by Jo Anderton
“Stanislav,” Natasha chided. “Do not push yourself.”
The Striker flashed a sorry smile in my general direction. “We are designed for the air,” he whispered. “And for killing. Walking, talking.” Another gasp. “Are difficult.”
I refused to feel sympathy. Natasha and her cronies did not deserve it. “And now you think I will help you? After what you did to me?”
Natasha nodded, a short, sharp motion. “Yes, because this offer does not extend only to yourself. Kichlan comes too.”
Kichlan? My weakness, was he, now that Lad was gone?
“We offer you both safety, out of the city, away from the national veche, in exchange for your help.”
“What makes you think–”
She cut across my words with a flat palm. “That’s what you were trying to, wasn’t it? That’s why you both left the underground ruins. To run.”
Ice sunk down into my belly. I did not believe, not even for a moment, that Kichlan would run.
“Kichlan did not leave with me,” I whispered.
“Truly?” Natasha asked, surprised. “Then where did he go?”
I felt the brush of a phantom hand again on my shoulder.
Hurry.
I could not go with them, even if I had wanted to, not if Kichlan was missing. Natasha, I think, understood, though she did not approve.
“We have a revolution to start,” she said, by way of a goodbye, and turned her back on me. She and her traitorous Mob, Shielder and Striker disappeared into the Movoc streets. They were, I had to admit, the best camouflage she could have found.
I returned to Lev’s shop through backstreets and hid in what shadows I could find. The city was changing. Smaller groups of soldiers had split from the initial mass of the army. They clung like dirt around corners, at doorways, watching commuters, stopping coaches, prying and questioning. The groups were uniformly made of three Mob, one Striker. I wondered just how foolish I had been to get off that ferry and turn back into the city. To all this.
I snuck back into the shop through a window, and descended, closing the trapdoor safely behind me. Fedor glanced up as I pressed through the ruined door to the domed building.
The smell of cooped up bodies, of not enough fresh air, and – I hated myself for thinking this – the unburied dead, hit me before I’d even cleared the passageway.
Another reason not to come back.
“Where did you go?” But then he stood, and I realised Fedor was not angry. In fact, he did not seem to feel anything at all. His shoulders drooped, and his expression was empty and slack.
Sofia leapt to her feet and stared behind me. “Is Kichlan with you?” Her whole body thrummed with intensity, as though she could just will him into existence if she tried hard enough.
I did not answer, and glanced around the room. More faces. Lev; at first I didn’t recognise him with his head in his hands. Valya close beside him. And Eugeny. The concentration in his eyes matched Sofia’s, only he was focused on me.
I could only shake my head.
“When did he leave?” Sofia asked, voice cracking.
“It must have been after I did,” I answered. “I do not know where he went.”
“And where did you go? What are those clothes you’re wearing?” Zecholas asked.
I said nothing.
“If you won’t tell us, then it does not matter.”
I glanced between them all. Zecholas’s distant look, Volski tense. Fedor, empty. Eugeny, grieving. Mizra and Uzdal sitting close to each other, opposite the Unbound. Sofia still standing, still staring, still believing Kichlan would appear at any moment, her conviction sharp and clear and written all over her face. My heart hurt for her. I knew what I had done when I joined her collection team. I knew she cared for Kichlan more than, it seemed, she’d ever had the courage to tell him. Or more, at least, than he had ever noticed. But still, she had detected my pregnancy before anyone – even me. She had cared enough to take me to her healer, and not to judge, not even to hate me.
I wondered if Kichlan would have been better off if he had cared for her and not for me. Perhaps she deserved him more.
Lastly, I turned to Lev. So broken, face pressed into his palms. I could not be sure, it was hard to tell with so many faces I did not know but there did not seem to be as many Unbound as there had been. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
“They took him.” Lev’s words were so muffled I barely understood them.
Eugeny began to weep, and Valya crossed the circular floor to hold him.
“Strikers.” Lev looked up and over his shoulder at me. I drew back before I could stop myself, from the bruises, the cuts and the blood. One eye was inflamed and closed, his lip was split, knuckles grazed, his wrist purple and swollen.
Somewhere, as though from a great distance, as though through a thickening mist, I heard a faint wail. A sound of grief, or horror.
“They intercepted us. They were looking for him. They had been sent. Collectors without bands, they were told, carrying bodies through the streets.”
“Him?” I whispered.
“Tore the shrouds until they found him. Knew who they were looking for. Took him away. Left the others in the street like trash, only after him. We tried to stop them. Arrested, dragged away. I grabbed Eugeny and ran. Other, I ran.”
“Him?”
“Lad!” Eugeny, tears streaming. “Of course it was Lad! Those disgusting creatures sent Strikers – Strikers! – for Lad’s body. Who else could we be talking about?”
I staggered, reaching for the rough wall to support me. Volski gripped my shoulder. The image of Lad’s pale face, torn free of its shroud, exposed and dragged away… I had to fight not to be sick.
And Yicor, that strong, dignified old man, left in the gutter.
What could they want with Lad’s body? What would they be doing to him? Kichlan–
“Did…” I could taste bile. “Did Kichlan hear this? Was he here when you returned? Did he know what happed to Lad’s body?”
“We don’t know,” Volski murmured by my ear. “We didn’t realise you were gone either, not until Lev and Eugeny returned.”
None of them even mentioned Natasha. But then, she had always been so silent, hidden in shadow and apparently uncaring, that maybe they simply had not noticed her absence.
I stared at my shoes. Old, compared to Devich’s trousers. Encrusted with mud, leather worn and patched. Kichlan had done that, stitched a small, miscoloured square over a hole I had torn while clambering down a rusty drain, with a careful and well-practiced hand.
Kichlan. Had he heard what had happened to Lad’s body? Had he gone, then, to take his brother back?
There isn’t much time.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Standing on the deck of the ferry, held by the icy Tear River wind, seemed so far away, an impossible dream.
“Tanyana?”
I glanced up. Expectant eyes watched me. “What?”
Fedor sighed. “Options. What should we do?”
I said nothing. Hard to answer when I didn’t know myself.
You will need to choose.
“Where did you go, Tanyana?” Volski asked, voice low. “You wandered around up there for bells, while the veche sent Strikers for us, and yet you were unmolested.”
I thought of voices in the mist, of faces leering in broken glass. Yes, I wasn’t arrested or recruited or assaulted and dragged away. But I would hardly say the veche had left me alone.
I can take you to him. I feel what they are doing, I know their cruel touch. Do you want them to use his body as their new vessel; do you want him to take your place in their experiments?
My gut clenched, fierce pain low and hard. Did I owe a dead friend anything? A dead Half? Whatever they did, however horrible and unfair, he was gone. I had watched it happen. They could not hurt him anymore.
Yes, the Half is gone. You do not need to hurry after him. He does not need you any more.
Just like Kichlan
had said. So maybe I should have stayed on that ferry, in that dream.
But I was not referring to him. Lad might not need you. But Kichlan does.
“We have to do something,” Fedor was saying. “We try to run,” his eyes flickered toward me, and radiated contempt, “go out there and risk capture. Or we stay down here, and slowly starve to death. Because there isn’t enough food hidden in Lev’s shop to sustain this many people for more than a few days. One way or the other, we will need to go outside.”
“Or, we could do neither,” I said, even before I realised I’d made my decision. But as I spoke it grew so clear, I wondered why I had not seen it before. Freedom? What was my freedom, without him? “And save Kichlan instead.”
Sofia focused on me, then, “Kichlan?”
Fedor turned a kind of dying-sun red that, when mingled with the faintly blue light from our suits, made him look more purple than anything. “We could what?”
“Kichlan needs us–”
“No! Enough. We need to look after ourselves, Tanyana. Not Kichlan, not anyone else. Not even the Keeper.” Oh, I could see how much that cost him. So much he had believed crumbling beneath the weight of the soldiers’ boots above us.
“I thought you didn’t know where he was?” Volski asked.
I held in a sigh at their foolishness, at their mistrust. It was exhausting to stand in the middle of such pressure. “I don’t.”
“And it doesn’t matter,” Fedor pushed on. “Because that’s not an option. Hide, or flee. We need to decide which of those we’re doing.”
“You can, if you like. I am going to help Kichlan.”
Sofia nodded. “Yes.”
“How?” Volski gripped my elbow. “You don’t know where he is.”
I looked up into his face and realised he thought I was finally broken; more so than I had ever been after Grandeur, after suiting. He worried and he feared for me. But he would never understand.
It had been foolish to drag him into this, and selfish. But that was not something that could be undone with remorse.
“No, I don’t.” I pulled myself from his grip. “But the Keeper does.”
16.
“When did the Keeper start caring about Kichlan?” Mizra spat the words at me.
That was cruel.
I made my way back to the Keeper statues. Fedor watched me leave, but did not intervene. Eugeny and Valya remained in the domed building. After a moment, Uzdal, Mizra, Sofia and Volski followed me out. It hurt, when Zecholas did not appear through the rubble, that he would prefer to remain with veritable strangers than trust in me. And yet, after everything I had put him through, was I really that surprised?
“The Keeper can hear you, you know.” I leaned against the rock and slid down. “And he doesn’t think that’s particularly fair.” Back against the Keeper’s marble thighs, I drew my knees into my chest, wrapped my arms around them and tipped my head back.
Something protested in my stomach at the squeeze. I ignored it.
Mizra hunkered down before me. After a moment’s hesitation, the rest of them joined him. “You can hear him, can’t you?” Mizra murmured.
I opened an eye, fixed it on him. “Yes.” As simple as that.
“Without the suit on?” Uzdal asked.
“Just like Lad used to,” Mizra answered for me. “Isn’t that right?”
I gave a half-shrug, half-nod.
Sofia reached a hand forward, her palm hovered above my knee but she could not bring herself to touch me. “Can you find Kichlan?” she whispered.
“So what does that mean?” Volski asked. He must have felt like an outsider here, amidst whisperings of disembodied voices and mythical beings. Maybe he was used to it by now. “Are you like Lad was?”
I shook my head. My hair caught loose grains in the rock and sent them down the back of my shirt. “I am not a Half.” I was certain about that, and not because I had not suddenly grown child-like, simple and prone to violence. Because I was missing something Lad had, something that made him a Half. He had never truly belonged in this world, not all of him, at least. And while I might be able to step between the light and the dark with the loosening of my suited bonds, it was not the same. Lad had lived both worlds. I merely visited.
“Is it because…” Uzdal glanced meaningfully at my stomach, hidden behind my knees.
Suddenly, three sets of very bright eyes were fixed on me.
Only Volski appeared confused. “Is it because of what?”
I stretched out my legs before me. They were too tight to straighten. Even a metal as fluid as my suit had to have some toughness in it, I supposed. “They are talking about the child I’m carrying.” Even as Volski drew back, even as Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia shared scandalised looks, I remained calm. There were more important things to worry about now. Everything felt like it was settling into place. Amidst the chaos and the fear and the decisions, I was calm.
No thrills and fighting, this time. No bargaining, no desperate bids for freedom – either by killing the puppet men, or simply running away. Kichlan needed me. It was that simple.
“Sofia, Mizra and Uzdal think my child might be a Half. And if it is, that could be why I can hear the Keeper now.” But I shook my head. “I think they are wrong. I have heard him before.”
You did.
“Before?” Uzdal whispered.
“Child?” Volski choked over the word. “My lady. I… I don’t know what to say. Who–” He caught himself. “Um, congratulations.”
I laughed softly. How long had it been since I’d done that? Sofia muttered, “It’s not Kichlan. Not him.”
Before? Yes, I had heard the Keeper even before the puppet men had twisted me with their weapon, before Lad had sacrificed himself, before I had known about doors between worlds and the danger on the other side.
I had heard him on Grandeur’s palm, when those crimson pions broke me. Even before I had fallen. But why was that? Had I been so connected to the pions, so deeply linked in my desperate fight to bring them under control, that when debris had taken their place, I had reached out to it, instinctively? I had linked to debris before I’d known what it was. The darkness that replaced the lights, the Keeper, the doors, the only thing between our world and nothingness. Was that why it had listened to me? Why, when I touched it with a suit designed as a weapon, built to destroy, it had calmed, it had obeyed? Because the debris knew me, the Keeper knew me. From the beginning.
I stood, slipping my back up against the statue. Mizra, Uzdal, Sofia and Volski hurried to follow. This was pointless, hiding in the dark while Kichlan needed me, discussing things with people who could not hope to understand.
It didn’t matter any more. The knowledge was hard; it was like the throb low in my belly. I was not part of a collection team or a critical circle. Not any more. And I had to admit to that, I had to give it up, and acknowledge that I was different. More so than what the puppet men had made me. I was more than my suit, more than a collector, than a binder or critical centre. Not quite a Half, yet similar. Close to the Keeper. Touching the dark.
What did it matter if I didn’t quite know what I was, or what I was becoming. Not everything needs a word.
You must hurry.
I nodded, to myself and to the Keeper invisible beside me. Volski watched me quizzically. I saw sadness in his eyes, something long-suffering. And again I wished I had not caused him that.
It was time to end it.
“I need to hurry.” I smiled at them. “I need to save Kichlan, you see.”
“Let me help,” Sofia said. “Let me come with you. Please.”
I closed my eyes against her pleading expression. “I don’t think you can.”
True.
“But I will bring him back. I promise.”
Sofia didn’t look entirely convinced.
I stepped closer to Volski, and held my palm against his cheek. A muscle jumped beneath my touch, but other than that and the darting concern of his eyes, he did not move. �
��I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I whispered.
He softened. “Don’t be, my lady. I am only grateful that I could help.”
I backed away, until I was again against the Keeper. “Go back to Fedor and the others, stay with them, do whatever they do. And be safe.”
“What–”
“I am going to help Kichlan.”
And with that I urged the suit to run over me. The street fell away, the buried domed building with it; the faces so worried about me went, these people trapped in conspiracy. There was nothing but the darkness and the doors, and the Keeper. No faces materialised in the wood, there was nothing of the landscape from the real world. Immersed in darkness, in doors, I did not need them any more.
“Finally.”
I turned. The Keeper stood beside me. Hands on his hips, chest thrust out and head tipped back, smiling broadly. It was the strongest I had ever seen him. His skin was white and solid, his eyes darkly fluid. Only the faintest flutter of a pulse showed in his neck.
“You look well.” It was a strange thing to say to a being that was not physical, a being whose body was built of debris. Strange, but fitting. “Solid.” If not a little awkward.
He nodded. “I have been closing doors.” And his smile faltered a little. “It will not last, though. The strength you gave me, the debris Lad bought me, it is but a tiny piece of everything that has been taken from me.”
“Yes.” I understood. But what could we do about it? What would it cost to release another basement’s worth of vats? I didn’t think I had what it took to watch another loved one die.
“Which is why we must hurry.”
I frowned, as always unsure if he could see my face beneath my mask. “I thought this was about Kichlan.”
“It is. They are, at the moment, linked.”
Pressure in my chest. “What are the puppet men doing to him?”
The Keeper’s dark eyes averted. It was hard to tell. Only in the shifting of my own reflection did I know his eyes had moved. “We need to hurry.”
I turned to head down the street. He caught my wrist and prevented me.
“I do not pretend to understand what has happened to you,” he said. “What they have done to you, how it has changed you. And why. But I know that you are a part of this world, Tanyana, as I am. As Lad was. I have seen you close a door. That is proof enough for me.”