by Jo Anderton
Mizra and I shared a look, stunned that Natasha – Natasha – could care enough about anything to interrupt us with such a noise.
“Do know you’re here,” Lad whimpered. And I didn’t blame him. She was just a little frightening, standing over her devastated collecting jars, feet planted wide, arms crossed, face red and scowling.
“Then maybe you didn’t hear me,” she continued, voice still deep and predatory. “We are in a lot of trouble.”
Aleksey cleared his throat. “Ah, excuse me for asking. What kind of trouble?”
One of her arms whipped loose, and pointed sharply at the four neat jars. “Because that is all the debris we’ve collected. The rest of these jars,” she waved that accusing finger wildly at the floor, “are empty. Or were filled with rubbish from last night.”
“We have only been collecting for two days,” Mizra offered as an explanation.
“We don’t even have enough to cover those!” Natasha’s tenor and volume rose, apparently in tandem. “Put an emergency in the middle of that and we are very, very behind on quota.” She paused to take a long breath.
“And that’s a bad thing?” Aleksey ventured again, brave individual that he was.
“It is,” Lad said, voice almost too quiet in Natasha’s echoes. “If we don’t keep up, the veche will punish us.”
“They could break us up again, send us away,” Mizra clarified.
“Either way,” I said. “We don’t want that kind of attention. Not from the veche.” And not from their puppets. I straightened. “That means we have to work very hard and very quickly. We have no way of knowing when the veche will come to take the jars away. We’d better make sure they’re as full as possible.”
Natasha crossed her arms again. Lad nodded. Mizra maintained his watch on my face, and Aleksey looked uncertain. All in all, it wasn’t particularly reassuring.
“Well, we’d better get moving if we’re going to have any chance.”
While Natasha scooped some of her empty jars into the bag, Lad helped me down the stairs. Mizra hovered at our backs like a curious fly.
“Which way?” As Natasha secured the door behind us, Aleksey hunched into his jacket and wound a scarf around his neck. It was a cold morning for the middle of spring – although even in mid-summer Movoc-under-Keeper longed for winter, and spring always struggled to make itself known – the sky clear but the sun insipid. Worn, like the city. Like me.
“Doesn’t matter.” Natasha ploughed on ahead. “Just walk.”
We followed without argument. Lad did not offer to guide us to dangerous and hidden debris, and I was glad for that at least. In fact, it seemed that the Keeper was upholding our hastily made bargain, and was leaving him alone. Instead, Lad held my hand and warned me about landmarks coming up that I should be careful of.
“There’s a hole in the street, Tan. Careful.”
I avoided a small crack between cobblestones.
“Oh, water. You could slip. Careful.”
I stepped over a small trickle of wastewater from a broken drain.
On my other side, Mizra was just as attentive, though silent. If I so much as blinked, he made a worried face, reached forward to touch my arm, seemed to catch himself and let his hand drop. Between the two of them, I knew I should be finding the whole thing very irritating. But perhaps because Lad was not talking to invisible people and being lured into untold danger, I didn’t really mind.
I couldn’t say the same for Natasha. She crouched at a broken pipe, scowled inside, lengthened her suit finely and probed. “Nothing,” she spat. “Mizra, get over here and help me look!”
Aleksey took his place beside me. He shot uncertain glances between Lad and me before murmuring, “Last night, that was... something. Wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Was bad,” Lad said.
Aleksey’s bruises were clear and dark, the cut on his lip swollen. Perhaps he deserved an explanation. But could I trust him? He had helped me, hadn’t he? But then again, I had once believed Devich was on my side, and Tsana too. So that proved little. “Lad,” I said, with a squeeze. “Would you help Natasha and Mizra look in the pipe?”
“But Kich said–”
“Aleksey will look after me. Only for a moment?”
With a purse of his lips that made him look uncannily like Kichlan when he disapproved of something – which was, after all, more often than not – Lad released me and joined Natasha and Mizra. They had followed the broken pipe to an abandoned heating system, shoved between a rusted gate and the degraded wall of an old building. It looked like the perfect place to find a cache of debris, but Natasha’s constant muttering, and the tension I could read in Mizra’s shoulders and back, did not fill me with confidence.
“I should thank you,” I said to Aleksey. “For helping me last night.”
“Not at all.” He tried to smile, ended up wincing and touching the cut on his lip. “I’m one of the team, right? It’s what we do.”
Part of the team, already? Tsana had been part of my circle for years, yet still I had not known her. Not truly. How long did I need to know Aleksey before I could trust him? Before I could tell him what really happened last night, the Keeper and doors and Devich and all.
We watched, in silence, as Natasha pried grains of debris from the old heating system and dropped them into jars Lad held open.
“So,” Aleksey said, finally. “I guess you’re not going to explain last night to me.”
“You were there. You saw what happened.” Even as I spoke, I realised how much I wanted to trust him. Scarred, just like me, but smiling and good natured, helpful and concerned. Was I being too cautious, had I let Devich get to me?
“Well, I suppose that’s understandable.” He even took such rejection with good humour. “Then at least tell me this. What was Fedor was rambling about?”
I blinked at him. “Fedor?”
“After Kichlan and the big one here took you home. He was frantic, kept talking about ‘him’ and how could she – by which he meant you – how could she treat ‘him’ like that?” He rubbed his palms together, breathing warmth over his gloves. “Upset the short woman, the one on the other team.”
“Sofia?”
“Guess so. She told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. It went on like that for a while. I was glad to part ways.”
“Ah.” Yes, Fedor. Just how much of Yicor’s secret books had he read? He knew about the Keeper, but did he know what Halves were too? How much had he heard last night? And could he put it all together? If he’d worked out that Lad was a Half – an intermediary between the Keeper and the world he guarded – surely he would want to involve him in the Unbound revolution. Would I have to protect Lad from Fedor now too?
“Well, as you said, I had left by then. So I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
Aleksey worried at the cap pulled tight over his head. “Fair enough. Still, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. You’re right, I was there. And I certainly didn’t have my eyes closed. But, you know, there are still some things I don’t understand.”
“Oh?” I said guardedly. He had a gentle way of pressing me for information, true, but he was still persistent.
“Like Lad and that body. I mean, I know you said it wasn’t normal, debris isn’t usually like that. So why was it attacking that dead person? And why did it turn its attention to Lad–”
“Got it all, Tan!” Lad bounded down the street, jar in one hand, looking both proud and relieved all at once. “Were you all right without me?”
I smiled at him, thankful for the distraction. “Yes, Lad. Aleksey has been looking after me.”
“Thank you Aleksey.”
Aleksey shifted under Lad’s warm regard and rubbed the scar on his nose.
“Other’s hells.” Natasha took the single jar from Lad and glared at it in disgust. “Not even enough to fill one.”
“Better keep going then,” Mizra said, shifting the bag slung over h
is shoulder. “Unless, Tanyana, you don’t feel well enough.”
“Of course I do.” I pulled Lad into walking and ignored the twinges in my stomach. Hunger, thirst, only those.
Aleksey fell in beside me, but I did not allow him to try that question again.
“Your scar,” I said. “How… How did it happen?” I touched my cheek with a free hand, bringing attention to my own web of scarring. “They are unusual, after all.”
His rueful smile returned, and he began to stroke his nose again, an unconscious movement quickly stilled. “I’ve been building the courage to ask you about yours.”
“Tan fell,” Lad answered for me, expression glum and his grip tightening to the point of hurting. “She fell very far down and got cut when she landed.”
That pretty much said it all. So I said, “Exactly.”
“Ouch.” Aleksey winced, and Lad nodded in serious agreement. “Well, mine? Someone hit me.”
Lad blinked. “They must have hit you very hard.”
“They did indeed.” Aleksey was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he would elaborate. After all, “someone hit me” was about as detailed as Lad’s explanation.
“Oh this is just ridiculous!” Natasha and Mizra had stopped at a sewerage vent steaming into the cold air. It certainly looked like a clogged system; perfect debris collecting ground. But, again, all they found was a small handful of loose grains. “Is it going out of its way to make us look bad?” She almost threw her collected debris at Mizra, who pointed an open jar toward her at arm’s length.
“It was a skirmish,” Aleksey said as we continued, his voice quiet, his head low. “I was an enforcer, not Mob or anything like that, but we were guarding an old family member of the national veche on a tour of the colony. We must have strayed too close to the border. The Hon Ji got us.”
Lad gasped, theatrically.
I patted his hand. “What happened?”
Aleksey cast us another of his self-effacing looks. “Ah, well, we did what we were trained to do. We sent a call along an encoded pion stream for backup and did what we could to protect the old man. But enforcers aren’t strong the way Mob are strong, even Hon Ji Mob. They carried these big… I don’t even know what to call it, like a hammer. But so huge, only someone with pions working overdrive in their body could hope to lift the damn things, let alone swing them. One tried to destroy the old man’s coach with it, and it looked like it was going to work. Except I got in the way.” He traced the gash across his face. It ran from his left eyebrow, across his nose, deep into his cheek and down to the right jaw line.
Following his finger, I couldn’t help but imagine the impact, the crush of bone and the slashed flesh, and I shuddered.
Lad stared at him mouth gaping in a wide O.
“All I really remember is red. Like the world was full of it, bright crimson like blood. Healers tried to explain brain trauma and hallucinations to me after I recovered, but I didn’t want to hear it. So I don’t really know what happened after I went down. Only that our call must have been heard, because Strikers darkened the sky and wiped the Hon Ji Mob from the earth. Not that I saw it.” He sniffed, ducked his head lower. “When I woke up, my face was a mess – much worse than it looks now, let me tell you – and the pions were gone. But then, you must know what that is like.”
I knew, all too well. I remembered that moment of confusion, of terror, of emptiness, when I realised I was alone in a world that had once been full of companions. And then the disgust, when I saw the dirty little specks of debris that had taken their place.
“The healers saved your life though. Scar or no.” I knew what that was like, too.
“Yes, the healers.” A flicker of a glance from beneath his eyelashes. “I had no face left, Tanyana. No face at all, but still, they, they are the most skilled in the military.” He hesitated. “The rest of my Fist were rewarded. Kopacks, status, medals.”
“Fist?” Lad asked, voice quiet and expression overawed.
“That’s what we are. What they are. A group of enforcers.”
“Oh.”
“While I had my face stitched up, the suit put on, and was sent here, to collect rubbish for a living and wallow in Varsnia’s scum... they were rewarded.” And before Aleksey turned his face away I caught a darkness there, a shadow across his eyes. There was rage, hidden somewhere beneath his usual unassuming smile.
“So there you have it.” When he looked up again he was all smiles and regretful nose rubbing and I wondered if I had imagined it. “And now I have answered your questions. It’s not that hard. You could give it a try.”
“Enjoying the walk, are you?” Natasha scowled over her shoulder. “Ever consider, oh, I don’t know, looking for debris with us? After all, that’s why we’re here.”
With a guilty look, Aleksey hurried forward to join her. Mizra held back long enough to whisper, “Did someone swap her with an overemotional double while we weren’t looking?”
“Mizra!”
Lad and I, however, could not be summoned with the snap of a name, and Natasha knew that. So she allowed us to follow at a gradually slowing pace. I was beginning to feel light-headed, even dizzy, and more thankful for Lad’s support than I would ever tell him. He took his responsibilities seriously enough, and did not need to know that without the strength of his arm and the grounding warmth of his body, I could not have kept up even our slow, slightly limping rate.
Natasha took us down all the usual ways: along dark alleys, between lampposts, around the back of factories. But all they yielded were small and sluggish grains, not even a faint webbing of grey planes. It was almost as though the city’s debris had felt with its pions.
Highbell tolled and faded. Natasha allowed us to stop long enough to buy hot roasted sweet potato and cups of chicken broth. The food vendors were having trouble with their stalls. Made out of clear poly inlaid in parts with steel, the stalls usually floated above the street, moving gradually around the city on legs of pion threads – invisible to us, but bright and strong to those who could see them. But these looked more like they were being dragged than shepherded as they lurched along, leaving scratches and dents with their corners in the cobblestones. The three point circles that manned them called out loudly to the usually helpful pions, a desperate and unseemly thing to do in the middle of the street. It didn’t seem to help.
I was ravenous, but the smell triggered my nausea again. It didn’t help that the food was poorly cooked – potato skins burned while still cold on the inside, and the broth watery and overlaid with an fatty film – but I ate anyway, aware how much I needed to. The meal sat heavy, sloshing in my stomach.
The day wore on and the debris grew even harder to find.
“Only three days,” Natasha muttered to herself. “I’ve only been doing this for three days. Do you think that’s the shortest amount of time anyone has led a collecting team before it was disbanded?”
“Maybe it isn’t just us,” Mizra ventured.
“What difference would that make?”
“Well, if everyone’s having trouble finding debris then we won’t stand out, will we? And they can’t exactly disband every collecting team in the city.” He paused. “Can they?”
Personally, I wouldn’t put anything past the puppet men and the national veche. But I didn’t say so. It was taking all my concentration to keep upright.
When Laxbell sounded, mournful and tired, I knew we had run out of time.
“Natasha,” I said, startled by how weak and wavering my voice sounded. Mizra’s hawk-eyes returned. Thankfully, I didn’t need to say any more. Natasha knew I had to take Lad back to his brother, and she knew she was defeated. Her shoulders sagged. “Yes, all right. Let’s go back. And hope they don’t come to collect the jars for another few days at least.”
Lad stopped pointing out potential hazards on our route. But somehow, his silences were worse. He joined Mizra in attentive, ever-watchful concern, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders instead of h
olding my hand. While I was thankful, I couldn’t stop thinking that it wasn’t fair. I was here to look after him, not the other way around. No matter what Kichlan said.
The stairs at Ironlattice were killers. I staggered too many times, and even Natasha seemed concerned about me by the time we returned to the toplevel.
“Not even two.” She sighed as she added the jars to the four full ones on the shelves and returned the empty ones to the table. The shelves looked so bare like that, so stark. What hope would we have, when the veche came to collect?
Then Natasha turned to me. “You’re taking Lad back to Kichlan, right?”
I nodded.
“And getting home from there…” hesitation “Would you like some help?”
I almost fell over. This wasn’t too strange, considering Lad was the only thing holding me up, but even without the now-constant pain and exhaustion, Natasha offering to walk me home would have knocked me from my feet.
“That’s it,” Mizra said. “I have to know.” He approached Natasha, peered at her, head tipped. “Did you hit your head on anything?”
“Pardon?” she asked between clenched teeth.
“You’re worrying about the jars.” Mizra started ticking things off on his fingers. “Offering to help Tanyana home, bossing us around. It’s like you’ve taken lessons from Kichlan. Is that it? Did the old boy teach you a few things? Haven’t got any lectures hidden in there somewhere, have you?”
“Mizra, if you don’t–”
“Tan,” Lad said, quiet compared to Mizra and Natasha’s rising voices, but his frightened tone cut through their bickering like a knife. “He asked if he can talk to you.”
In the sudden silence I forced myself to push tiredness and my rebellious stomach aside. This was my idea, wasn’t it? So I couldn’t tell the Keeper to leave me alone, not when he was keeping to our arrangement.
“All right.” My suit was still sluggish, stretched thin from the night before. I gritted my teeth against flare-ups of pain around the bands, and the solid ache within my bones. Not the usual enthusiastic longing for freedom, the suit felt more like it had burrowed deeper inside me and did not want to leave. It spread slowly over my body, encasing my head last. The Keeper stood beside Lad. He wrung his pale hands so tightly the debris within him bulged between his fingers. His dark gaze darted around the room like he was a trapped, frightened animal. But still, he was keeping his word. He did not touch Lad, or crowd around him, or ramble nonsensical words in his ear. The room was small – doors at my feet and at my back – but at least these seemed secure.