by Jo Anderton
I held the slide and sat in the darkness.
Above and behind me, music played, people laughed, and the smell of food wafted out to churn my stomach.
How long could I sit hidden in the cold shadows?
"There you are."
I turned to see Devich leaning against the mansion wall, looking down at me like I was a lost kitten, or an errant puppy. Light from the window striped his face with warm, diffused lines.
"You're missing the toast," he chided me, not really angry, rather amused.
I stood. "Where did you go?"
He chuckled. "Missed me? You had Lord Sporinov and his closest cronies eating out of your palms like a bowing, preening flock of pigeons." He grinned at his own wit. "You didn't need me at all!"
"I didn't say I needed you." How had he convinced me to come here? How had I allowed myself to believe nothing had changed? I was too different now; I had moved on. "I think it's time to leave."
Devich, taken aback, tried take my hand. I didn't let him. "They are toasting, Tanyana. You know it's rude to leave before the toasts are finished."
"No one will notice."
He opened his mouth to protest.
I said, "They won't."
For a moment I thought Devich would leave me to fend for myself, as he glanced over his shoulder to the open doors and the carpet of light running down to the carriageway. Was the landau waiting for us? Had Devich paid the driver? Could I walk home before dawn came?
But he sighed, and shook his head. "This is a mistake. But if you really want to leave, we will."
"I do."
Devich held out his hand again and I continued to ignore it. I walked past him, and heard his shuffling feet follow slowly.
Applause echoed from the open doors. I headed for the stairs, but a low, gravel-dry laugh slowed me. A man leaned against stone beside one of the large open doors. His face was hidden in shadow, save for the fiery end of a cigar he was sucking.
"Don't like them either," the man said in a voice as dry as his laughter. "I've tipped my glass at too many toasts, and they never change." He straightened, and stepped from the shadow.
I realised then how very old he was. He stooped beneath a coat that was too big for him, and walked slowly, his shoulders hunched, his knees bent. Faint wisps of pale hair hung like cobwebs over a bald and sun-spotted head. His eyes were sunken, blue lost in watery red, and his hand, where it clutched the ivory head of an ebony walking stick, shook so the point rattled against stone. The long, thin cigar remained in his mouth as he walked and he breathed smoke in and out with every pronounced breath.
A bright pin lanced his silver necktie. On its woven pewter head, a bear roared. An ancient ruby was clutched in its jaws.
Devich sketched a sharp bow. "My lord Sporinov."
The old man chuckled. "You're a sharp one."
It took me a moment to understand. This was Vladir's father, surely.
"Thank you, my lord." Devich glanced at me, and made tipping movements with his head.
I repressed a groan and bowed instead. "My lord." Why was it so difficult to leave this place?
"You're a lady?" The old man leaned forward, putting so much weight on his walking stick it bent, and peered at me. "Don't look much like a lady to me." He laughed again. "But don't let that upset you. Nothing looks much like it used to do."
It hadn't upset me.
"Ah, now I know you." A smattering of empty spaces broke up the teeth as he smiled. "You're the one Vladir's so excited about. You're the Unbound."
From legend, from children's tales and fanciful stories, that word reached out to grab me.
"Unbound?" I whispered.
"Heard that before, haven't you? Didn't you know what you were? Didn't my son tell you?" He made a strange snorting sound. "Acts like he knows everything, doesn't he? I can still teach him a few things, if he'd shut his mouth long enough to listen."
I knew what I was. "I am a debris collector."
"That's a pretty name for this new age. Not always called that, you know. Didn't always collect, did the Unbound."
Didn't they? What other purpose could we have, if not to collect the waste of the world and keep its systems working smoothly, cleanly?
Devich, suddenly, was at my side, gripping my elbow, turning me around. "Your pardon, my lord," he said to the old man. "But our coach is waiting."
"Well, go and catch it. I won't keep you." He shuffled so he could look over his shoulder through the open doors. "Toasts still going? I'd never bore my guests like this." He spat out the nib of his cigar, still glowing. "Yugeve? A cigar, boy! A cigar!" And he shuffled slowly inside, calling to some servant I couldn't see.
I turned. Sure enough, the landau was waiting. The driver had been watching us with interest, but was suddenly absorbed in his own knees.
I allowed Devich to guide me into the coach. We sat in silence as it slid through the streets of Movoc-underKeeper. When it pulled up at my apartment I opened the door myself, dropped to the paving stones, and had unlocked my front door before Devich had even paid the driver.
I was about to close the door when Devich hurried up the path. He jammed an arm in the gap and winced as I pushed against it. "What are you doing?"
"Good night, Devich."
"Not without an explanation. And please, keep doing that. Let's see who tires first."
I took my weight off the door, and he nudged it open. With a sigh I stepped away and he entered the hallway, rubbing his arm, pouting.
"What's wrong?" He wasn't exactly angry, but he was close to it. Somewhere in between anger and hurt. "Why did we have to leave like that? Why did you jam my arm in there?"
Only then did it occur to me that he could have let himself in, whether I had shut the door or not. I had opened myself to this man. He wasn't going away that easily. "I told you I didn't belong with those people any more. And tonight only proved that."
He shook his head.
I scowled at him, and tore the scarf from my neck. I picked at the shirt buttons near my wrists and pulled the whole thing over my head. It felt better without the bulk of clothes.
"Tanyana." Devich stepped very close. One hand cupped my chin, the other slid over my hair. Gently, he placed a soft kiss on my lips. "Tonight I saw you hold the attention of some of the most powerful men in Movocunder-Keeper, and the whole of Varsnia itself. I saw you walk into a room filled with the rich and the powerful with your head held high, with your back straight, and a bearing that said 'This is who I am, and I don't really care what you think about that'. Do you know how amazing you looked beside the puffed-up finery and the artificial smiles? You were magnificent, you are magnificent." Both of his hands held my head. "I wish you could see that."
I wanted to ask him if he'd seen the woman who was once my subordinate lose all her respect for me. Or if he knew what it was like to be treated like an oddity, like a specimen under glass. But his smiling lips were so close, and his hands were so warm. And Devich had made a place for himself among those people, he had been given the invitation, and he had melded well into the dancers and the feasters and the drinkers. If he thought I belonged there, if he still respected me and knew me as a woman, not an insect, then perhaps I did.
It was enough. Enough to let go of the angry ache in my belly. Enough to lean against him as he kissed me, and work the buttons in his sleek shirt. As he did the same to my ill-fitting pants I remembered the jar of pills in my drawer and wondered how long they would last.
10.
Dawn, Mornday, with the Tear splitting silent and smooth around the prow of the near-empty ferry. In the raw sunlight on river spray, I thought of the Unbound.
The Unbound were troublemakers, always in the background, always sabotaging the work of good, honest pion-binders. They were the figures in dark cloaks who would not show their face.
My mother had told me few fairy tales when I was a child. "You should learn about real life," she would tell me, "because in real life there are no ma
gic solutions, there are no first sons to sweep you from the arms of dark danger. There is hard work, kopacks, and status. Remember that."
But I knew a few. There was one about a knight and his princess. Rusclan and Ludmilla. On the day they were to marry Ludmilla was carried away by one of Rusclan's rivals. Through many trials Rusclan hunted and found his beloved. But that wasn't the point. The point was his supposedly faithful and Unbound friend, the only man Rusclan would trust with his powerful and pion-strengthened sword. The night after Rusclan had regained his bride his friend broke that trust, and killed the hero with his own weapon.
After which Rusclan was healed by a good binder and went on to save the princess again and probably the day. Something like that. But again, that wasn't the point. It was the Unbound that called to me, skulking from his place in the darkness. What could it have felt like to play shadow to a knight like Rusclan, to care for his pionpowerful sword when all it looked like to you was a hunk of steel? Would you feel used?
The man didn't have a name. He was just Unbound.
So, that's what I was. Untrustworthy, unnamed. Unbound.
I felt dark against the rays of the new sun. But as I disembarked from the Tear and made my way toward Darkwater I realised how wrong the fairy tales were. We did not skulk in the darkness because we belonged there. We stuck to the darkness because that was where we had been pushed. Because of the crowds and the offended looks.
And because that's where the debris was. If debris didn't like the shadows, the crevices, the cracks and the darkness, then we wouldn't have to walk in it.
Debris skulked, we merely followed.
Breakbell had not yet sounded as I reached the door to the sublevel, but it was unlocked – Kichlan had arrived before me. I glanced up before I stepped into the stairwell and caught sight of clouds rushing over the Keeper's Peak, whipped along by a wind as strong as the Tear's current had been. They shaded the promising morning sun.
Sure enough, Kichlan and Lad were alone in the sublevel, and both avidly poking at a young fire.
"Morning," I said, and shrugged off my heavy jacket. It was pleasant in the sublevel, warm and sleep-inducing, far nicer than the outside promised to be. "Clouds are coming." Hands thrust out, I warmed myself by the struggling flames.
"Tan!" Lad leapt to his feet, opened his arms, checked himself visibly and compromised by patting me on the shoulder. "Good morning, Tan."
"Good morning, Lad."
He beamed, and crouched down to the fire.
Kichlan and I shared a raised-eyebrow glance. "He's being good," Kichlan mouthed, before standing up, and passing me something wrapped in linen.
"What's this?" I flipped open the cloth and found a cool pastry, about the size of my hand.
"Eugeny and I have been talking," Kichlan said. "We decided you don't eat enough." He couldn't quite meet my eye.
"Did you now?" I hardened my expression and fixed him with my gaze. I didn't need handouts, least of all from Kichlan, Eugeny or Lad. They who had hardly anything to share.
"Didn't," Lad said, from his position by the fire, leaning so far into the fireplace I expected him to topple at any moment.
"Lad!" Kichlan snapped. "Get your head out of there."
His younger brother sat back, expression puzzled, verging on hurt. "But you didn't, bro. Geny said Tan was hungry and you said she wouldn't want to. You said she's too..." he screwed his face up. "Don't remember."
With a sigh, Kichlan patted his brother. "Ever the diplomat, Lad."
Lad grinned, and returned to his fire.
"Too what?" But I couldn't feel angry, not at the embarrassment colouring Kichlan from neck to forehead. "What am I, exactly?"
"Proud."
I thought of the ball, of sitting alone in the shadows. "Then you don't know me as well as you think you do." I bit into the pastry. Potato, pumpkin, and turnip were soft. I tasted pepper and the faint dripping of lard holding it all altogether. Before leaving I had drunk my usual tea, and scrounged leftovers from a meal Devich had made on Rest: the crusts of bread he hadn't wanted to eat, and browning apple peel.
I just had to hold on. Another night like the ball, more of Devich's important friends, and I would make someone listen. I would make someone understand. Or Tsana would wake up to her cowardly self and together, we would open a tribunal. We would tell the truth and the veche would find whoever was behind those pions burning fierce, and with the compensation – surely, I would be compensated – I would have enough kopacks to eat. To keep my home.
Just a little while longer.
"Thank the old man for me, won't you?" I sucked oil from the tips of my fingers.
"I'll tell him you said that with your fingers in your mouth." Kichlan grinned. "Trust me, that will be thanks enough."
As breakbell sounded above us, the rest of the team filtered in. Uzdal and Mizra were wrapped in extra scarves and knitted hats, their pale features nearly lost amidst the clothes. Sofia was so heavily layered she walked like a child dressed for the snow. A few strands of her dull hair escaped a large knitted hat, to stick against her cheek and nose. Natasha followed, brown hair tucked into a tight dark cap pulled down as far as her eyebrows.
"Lovely day outside," Uzdal muttered. Even in the sublevel warmth he kept his layers on.
"If we're really lucky it might snow on us again," Mizra added. "Wouldn't that be nice?"
Kichlan collected metallic jars and filled his brown leather bag. "Then the sooner we fill quota, the better."
"Other's oath," Uzdal muttered.
We left the Darkwater sublevel and entered an outside world growing rapidly dim and cold. I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket, tugged my leather-lined cap down to cover my ears. The wind that had whipped the clouds along started whipping us as soon as we stepped into the street. It was funnelled by the buildings and careened down Darkwater with a scared-dog howl. Above us, clouds settled in like hounds for the night, dark fur raised and shaggy.
It was hard to believe I had ridden the Tear in clear sunlight that morning.
"The snow will start any moment," Mizra said as we turned the first corner in what I was beginning to learn was our usual Mornday route. "And then, if Lad finds another sewerage vent, the day will be complete." He clasped his hands behind his back in a fair imitation of Kichlan. "Because if collecting doesn't make us as miserable, as cold, and as dirty as possible, then we're simply not doing it right."
I grinned at him and glanced at Kichlan. He was entertaining Lad that morning who, as usual, led us from the front. Together they were pointing at lampposts, rooftops, effluent vents. But at each one Lad just shook his head. Not a good sign, as far as the quota was concerned.
"What is it with this place and brothers?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
Mizra shrugged. "Don't know about those two, but twins always end up as collectors."
"Really?"
"Truly."
"Other's oath," Uzdal muttered again.
What had started Uzdal's sudden fascination with the phrase? I thought for a moment. "I haven't met many twins like yourselves." Had I met any at all? No binders that I could think of, not at any circle level.
Both made identical faces of disgust. "Sad truth about the world, Tanyana," Mizra said. "Twins aren't particularly, how shall I put it? Desired."
I did my best to appear perplexed, and assumed that it worked when Uzdal gave his head an exasperated shake.
"Most twins end up like us." Uzdal pointed to himself and his brother. "Debris collectors. Fallen. So, most mothers, if they find out they're expecting twins, well, they do something about it."
"They abort the children," Sofia, walking behind us, interrupted. "That's what these two are trying to say, although they obviously don't want to. Of course, if you'd just thought about it for a moment you might have worked that out for yourself."
I ignored the criticism, and stared horrified at Mizra and Uzdal. I had heard that some healers could see a baby as it grows by t
he flow of pions between mother and child. What did a baby destined to collect debris – an Unbound baby – what did they look like to pion sight? Would the flow be interrupted, the womb dull compared to the rest of her pion-bright body?
"That's horrible," I whispered.
"We know," Mizra said.
"That's real life." Sofia pushed past us, to walk with Kichlan instead.
"Why do they kill them?" I asked the twins. "Why are twins, most twins, why are they like us?"
Uzdal glanced ahead, where Lad walked between Sofia and his brother, laughing. "Why is Lad one of us? Because he is broken, Tanyana."