by Jo Anderton
I was suddenly hot, and sore. I flipped the edge of my cap up to reveal my ears, and hunkered away from enquiring eyes. The stitches on my face and the bandages on my neck stood out like a snow-rabbit in spring. My cheeks reddened beneath them, a warmth that sent every thread, every puncture itching.
What I would have given for the comfortable interior of an expensive landau. Temperature-controlled, silk on the seats and a selection of slides to choose and read from. Daily missives from the veche, mostly, but better than staring mindlessly out the window. Which was all I could do now.
We rattled and bumped our way further from Movoc's centre, and out into the poorer areas of the city. With each stop a passenger left, and was almost immediately replaced by a new one. I tried not to let my mind wander over the buildings and what I would do to fix them up. Re-stone the plain wall there with a criss-cross of brick and ornamental shale. Refashion the entire roof on a particular hovel, where it sagged precariously in the middle. I'd fix the roads too, not something an architect would usually stoop to do. Even the most beautiful of buildings can be ruined by uncared-for streets.
Twice, when the coach slowed to ease the passing of men and women on foot, I saw stiffly walking figures, too pale to be real. One stood beneath a lamp. The other walked alongside the coach, close to the window, and met my eyes through the glass. The puppet men. They probably wanted me to see them, to know they were ever watching. I sank down further in my uncomfortable seat.
Finally, the coach came to a squeaking halt and none of the other passengers made to leave. I opened the door, gasping as icy air hit me.
"Eighth Keepersrill, Section ten," the driver called. I tugged my cap down and, gripping the handrails, swung myself around to face him. There were a few shallow indents leading up to his seat and I climbed closer.
The driver whistled lowly. "Agile, aren't ya?"
He couldn't feel the strain in my muscles or the stinging of my scars.
"How much?" I asked.
He drew a rublie from his pocket. It was battered, the small lights that ran the edge flickered unsteadily. I was surprised it still worked. "Eight hundred."
"I beg your pardon?"
He blinked, a small frown creasing greying eyebrows. "Eighth Keepersrill ain't 'round the corner, you know."
I knew. How much time did I have before breakbell?
"I shared a small cabin. It was cramped and uncomfortable. As far as I could tell, you drove us in circles to get as many people crammed in there as possible. If you expect me to pay eight hundred kopacks for that kind of service, your brain has either frozen, or you think I'm some kind of idiot. Do you think I'm an idiot?"
The driver's eyes bulged. "Miss, that's the fare-"
"I will pay you two hundred."
He choked on something, and spluttered, "Two hund-"
"A quarter of the fare for a quarter of the space. That's fair."
"That's robbery!"
I flicked open my lapel and drew out my watch. As I opened it, scowling at the circles, at how Other-damned close they were spinning to breakbell, I'm sure he got a good look at the bear inscribed on the polished brass, its glass eyes deeply blue and teeth opaque white.
I snapped the watch shut. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."
The driver paled, like a man who just realised he'd made a nasty mistake and tried to swindle someone far above his social standing. Or thought he had, at least.
"Nothing."
"Good. Two hundred?"
"Yes, miss. Of course."
I handed him my rublie and watched intently as he touched it to his. The lights flashed as the two connected, then flickered green to indicate a successful transaction. I took the rublie with a nod, glad he had no idea that I couldn't see how many kopacks were registered to me, let alone how many he had taken.
"Thank you." I leapt from the side of the coach. Only when I landed in an inch of sludge and sent sharp pains into my ankles and left leg at the impact, did I realise it probably wasn't the best idea. Despite that, I straightened under the driver's appraising gaze.
He lifted gloved fingers to his hat. "Miss."
I turned as if to go, then stopped. "Oh, one other thing."
"Miss?"
How much pride did I have to swallow in one day? What would it take to make me sick? "How much was on there?"
"Uh…?"
I shook my head, tried to pretend exasperation. "On my rublie. How much was on there?"
"On yours? Ten thousand, miss. You must have seen-" He started to pale again. It made the whole thing easier, to know his day was turning out just as well as mine.
"Thank you." I spun, before he got any grand ideas about getting his hands on my rublie, and hurried away.
Ten thousand. Ten thousand! I'd expected the veche to take my payment for Grandeur away, but ten thousand? Had I paid for my time in the hospital, for Devich and the veche men to suit me? Ten thousand wasn't enough to keep my home next moon, ten thousand wasn't enough for the new clothes I needed to fit over the Other-buggered suit. Ten thousand would keep me eating for a while longer, but only if I was lucky, only if I stuck to flatbread and cheese that would have been more appropriate to grout tiles with. I could stretch it out, but not forever.
How much did a debris collector earn?
I peered up at the first intersection. Where in all the Other-cursed hells was Darkwater?
Was it really worth it? If I didn't turn up in, oh, I probably only had a few turns of the third wheel left – then what was the worst that could happen? Tribunal, colonies, some nonsense about civilisation? They meant nothing. I had no life left to take away, no purpose, no health. And soon enough, no home.
What more could they possibly do to me?
I stared at the street signs. One had fallen off long ago, all that remained of its metal fixture was rust and ice. The other had been scrawled on, all semblance of a name scribbled out with thick black paint.
"Are street signs too much to ask?" And now I was talking to myself. "Other's hells! That's it. I give up. I'll take whatever you veche bastards think you can dish out!" I yelled at the sign, and the whole run-down, garbage-riddled eighth Keepersrill, Section ten. "And you can shove your collecting team up the Other's hairy-"
A hand gripped my shoulder. I spun, ready to shout the rest of all the expletives I had ever learned into the face of whoever had been stupid enough to interrupt me.
But the dark eyes I met were calm. I could see my stupidity in their depths, my useless railing. "You must be Tanyana."
I gaped at the man. He was tall, wrapped in a long brown coat that almost touched the sludge on the street. Pale blond curls escaped a tattered hat.
"How do you know my name?" I choked over the words, struggling to get myself back under control.
He glanced at my coat, at the smooth leather of my cap and the shoes, still gleaming beneath the beginnings of a coating of sludge. "You wouldn't come here if you hadn't fallen." His clothes were heavily patched, the hems of his jacket and pants uneven. "And only the recently fallen would still be so angry about it."
"Fallen?" I whispered. Did he know then? About Grandeur.
He raised his eyebrows. "I'm Kichlan." He didn't offer me a hand to shake, in fact, he barely met my eyes, choosing to look over the top of my head instead. "I'll show you where we are."
With that, he hunched his shoulders against the wind and headed down the street that had lost its name. After a moment, I followed.
Tenth Section hadn't seen a repair team or a clean-up crew in a very long time. Bags of garbage clogged the corners where one ugly, hulking grey building met its twin. The stonework on the street and on the side of most of the buildings was beyond repair, and well into the replacement stage of life. Potholes dotted the road, great cracks ran down walls and all of it was crumbling in the face of the wind and the cold.
I already felt out of place, trailing behind Kichlan, suddenly aware of the quality of my own clothes. Hand in my pocket, I ran my fing
ertips over the rublie's bumps and grooves. Ten thousand could be a lot of money for people living in a place like this.
"Here." Kichlan stopped at a nondescript door once painted in a dark poly-mix, now peeling like snowburned skin.
I glanced around the door, the wall beside it, even the street, but found no number. Helpful, considering the missing street name.
Kichlan turned an old-fashioned iron key in the door's old-fashioned iron lock.
A tight, claustrophobic staircase led below the frozen ground. Dim lights wavered, and I realised with a shock they weren't pion-powered.
"It's gas." I stopped by one of the lights. A small flame flickered behind heat-smudged glass.
Kichlan, several steps below me, glanced over his shoulder. His thin mouth was made firmer and more disapproving by lines drawn with heavy shadow. "Of course."
I stroked fingers along the wall below the light. A faint bump betrayed the presence of a gas pipe behind thin cement and flaking paint. "I didn't think the gas lines still worked." How long had Movoc-under-Keeper employed its factories of pion-binders to keep the lights on? A hundred years, possibly more? And who would use a potentially dangerous, unreliable substitute instead?
"Not many do. Debris collectors are the only ones who use them." Kichlan resumed his descent.
"Why?" I hurried to close the gap between us, my feet slipping on the steps' wet edges.
He snorted. "What do you mean 'why'? You can't expect us to rely on pions instead." The stairs ended at another dark door. Kichlan wrapped his gloved hand around a handle of twisted metal. "Would you trust something you can't control? Something you've never seen and can't even smell, or taste?"
I held back "I would if it's safer than gas" on the tip of my tongue.
Light spilled into the stairwell as Kichlan opened the door. I followed him inside.
My eyesight adjusted to a wide room, sparsely furnished. A low table was pressed into one corner and surrounded by ratty couches and sagging armchairs. Desks lined the wall beside the door, and cabinets crowded another, their doors closed and locked. There wasn't much else. A few empty wooden cartons that didn't seem to serve much purpose. The ceiling was high, with the bottoms of windows letting in light from the street and the occasional glimpse of booted feet hurrying by.
Five curious faces peered at me from the couches and chairs. I clenched my hidden hands in my pockets.
"Found her." Kichlan tugged off his gloves and threw them on a desk that sagged beneath the paper piled on top of it. Paper: another relic from an age before the revolution.
I started to notice the warmth in the room too, and reluctantly withdrew my hands and slipped the cap from my head. "Hello," I said, as I fussed with my hair. The problem with wearing a hat and styling cream at the same time.
"Cutting it close, aren't you?" said a pale young man lounged across one of the couches.
I said, "Streets with no names, doors with no numbers, I have trouble with them. Call it a fault of mine."
He lifted his head to smirk at me. His eyes were sharply blue, his skin heavily freckled.
"We're hard to find, Mizra." Kichlan unbuttoned his coat. "We all have trouble the first time." He hung his coat on the wall and waved his hand loosely at the free hooks.
I undid my coat. They were all watching as I hung up my jacket. I tugged at my shirt collar, feeling intensely self-conscious.
A sharp-eyed woman standing behind one of the chairs stared at my wrists. "How long?" Brown hair framed her face and bobbed as she nodded toward my suit, wrapped and dimmed by dark cloth.
My throat went dry. "Sixnight and one. I think. And maybe another day or so." It all jumbled together, the falling and the healing.
"Other." When she brushed a strand from her face her suit flashed brightly silver in the morning glare. "Doesn't it hurt, the cloth?"
I raised my wrist. "No. Not any more, at least."
Her face crinkled into a disgusted expression. "Other."
"Is that unusual?" My eyebrows lifted, tugged stitches, and I eased them down.
She snorted a soft laugh. "Unusual? You could say that."
The pale young man, Mizra, chuckled. "We thought you might be fun."
They thought?
"Natasha, Mizra, enough." Kichlan frowned at both of them. "Tanyana, welcome to your debris collection team." His voice drawled the words out a little, making them bitter, tinged with sarcasm. Hardly reassuring.
I swallowed hard in the silence. "Thank you."
"You have met Mizra."
The young man waved his hand in the air, suit glinting on a soft wrist.
"His brother Uzdal."
A nearly identical man sat in an adjacent armchair and regarded me gravely. Twins, they had to be. It was rare to see twins in Movoc-under-Keeper; it was rare to see them in the whole of Varsnia. Few lived beyond infancy.
"You now know Natasha." Brown hair, sharp green eyes. Right.
Would I remember any of this?
"This is Sofia. If you need anything, she's the best place to start."
A small, solid woman glanced up from the wad of paper she was reading. She chewed the end of a graphite pencil. Thin hair, a featureless brown, was pinned in a knot at the base of her head. She wore a shapeless dress in layers of grey.
"And this, finally, is Lad."
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself. But when Kichlan turned to Lad his voice softened, and he smiled. I'd been starting to wonder if he was capable of it.
Lad was even larger than Kichlan. Poorly cut blond hair stuck out around his head, and his cheeks had a glow to them, strangely childish beneath a fine layer of stubble. He had been sitting on the edge of an armchair and leapt to his feet at the sound of his name. He grinned at me, so widely it seemed to split his face, and shuffled forward.
"He told me about you." Lad grabbed my hands, squeezed them in his own, and shook vigorously. I hissed as he tugged at sensitive skin around my suit, and the wounds beneath my left glove. "Knew you were coming."
"Be careful, Lad." Kichlan touched the larger man's shoulder. "Be nice to the new lady."
"I am." He squeezed harder and leaned in close to me. His breath smelled sweet, like sugar drops. "He's glad you're here. Waiting a long time."
I tried to pry my hands from Lad's grip. "Thank you."
Beaming like a newly risen sun, Lad gave me one final, extra-enthusiastic shake, and released me. I staggered a few steps and grabbed at the wall for balance.
Kichlan frowned at Lad, but even so his face held none of the disregard he had shown me. "What did we talk about?"
Lad fidgeted with the hem of his shirt and shuffled foot to foot. "Be nice," he said, voice muffled, head low. "When the new lady comes, got to be nice."
It was hard to imagine a man of his size, his strength, talking like such a child. I rubbed at the throb he had set off in my hand. How could I relate to a new circle like this? No, not a circle. Not any more. They were a collecting team. I had to get used to that. Resentment from Natasha, flippancy from Mizra and nothing from his twin, disdain from Kichlan and the small one, now spiced in the middle with Lad's excessive enthusiasm. A bizarre lot.
"And how do we be nice to her?" Kichlan continued to lecture the large man.
Lad lowered his head closer to his chest and mumbled. "Don't touch. Keep back."
"That's right. Are we going to be careful, now?"
Lad nodded. In places, his hair was long and frizzy, and it jiggled wildly. "Yes."
"All right. But I'll be watching you. So you be careful."
When Kichlan returned his regard to me, his face closed up again. It was like a door, a glance of a bright room and suddenly I wasn't allowed to see any further, any deeper. "My brother is enthusiastic. He likes to meet new people."
At least one of them did. "Your brother."
"That's right." Sofia dropped her wad of paper on the table with a bang. "Lad is our special boy, aren't you?" She stood, and patted Lad's
hand. He grinned down at her. "Not another collector like him, nowhere in this world."
"He's the best there is." Mizra, still prone, tipped his head over the arm of the couch and peered upside down at me.
"None better." Uzdal's voice was so quiet I barely heard it.
Did they expect me to add to this peculiar chorus of compliments? I kept my silence.
"You're lucky to be on this team." Sofia stepped between Lad and me, hands on hips, and flickered her gaze from my feet to my head. I started to suspect I wasn't entirely welcome. "And I don't care where you've come from, what you did before the accident that brought you here. A good pion-binder is not necessarily a good collector."
"Right." Accident? Did they know? Other, how could they know?
"Hmph." Her lip twitched. "Take those dark bands off, and let's have a look at you."
I ran a finger beneath the cloth hiding the suit on my right wrist from view.
"You won't need to cover them here," Kichlan said, softly, and I had the strangest feeling he understood my need to keep the suit hidden. Why all the changes in my life hurt less if I didn't have to look at the Other-damned shackles of silver and light.
I peeled each of the black strips away and undid my shirt collar so my neck was visible. My neck, and the bandages that crawled up from my left side. They felt heavy on me, even heavier than the suit, and I realised they were what I didn't want to expose to the world. Just like the suit, I didn't want my scars to be real either.
Mizra sat up to watch me, with his brother leaning behind him to get a view too. Why were there so many brothers in this team?
"Stomach too," Sofia said, arms crossed.
I blinked at her. "You want to look at my stomach?"
Mizra chuckled. "Better get used to it. No privacy around here."
My cheeks flushed as I untucked my shirt, lifted it, and tied the ends to expose the rim of silver around my waist and the white edges of padded bandages. The suit cast its own light into the room. It spun lazily, and I realised, as I clasped my hands near my waist, that each piece moved in time with the others.