Debris vw-1

by Jo Anderton

  "Quickly." Kichlan grabbed my elbow and dragged me with him. "Once he's found it there's no slowing him, no stopping him."

  I tripped on what was left of the gate and allowed myself to be half-carried, half-dragged into the alley. The stench of cat piss made me gag, while Kichlan's grip jarred into my shoulder. I struggled upright, and started running, finally able to shake him off. "Found what?" I panted behind him.

  He spared me a glance, disbelieving. "Debris, of course."

  I couldn't see anything, not even the Other-forsaken sludge I was stepping in. Even if the whole alleyway was teeming with dark, wiggly worms of debris I wasn't sure I would see it.

  Lad turned a corner, Mizra and Uzdal close behind. Sofia, with a kerchief pressed against her nose, and Natasha, expression ugly with disgust, were a step behind them. Kichlan, probably impatient with my slow, limping run, nearly missed the bend.

  "How does he know where it is?" I asked, trying to breathe through my mouth and talk at the same time. Anything to lessen the smell.

  Kichlan grabbed my arm again and forced me to match his pace. His face was lit bright with flashes of sunlight and a wild smile. Somewhat mad, somewhat alarming, but alive. And proud. "He's Lad." The grin caught me and dragged out a smile of my own. "That's enough, isn't it? He's Lad. He knows."

  We halted at a dead end. Roughly fired clay bricks – ugly and dark and made, I guessed, of ungainly or reluctant pions – stretched upward in a wall so high it blocked the Keeper from view. I peered at the soles of my shoes as the others shuffled aimlessly, moving boxes of rotting wood aside, lifting the worn-away edge of what was once a drainpipe and flinching back from whatever hid there. I touched an adjacent wall, just as ugly, for balance as I tipped my foot up. I had definitely stepped in something far below savoury.

  Lad stood at the dead end, shoes swimming in scummy liquid. His face was hard to see in the dim alley, but what muted and grey light did penetrate it showed his lips moving slowly, his voice so quiet it was lost in a distant and incessant drip. Almost, I thought to myself, like he was talking to pions. What a strange and ridiculous thought.

  Kichlan said nothing, only watched his brother. I put my foot down and leaned against the wall, just as Lad spun toward me.

  "Look out!" he cried, and lunged forward as the wall gave way. His large hands fumbled with mine; I grabbed air and slippery palms but could hold onto neither. I fell backwards, into a putrid puddle of water, as a heavy shower of bricks rained down on me.

  I scrambled desperately, hands beating at the falling bricks, feet slipping and kicking for purchase. And just as suddenly as the wall had collapsed, the stones stopped falling on my head. I opened my eyes to a semicircular dome of silver that wrapped around me, that shielded me from the rest of the wall.

  What, by the Other's own hells, was that?

  "Tanyana!" Kichlan yelled, voice muted through the silver ceiling and the Other only knew how much rock. After a breathless moment I heard scraping and the clattering of stones, then tapping.

  I coughed until I could spit up the brick dust clogging my throat. "Kichlan? What is this?"

  "How did it do that?" Someone – Sofia – was talking on the other side of the silver. Not, I noticed, trying to get me out from under it. "It's dormant, Kichlan. Dormant! We haven't even shown her how-"

  "Give her help!" Lad shouted. "He says to be quiet and help her!" I agreed with him.

  "Tanyana," Kichlan yelled again through the metal. "Don't let this frighten you. This is your suit, just your suit doing what it should do. You need to calm down and get it under control."

  Calm down? I thought I sounded like the calmest person here. "How do I do that?"

  A moment of half-heard muttering. "Your suit is more than bands of silver."

  "I have come to realise this," I mumbled to myself. My voice echoed strangely in the tight space.

  "Your suit is all this silver stuff too," he continued, oblivious. "It's in your arms and legs. It's so deep inside you wouldn't know it's there, until it does something like this."

  I remembered being strapped to the veche's table. The muscle spasms from wrist to shoulder. The ache, the pressure, further down than any surface scratch could have been. Fluids pumped into me. Fibrous, wiggling things trapped in glass tubes. I had seen it happen, I had known the suit was moving deeper.

  "I see."

  He hesitated again. "The suit is part of you. Your legs, your arms. You know how to move your arms, don't you? Your feet? The muscles around your stomach, your neck?"

  "Of course."

  "Then you can move the suit."

  I looked up to my wrist. Dimly, I could see a connection, where the silver on my wrist had grown, spread, flattened into the ceiling that now shielded me. The silver was part of those spinning, glowing bands. They were a part of me. And as I thought about lowering my arms that very symbol-scrawled silver bubbled back down into the bands on my wrists.

  I blinked against sudden sunlight before large hands scooped me out of fetid sewage. "Tan!" Lad crushed me against his chest. "Too slow, too slow!" he cried.

  It took a bit of coaxing for Kichlan to convince his younger brother to put me down. I was so grateful I even accepted Kichlan's shoulder to lean on, deciding walls weren't to be trusted. "Are you all right?" He studied my face, my head, my arms and my shoulder.

  "Other of a first day." Mizra would have sounded more sympathetic if he hadn't been grinning evilly.

  I fingered the top of my head and ignored him. Some of the bricks had scraped away skin, leaving dots of blood on my fingertips. And even though my uniform and suit had saved me from the worst of it, I suddenly felt sore all over. Exhausted and sore. Because from Movoc's greatest statue to one of its most decrepit walls, the city was trying to kill me. And maybe it was the dust clogging my throat, or the blood on my fingers, or the ache in my bones, but I was starting to wish it would just get it over with.

  "How did you do that?" Sofia glared at me. "I thought your suit was dormant. How did you know what to do?"

  "I didn't do anything." My head rang with the words. I knew I should have felt more shaken. Frightened by the wall coming down on me, confused by this suit that apparently should not have just saved me the way it had. Maybe it was the blow to the head. I just wanted to close my eyes.

  "That's not possible."

  "Sofia," Kichlan said in a warning tone that sent vibrations through me from his shoulder.

  "Look what you found," Uzdal called from the hole I had made in the wall.

  I pushed away from Kichlan's nice, stable shoulder and stumbled around loose bricks to stand beside him. On the other side of the wall was what could only have been an old city sewer. Walls chiselled into stone, not a dollop of cement anywhere, had eroded beneath a trickle of thick slop and made the foundations of at least three buildings now grown on top of it dangerously unstable. But, strangely enough, that barely caught my attention. It was the cluster of debris, squirming in the near-darkness like fat, baby snakes that held my eye.

  "It was hard." Lad stood between us, stooping to get low enough to look in. "Should have known but didn't understand so you broke it. Sorry you got hurt, Tan. Sorry."

  "Next time, try not to crush anyone." Mizra patted Lad's shoulder, but the large man jerked away from the touch and stomped off to huddle in a corner.

  Kichlan watched his brother and sighed, before pointing a finger at Mizra and running it across his neck like a knife. Mizra frowned, but I couldn't help noticing how pale his cheeks were. "That's a great find, Lad," Kichlan said, loudly. His brother showed no signs he had heard. "Let's get it collected," Kichlan told the others in a softer voice.

  He unhooked the bag he had over his shoulder and drew more metallic jars from its well-worn brown leather. He passed them out to the rest of the group. "Everyone set?"

  I sat on a pile of rubble and watched as the others crowded around the hole in the wall.

  "Here," Kichlan said, holding up his wrist and drawing my att
ention. "This is the way they're supposed to be used."

  His suit flickered, more of the symbols rose to the top of the liquid and the spinning inside band stilled. The symbols pressed their sides against each other, swelled, and rose from his wrist before splitting into two solid, silver prongs. They grew, extended into the hole in the wall, pinched a small, wiggling piece of debris and drew it out.

  "Debris cannot be touched." Kichlan held the debris over an open jar. "Not by hand, not by instrument, not by anything." He lowered the debris, opened his tweezers. "Except the suit." He sealed the lid. "And the jar."

  I stared at the jar. Why? What was the suit made of, and was the jar the same thing? Why had mine protected me, moved without command? And could I ever get it to do something that precise, that controlled?

  Kichlan gave me a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, it's been all too much for one day. And we don't usually drop things on new team members when we're trying to teach them either." He winced, and sent a guilty glance at his brother. "Just rest while we clean this up. You can try collecting some tomorrow."

  Tomorrow? Another day with these people, this dirty stuff, these horrible silver appendages. What an entertaining prospect.

  I leaned against chunks of ancient brickwork and let myself feel the aches. The throb in my head, matched by a larger, broader pain in my shoulder where I had fallen. Sharp twinges from stitches pulled and jolted. Had any dust found its way into my bandages? I would have to strip them all when I got home and clean everything carefully.

  Sunlight lanced down from the small gap between leaning buildings. I tipped my head to feel it on my cheeks, and squinted against the pale gold. Were those clouds, edging their way over the blue sky, or my poor eyes made hazy by a throbbing head?

  Dimly, I became aware of Lad whispering, "Didn't mean to, didn't know, should have told me." How could I hear him? It sounded like he was right beside me. My head was too heavy to lift, my eyes held closed by the sky's light. "Can't hurt her. Not again. If I hurt her, I can't go out any more."

  He's sorry, you know. A voice from the rubble, from the sagging building. Don't blame him. It isn't his fault.

  "I know," I whispered.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan's worried face blocked the sunlight. "Are you all right?"

  I struggled to sit up, finally levering my body straight with my elbows. My mouth tasted dry, caked with the same dust that weighed down my face. I ran a tongue like paper across my teeth.

  "Were you talking to anyone in particular?" Mizra crouched beside Kichlan.

  I blinked, spurring tears, and my head rolled on a stiff neck. "Dreaming," I croaked. I must have fallen asleep with the sun on my face.

  Kichlan's smile didn't quite ease the worry in his eyes. "Well, it's been a hard day. But no time for that now." He glanced up. "We'd better get moving before it hits."

  It? I squinted up, only to find low and rolling snow clouds, the sun a dull disk in their midst.

  "Come on." Sofia sounded agitated. "We've got it all. Time to get back."

  When I stood, head thumping to the beat of my heart, I realised they were all waiting for me. Even Lad, who no longer cowered in the corner and whispered for forgiveness, was holding two jars of debris and looking very pleased with himself. I wanted to ask how long I had lain on the rubble and slept, but my mouth was full of dust, and it took everything I had to focus on placing one foot in front of the other.

  5.

  Snow began to fall before we reached Darkwater. A final flurry of winter, like a childish swipe at the approaching spring. I tilted my head to catch the light, icy flakes in my mouth, and let them melt away some of the dust and the thickness of sleep. I kicked into the thin drifts that draped across flagstones, leaving dirty footprints, and feeling that bit cleaner. Its soft touch on my head soothed the throbbing, but stung in the freshly made cuts.

  "That's the end of that day, then," Uzdal murmured as Kichlan worked the old-fashioned lock and let us into the sublevel. I wasn't sure what bell it was, anymore. Pale white clogged the bottom of the windows, and didn't give much of an indication of the time.

  Kichlan brushed away flakes from his eyebrows and hat. "Jars in the corner, please. Tanyana." He waited for my attention to continue. "Do you see what they're doing? Full jars go on the shelves until the veche come for a collection. Empty jars only on the table. Do you understand?"

  I nodded, still feeling heavy and dull, not much better than I had in the sunlight and on the rubble. He frowned at me.

  "Everyone hurry home," he said, and took Sofia's remaining jars. "Don't want anyone getting caught when this gets worse." As it was bound to do. Movoc-underKeeper loved her snowstorms.

  I watched as Kichlan filled the shelves with jars, and the rest of the team left the sublevel. I counted them. Ten jars. Was that enough? Would we meet quota? I didn't want to be responsible for an inspection, not when Kichlan's thundercloud face hovered hazy but dark in my memories.

  Pincers. Tweezers. How had they done that?

  I clenched my fist. Silver oozed from my wrist to coat my hand and ballooned into something round and twice its size. That was a fist then.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan's voice sounded dim, like my ears were stuffed with wool. "What are you still doing here?"

  Gently, I opened my hand again. Whether I moved my hand at all I couldn't tell, all I could see was the silver bulb flatten, and that was all I could feel. I cupped it carefully and slow. A flat palm. Like a spade.

  "It's time to go home." Kichlan was closer. Was that Lad I could hear, murmuring and worrying in the background? "You can practice tomorrow, don't worry about it now."

  I twitched the corner of my mouth. It was all the same, all part of me. The bulb was my fist, the spade was my palm. And I knew how to extend my arms, I knew how to grasp something with my thumb and forefinger. So I reached, as though there was debris in front of me. Slowly at first, my second arm, that dull silver almostliquid grew. Then faster. I opened my thumb and forefinger and the silver split.

  "Watch out!" Kichlan cried.

  Silver crashed into the ceiling. Cement spilled in a waterfall onto my aching head. I jerked my hand back and the silver rushed into my wrist, pushing me to the ground, sending spasms to my shoulder. I could feel it, I was certain. That almost-solid, almost-liquid, strong silver in my skin, my bones, and all the spaces in between.

  Kichlan dropped to his knees beside me. "Tanyana," he sighed. "Didn't I tell you? Go home. Don't, for the love of Keeper, try that again. Not until you've had some sleep at least."

  I glanced up. A large hole, a good two feet wide, was cracked into the cement. At least, from this vantage point, it appeared to be only a few inches deep. "I'm sorry."

  "You will be, when Sofia sees this." He gripped my hands and helped me stand. "Just go home, Tanyana."

  I nodded, still numb, and climbed the stairs.

  But I could go no further than the eaves of 384 Darkwater. Snow built on the toes of my boots, and I wondered how I would get home. I stank, my body hurt and my head swirled like the snow drifts growing in the street. No coach would pick me up in this state. There was a ferry on the Tear. I could try that. Did it run in a snowstorm? What bell was it anyway?

  I dug my watch from its niche between my coat and the uniform skin. It rattled alarmingly. Pieces of glass fell to the snow when I drew it out. My hand shook. It had borne the brunt of the stones and rested shattered, broken, in my palm. The bear's head was unrecognisable. Glass had come loose from its inlay. When I pressed the latch the cover fell off, and the circles and bells tumbled with soft chimes to the ground.

  All I could do was stare at it. My watch – my life before any of this had happened – shattered in my hand. I couldn't move.

  "You need to be careful, Lad. Don't you remember what happened last time?" That was Kichlan, emerging from the sublevel.

  "Course I do. But wasn't my fault, Kich. I was just following," Lad said, tone teasing between sullen sulking and genuine apology.

&n
bsp; "Tanyana got hurt."

  "Tan." Lad hesitated. "She okay, brother?"

  "This time. But that's what I mean, you need to be careful."

  "I will tell him." Lad's voice hitched. "Tell him to be careful."

  "I know you will, Lad. I know you will."

  Dimly, I wondered when I had become Tan.

  "Just next time, don't listen to him so much-" Kichlan stepped onto the street and saw me. He stopped, startled, and raised an arm to hold back his brother. Or perhaps shield him.

  "He knows better than me, brother." Lad, oblivious to my presence, pulled the door closed. It locked with a heavy clang that echoed from the stairwell behind it. He made a great show of pushing against it, checking, it seemed, that the lock would hold. "Can't ignore him-"

  "Lad, hush."

  Lad finally noticed me, hands still on the door handle, eyes wide. Perhaps I wasn't supposed to have overheard that particular conversation.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan approached me slowly, one hand half-extended. I felt like a stray cat in the snow.

  "Tan!" Lad bustled up close. I thought I should probably flinch, or step back, or do something. But as it was I stood there, hems soaking up the snow. The cold sent chills through my legs, and I shivered.

  Lad smiled at me, but this faded as I didn't respond. He glanced over his shoulder at his hesitating brother. "Kich?" He waved his hands, a gesture of uselessness. He reminded me of a fat honeybee, with his hands flapping out from his sides like that. I wanted to laugh, but only shivered instead.

  As Kichlan approached, Lad leaned over him and cupped his hands around his mouth. "She's cold," he whispered. Hardly conspiratorial, I would have had a harder time hearing him if he'd spoken plainly. "Why isn't she moving?"

  Why indeed? I frowned to myself, skin on my forehead numb. Home was so far away, and there was all that snow in the way. It was too hard, I realised. I was standing still in the cold, in the snow, because it was all too hard.