by Jo Anderton
"Oh." I was glad too. Even if the team had turned against me, even if Kichlan offered nothing but silence and suspicion, it didn't matter. At least I had Devich.
I put his strange and probably pain-rattled words aside, and I kissed his exposed neck.
16.
I hadn't returned to Proud Sunlight since I had graduated: Three Point Circle, First Class, Architect with Distinction. I would have been welcome before, particularly as my binding skill improved, my circle increased and the number of kopacks I could have donated rose with both. It was strangely satisfying to think that the first time I would return was when I was no longer welcome, when I had no pion-binding skill left, no circle and a pittance for an income. Maybe the fall had twisted something in my sense of humour.
On Thriveday we filled our quota early, with a large cache barely a few yards from the Darkwater door. We scooped it out of a pothole in the street, had not been forced to lie face-down in muck, wade through sewage or scale the side of buildings. However unnatural that enormous heap of debris lying easily accessible in the middle of the street was, I couldn't help but be thankful. Just this time. With our jars filled the remains of the day were left empty. I was not invited to shop, to travel to graveyards or enjoy Eugeny's cooking. I took the ferry into the city and tried not to see the patches of darkness hugging walls, lampposts, even the deck of the boat.
And I returned to Proud Sunlight.
The university was an imposing building of sandstone and marble close to the banks of the Tear River, a few rills north of the bridge. It hulked above the old city buildings, ancient as they yet larger, its pale walls broken by dark stained-glass windows. The Keeper had been sculptured into the stone at every corner, above every doorway. Both the mountain and the myth it was named after, he who defended us from the Other. That kind yet stern face, strong and everlasting.
A tall iron fence enclosed the building and the manicured gardens that stretched to the river. An old jetty reached out into the Tear, but I had never known it to be used. Before Proud Sunlight had opened its gates and heavily reinforced doors to anyone with sufficient binding skill, that fence would have been guarded, old family children alone invited to study in its halls. Now the main gates were left open, and enforcers no longer patrolled the corridors or garden paths, but to me it felt no more inviting. As I passed through the gate I felt like an intruder. So I hunched my shoulders and jammed hands in my pockets and hoped I could remain unnoticed. Just in case enforcers from the distant past did, somehow, remain. In case they could see through my secondhand clothes to the suit on my wrists and the honour I had lost, and throw me from the rooms I had once studied in so proudly.
But no one did. I attracted few second glances as I made my hopefully unobtrusive way past the main hallway. Pion-binders were practicing, bathed in colour from the tall windows. They huddled in groups of three and seemed to be altering the temperature of the room. I wondered at that. If Proud Sunlight had stooped so low that it was teaching binders to work in heating factories, then it shouldn't have been so quick to strike me from the honour roll. The university I remembered specialised in disciplines that required precision and skill, disciplines that if not done correctly could put lives at risk. Architecture, healing, military technologies and the more arcane investigation into circle formation and pion skill.
I continued beyond the main hallway, beyond offices and classrooms on the lower floor. A voice droned from somewhere, lecturing in a dull monotone that even Kichlan would have struggled to match. The thought made me smile and realise I missed his lecturing, at least compared to his silence and his distrustful glances.
The building was roughly divided between the disciplines; the kind of unofficial rule new students spent their whole first year trying to work out. Ground-floor rooms were allocated to the military; architects preferred the upper hallways. I knew the ways well, even after all these years. How many was it? Ten years? Yes, it must have been.
I found the half-hidden stairs behind an out-of-place bookcase in an old, empty office. The stairs themselves were an architectural wonder, and I could understand why the first architects who had come to learn and teach here had been attracted to them. They wove their tight way through the building, bypassing the rest of the levels to reach the top. Proud Sunlight had a strange roof. Designed with odd angles, some areas made of great sheets of glass that let the sun or the moonlight in, most built from the stone itself. What might have once been an attic had been divided into rooms, and these the architect lecturers had claimed as their offices. It was here I would find Jernea. If he was still alive.
I made my way down a thin hallway. Deep afternoon sunlight glanced in through patches of glass above me. It lit some of the offices, while others were left in dark shadow. A few faces I did not recognise watched me from desks as I passed them. A small group of ridiculously young students passed me in the hall. They whispered circle theories and hardly noticed me. I remembered what that was like, to have such passion, to be so skilled, and ready to create your future with both.
I had almost given up when one of the faces I didn't know did more than just watch me pass. Young for a teacher, his black gown too big for him, his silver bearclaw too bright, he was twitching through the invisible contents of a slide when I walked past his office. He looked up, surprised, placed the slide on the desk and strode into the hallway.
"You!" He pointed to me, and I stalled as a streak of warm light touched my face. "Who are you?" He approached me, hands hidden in folds of black cloth. The crimson satin edging on his gown surprised me. He must have graduated young and with high honours to have made second-senior lecturer by his age. "You're not a student."
I wondered what tipped him off? The scars? The clothes, or just because I looked colossally older than everyone in the Other-damned place? Which was exactly the way I felt.
"What are you doing here?"
I repressed a sigh. "Just looking for someone."
"Just looking?" He stepped into the sunlight and I noticed sporadic pale hairs dotting his chin and upper lip. Didn't help my mood. "You can't just look. This is an exclusive university, only the best–"
"What's going on here?"
I turned as a woman stepped out of the office at the end of the hallway. She strode toward us, step sure and brisk, and the young teacher took an involuntary step back.
"Who are you, what is–" Then she saw me, bathed in the light from the roof, and she stopped. "Ah. So, you did come." She was still in shadow so I could not see her face, but I could hear the rueful smile in her voice alone. "I suppose they were right." Another step, and the light touched her as well. I realised I knew her. Her sun-browned face carried more lines than I remembered, her dark hair was pulled back where it had always floated free. Dina. Only now, she wore a gold edge upon her black gown. Architect dean. It was rare for a woman to lead any university faculty, but she had always been skilled. Jernea's assistant when he had mentored me, a sub-senior lecturer those ten years ago. Quite a rise.
"Petr, thank you, but you can go now."
The young lecturer made to argue, but Dina cut him off.
"Please. Leave us."
With a final scowl in my direction, Petr returned to his office. Dina watched him go before casting her hard eye on me. "They did better work on your face than I expected, when I was told you were scarred."
Of all the students Jernea taught, why would she remember me? "It will never be the way it was."
"No, it won't." She seemed to hesitate, to be debating something silently within. "I suppose you have come to see him."
"It was my last resort." I had already steeled myself to hear of Jernea's death.
"I'm sure it was." Instead, she gave me a sad smile. "I will let you see him, but you should be prepared. He can't help you, he can't help anyone anymore."
"He is still alive then?"
Dina laughed, full and throaty. "That old bear will outlive us all. He refuses to hear the call of the Other, and you kno
w what he is like when he sets his mind on something. The Other can shout as loudly as he wants, the old man won't listen."
I couldn't help but grin. "That's true." Jernea was one of the most tenacious people I had ever known. A powerful binder, a highly skilled architect and a determined teacher.
Dina gestured to me, and I followed her back to her office. "I must warn you, he is not the man he once was."
Her office was large, but narrow, almost a corridor of itself. Full bookshelves lined the walls, floor to partstone, part-glass ceiling. Only section of the university's ancient and priceless library. A desk, a few chairs and a rug alone broke up the uniform tones of wood and sandstone and leather-bound paper. Jernea was sitting at the far end of the office, beneath a large glass section. Late afternoon gold seemed to make him glow.
"He is no longer employed by the university," Dina said, softly. "He has not worked here for years. However, he feels safe in this room, he feels more at home here than in an old and empty house." She rubbed the back of her neck and looked at the floor. "Truth be told, I feel better when he is here with me. I don't remember a time at Proud Sunlight without him. He has carers, of course, and they came to me. Explained his situation. His distress. I was glad to have him back, to care for him. He doesn't need much. They feed him every day..." She trailed off as I slowly approached my old mentor.
Jernea sat in a strange chair, wrought of some kind of thick poly. It couldn't have been comfortable: too straightbacked, legs out, arms on hard rests. Not a cushion or any kind of padding in sight. He wore a gown of faded blue that was done up loosely down the front. His bare skin was thin and withered across stark ribs, and there were countless tiny holes in his chest.
"Other's hell," I hissed. "What have they done to you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Dina said, behind me. "I should have thought of this. You can't see them."
"See what?" I glanced at her, angry. There were more holes on his forehead, down his neck, even his arms.
"The pions, of course. It's a complicated system, tied in to the chair itself. It keeps him alive. They're pumping blood down to his extremities, monitoring and compensating for oxygen loss, as well as maintaining the workings of his left kidney–"
"Stop." I held up a hand, closed my eyes. "I– I don't want to know." I could imagine pions looping around him, in him, binding him to the chair, to this life, like colourful chains. And I wished I couldn't, because I didn't want to remember Jernea like that.
He looked like he had been spun from glass. Nearly transparent skin stretched across the bones of his face and hung in wrinkles around his neck. I could make out the veins at his temples, every sunspot that had ever dotted his cheeks. His eyes were white with cataracts, his hair thin. A blanket was tucked in around his legs and his once powerful and expressive hands were curled and skeletal, shaking on his lap.
"Jernea." I crouched beside him.
His head turned, ever so slightly, but his sightless eyes passed me by. He mouthed words, but they came out only as wet sounds.
"Today is not a good day." Dina stood close to my back. "He cannot talk today. He cannot stop the shaking. Some days he will ask after people I have never heard of. He will talk to the pions in the walls as though they were his friends. Today is not one of those days."
I stood and realised my own hands were shaking, almost as much.
"You picked a bad day."
"I did." I clasped my hands, squeezed them as I fought tears. I would not weep for my stubborn old mentor. It was good, in a way, that he did not know that I had fallen. That he would not understand it, or hear it, even if he was told. In that mind, locked behind age and blindness, I was always the centre of a critical circle.
"Why did you come here?" she asked.
When I turned, Dina's expression was hard. She crossed her arms, bunching the loose fabric of her gown. "You're not really here to try and persuade an old man to open a tribunal for you, are you?"
I gaped at her.
"Because he would be hurt, Tanyana, to think that was all you wanted from him."
"How did you know I wanted a tribunal?" And why did she remember me? Of all the students, why me?
"Tell me why you are here."
I looked back to Jernea, to his shaking and crippled fingers. "No, that is not why I came. Although I might have, if I had thought of it earlier." I shook my head. "I came to ask the greatest pion-binder I have ever known for his expertise, his knowledge, his mind. I came here for nothing."
Dina's shoulders sagged. "I should have known. No one he had touched could use him so thoughtlessly."
"So tell me," I said. "How did you know that?"
The edges of Dina's mouth twisted into a grim smile. "Come now, you must know."
"The veche?" I whispered. "Did they come here, did they threaten you?"
She was looking at Jernea again. "I should not be talking to you. I believed them, when they said even talking to you would be dangerous, that helping you could be fatal. Even for an old man." But when she looked back up at me her face was set, eyes dark and furious. "But I will not be threatened, and as ancient and distinguished an institution as Proud Sunlight will not be bowed into submission. They can take away our funding, divert kopacks into weapons research and warmongering, but we will not compromise our integrity. We will not be beholden to the veche any more than we already are. No matter how many more pale and strange-looking thugs they send!"
Ice shuddered over my skin. "Pale? Did they have no expression, nothing in their voice that sounded human? And did they walk like they were unreal, like they were built of wood?"
"That's an accurate description, if I've ever heard one." Her expression grew disbelieving. "Don't tell me you didn't know it was them. They're watching you, Tanyana. They made a point of coming here, of telling me you were looking for help to open a tribunal, and if I dared to help you both Jernea and I could be in some peril." She chuckled. "They can't understand the calibre of binder Sunlight produces if they think they can threaten us."
I stared down at the old man for what felt like a long time. "I'm sorry to bring them to your doorway."
"I know you are." Suddenly Dina placed a hand on my shoulder. "But I am more fearful for you. The veche must be very, very interested in you. Watch yourself."
I nodded. "I will go, and hope I take all my trouble with me."
She lifted her eyebrows. "What did you want to ask? I might not be the old man, but I have stood beside him for a long time." Dina softened as she spoke of him. "I learned a few things here and there."
"It doesn't matter now. And I won't give them any reason to come for you."
I crouched again, took one of Jernea's hands and then held him. He felt thin and fragile, like so much of my life now. And as I thanked him silently, I realised those questions I had thought so important really didn't matter. Why broken people like me could see debris, whether we could be fixed. What mattered, what really mattered, was why the puppet men had taken such an interest in me. And what, if anything, I could do about it.
A final pat on skin that didn't seem to feel me, and I stood. "Thank you," I said to Dina.
She nodded, seemed to hesitate. "Listen, I don't know if I should tell you this, but I think I will." She looked down to Jernea. "For him. When they came, the strange veche men, I heard a rumour. Kopacks are being withdrawn from us, here and at other universities, and thrown into something very secret. I overheard members of the military discipline talking about war with the Hon Ji, and those veche men seem to be involved. So be careful, Tanyana. Those are very powerful men."
When I left the university the bell was late, the sky streaked with long, drawn-out clouds shining crimson in the sunset. As I travelled the ferry I wondered if I was being watched.
Trudging back to my room above Valya's home, I realised I had no appetite. Of course, that wouldn't make a difference to her.
"You're late!" she called as I entered the house. "Busy, busy day."
I shrugged out
of my jacket and draped it over a chair before sitting at her table. It was constantly hot in Valya's kitchen. There was always a fire burning and something cooking. "Not really." I rested my elbows on the table and sank my face into my hands. "I was looking for something and I didn't find it."
"Eh?" She placed an earthenware bowl in front of me and spooned it full of thick soup. She and Eugeny would have agreed on the apparent universality and infinitely appropriate virtues of soup. "Debris?"
"No, we found that." I stirred chunks of potato, parsnip, carrot and onion. Valya ate little meat. "Found that easily."
"It is everywhere now."
I blinked, slowed my stirring. "You've noticed that too?"
"Impossible not to." She shook her head. "Dangerous times. Explosion in the night. Debris left lying on the street. Too much to pick up. Not a good sign."