworthy. A true servant of the Keeper.”

  “Is that why you took us in?” Kichlan asked, teeth clenched but expression uncertain, like he didn’t know what to believe or who it was safe to trust.

  “Not only you,” Eugeny answered. “I grew too old for the sty, too stiff for the stable, too damned slow to chase hens around. I had rooms, and knew there were people who might need them.” He tipped his pipe at Yicor and Valya. “Certain kinds of people.”

  “You have trusted him for so long,” Yicor said to Kichlan. “Does this really give you a reason to stop?”

  Kichlan’s shoulders sagged, he rubbed at his face and for a moment. Shadowed by the fire at his back he looked so tired, so lost, that it tugged at my heart. Then he met my eyes, and I could read the question there. I nodded.

  “As you say.” He released a great sigh. “Just as you say.”

  But something niggled at the back of my mind, some doubt not as easily assuaged. Yicor, Valya, the Unbound: what had they tried to do that had brought the wrath of the veche down upon them? And why did they think I would help them do it again?

  “I still don’t like this,” Kichlan said as, huddled against the early-morning wind, we followed Valya and Yicor at a distance. Apparently this was to make sure we didn’t draw any unwanted attention to ourselves. “For all their fine words, these are still people we barely know, and we’re following them blindly, without any idea what they really want from us.” He walked close to me. “I just– I don’t want you to get hurt. Not again.”

  My silver-filled cuts felt strange and heavy. Hard lines against the muscles of my stomach, immobile patches amidst my movement, they jagged into me with each stride.

  Kichlan wrapped an arm around my shoulders. He had his brother’s breadth, but Kichlan was gentler. His hand cradled, rather than clutched, as it rubbed warmth into my upper arm.

  I leaned into him. “What about Eugeny?” I managed, after a moment. “He is someone you know well.”

  He paused. “I thought I did.”

  I was about to tell him that everyone had secrets, and not to hold them against the old man who had cared for him and his brother so well. But I caught myself, just in time. I thought about the Hon Ji Half I had killed, what I had put Lad through, and the secret he now carried for me. Secrets and lies weren’t innocuous.

  So instead, I said, “I know what you mean. But it’s important, don’t you think, to learn what they have to teach us? Anything that might help us help the Keeper.”

  Kichlan scowled. “The Keeper. Again.”

  I said nothing. Better he hate the Keeper than me. I was not proud of that.

  Valya and Yicor waited on a street corner for us to catch up. A brave – or perhaps foolhardy – slide vendor dared to approach them. He carried an enlarged version of the small glass rectangles he was selling. Neither Valya nor Yicor could, however, read the words scrawled in bright pions over its surface and projected into the thin air just in front of their faces. I didn’t hear what Valya said to make the poor man flinch, turn around and hurry away, but I could imagine it.

  “There are places of memory in the city,” Valya said when we caught up. She wrapped her old, dust-edged shawl tighter around her shoulders. The old woman did not leave her house often.

  “Places where the old world survives,” Yicor said. He met my gaze and his eyes seemed to shine with humour, with some wry joke I was not entirely privy to. “Places where its secrets are protected. Hidden.”

  Like the library beneath his cellar, perhaps? Yicor hid books there, ancient tomes written with debris stitched to the vellum. It was from those strangely fungal-looking, bulging words that I had learned Lad was a Half, and what that meant. It was there I had learned to fear for everything.

  After a moment of loitering and surreptitiously scanning the street, Valya opened a shop door and hurried us inside. The shop instantly reminded me of Yicor’s. Different part of the city, different layout inside and not so heavily blanketed with dust, but still much the same. Instead of shelves filling the wide room this one was occupied by tables. Lined up wall to wall, their scratched wooden tops were covered with antiques. Wooden boxes with glass lids held coins, jewellery, spoons and small pieces of thin-looking porcelain. Large crates contained pottery, silverware, books. There were even clothes, folded carefully in thin paper, or hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

  All made, owned and used, I assumed, before the revolution two centuries ago. Or at least during its early days. Artefacts from a time when the city ran on gas and steam, not great threads of bright and colourful pions strung up between buildings. When words were read in books, not in light projected from glass slides. Houses were built by hand, carriages were drawn by horses, and only a few people had enough pion-binding skill to work deep changes to the structure of the world. The descendants of those few, powerful people still made up the national veche today. Debris collectors were not needed, because not enough debris was produced. And the Keeper had no trouble guarding the doors between worlds.

  The modern city of Movoc-under-Keeper relied on the augmentation of binding skill through Novski’s critical circles: three, six, or nine lesser binders gathering and channelling pions to be manipulated by their circle centre. That was the revolution that changed Varsnia, at first, and then fed through to the rest of the world. Factories full of unskilled binders, working on his principles, could heat an entire city, or light it, or process its waste. Circles of architects built great shining towers. Massive farms were established to grow any kind of food in even the coldest environments. Coaches glided on legs of light.

  All this new pion-binding produced so much debris that collecting teams like ours, with our suits and our jars, were established to clear it all away. Too much debris, left unchecked, interfered with the working of a city’s new and complex pion systems.

  I picked up a small figurine of the Keeper Mountain, made of clear glass, with dots of colour denoting trees and solid white for snow at the peak. It was hollowed out. I ran a finger around the inside, but couldn’t work out what was supposed to fit into such a strange shape. “I didn’t realise there was such a strong market for antique
s in Movoc-under-Keeper.”

  “There isn’t.” A man emerged from a door at the back of the room. Younger than Yicor and Valya, solid dark hair slick on his head, and his expression fierce. He scanned Kichlan and me with the same appraisal I’m sure he gave all the merchandise brought into his shop. Beside me, Kichlan bristled. “We use these shops as a cover. You know what they say about hiding in plain sight.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I had no idea anyone said that.”

  Kichlan snorted a tight laugh.

  The man scowled, and turned to Yicor. “Are you sure about these two?”

  “Of course!” Valya snapped.

  Yicor placed a hand on my shoulder, his face set with determination. “Eugeny is. And if you won’t trust our judgement, then trust his.”

  The shop owner softened. “Then come with me.” He turned and disappeared back through the door.

  Valya and Yicor pressed Kichlan and me forward.

  On the other side of the door was a storeroom full of crates. These were, I realised, just cover for a trapdoor at the back corner of the room. Half-hidden by stacks of boxes, it was almost invisible.in the dim light.

  “What is it with you people and trapdoors?” I muttered.

  I caught a fragment of Yicor’s smile. “We like buried things,” he murmured. “So much of our past is lost beneath the ground; history and memory, crushed by the weight of buildings and time.”

  A long ladder led down from the trapdoor. Darkness wrapped around me as I followed the shopkeeper, and descended. Only a flickering oil lamp swinging from a hook in his belt and the glow of my own suit guided me. I dropped the last few feet, wincing as the lines of metal across my stomach jarred with the jolt.

  It looked like we were in a street. Worn cobblestones at my feet, an eroded and uneven gutter, stone predecessors of pion-powered streetlamps broken and long unused. Broken windows like half-open eyes peered from the remnants of buildings. These houses were stunted things, built of stone, and most had collapsed, forming a base for the world above. Movoc-under-Keeper was one of the oldest cities in Varsnia, and a true child of the critical circle revolution. Hidden amidst the new wonders of Novski’s world, slices of her history remained. I had seen the odd wall, built without the aid of pions, still standing after centuries of change. These rare examples were fenced off from the destruction of curious fingers, and usually adorned with plaques listing how old they were and why they had been built. But they looked nothing like this. I pictured the city above us, the wide factories and tall apartment complexes, and wondered how we could have built all that, unaware of the bones of a far older city below.