by Jo Anderton
"What's this?" I called as I approached them.
"Morning!" Lad bellowed, and left the fireplace long enough to sweep me into a brief, crushing hug.
"Morning," I croaked once he had let me go.
Large, dusky embers glowed inside the fireplace, beneath two heavy iron pots. Something bubbled away under their half-closed lids and that was where the smell was coming from. The smell that set my stomach rumbling.
"Guess what?" Lad, torn between me and the allure of the embers, rocked as he shifted his weight between the two of us.
"What?"
"Guess what Kich did? He said we all did something wonderful last night and he was going to give us something. So, you know what he did? He cooked!"
"Did he?" The pots reminded me pointedly of Eugeny.
Kichlan smiled at me over his shoulder. "When Lad and I first came here the old team leader would complain about the loss of his fireplace. A lot. You know how some people can't stop griping about the same, small, pointless-"
Sofia cleared her throat discreetly.
"Anyway, before we weighed down the shelves with yesterday's jars, I thought I'd give them a bit of a push and see if the fireplace still worked."
Lad made inarticulate spluttering noises.
"Well, I asked Lad to give them a good push. Better?"
His brother nodded wildly.
"Big sixnight ahead of us, and nice to have hot food before we head out, don't you think?"
As the embers warmed my face I wondered how early Kichlan and Lad had arrived here, to get this all organised.
It was worth the effort. Lad collected seven wooden bowls into which Kichlan spooned a kasha of buckwheat and raisins, thick with butter, crunchy with pecans, spiced with cinnamon and sweetened with honey. On this he poured apricots stewed in vanilla and a splash of what had to be brandy. I ate it hurriedly. It made me warmer and more comfortable than I had felt for a long time.
Kichlan ate little, and gave most of his bowl to Lad. Before the rest of us had finished eating Kichlan was up, filling his leather bag.
He waited, bag over his shoulder, for us to stack used bowls, lick spoons dry and give him our attention. Then he crossed his arms, lifted his chin and addressed us like a general to his troops. "We have a lot to catch up with. Thankfully, due to yesterday's emergency we have managed to bridge the gap somewhat, but you can be damned sure the veche will take that into account. So we need to work hard. I see long days ahead of us this sixnight. We must stop at every corner, look under every lamp-"
Behind me, Natasha groaned. To my left, Mizra and Uzdal shifted simultaneous feet. Lad was watching his brother with something close to awe, and Sofia wasn't much different. All I could feel was a tired ache in my legs, but resolved not to let it show. This was my fault. I would help Kichlan correct it.
"-we must find every last grain of debris there is to be found!" Kichlan's voice rose, it echoed from the sublevel walls. Did he expect us to start cheering? "And we will rely on you, Lad, to do that." He stepped forward. He placed a hand on Lad's shoulder, looked him in the eye. "Can you do it? Can you help us?"
"Yes!" Lad shouted. Wincing, I pressed a hand to my ear.
"Then it's time to start." Kichlan pointed to the stairs. "Let's move."
Lad bounded out of the sublevel. Kichlan strode behind him with Sofia fluttering in his wake. The rest of us followed grudgingly.
"It's all for Lad's sake," Mizra murmured. "Just so you don't think we've all completely lost our minds." As we emerged into the sunshine he cast a hard look at Sofia's beaming, enthusiastic face. "Well, not all of us."
Lad was already ahead, pushing his way past boxes and down a narrow alley. I immediately understood why an eager Lad was an asset, and why keeping him happy so very important.
It didn't take him long. At the end of the alley he found a broken pipe, and smiled proudly as Sofia scooped a jar's worth of debris from its jagged hole. I didn't think he noticed when she got too close, however, and caught the back of her hand on its rusted edge. "Other," she whispered a curse, dug a kerchief from her pocket and wrapped the wound tightly.
The next cache squirmed with a nest of rats, beneath a large crate overflowing with rubbish. Sofia refused outright to collect from it. Mizra and Uzdal played some kind of complicated game involving hand gestures to decide which of them had to do it. I gathered the task was given to the loser.
By the time Uzdal, looking pale, had collected it all, we had another three full jars. I held back a sigh. Was this my life now? Rummaging in rubbish with vermin?
As we continued, Kichlan walked beside me. "I have done you a disservice." He clasped his hands behind him.
"Are you about to lecture me again?"
Lad pushed ahead, crossing a wider street and down another alleyway. He looked intent, head down, whispering under his breath.
"I should have done the first one properly." As we followed his brother Kichlan explained about the symbols, about the map, things I should have learnt from the start. I listened, nodded, and didn't mention that I had heard most of this before. Or where I had heard it.
We stopped by a sewerage vent. Even I, with my untrained debris-collecting eye, could tell this would be a good spot: steam lurched haphazardly through the bars. Mizra used his suit to lift the grate without standing too close. Together, he and Natasha lay on the wet stones, shuffled as close to the edge as they could without burning their faces in the steam, and sank long, wide spades from their suits into the sewer. Unable to see what they were collecting they simply dredged up everything that was down there, and Sofia picked grains of debris from the mess. I looked away.
"What about the other ones?" I asked Kichlan, determined to do anything to try and ignore the smell rising with every spoonful Mizra and Natasha scooped up. I peered down at the turning and glowing of the ciphers on my wrist, their rising and sinking.
He was looking pointedly away from the sewer as well. "The other ones?"
"The other symbols. What do they mean?"
"Don't know. The map finds debris, that's what we're all told at the beginning. All we need to know is how to find and follow it in a crisis. The other symbols don't matter."
"Oh." Unsatisfied, I ran a finger along the smooth edging of the suit, brushing both metal and skin. Almost in response, two signs turned over and rose to the top. They shone brighter than any of the rest, but I had no idea what they were saying.
Even Lad was subdued when Natasha and Mizra finished with the sewer, and Uzdal replaced the vent. Four jars that time, but it took a whole bell to get it all.
Mizra stood, patted his wet, fragrant coat down. "Next time you see one of those, Lad my boy, ignore it. Please."
"Sorry." Lad sagged even further.
"Now, now." Kichlan hurried to his side. "That was the best haul we've had all day! It was worth the effort, and no one else could have found it."
Lad managed a small smile. I noticed Kichlan had positioned himself between his brother and Natasha, who looked decidedly unimpressed by his miraculous find and wasn't likely to be diplomatic about her opinions.
"So we'd better keep going," Kichlan continued. "Lots more to collect today."
Lad glanced around and lifted a cupped hand to his ear. "This way!" Again he was leading us, out of the alleyway and into a street lined by roaming food stalls. I was struck, suddenly, by the contrast between the dank lanes where we had spent our morning, and the bright, open, delicious-smelling street.
The food stalls looked very odd without their pions. Essentially a large box of clear poly inlaid in parts with steel, about four feet high and four feet wide, each one was attended by a three point circle. Together, the three pion-binders prepared the food and kept the stalls floating above the street, moving gradually so they could cover as much of the city as possible in a day.
The nearest circle was selling sweet potatoes. Deliciously hot, crunchy-looking, golden sweet potatoes. The vegetables were stored at the bottom of the poly, wher
e they could be easily seen. For ten kopacks customers could choose their own potato. It would rise, tied in bright pion threads, to be roasted behind a metal screen, before finally emerging wrapped in a fresh, white napkin.
Without the entangling, driving lights the whole contraption was disconcerting. Hovering boxes, floating food, heat that seemed to come from nowhere. But despite how strange it all looked to me now, my stomach still urged me to slow. And as I turned to the food and the warmth, a man who had just bought one glanced at me. And dropped it.
I knew him. He knew me. And he left his food in the street, spun, and hurried away. I watched his back, his furtive glances over one shoulder, until he disappeared inside a building on the corner.
Construction for the Furtherment of Varsnia. Just some administrator, always behind a desk, pushing around kopacks and making sure I, and my circle, was paid on time. I couldn't remember speaking more than a few words to him. Certainly no reason for him to drop his food and run.
"Tanyana?" Kichlan called from far down the street. "Hurry up!"
I stared at the building for a moment longer, before shuffling as fast as my tight skin would allow to catch up with my team.
"What was that?" Kichlan asked.
Lad had found debris at a faulty heating valve. Of course, the valve was on the roof of a six-story-high building and surrounded by scraggly pigeons attracted to the warmth. Apparently, it was my turn to collect it.
"Someone I recognised," I answered, as I sent poles into the ground from the bands on my ankles to propel myself upward. Like I had done the other night, only this time on purpose. The birds flew away, I scooped the debris in a deep pot I made with my hands and was down again in a moment. Natasha looked disgusted, Uzdal gave me a nod.
Kichlan held out jars for me to fill. "A pion-binder?"
"Yes."
"Someone you worked with?"
"In a way." I hesitated. Torn. I needed to turn back, I knew it, I needed to find that man and all the veche representatives he worked for. But the quota… and Kichlan had gone to so much effort to make us dawnbell supper in the morning. "I need to talk to him." I swallowed guilt in my throat like a lump. "Now." I had to find that building, that administrator. I needed to pin him down and get answers.
Why had he run like that?
Kichlan held my gaze for what felt like a long and heavy moment. I knew what I was saying. I knew we had to use Lad's help while he was still in a good mood. But debris collecting wasn't my world, at least, it shouldn't have been. If I hadn't been pushed. If I hadn't been silenced. And I couldn't let it just go on. I had to grasp at the straw that had appeared so suddenly, then fled like I was the Other at its heels.
"I will go without you," I whispered.
Strangely enough, Kichlan wasn't angry. His neck didn't bulge in the kind of frustration I seemed to be able to bring out in him without trying. No disappointment either. "We have a long sixnight ahead of us," he said again. "Will this take long?"
"I don't know."
"Then we'd better come with you and make sure it doesn't." He smiled. "You can be useful to have around." He gestured to the roof I had just cleared. "Can't just let you leave."
Together, Kichlan and I turned back to the street. Looking confused, Uzdal, Mizra and Sofia followed. Lad, easily distracted, bounded after us.
"As long as she gets the next sewer," Natasha muttered, and hung at the back.
I felt strangely strong as I walked down the wide street, flanked by my debris collecting team. Even though pigeon feathers had stuck in my hair, Sofia had a bloody kerchief wrapped around her hand, and Natasha and Mizra smelled like sewage. Even though Lad had started to skip, and attract wide, shocked stares.
The door was locked. I ran fingers over the soft crystalline pad and it buzzed an angry rejection. An old bronze plate was screwed into the brickwork beside the door, green with age and almost unreadable. I could make out "veche" though. Was there a sign below it, in bright pions I could no longer see? What was the administrator doing here? I had never travelled this far from the city centre to meet with anyone from the department, I didn't even know they kept offices outside of the city centre.
"It won't open. Pity." Kichlan leaned close to the panel, lifted his hand to rap against it. But he missed, and his suit knocked it instead. The crystal wobbled like water, sent out a high-toned screech, and the door unlocked with a click. "Oh my." Kichlan straightened. "What do you know?" His eyes were too wide, his face too innocent.
"How did you do that?" Sofia glanced between door and suit.
He shrugged. "It was an accident." He smiled down at me. "Well, didn't you want to get inside?"
It hadn't looked like an accident to me. Either way, he had opened the door. I pushed inside to a narrow and dimly lit hallway. Kichlan and the rest of the team followed.
There was something eerily familiar about the hallway. Its beige walls, the tiled floor, the lighter squares on the walls where pictures must have once hung. The whole place reminded me of the hospital building. Of where I had woken, and been suited.
It made me shudder.
The door at the end of the hallway was open a crack, letting out sharp beams of bright light. I pushed it, and sure enough the administrator was there, sitting behind a desk as he had always been, but looking pale, and flicking fingers and rambling at invisible pions.
He looked up, saw us, and lurched to his feet. "How did you get in here?" He looked around, eyes wide. What was he looking for?
I entered the room. It was far too warm, but I could see no heater. "Do you know who I am?"
He shook his head. "Of course not. Should I?" Sweat dripped from his chin.
I approached the desk, and could feel Kichlan and Lad close behind me. I said, "Don't bother lying." I placed my hands on the wood, flexed my fingers. My suit shone in his eyes and the administrator flinched back. "You recognised me, now you can tell me why you ran like the Other-cursed wind when you did."
The administrator's eyes flickered fast and panicked from my face, to what I could only imagine was Kichlan's thunderclouds, and up to Lad.
Then the large man crashed his fist on the desk beside me, and all of us jumped. "You tell Tan!" he bellowed, and the administrator stumbled back against the wall. "You stop lying to her and tell her!"
"Lad! It's all right, don't shout." Kichlan reached for his brother's arm, but Lad easily shook him off.
When I looked up at him, Lad had tears in his eyes, and his face was red. On him, it was frightening. "Not nice," he hiccupped the words, sniffed loudly. "Doesn't feel nice in here. And don't lie to Tan."
"All right." The administrator ran a finger around the edge of his high-collared yellow jacket. No wonder he was hot, wearing that in a room like this. "No need for threats."
Lad sniffed again, shifted and crossed his arms. Kichlan patted his elbow, looking helpless.
"Yes, I know who you are." The administrator drew a kerchief from a pocket and used it to wipe his face. "But if you're here for the kopacks you should know there's nothing I can do. I allocate payments, or retract those payments, based entirely on the instructions given to me. I can't just produce kopacks, no matter what you threaten me with."
I blinked at him. "Kopacks?"
"Don't tell me this is about kopacks!" Sofia snapped from behind me.
"It isn't." I straightened. "I don't remember your name."
"Pavel," he murmured. "I wouldn't have expected you to."
"Pavel, then." I walked around the desk to stand in front of him. Kichlan, I noticed, remained attached to Lad. "I haven't come to get my payment for Grandeur back, if that's what you think."
If anything, Pavel paled further. "Why are you here then? Trying to make things worse for me?"
"Worse?" I frowned, waved a hand at the room. "This isn't where you used to work, this isn't where I met you. So I could ask you the same question. Why are you here?"
Suddenly, he grinned. It was like a crack through his face, jagged, viol
ent, harsh. "You really have no idea, do you?"
"What?"
Lad let out a damaged-animal groan.
Pavel said, "I'm not the only one. Everyone else in my office, all of the other administrators who helped you at some stage in their career, have been relocated to Otherholes like this place. Your circle members survived, they're too well connected to be pushed around so easily. But everyone else." He laughed, a ragged sound. "Even heard some woman on a desk at the tribunal chamber spoke to you and was sent to work in death records in the colonies! Death records! Can you believe it?"
Something hard and cold seemed to have been dropped in my stomach. "No." It set me shivering. "No, I don't."
He laughed again. "What are you here for, then?"
"I-" I swallowed. "I need your help, Pavel. You have contacts, you must have, in the veche. Like the people who send you those instructions! High up. I need… can you tell me who they are? Where they are? I need a tribunal opened, I need to tell the truth!"
"The truth about what?" Natasha muttered at my back. Lad sniffed loudly.
Pavel simply shook his head. "Did you hear me? No one would listen to me now, thanks to you. Whatever contacts I had, whatever career I had been building, they're gone. Gone! Because you touched my life, and you are Other-damned cursed."
Cursed? "Tell me who they are then, where they are, I'll-" I said.
"Listen to me, you debris-collecting bitch!" Pavel lurched off the wall and I realised how tall he was. He lifted a hand, I held a wrist above my face and my suit shone brightly on us both. "It's over! Over. Look what they did to us, we who hardly knew you. And we were lucky. Pale bastards with their wooden walk and those vacant, empty faces. We're lucky all we lost was our livelihoods, our careers, our status and our friends. Got no pity, got no feelings, got no limits to what those men – those things – will do! Truth, is it? Don't you understand? The truth is what the veche say it is, and you better just shut your mouth and do whatever it is they want you to do. Or people will stop disappearing and start dying, until finally, they get rid of you. Do us all a favour and kill-"