by Jo Anderton
I introduced him to Kichlan, who crossed his arms and nodded. Tsana wrapped me in a light embrace, barely touching me, and her high-necked jacket smelled of cumin and rose. A daughter of an old family with powerful veche connections, she was perhaps not as skilled as someone in her situation should be. After all, it was her mistake that had given me my first set of scars, but she was always graceful, even in the middle of all this chaos.
I tried to ignore how filthy I was, compared to the two of them. But I was aware of every patch in my second-hand clothing, the stench of sewerage and ever-present damp that my life as a debris collector had infused into the cloth, and the blood and vomit stains, newly gained that night.
Before Grandeur fell – before the puppet men and the veche had thrown me from her hand, eight hundred feet in the air – I had been a binder just like them. I had been the best of them. Now we belonged in different worlds. Different realities, I supposed, separated by the silver drilled into my bones.
“Are you hurt?” Volski hissed. He gestured to the great gashes in the ground. “What happened?”
“Debris,” I answered. “Debris happened.” In a way. I pulled him a little closer. “What are you doing here? Surely this isn’t the kind of job you usually do, a patch and repair?”
Volski started to shake his head, but Devich interrupted before he could speak.
“This is not a simple patch and repair.” He approached us. Behind him, the enforcers parted the crowd again and allowed the rest of the architect circle in. I noticed two new faces, and no sign of Llada, who had taken over my role as critical centre. “Please set up your circle, lady Tsana. This area needs to be stabilised as quickly as possible.”
Too much information to take in, all at once. “Lady?” I said, before I could stop myself. “Tsana, you’re the circle centre? What happened to Llada?”
She gave an elegant shrug. “Replacing you, Tanyana, was too hard on Llada. She opted for a smaller circle, and I was made centre.” She smiled delicately, before turning away.
I shared my surprised look with Volski, who shrugged, a decidedly inelegant gesture on him. “I know,” was all he said, all that needed to be said. He followed Tsana.
Tsana was not skilled enough to control a nine point circle. But I supposed veche connections could take you far, even after almost killing your critical centre.
“You should leave,” Devich said. He didn’t try to grab me like he had last time. Instead, his tone was distant, almost defeated. “You’ve done your job here, and it is not safe to remain.”
That didn’t sound like the Devich I knew. “Devich? What’s wrong?”
Kichlan bristled beside me. “Have you forgotten what this man did to you? Ignore him, Tanyana. Just turn your back and walk away. He does not need your sympathy.”
“I know that,” I said. “And he won’t get it. No matter how good an act he puts on.”
Tsana was organising her circle. Evidently unsure of the integrity of the ground she had them form their nine points tightly around her, rather than around the stones they would be repairing. It was less efficient that way. Better to cast your pions across the entire building site then knot them to the side. But she was the circle centre, not me. So I looked away.
Devich, to my surprise, barely reacted to Kichlan and me at all. “An act?” he said, slowly, like he was trying to remember what the words meant. He looked down to his arm and started plucking at the sleeve. A strange habit, and new.
Tsana and her circle began to work. A great grinding noise rose from the ground beneath us, and the entire market square shook. A few of the remaining poly stalls that had survived the debris attack cracked, and sand slid loose from the buildings around us. Clumsy work. Kichlan wrapped an arm around my shoulders, holding me up before I even realised I needed the help. For all the sound and movement very little was happening to the fractures in the ground. A mesh of concrete and iron formed to fill the gaps, but it came out spongy, uneven, and collapsed too quickly into mud.
“Strange,” Devich said. He twisted his sleeve into a tight ball of material, revealing an inch or two of what should have been skin. Instead, Devich was silver.
I studied the reflective surface wrapped around his wrist. No swirling symbols or shining lights, so what was it? Then I shook my head at myself. Was I being gullible? Perhaps. But damn, this was a pretty comprehensive deception. “What is?”
At first he didn’t answer. The cloth in his fist began to tear.
“Devich?” I laid a hand on his arm, and he flinched, staring at me with a sudden flash of horror. “What’s strange?”
“No,” he whispered, words little louder than breath. “Please. I tried, I did. So please. Not me too.”
“What are you doing?” Kichlan hissed. I waved him back, earning a dark scowl.
“Devich?” I leaned closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Pions.” Fast breaths and quick blinking. He released his torn sleeve. “The pions are wrong.” He gestured to the market square.
Pions? Confused, I followed his gaze. “Why? What are they doing?”
He tapped his forehead, rubbed at his eyes. “Can’t tell. Difficult now. I think, I think they’re running away.” He stared at me in such fear and uncertainty that I was reminded of Lad. And it shook me. “Vanishing. Where could they go, Tanyana? What does it mean? What happened here?”
Vanishing? Pions didn’t vanish. They changed, yes, as they created and destroyed at our command. But pions were eternal. What could be happening to them? Were they running away, fleeing to some deeper part of the world where even a nine point circle couldn’t coax them into life? Or falling prey to residue emptiness, to the very memory of an open door?
“I don’t–” I narrowed my eyes, and stopped myself. Could I really believe anything Devich was saying? Was this all just a ploy to get information out of me? His fear an act, the metal little more than foil wrapped around his arm? I wouldn’t put it past him. But why bother? What could I possibly know that he, or his puppet men masters, didn’t? “Don’t pretend ignorance.” I pulled away from him. “I know better than to trust you.”
That seemed to wake him up. His eyes sharpened – still too big and heavy with sleepless shadows but much more the Devich I thought I had known – and he laughed, dry and bitter. “Trust? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Tanyana. You don’t understand any of it. You don’t understand what they, what they–” He waved his torn sleeve in my face and for an instant, in the bobbing, unsteady light, his arm was longer that it should have been, slender, and elastic like a whip attached to his shoulder.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He clutched his wrist to his chest, and sucked in loud, painful-sounding breaths. “I told you, already. But you won’t listen to me. Not any more.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kichlan snapped. He clutched my shoulders and tried to turn me around. “He’s lying to you, can’t you see that? Manipulating you all over again. This is just another of his twisted games. Don’t fall for it. Don’t trust him.”
A flush of crimson rose from Devich’s neck, followed by what looked like ripples beneath his skin. “I promised, didn’t I? That I wouldn’t lie to you.” He released his arm, shook his tattered sleeve free. “There, can you see? I am their tool too, and that’s all I ever was. Just like you, Tanyana. And when I failed to complete my task – you, of course, made that impossible – they found another use for me. Piece by piece.” As he spoke, eyes wild, mouth loose and dribbling, he scratched violently at the top of his head.
I strained against Kichlan’s guiding arm and tried to see. Yes, there was something beneath Devich’s shirt. Suit metal? It could have been. But what did that mean? I drew a deep breath, clung to my cynicism, and held the memory of his betrayal close. “No matter what you say, it doesn’t mean I can trust you.”
A hissing breath, “Is there nothing I can do that will change that?”
“Oh, this gets better and better,” Kichlan sneered.
“Why won’t you listen to me?”
More tearing, more groaning, and Tsana’s circle finally managed to repair the ground. But the work was poor. Instead of the smooth stones the rest of the square was paved with, they had resorted to uneven cement.
“Why won’t I listen to you?” I couldn’t believe he would even ask that question. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten manipulating me, lying to me, and tossing me to the veche like so much meat for a pack of rabid dogs! I trusted you, Devich, and you betrayed me. Do you really expect me to make that mistake twice?”
Behind him, Tsana was trying to rebuild the lamp and failing abysmally. A steel pole sprouted, uneven and knobbled, from the iron frames reinforcing her weak repair job. Giant globes like misshapen fruit grew from the top, quickly lost their integrity and slid wet and shapeless to the ground.
Devich laughed at my words. “Trust? I will not, Tanyana Vladha, allow you to lecture me on trust. I have never known anyone with such poor judgement as you.”
“What do you mean?”
He was so pale, so gaunt, so much less than the beautiful man I had fallen for so easily. But still he managed to look down on me, to sneer. “Honestly? None of the things the veche have done to you would have been possible if you hadn’t placed your trust with people who did not deserve it.”
I drew myself up, trying not to feel Kichlan’s supporting arm. “Like you.”
“Me? I told you, I am just another tool.” He jerked his thumb at my once circle. “Think about this, will you? Do you honestly believe Tsana was promoted to the centre of a nine point circle through skill alone?” As if on cue, the makeshift lamp collapsed entirely and ironic applause broke out from the crowd. “You know who her father is; you know who his friends are.” Old family veche representatives who were obsessed with debris, and who had orchestrated everything that had happened to me, from my fall from Grandeur to my role as an experimental weapon. Yes, I knew. They lurked in the shadows, pulling the puppet men’s strings. “So think about it, for just a moment. Think about everything that has happened to you and how it all began.”
I scowled at him. “She has contacts, yes, but that doesn’t mean–”
“Glass?” Devich cut through me, just as sharp. “You really think she panicked and accidentally created glass?”
Ice travelled down every scar on the left side of my body. A cold memory of the mistake Tsana had made, when I fell from Grandeur’s hand eight hundred feet high and landed on glass. My stomach rolled again, and only Kichlan kept me upright as I swayed.
“That glass gave her the circle centre, as surely as it gave you those scars,” Devich continued.
“That’s enough!” Kichlan turned me around, started me walking. “Keep away from her.”
“Who do you trust, Tanyana?” Devich’s voice faded. I felt distant, cold, sick. “Ask yourself, who?”
Behind me the newly stitched ground tore with a long and terrible moan.
6.
Who do you trust?
Devich’s words echoed in my head, however much I tried to wish them away.
I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home. Probably under Kichlan’s watchful eye. But when the sun lightened my attic room and dawnbell echoed cleanly down from the Keeper’s Tear River, I was already awake and unsure if I had even slept.
I dragged myself from my bed. I couldn’t stomach Valya’s food or perceptive, ever-watching eyes for dawnbell supper, so tempted a later lecture and headed into Movoc-under-Keeper with an empty stomach; an empty, fragile stomach.
The city felt just as strange as I did, like spun glass in the crisp morning light. Maybe that was because I had almost destroyed it the night before.
Or maybe not. The seventh Effluent was not a wealthy area and as such was never particularly well maintained, but that morning it looked even worse than usual. Weakness ate away at the buildings and roads like a fungus, clear even to my pion-blind eyes. Patchy holes in the cobblestones revealed rusting, unused pipes beneath the street. Cracks ran through walls, and the mortar dissolved between stones. I witnessed two evacuations on my way to meet Kichlan and Lad – enforcers leading poor families out of crowded rooms while three point architect circles fought in vain to keep their homes standing. A small girl, carried by her weeping mother, met my eyes solemnly. That steady gaze seemed to look right through me, to the door I had opened and the Keeper’s scar that would never heal, and I hurried away feeling hot with guilt. I paused again at a corner to watch two lamps on opposite sides of the intersection soften and bend forward in a disconcerting, synchronised bow.
Perhaps I was just more aware of the city, of its stones and invisible pion-bindings, since the night in the market square. Or maybe the veche needed to invest in more architects instead of spending kopacks on Strikers, Mob and the puppet men.
Or maybe the pions really were disappearing in the face of the opening doors.
When I arrived Lad and Kichlan were already waiting for me on the corner, which was odd, because I was far earlier than we had arranged.
“Tanyana.” Kichlan held my shoulders and searched my face. He didn’t look pleased with what he found there. “Did you sleep?”
I started to rub at my eye, but quickly stopped. “Not sure.”
“Tan looks very white,” Lad whispered to his brother. As usual, his attempts at subtlety failed terribly.
“How is Eugeny?” I asked, trying to head-off the clouds gathering on Kichlan’s face.
He softened, for a moment at least. “The old man is tough. Stubborn too. Woke before us, was already cooking kasha when I got down the stairs and wouldn’t let me take over. Typical.” He rubbed Lad’s back, and some of the guilt eased from his younger brother’s expression.
“But what about you?” Kichlan’s frown returned with force. “Are you certain you’re all right? Maybe you should stay with Valya today. She’ll look after you, I’m sure.”
I grimaced. “I don’t think I could take it. And anyway, who would look after Lad?”
A moment more studying, and Kichlan turned to his brother. “Lad, will you look after Tan today?”
Lad brightened like the newly risen sun. “Oh yes, bro. Yes, I will!”
“You know you have to be careful with her, don’t you?” Kichlan continued, as though I wasn’t standing right there with them and certainly didn’t have any say in this new arrangement. “She might act like she’s strong, but underneath she’s fragile. You know that, right?”
Lad nodded, expression serious. “Oh yes, bro. Heard you and Geny talking. She is all crystally, right?”
Kichlan coughed, and looked away.
“Crystally?” I asked, an eyebrow raised.
“That’s right,” Lad explained. “Heard Kich telling Geny. Tan is like crystal but doesn’t know it is crystal. But Geny said no, she’s too tough. But Kich said, only on the outside, it’s so deep even she doesn’t–”
“Lad!” Kichlan interrupted, face bright red. “That’s enough, Tan understands. Don’t you?” He cast me a pleading expression.
Expressionless, I held his gaze. “Oh, I think I do.”
“Good.” Kichlan, attempting to salvage his dignity from the situation, placed my hand in Lad’s and folded his fingers over mine. “Then I will see you both here this evening.”
“Yes, Kich,” Lad said, eyes shinning.
As we left him, I watched Kichlan from over my shoulder, and maintained my irritation, even in the face of his flushed, slightly pleased with himself grin.
Lad led us to Ironlattice. I was a little surprised that he remembered the way so well. But then, he’d never been given the opportunity to lead before. Perhaps he was more capable than any of us gave him credit for.
“Here, Tan.” He opened the back door for me. “Careful on the stairs.”
I gripped the wall for support, and focused on not tripping. I suspected he would try to carry me if I showed the slightest hint of weakness. Lad took his responsibilities seriously.
/> Natasha waited alone in the toplevel. When we reached it, she looked up, her expression hard. “We’re in serious trouble.”
Silver debris collecting jars were spread out on the floor around her. Four in one neat pile, a good three dozen, probably more, scattered with their lids open. Stones and dirt made up a third pile closer to the windows.
“Morning!” Lad said, and his chest seemed to swell. “I’m looking after Tan today.”
“Oh?” Came a voice behind us. I moved further into the room to allow Mizra up. “And why would that be?”
“Tan isn’t feeling well and Kich said I should.”
“Unwell?” Mizra’s expression was a little too knowing, a little too pointed. It unsettled me.
Who do you trust?
“Last night was difficult.” I tried to look unconcerned. But my mind spun webs around Mizra, rolling him over and over, wondering. Could I trust him? Or Uzdal? Even Natasha?
“And she didn’t sleep,” Lad chimed in. “Said so.”
Lad, I could trust Lad. And with him, Kichlan. Maybe that was all I needed.
“Oh dear, looks like I’m last,” Aleksey called from the stairwell, his voice echoing. “Sorry about that.”
What about Aleksey, this new collector I didn’t even know? Could I trust him?
“Not late,” Lad told him. “The bell hasn’t rung yet.”
“That’s good.”
“So, you were saying.” Mizra still watched me, hawk-like. I tried not to feel like some poor rodent about to become supper. “You didn’t sleep? Why was that?”
“Why do you think?” I grated out the words, even as my stomach flipped into a knot. “Or did you have your eyes closed all night?”
Metal rang against stone as Natasha, her expression dark and furious, threw one of the empty jars against the floor. We turned to stare at her in shock as the sharp, splitting noise echoed around the close room. “Do any of you even know I’m here?” she growled.