Debris

  Why had he run like that?

  Kichlan held my gaze for what felt like a long and heavy moment. I knew what I was saying. I knew we had to use Lad's help while he was still in a good mood. But debris collecting wasn't my world, at least, it shouldn't have been. If I hadn't been pushed. If I hadn't been silenced. And I couldn't let it just go on. I had to grasp at the straw that had appeared so suddenly, then fled like I was the Other at its heels.

  "I will go without you," I whispered.

  Strangely enough, Kichlan wasn't angry. His neck didn't bulge in the kind of frustration I seemed to be able to bring out in him without trying. No disappointment either. "We have a long sixnight ahead of us," he said again. "Will this take long?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then we'd better come with you and make sure it doesn't." He smiled. "You can be useful to have around." He gestured to the roof I had just cleared. "Can't just let you leave."

  Together, Kichlan and I turned back to the street. Looking confused, Uzdal, Mizra and Sofia followed. Lad, easily distracted, bounded after us.

  "As long as she gets the next sewer," Natasha muttered, and hung at the back.

  I felt strangely strong as I walked down the wide street, flanked by my debris collecting team. Even though pigeon feathers had stuck in my hair, Sofia had a bloody kerchief wrapped around her hand, and Natasha and Mizra smelled like sewage. Even though Lad had started to skip, and attract wide, shocked stares.

  The door was locked. I ran fingers over the soft crystalline pad and it buzzed an angry rejection. An old bronze plate was screwed into the brickwork beside the door, green with age and almost unreadable. I could make out "veche" though. Was there a sign below it, in bright pions I could no longer see? What was the administrator doing here? I had never travelled this far from the city centre to meet with anyone from the department, I didn't even know they kept offices outside of the city centre.

  "It won't open. Pity." Kichlan leaned close to the panel, lifted his hand to rap against it. But he missed, and his suit knocked it instead. The crystal wobbled like water, sent out a high-toned screech, and the door unlocked with a click. "Oh my." Kichlan straightened. "What do you know?" His eyes were too wide, his face too innocent.

  "How did you do that?" Sofia glanced between door and suit.

  He shrugged. "It was an accident." He smiled down at me. "Well, didn't you want to get inside?"

  It hadn't looked like an accident to me. Either way, he had opened the door. I pushed inside to a narrow and dimly lit hallway. Kichlan and the rest of the team followed.

  There was something eerily familiar about the hallway. Its beige walls, the tiled floor, the lighter squares on the walls where pictures must have once hung. The whole place reminded me of the hospital building. Of where I had woken, and been suited.

  It made me shudder.

  The door at the end of the hallway was open a crack, letting out sharp beams of bright light. I pushed it, and sure enough the administrator was there, sitting behind a desk as he had always been, but looking pale, and flicking fingers and rambling at invisible pions.

  He looked up, saw us, and lurched to his feet. "How did you get in here?" He looked around, eyes wide. What was he looking for?

  I entered the room. It was far too warm, but I could see no heater. "Do you know who I am?"

  He shook his head. "Of course not. Should I?" Sweat dripped from his chin.

  I approached the desk, and could feel Kichlan and Lad close behind me. I said, "Don't bother lying." I placed my hands on the wood, flexed my fingers. My suit shone in his eyes and the administrator flinched back. "You recognised me, now you can tell me why you ran like the Other-cursed wind when you did."

  The administrator's eyes flickered fast and panicked from my face, to what I could only imagine was Kichlan's thunderclouds, and up to Lad.

  Then the large man crashed his fist on the desk beside me, and all of us jumped. "You tell Tan!" he bellowed, and the administrator stumbled back against the wall. "You stop lying to her and tell her!"

  "Lad! It's all right, don't shout." Kichlan reached for his brother's arm, but Lad easily shook him off.

  When I looked up at him, Lad had tears in his eyes, and his face was red. On him, it was frightening. "Not nice," he hiccupped the words, sniffed loudly. "Doesn't feel nice in here. And don't lie to Tan."

  "All right." The administrator ran a finger around the edge of his high-collared yellow jacket. No wonder he was hot, wearing that in a room like this. "No need for threats."

  Lad sniffed again, shifted and crossed his arms. Kichlan patted his elbow, looking helpless.

  "Yes, I know who you are." The administrator drew a kerchief from a pocket and used it to wipe his face. "But if you're here for the kopacks you should know there's nothing I can do. I allocate payments, or retract those payments, based entirely on the instructions given to me. I can't just produce kopacks, no matter what you threaten me with."

  I blinked at him. "Kopacks?"

  "Don't tell me this is about kopacks!" Sofia snapped from behind me.

  "It isn't." I straightened. "I don't remember your name."

  "Pavel," he murmured. "I wouldn't have expected you to."

  "Pavel, then." I walked around the desk to stand in front of him. Kichlan, I noticed, remained attached to Lad. "I haven't come to get my payment for Grandeur back, if that's what you think."

  If anything, Pavel paled further. "Why are you here then? Trying to make things worse for me?"

  "Worse?" I frowned, waved a hand at the room. "This isn't where you used to work, this isn't where I met you. So I could ask you the same question. Why are you here?"

  Suddenly, he grinned. It was like a crack through his face, jagged, violent, harsh. "You really have no idea, do you?"

  "What?"

  Lad let out a damaged-animal groan.

  Pavel said, "I'm not the only one. Everyone else in my office, all of the other administrators who helped you at some stage in their career, have been relocated to Otherholes like this place. Your circle members survived, they're too well connected to be pushed around so easily. But everyone else." He laughed, a ragged sound. "Even heard some woman on a desk at the tribunal chamber spoke to you and was sent to work in death records in the colonies! Death records! Can you believe it?"

  Something hard and cold seemed to have been dropped in my stomach. "No." It set me shivering. "No, I don't."

  He laughed again. "What are you here for, then?"

  "I–" I swallowed. "I need your help, Pavel. You have contacts, you must have, in the veche. Like the people who send you those instructions! High up. I need... can you tell me who they are? Where they are? I need a tribunal opened, I need to tell the truth!"

  "The truth about what?" Natasha muttered at my back. Lad sniffed loudly.

  Pavel simply shook his head. "Did you hear me? No one would listen to me now, thanks to you. Whatever contacts I had, whatever career I had been building, they're gone. Gone! Because you touched my life, and you are Other-damned cursed."

  Cursed? "Tell me who they are then, where they are, I'll–" I said.

  "Listen to me, you debris-collecting bitch!" Pavel lurched off the wall and I realised how tall he was. He lifted a hand, I held a wrist above my face and my suit shone brightly on us both. "It's over! Over. Look what they did to us, we who hardly knew you. And we were lucky. Pale bastards with their wooden walk and those vacant, empty faces. We're lucky all we lost was our livelihoods, our careers, our status and our friends. Got no pity, got no feelings, got no limits to what those men – those things – will do! Truth, is it? Don't you understand? The truth is what the veche say it is, and you better just shut your mouth and do whatever it is they want you to do. Or people will stop disappearing and start dying, until finally, they get rid of you. Do us all a favour and kill–"

  With a roar Lad tore himself from Kichlan's hands and barrelled forward. He knocked me to the ground, grabbed Pavel by his upraised hand, lifted him from h
is feet, and sent him crashing against the wall.

  "Lad! No!" Kichlan stumbled after him.

  Sofia dropped to my side. "Are you all right?"

  I struggled to sit up.

  Lad picked Pavel up again, held his shoulders in those huge hands and lifted him high. "No!" he roared into the man's terrified face. "You cannot lie to Tan! You cannot hurt Tan! No more!" And with a great twist and a heave he threw Pavel across the room, to crash over the desk and onto the floor.

  Tears streaked Lad's face. He batted Kichlan aside like a fly, reached again for Pavel. Mizra began digging in his jacket for the little bottle that could quell him.

  I stood. "Lad?"

  Lad dragged Pavel up by the front of his jacket. He sniffed.

  "Lad?"

  He turned his wet, guilty face to me. "Tan?"

  "It's all right, Lad. You can stop." I walked past Kichlan, I touched a hand to Lad's back. He shook beneath me. "He's not hurting me. He's not shouting any more. Thank you for protecting me. Please, Lad, put him down now."

  Pavel dropped like a doll. He looked up at us with wide, frightened eyes. His forehead and left cheek were red and already swelling. One arm lay at a strange and painful-looking angle on the floor.

  Lad turned into me, wrapped arms around my shoulders and started to cry. As I held him, I stared down at Pavel, who still hadn't moved. "I'm sorry." And I was. Not just for Lad. But for what his life had become, because of me.

  Because I was cursed, and the puppet men seemed to be wreaking evil on everything I touched.

  "We need to go." Kichlan gripped Lad's elbow, tried to peel him away from me. "Now." In his eyes I read fear and urgency.

  I nodded. Together, we eased Lad into walking and left Pavel's office. I didn't look back.

  I knew, without needing Kichlan to tell me, that there would be no more collecting today. The bell was late, and the streets full as we made our slow way back to the sublevel. Kichlan kept as close to Lad's shoulder as he could without tripping over his feet, and eyed each person that passed us with suspicion. Lad watched the ground, and sniffed constantly.

  I'd ruined the rest of the day, created more work for the next five days, brought out the kind of violence in Lad that Eugeny had warned me about. Strangely, Kichlan's silence made me feel worse. Spitefulness was, I supposed, easier in its way to deal with.

  But I didn't feel as guilty as perhaps I should have. Because anger burned inside me again, even deeper than the suit. Pavel's story had fanned the flames.

  None of this was right. I'd known it, felt it that moment on Grandeur's palm, and every time I tried to speak the truth since. While the veche could silence me, while it could keep me busy with this garbage collection, keep me exhausted, aching and out of the way, it couldn't quench that fire. It could alienate the people I had once trusted, it could ruin anyone even remotely connected to me, but that wasn't enough.

  Someone had summoned the crimson pions that had thrown me from Grandeur. Someone had done this to me. I would not, could not, forget that, not until I exposed them. Not until I proved to everyone that I had not been responsible for my own ruin. I would have my tribunal, I would tell the truth. No matter what I had to do to get it.

  The crowded streets parted around our small debriscollecting team like weed-riddled water. I tried to ignore the affronted expressions, the touch of fingers to nose, the wrinkling of foreheads and the turning away. But still, I was glad when we stepped into Darkwater. The sublevel was a haven. Quiet, isolated and dark, with only sputtering lamplight flickering in from the windows near the ceiling.

  I breathed in the memory of Kichlan's meal, and tension in my gut eased.

  There in our space, we tarried as dusk fell in the world above ground. The thought of the ferry ride home during the night was less daunting than swimming through those crowds again. Instead, we pushed the furniture out of the centre of the room and arranged it so the fireplace was accessible. We discussed the possibility of more dawnbell suppers by ember-light. And each of us watched the windows, glanced at the glass-shadowed image of feet walking by, waiting for them to thin.

  Sofia made the first move. She touched Kichlan lightly on the shoulder. "I have to go." Her free hand was on her stomach again, her cheeks still pale. What had happened when the debris had thrown her to the ground? Surely, if she was still hurting, she needed help? "I need my sleep."

  I followed her, held her leather-lined coat with the embroidered floral buttons as she wrapped a scarf around her neck. It was so thick, and she so small, that she looked like a child in her parent's clothes. "Are you hurt?" I asked, voice low, glance deliberately shifting from her eyes to her hand.

  She blinked away a moment of confusion. "Oh. No, Tanyana. I'm not."

  "When you fell, when the debris hit you, it didn't, you know what I mean, hurt anything?" Now that really was my fault.

  She must have seen it in my eyes. "Nothing to worry about." Her lips were also pale and they didn't reassure me, despite the rueful smile. "I made certain of that."

  "Oh, good." Made certain? How much had that cost her? I itched to offer to pay for the healer, but I didn't even have enough kopacks for myself. "I was worried."

  "I can tell." Sofia did the buttons on her jacket and tucked her scarf into its low neckline. The purple wool did compliment the jacket's green, I had to give her that. "I'd feel better if you'd worry about the hole in the ceiling."

  I blushed, and muttered something that didn't sound like real words, not even to me, as she left the sublevel. Only Mizra, it seemed, had noticed our conversation and he, thankfully, was watching Sofia instead.

  Natasha followed Sofia's example and was above ground a moment later. Mizra and Uzdal told Lad stories for another bell, but left as the large man began to snooze where he was sitting.

  Kichlan didn't hurry. He lit two gas lamps on the walls, apparently able to ignore their noxious smell. He cleaned his pots with snow gathered on the doorstep and melted by a small fire. He brushed ash from the floor in front of the fireplace and took it upstairs to dump on the paving stones.

  I sat on a couch, watching Lad sleep and his brother fuss.

  "He likes you," Kichlan said when most of his chores were done, and the silence had stretched out so long, and so comfortable. "That's why he acted like that today. He is not a violent man, just easily confused. He thought that Pavel man was hurting you. He just wanted to help."

  "I know. And I like him too."

  Kichlan picked up an empty collecting jar and tapped it against his palm. "I would tell you to be careful, but I think Eugeny must have done so already."

  "He has." I stood, carefully, slowly, so I didn't disturb the sleeping man opposite me. Lad had his hands tucked up under his chin and was drooling gently onto his knuckles.

  "Eugeny has much to warn others about." Kichlan set empty jars in straight rows on the tables we had repositioned against the wall. They reflected the lamps like fireflies against a steel sky. "And he cares about Lad nearly as much as I do. He wouldn't want to see Lad taken away, he doesn't want him imprisoned."

  I stopped, my hand hovering above the tension in Kichlan's shoulders. "Imprisoned?"

  Kichlan sighed, and seemed to droop. To grow old. "That's why I have to be here, with him." He turned to face me. "Do you understand? Always with him. And that's why we need to avoid inspections, avoid missing our quotas or doing anything that could draw attention to our team. And to him."

  Guilt caught in my throat again. Lad was a beautiful man. But said like that, with age and weakness and a broken voice, he could have been a chain. "What happened?"

  Kichlan eyed me for a moment. What did he debate in his head, in that silence? "I wasn't there." He half-sat on the edge of the table. I fought the urge to cross my arms. "I was stupid. I thought I could leave him. He was–" with a frown, he mouthed numbers "–young. I don't remember how many years. But he was already large."

  I waited as he paused.

  "I still don't know exactl
y how it happened. Mother never would tell me. I tried once to pry it out of him. Took a sixweek and one before he forgave me. Didn't talk the whole time."

  Lad twitched in his sleep and drew his knees up. A giant child on a small couch.

  "I knew he liked the girl, I knew he followed her, smiled at her, gave her flowers. Weeds that grew between paving stones. I knew she was kind to him, indulged him, treated him like a large baby to be coddled." Bitterness crept into his voice. "She shouldn't have encouraged him and I shouldn't have let him talk to her. It was my fault. Do you understand, Tanyana? I always have to be there."