Debris vw-1

by Jo Anderton

  And my watch was broken.

  Kichlan pressed his finger to his lips and Lad shuffled over to give his brother room. "Tanyana, shouldn't you go home?" Kichlan asked.

  I stared down Darkwater. The useless signpost was lost in thick haze, as were most of the buildings beyond it. The roads were not left to the snow this way in the second Keepersrill. Already the snow-shifters would have swept the powder away. I didn't expect to see them here, their great shapes hulking dark against the white, their wide metallic wings brushing the snow away with stiff feathers. Their drivers knew the streets to keep to, knew where they would be tipped for keeping a lady's skirts dry and preserving the integrity of a man's shoes. There were no spare kopacks to pay them with as far out as the eighth Keepersrill.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan placed a hand on my arm and tugged gently.

  What had he been talking about? Ah. Home. "It's so very far away," I murmured, and looked down to the useless silver in my hand. "It broke."

  Lad made a strange hiccupping sound, like a distressed animal.

  "What's far away?" Kichlan leaned closer, gaze darting over my face. His once-smooth cheeks were rough now with stubble. Heavy for less than a day's growth. Kichlan made to take my outstretched hand and I snatched it away. The rest of my watch fell, silent into the white. A breath of air, and it was gone.

  He took my elbow as I wobbled.

  "Home." I tried to pull away but his grip tightened, and I realised he was not so much holding me back, as holding me up. I recalled leaning on his shoulder, head throbbing and bleeding. "It's eight hundred kopacks away. That's what the bastard coach driver wanted to charge me, can you believe it?" The words rolled out of me, drawn by some invisible thread. "And my watch is gone. And it is snowing. And my head hurts." I tapped the sore spot beneath my hat for emphasis, and winced.

  "That must be a long way," Lad said, very serious.

  "It is indeed." Kichlan studied me.

  "We got to, brother. He says we should."

  Kichlan brushed snow from my shoulder in a gentle, distracted way. "Does he now? What did I say about following him blindly?"

  "He's right though."

  "I suppose he is."

  "Who is?" I didn't like their riddles.

  Kichlan didn't answer. Instead, he slipped his hand to my upper arm, like I was an old woman and he a tired but conscientious son. "You should come home with us. Just this time." He exerted gradual pressure and took slow steps, moving me forward before I realised it was happening. "Come home with us. Until you feel more yourself."

  More myself? Did I even know who that was any more?

  "No, really…" I tried to rouse the part of me that screeched protests. That told me it wasn't proper to go home unaccompanied with two brothers I had just met. The part that clamoured for my home, my bed, my hot water. The part that longed for the comforts of an earlier life not buried in snow, soaked in sewage, and heavy with the dust of ancient stonemasonry. But that part of me was muffled, buried underneath the rubble of the day. And Kichlan was guiding me gently, and Lad was on the other side, grinning like a child with candy in his pocket. "Is it far to go?"

  "Home should never be far," Lad declared.

  "No, it is not," Kichlan said, making far more sense than his brother.

  So I let them guide me. I watched my feet most of the way to Kichlan's house, and kept feeling for the watch that should have rested close to my heart.

  The brothers lived in the attic of a squat house dwarfed by taller buildings, solid slabs that were nightmares of poor construction and ugly design. Their house was old enough to escape such a horrible fate, but that was the only good thing about it. Its stonework looked suspiciously similar to the wall that had fallen on me, and I wondered how much of it had been built by hand rather than pions. A heavy wooden door creaked as Lad pushed it open, and ushered us into a dim room heavy with smoke and shadows. I blinked against the slants of orange fire-glow, coughed in the smoke, and couldn't see very much at all.

  "We're back!" Lad called, so loudly and suddenly that I jumped a little with surprise.

  "Lad?" A voice warbled from an adjacent room. "Is that you, boy?"

  "He owns this house," Kichlan whispered as Lad bounded into the room. "He's a good man. He won't mind if you stay, as long as it's only one night."

  So this wasn't Kichlan's house after all. He was simply, what, boarding here? Somehow, I found it difficult to reconcile. Kichlan, who organised his collection team with such authority, didn't even own his home?

  "What's got you so excited then?" The voice came nearer, accompanied by the shuffling of feet. "Oh." A short, ancient man turned into the hallway. He was wrapped in layers of clothes made from what looked like mainly quilts, all patches and mismatched colours. Faint wisps of pale hair, lit a coppery gold from what must have been a fireplace behind him, escaped a tea-cosy hat to float with the smoke around his head. He carried a large pipe in one hand, and gripped the door frame with the other.

  Tiny embers dropped from the pipe as we stared at each other, to touch bright on the wooden floor before winking out.

  "Kichlan." The old man collected himself, tapped his pipe against his cheek, and drew a small breath of smoke into his mouth. It curled up to his nose. "You aren't going to introduce us?"

  "This is Tan!" Lad filled the quiet to overflowing. "She had to go a long way and it's snowing and bricks fell on her, so Kich and I thought she could stay here." He paused only to breathe. "Is that all right?"

  I couldn't see Kichlan's face. He stood behind me, holding me upright. But whatever the old man saw there must have convinced him. I doubted it was Lad's rambling that did it.

  "Of course. You're welcome, dear Tan. I'm Eugeny, and my home is yours." He made a strange bow, touching the mouthpiece of his pipe to his hat.

  "It's Tanyana." My voice sounded soft and breathless, and I tried to push more force into it. "And thank you."

  He nodded. Lad whooped and clapped his hands above his head.

  "Now," Eugeny wrinkled his nose, "something tells me the lady would care for water to bathe in?"

  How he could smell anything through the smoke escaped me.

  "She has had a difficult day," Kichlan said. I wanted to argue, to tell him I didn't need anyone to excuse or explain for me, but he was already leading me down the hallway to a set of stairs leading up to a second floor.

  "I can hardly imagine." Eugeny waited until we had passed before commanding Lad to collect a couple of buckets, which he took outside. I decided they couldn't have running water, which was something of a shock. I thought every building in Movoc-under-Keeper was supplied with running water. It operated on the same, essential system as the light and the heat, with factories across the city, where pion-binders sat in large, compounded circles, gathering pions and convincing them to push clean river water through a complex series of underground pipes. Each tap was just another valve, keeping the water out until it was needed. Some of the pions were also asked to heat the water as they ferried it along, although I believed that required a slightly higher level of skill than simple plumbing.

  I supposed this also explained the fireplace and the darkness. Was anything in this house powered by pions?

  They might not have had running water, but Kichlan and Lad certainly had a bath. The attic room was a wide one, with a high peaked ceiling and a few elongated windows near the floor. Rugs carpeted the sound of their feet and hugged the warmth wafting up from Eugeny's house below. There were beds in two opposite corners, each with a rickety stand and water jug of its own.

  The bathtub was old, solid metal with bear-claw feet and pale, chipped enamel. Lad filled it steadily, with water that looked clean enough. He heated the full buckets in Eugeny's fireplace before pouring the warm water into the bathtub and hurrying away for more. While he did this Kichlan found a thin bar of soap and a towel big enough to be a blanket.

  As the bath water grew Kichlan began to fidget and look decidedly uncomfortable. There was
no screen in the room, nothing to separate the tub from the rest of the attic. And as the steam rose, inviting with its promise of warmth, of being clean, I was already weighing up a little more immodesty for a nice hot soak.

  "Eugeny will be cooking," Kichlan said as Lad brought the final bucket of water up the stairs, puffing from his exertions, and poured it proudly into the tub. I eyed the water and wondered how long it was going to stay so nice and warm.

  Kichlan grasped his brother's hand, earning a startled expression, and Lad dropped the pail. "Clean yourself up before it cools down." He flushed redder than the warm room could account for. "We'll be downstairs until you're ready." He had to drag his younger brother toward the stairs. "Come on, Lad!"

  "Downstairs?" Lad's deep voice echoed up from below. "But what about her back, Kich? Who's going to scrub her back?"

  Kichlan's splutters echoed also.

  I shrugged off my jacket. It dropped with a squelch to the floor. I pulled the hat from my head and the gloves from my hands and kicked the lot as far from the bath and its promise of cleanliness as I could. My pants were sodden; the only clothes to have escaped the sewage appeared to be my shirt, kept safe by the coat, and the uniform itself. Would such strange material even stain? If it was designed for daily use, perhaps it was beyond such needs as washing.

  The uniform peeled off like a layer of stiff skin, and hurt like it too, where it tugged on stitches and poked at bruises.

  Voices made their way up from the ground floor.

  "They got to her too, eh?" Eugeny's rattling baritone was clear despite the floor between us. "Be careful around her. You know they won't be far behind."

  Kichlan was too tactful to be overheard, and I couldn't make out his answer.

  "I know. But your kindness mustn't put the boy in danger."

  I leaned into the water and watched coils of dirt and oil spread over its taut surface.

  Just who were they?

  The soap was plain and made a kind of half-lather, more like a film of white than any real suds. It smelled like faux flowers, sweet and manufactured, but at least it wasn't sewage. I rubbed the flakes into my hair and wherever my skin was free from bandages before ducking beneath the water, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and rubbing again to get it out.

  When I sat up and slicked hair from my brow, I realised I looked worse clean. The bandages along my neck and left shoulder had been jarred out of place, the normally thin lines of pink scarring beneath them red and puckered. I could still see some of the grit stuck around a dark stitching cord.

  "Other's hairy arse," I growled. Dirty, wet, and no clean bandages. "Damn it!"

  "Ah, Tanyana?" The top of Kichlan's head bobbed in and out of view at the top of the stairs. "Are you all right?"

  I allowed myself a rueful chuckle. I dipped myself lower in the tub. "No, Kichlan. Not really."

  A moment of uncomfortable silence. "Can I help?"

  "Why not?" What was one more indignity on top of a day full of them? "Do you remember the bandages…?" I let my voice trail away. "You might as well come and see for yourself."

  I hadn't realised how uncomfortable silence could get, and resisted an urge to push it, to see what I would need to say to make Kichlan's discomfort worse. More references to the Other's backside would probably not help.

  "If… if you think… I will…"

  Grinning at Kichlan's stumbling, his overflowing discomfort, I shifted myself around in the tub so I sat with my back to the stairs. It was big enough to allow me to pull my knees close to my chest. "This is as decent as I'm going to get, I'm afraid. I'm part of your team now. Supposed to look after us or something, aren't you?"

  "Yes." The word came out as a tangled cough.

  "Kich?" Lad's voice was loud, boisterous and distinctly comfortable. "See, told you! Everyone needs help with their back."

  "Lad! No!"

  The scrapes and bangs of a struggle reached me from the stairs. I rested my head against my knees, thankful for the warmth that added flexibility to my strained and bruised neck, and grinned against wet skin.

  "No, Lad. Eugeny! Eugeny, a hand?"

  More struggling.

  "But, Kich, what about her back?"

  "Your brother can handle it, Lad, my boy." I could hear laughter in the old man's voice. "Why don't you help me with supper? We can make something especially for your friend. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  "Oh, yes. I guess." Lad hesitated, torn. "Are you sure you can handle, Kich?"

  "Yes," Kichlan answered in a squeak.

  A moment more, then footsteps descended.

  "What can we make, Geny?" Lad asked as his voice faded.

  "I'm coming up," Kichlan called ahead. A warning of sorts, I supposed.

  I waited until he was closer before turning my head.

  "What's the matter?" His thin lips and serious expression were out of place on his blushing, flame-red face. "Is it your head?"

  Looking over my shoulder was not helping my aches and pains. I turned around. "No, the stitches. From the glass, when I fell. Well-" I gestured to my left shoulder with a flick of my head "-you can see for yourself."

  I leaned on my knees as Kichlan touched my shoulder and back. His soft fingers were cold compared to my water-warmed skin, and they shook, but he didn't knock the bandages or brush the sensitive stitching. "The dust, from the wall," he whispered.

  "And the Other knows what else," I muttered.

  "The old man is good with these things." Kichlan stood. I heard footsteps retreating. "Doing things without pions, that is. Wait a minute."

  Left alone in the attic I righted myself, and stretched gingerly. The water was beginning to cool.

  There wasn't much in Kichlan and Lad's shared room besides their beds and bath. A hamper of old wicker slouched beside a small chest of drawers. Two pairs of boots, cleaned well but betrayed by faded and cracked leather, leaned against the hamper. Could they only have enough clothes, enough possessions, to fill a basket and three drawers? I searched the room, to the bare wooden walls, rug and freshly swept floorboards. Simple, empty.

  And, as I lay in a warm bath while an old man made evenbell supper in the house below, unavoidably comfortable.

  Second glance at the dresser, and I frowned. There was something on top of it, something dull, metallic and ugly in such a bare-wooden room.

  I frowned at it. What was it? It almost looked like a hand. A metal hand.

  "I'm coming up, miss!" Eugeny called from the stairs.

  I turned my back to the old man entering the room.

  Eugeny whistled lowly, a soft rush of air under his breath. "Nasty." But he didn't ask what had happened, or comment further. "Can you remove the bandages? Got the boys tearing up an old towel to fix them."

  Gingerly, I unwound the tucked-in knot and began unwrapping my shoulder. "I-" I swallowed on a sudden lump. "I'm sorry to make you do that."

  "No fuss, miss." Eugeny took the wet, dirty bandages as I pulled them away. "Old anyway, just sitting in my cupboard tempting the moths."

  I nodded, but wasn't entirely convinced. "Well, thank you."

  "Not me you should thank."

  I had to rearrange myself to undo the bandages around my hips and upper thigh. Eugeny had foreseen this, and was already facing the stairs. He clasped his hands behind his back. His fingernails were short and clean.

  "It's your house, though." I shifted again. "You can turn around now."

  He took the remaining bandages. "That's true. But the boys wanted to help you, and they're good boys, both of them. Help an old man out. So I do the same. Now, I'm going to leave this for you." Something tapped on the bath beside my shoulder. I glanced down. Eugeny was holding a wide glass jar, filled with a yellow paste. I took it from him.

  "What is it?"

  "Golden roots of the waxseal plant," he said, as though that explained anything to someone who'd never heard of a waxseal plant. "When you're dry, put it on the wounds, and then replace your bandages. Ah, here we g
o."

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Eugeny shuffle to the stairs and take a bundle of pale material from a curious-faced Lad.

  "They're on the boy's bed, with your towel. When you're ready."

  I realised, in the tone of that "when you're ready", that I had spent too long getting clean.

  "Lad's helped me finish the apple pie." The old man shepherded Lad before him, and left me alone.

  With little choice, I stood and stepped carefully from the water. As I wrapped a large, pine-smelling towel around me, something gurgled in my gut. I was ravenous.

  I did as the old man had instructed. I smeared the gunk – I couldn't bring myself to think of it as golden – on my stitches. Kichlan and Lad had no mirror, so I couldn't be entirely sure I had got all of them, but I had cleaned the wounds enough times to do it mostly from memory. It stung at first, before easing the aching skin into a warm kind of numbness. Despite myself, I couldn't help a surge of affection for the old man as I tied the fresh bandages. For bits of an old towel they worked surprisingly well.

  For a moment I considered leaving my uniform in its heap on the floor. Then I imagined Kichlan's reaction. I collected the dark cloth from the floorboards. It was dry. I lifted it close to my face and sniffed. Again it surprised me, giving off not so much of a hint of the sewer. I dragged it on.

  The silver hand on the dresser caught my eye. I picked it up. It was heavy, and clinked on the inside as I weighed it in my palm. Where the wrist should be was a jagged hole, metal ending in burns and rust. I peered inside. Dimly, I could see thick wires coiled in on each other. They reminded me too keenly of the fibres in their metal tube, those that had become my suit. What was this hand, that it resembled the suit so closely? And why was it on Kichlan's dresser? Something told me it did not belong to Lad.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan called from the floor below. "Are you coming?"

  I dropped the hand. It fell with a crash that sounded louder to my ears than it should have. I stood, stone still, waiting for Kichlan to run up the stairs. No one came. Heart knocking against my chest I collected the hand, placed it back on the dresser. It hadn't bent, or scratched, although it seemed to rattle more than before. I gave it a last pat, and hoped Kichlan didn't move it often.