Debris vw-1

by Jo Anderton

  Mizra whistled, the sound sharp against the room's smooth walls. "Sixnight, you say?"

  "And one," Natasha whispered. "Maybe more."

  Hadn't they noticed the bandages? Didn't they have questions? "Are you repeating yourselves for any particular reason?" The heat in my cheeks had turned to anger. Easier to deal with than embarrassment.

  Kichlan came to my aid again. "A sixnight-"

  "-and one, maybe more," Natasha added.

  Kichlan didn't miss a beat "-is a very short time to adapt so well to a new suit. Particularly at your age."

  I ignored that comment. "Is it?" I remembered what Devich had said to me, about being strong. Maybe this was what he meant. "What do you mean, adapt?"

  "Just look at them." Mizra dropped off the couch and approached me. He was tall, I realised, and very thin. He walked, slow and laconic, like someone strolling through water. "They're glowing steadily, and the spinning is synchronised. It usually takes moons to get to that stage, filled with hard work and a lot of practice."

  Had the bands ever been out of sync? I'd not noticed.

  Sofia began to undress. "Right, let's get you into your uniform. We have a lot to do today and don't need you to slow us down."

  My eyes widened. "What, exactly, does this involve?"

  She gave me a withering look, even as I realised she was wearing something else beneath her shapeless dress. The top was like a corset, boned around her chest, but not tight enough to inhibit her breathing. Dark material, lined with more stiff bones beneath the fabric, stretched over her shoulders and down her arms, ending a few inches short of her wrists. Of course, the strange outfit left a gap at her stomach, enough for the band of silver metal and an inch or so of skin. She wore pants in the same dark fabric, finishing above her ankles. The boning continued through the whole thing and softened with the contours of her body, with her own bending, the movement of her joints and muscles.

  I had never seen anything so form-fitting, so revealing, even though it covered her completely, and couldn't decide if it was ridiculous or hugely inappropriate.

  A horrible thought dawned on me. "What is that?" I choked over the words.

  Sofia gave me a cruel smile. "Your new uniform. Like it?"

  "Other's balls."

  Mizra chuckled as Lad pressed his hands to his lips, snorting giggles behind his palms.

  "Now, now." Kichlan fetched a packet wrapped in clear poly from the desk and passed it to me. "You'll get used to it."

  "The uniform is strong, it is warm, and it does not impede the use of your suit," Sofia said as she planted herself in front of me. "Swallow your pride, and just put it on."

  She was a rather ineffectual shield, but Natasha didn't offer to help and no one seemed inclined to ask her. So the smallest woman present was the only thing between the men and me as I pulled off my clothes, and tried to squeeze into the strange black top and pants. They smelled strongly of their poly wrap. The material was a lot like the dark strips Devich had given me, too stretchy to be normal, thin to the touch, but strong when pulled.

  I untied my shirt first, counting my blessings that I'd chosen a long one, and replaced my loose, comfortable woollen pants with the decidedly uncomfortable new pair.

  My new team were not modest about their staring. I told myself not to care, not to feel self-conscious, and focus more on easing the material around my ankles and over stitches.

  They kept quiet until I had pulled off my shirt and was trying to work out if I could keep my camisole on underneath the tight black uniform.

  "You're hurt," Lad murmured.

  I glanced up to see his expression shocked, eyes tearrimmed. And I swallowed hard.

  "Yes." I gave up the fight for a moment and straightened, so they could all see the bruises, the bandages, the scarring and the stitches. How strange that my new team had noticed the suit first, but maybe that was the kind of scarring they understood. And standing beneath the scrutiny of people I would have to work with, I realised the suit and the stitches were one and the same to me. Cause and effect. All a part of my fall. However much I wanted to keep them hidden, to deny their existence, it couldn't be sustained.

  "So," Uzdal said, tone flat. "You're the architect."

  Had I really expected to maintain my anonymity? Grandeur was a big statue, her fall must have been spectacular. In a terrible way.

  "I told you she would be," Kichlan said, and I wondered at his wooden expression. "Powerful binder makes a big mistake, we get a new collector. Doesn't take much to work that one out."

  Makes a big mistake? I bristled. "I didn't make any-"

  "Why didn't they heal you?" Kichlan somehow twisted the question into an accusation. "Why give you stitches? They will leave scars. I thought healers would do anything for their fellow pion-binders, even ones who throw themselves from great heights and drag buildings down with them."

  "The healers did the best they could for me." Why did this make him so angry? Had the veche dragged him from this dank sublevel to clean up all the debris I had left behind? Oh, the terrible injustice of it all.

  "Is that what they told you?"

  What could I say to that? I had no idea what he meant, and was at a point where I really didn't care. Instead, I sent Sofia a silent glance as I wrapped fingers around the hem of my camisole. She nodded, barely perceptible, and mouthed, "Leave it on," her voice little more than a breath.

  The black top squeezed on, tight boning pressing against my chest, my shoulders and arms. I waited for pain, but if anything, the firm but yielding pressure seemed to calm my stitches. Dressed, I flexed my hands, extended my arms and turned the inside of my elbows up. The material curved with me, not prodding, not constricting. It felt like a second skin, a tough one, strong when I rapped it with my knuckles. And a little too warm.

  "You don't go outside like this, do you?" Warmth in an underground room was one thing. Warmth in the middle of a Movoc winter demanded many, many more layers. And the whole uniform wasn't proper. Too much skin, too much shape.

  Sofia clicked her tongue. "Of course not. It's easy enough to cover, just wear what you would normally, bar any underclothes. You won't need them."

  "What's the point if we wear clothes on top of it?"

  Kichlan passed Sofia's discarded garments back to her, and said, "With the uniform on we only need one layer. One loose layer. And trust me, when we start collecting you'll understand. The last thing you want is clothes getting in the way."

  Sofia lifted an eyebrow. "You might have to wear skirts next time though."

  "I have pants loose enough to go on top of this."

  "Not a good idea for a debris collector to stand out." She gave me a stern look. "We need to walk around unhindered, unmolested. If you start trying to be different, trying to get attention, you'll make life harder for all of us."

  Attention? That wasn't why I cut my hair short, and wore men's clothing. "I have some very loose pants."

  Kichlan sighed. "As I was saying, wear the uniform beneath your clothes. Get used to it. You can be called on at any time, and must be ready to respond immediately."

  "Immediately?"

  He nodded. "When accidents happen – like architects who lose control of their buildings, say – we have to be prepared. Any time. All the time."

  I refused to rise to the barb. "Given the effect debris can have on a pion system, I understand why."

  Enough debris could slow a whole system down, leaving pions unresponsive and ultimately useless. Any system, no matter how large. And what was Movocunder-Keeper but an enormous pion system, a system of systems, built from pions, with pions, entirely dependent on their smooth working. From fountains to landaus, nothing operated without them. Imagine running a hospital without working pions, or the heating system, or the lights. A whole city in chaos, utter darkness and cold.

  "You were a skilled architect, weren't you? A strong binder." Kichlan's voice was soft again, like he couldn't decide if my past made him angry or sad. What d
id it matter, how skilled I was when I was a pion-binder? All that was gone now. "Before you fell."

  My throat felt dry. The uniform was too hot. "Yes. Before I fell."

  I held Kichlan's gaze, tried to decide if I could read sympathy in his eyes, or a bitter kind of confusion.

  Then Lad broke into the silence. "He likes it." He grinned. "Thinks you look good in it. A lot."

  Mizra burst out laughing as Kichlan gaped at his brother. Sofia glared at me from beneath thick eyelashes. The anger there, the resentment, was far deeper than anything she had shown me yet. The whole new-team arrangement wasn't really going very well.

  "Let's go," Sofia growled the words, pulled her clothes back on and stalked to the stairs. I collected my own clothes, tugged them on, and followed.

  Lad was bouncing on the balls of his feet as I stepped back into the glare of Movoc-under-Keeper. I shielded my eyes and squinted into the hard blue sky. Clouds hugged the edge of the horizon, probably flocking to Keeper's Peak and the lesser range of mountains in her shadow. I hoped they would spill over as the day wore on, keeping some warmth in the city, dulling the worst of the sharp sunlight.

  "Lovely day to be collecting." Mirza hunched himself into a jacket patched together from scraps of leather and wool, and wrapped a widely knitted scarf around his neck. Guilt nudged at me. I was acutely aware of the lamb's wool cushioning my ears, of my smooth leather shoes and the heavy, wind-blocking lining of my coat.

  "Aren't they all?" Natasha mumbled into the high collar of a jacket that swallowed most of her head.

  Their attitude didn't dampen Lad's excitement. He giggled and repeated, "Lovely day!" over and over. He sang it, like a child with a newly learned expression, loudly, softly, without apparent tune. And he continued to bounce as Kichlan fought to secure Lad's loose scarf.

  "It's going to take all day to calm him down now." Kichlan gave up on Lad's scarf altogether and muttered as he stalked past me.

  Was that my fault?

  As the others started down the street, Kichlan gestured for me to follow him. "I guess the most important thing I can tell you is to fill the quota."

  I blinked at him. "Quota?"

  He gave a little sigh and nodded. "Every sixnight and one the debris we have collected is taken away by the veche." He rustled around in a brown leather bag he had swung over his shoulder and drew out a strange container. It looked like a jam jar with a lid that sealed tightly, but was made of a dull metal instead of glass. It didn't, I rather quickly assumed, hold jam. "We put the debris in these, and they'll count the number we send back full. After a decent sixnight we'll fill seventy-two. Any less than that is a problem. Although, they'll be after-" he flicked his fingers, counted under his breath "-eighty-four now you're here."

  "Wonderful," Sofia muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.

  "And if we don't meet this quota?" Why didn't I shut my mouth when it wanted to ask questions like that?

  "Inspection." Kichlan's face took on a thundercloud aspect, dark, foreboding. Inspection hung in the cold air like it was written in ice. The rest of the team held their breath. "And we don't want that."

  Well, I could understand not wanting to endure a veche inspection, particularly considering their presence at Grandeur's construction site when it all fell apart. But the tension I could suddenly feel felt a little extreme. What could be so bad about an inspection? A lecture, a rap on the knuckles? But those hanging-ice words told me there had to be more to it than that.

  "To avoid such an event we have devised half a dozen set loops," Kichlan continued, expression still dark. "You will learn them over the next sixnight or two. They take us past places where debris congregates. Faulty lamps, old sewers. Pion systems that aren't functioning properly. It has worked, so far, to fill our quota and keep from attracting unwanted veche attention."

  "Kich's idea," Lad told me, tone light compared to Kichlan's face and everyone else's heavy silence. "He decided the ways we should go and we always find some."

  "Oh, Lad." A smile swept Kichlan's thunderclouds away. "You're being hard on yourself. We also have a secret weapon-" he nodded to his younger brother "-thanks to Lad, we always find the debris we're looking for, even if it's off the loop. Other teams aren't so lucky."

  Lad, still bouncing and drawing further ahead, grinned proudly.

  I gave a sharp, quiet sigh. "Aren't we lucky."

  "You'll see," Sofia said, expression smug.

  "Just remember one thing." Mizra wrapped an arm around half of Lad's wide back. "When it comes to debris, always follow Lad's instincts."

  "Always," Kichlan echoed him.

  Once we left Darkwater we headed from side street to side street, poking into every shadow, scrutinising every corner. I found myself immersed in a uniformity of poor brickwork, unwashed streets and cracked windows. I had no idea how I was supposed to remember the whole twisting route, let alone half a dozen different ones.

  In these poorer areas kopacks weren't spent on frivolous fountains or expensive walkways that required intensive pion systems to run. Even if I still retained my pion sight, the buildings in these sections would have looked dull to me. Almost lightless. That wasn't to say they were like the ancient buildings at the city centre, built by hand in a time before critical circles. Rather, they were constructed cheaply and quickly, by smaller circles and with weaker, shallow pions. The buildings stood, barely, and did not weather the passing of time particularly well.

  "Pay particular attention to shadows," Kichlan lectured me. The others were a good five strides ahead, talking among themselves. Mizra gestured wildly and Lad nearly fell to the icy flagstones in a paroxysm of laughter. "Dark in colour, debris is easy to miss in the shadows. We do not collect at night for this reason. Unless, of course, in an emergency."

  "Of course."

  Mizra waved his hands in the air, and now Uzdal was laughing too. Even Natasha let out a soft chuckle. Lad whooped, the sound echoing. A face peered down from a slit of a window, high up in the flat, unpainted cement wall. I glanced up to see an old man, hair thinning and face heavily lined, scowling as we trooped past.

  "Mizra," Kichlan called. When the young man turned around Kichlan made gestures over his mouth, then pointed at Lad. Mizra shrugged, only to be rewarded with a clenched fist. Finally, Mizra nodded, and the laughter ceased.

  Seemed a pity to me.

  "Where was I?" Kichlan clasped his hands behind his back, and lifted his head. He could have passed easily for a university lecturer striding along like that. All he needed was a black cape and a bear's claw pinned to his breast.

  "You were telling me about emergencies," I said, At least emergencies sounded interesting.

  "Remember to wear your uniform all the time."

  "So you said."

  "Even at night."

  I balked. "At night?"

  "I told you to wear it all the time, Tanyana. And I mean it. If you are called to an incident at silentbell what will you do? Trust me, you won't be given time to dress." And then, Other's beard, the bastard sneered at me. "When the call comes-"

  All the time? That was ridiculous. "How will I know if there's an incident when I'm snug in my own bed and sound asleep?" And how did he expect me to reach that state of sound asleepness wrapped in a hot, hard, second skin?

  "I was trying to tell you." He tapped at his wrist. "You'll know."

  The suit then. I couldn't get away from it, could I? Not at home, not in my sleep, not anywhere or any time. "Fine."

  "Good." Kichlan was silent for a moment. "Should be easy for a skilled ex-binder like you to work out."

  "Great." My left knee was starting to hurt.

  We trekked further. More small windows opened, letting in the crisp morning air. Wet clothes and bedding were hung on wire strung between them. People stepped out into the streets. Men dressed in dark suits with smallbrimmed hats tucked tightly over their ears. Women in wide skirts, heavily layered, rustled against the flagstones in rose pinks, wildflower cre
am and bright sky blue. Their hands were wrapped in muffs of fur dyed to match the colour of lace hemming or glimpsed underskirt. Some wore thick hats, wide enough to keep the sun from delicate skin but low enough to protect their ears, but most donned more elaborate versions of my own: tight around the head, topped with soft moleskin and rimmed with fur.

  I tugged at the lapel of my unfitted, tailored-for-a-man jacket. I played with the ends of my short-cropped hair.

  "Now do you see what I mean?" Sofia hung back from the others to grace me with a self-righteous smile. "You really don't fit in, do you?"

  I supposed that was a bad thing. "I don't see you dressed up like some oversexed flower waiting for the bee."

  Ahead of us, Mizra let out a raucous laugh that had Lad quickly following suit. Sofia scowled. "I look like a woman of my station. You should try it sometimes." She hurried forward to smack Mizra on the back of the head.

  I decided it was easier to hold my tongue than argue the point.

  We didn't get much further from the Keeper that day. We wound our way through small alleys and side streets, squeezing through gaps in wooden fences, climbing a few stunted iron railings and opening rusty gates with hinges that screamed to wake the Other. I supposed it was intentional, this keeping out of the way. Away from people, away from the thoroughfares, away from space and sunlight and open sky. Because debris kept to the corners, Kichlan said, because the passage of coaches, of people, could sweep it away like dust. I didn't believe him. I was convinced, as I strained to squeeze through a cracked iron gate that refused to open any further, that the collectors were not following debris. They were avoiding people.

  Then Lad, out in front and pushing along nicely despite his size, stopped. Mizra ran into his back – the experience a lot like I imagined walking into a wall would look like – and hurried to step away, expression apprehensive.

  The team wrapped themselves in tense silence, all at once. I glanced from face to face, but all attention was reserved for Lad. The big man cupped his hand to his ear. Listening. He nodded, to no one in particular, and started abruptly down a different alleyway.