Debris (41 page)

  I reacted this time, determined to be more than some passive body inhabited by a proactive suit. Spikes arched from my hands to catch in the sides of the rubble. No longer flying, I withdrew them enough to skid down to the ground, sending clouds of dust to join the smoke and setting off avalanches of my own.

  "I know you're there," I spoke to the clouds, to the grit clogging my throat.

  Movement behind me. I spun and lifted an arm as a plane lanced out of obscurity. It smacked against my forearm, slid around the metal and unable to get purchase, glanced off into the air beside my right ear.

  The suit. Of course. It had tried to tell me already, if I had only known to listen. The debris couldn't hold my suit. Couldn't hook it, couldn't scratch or pound it. "All right, then. If I must."

  Kichlan had warned me against this. But Kichlan believed debris didn't think for itself, that it wasn't vicious, wasn't vindictive. And look where that philosophy had got us.

  Something dark glanced against my head, knocking me forward. As I fell I let down the guards on my suit, loosened muscles from the bonds of thought. Silver slicked over my fingers, my palms. It was cool as it shot up to my shoulder, as it spread over my chest and down to cover pelvis and thighs.

  I stood to meet the next plane that launched at me, coated neck to toes in silver. I reached for it with my own hands, not extending, not scooping it or collecting it with tweezers' precision. I grabbed debris, wrapped silver fingers around it. And when I held it in a hand encased in the suit, it was no longer the light reflected on stone as Kichlan had described it. This debris was not the unearthly sails I had seen, the shadows with nothing to cast them. It was solid, it was catchable. It was real.

  I understood how that kind of solidity could wreak the damage it had done. How it could knock me, break me, bruise me. But I couldn't understand why I had never felt it before, why none of the team had done this most simple thing and gripped debris with suit, with hand, with everything.

  
I knew you were strong.

  I stared at the debris in my grip. Planes still hit at me, smacked against my calves, my back, my shoulders. But these were insects flying, soft, barely felt through the silver.

  Something glanced across my ear, cutting a line of blood that splattered wide against the ground. I swiped with my free hand and knocked the plane back. I would not be battered around any longer. Not by pions, not by debris.

  "Did you?" I spoke to the debris in my hand.

  
Yes, and that is why I am glad you are here.

  "So I can help you, is that it?" Like Valya had said?

  
Yes. But for now, will you just end it? Will you give me peace?

  "You want to be collected?" To be controlled, crammed in small jars and sent into storage to rot. What was all this about, if not escape?

  
Peace.

  Peace? This thing that attacked me, this unknown voice. How could it hurl me across a room, throw me like a doll, and then demand I give it peace?

  
I can't stop it doing those things. And the longer I am here,
the more danger I am in.

  The dragonfly wings quivered, fast and flickering as though prepared for flight.

  "Danger? From whom?"

  
Look up. They are always here.

  The puppet men. Pale figures at a broken window, watching from a building beside the ruin.

  
If I stay, they will attack me too. But if I go, that which you
hold will run wild, and wreak more destruction than you can
imagine. So bring it peace.

  I tried to imagine it. The wings receding, the shadows drawing back, until all that remained was a small, wiggling lump.

  
They will try to stop you.

  The puppet men disappeared. A moment later they were at another window, closer to the ground. They pressed hands to the glass and cracked it, the lines of fracture caught bright in the ruddy firelight.

  Above me, the great wings swept across the sky, hissing steam into the air and sending rubble flying. I wavered. Peace? These planes didn't deserve peace. They deserved to be cut, to be sliced into pieces and forced into jars and stored in the darkness for the rest of eternity. They had killed the technician, hurt Devich.

  
But that's how this all began. Can't we just finish it? Can
you give me peace?

  "Who are you?"

  The voice was quiet. The planes battled on.

  
I am not like those men. I will not hurt you, I will not deceive
you, I will not use you. I can only ask for your help.

  "Why are you asking me, what do you think I can do? I can't control debris, no one can control it! Peace?" I imagined that small, wiggling lump again. So simple, so innocuous compared to the chaos around me. Certainly a debris I preferred. "How do you expect me–"

  The wings flickered. They stretched, they arched, then they dissolved into the ruddy night, became gloom on the rubble that edged closer, softly, like tired steps over the dirt. Fanned out around my feet they cast for me a hundred thin shadows, strangely expectant.

  Carefully, ready for attack, I crouched. The planes kept still. I lowered the debris in my hand, touched it to the ground, held it there as it absorbed each shadow until I held something more akin to a wide, wet towel. It wasn't quite plane form anymore, more like softened, limp grains, stretched thinly.

  
Thank you.

  It was relieved. Absorbed, lessened, and relieved. When I glanced up the puppet men were gone too.

  I draped the debris over my suited shoulder and trudged to the mountain wall. Devich was looking down at me, paler, like a ghost face in the rubble.

  "Is it over, now?" he called, querulous.

  "Yes." I was stronger in my suit. With the debris balanced I found handholds and footing. I climbed smoothly, then lifted cement and exposed Devich to the air. He gasped, groaned. He looked crushed, out of shape around the middle, and delicate. A paper doll.

  But he was still able to smile. "You're all shiny. So pretty."

  "We have to get you to a healer." I hoped he could afford one, hoped he wasn't broken beyond repair. Like me.

  He didn't move. He watched me, eyes open, empty. I bent, wrapped arms beneath him and lifted him against my chest. I knew I should feel fear, feel panic. Be terrified by those empty eyes, be angry at the thing over my shoulder. But all I felt was strong.

  I climbed, Devich in my arms, debris over my shoulder.

  "–vanished." Sofia sounded exhausted. And closer than I expected.

  "She's here, must be here," Kichlan said, too fast, too loud. "We need to search."

  "What about the debris?" Mizra snapped. "It's too dangerous."

  "It's gone, I told you," Sofia answered him.

  "How could it just disappear? How?"

  "Tan," Lad spoke above them all, blue sky above their cloud. "She's here."

  I stepped out of the rubble to silence. Kichlan gaped at me, a few feet from the edge of the hole. Sofia, slumped on the ground, had been glaring at Mizra. They both turned shocked faces to greet me. Uzdal, restraining Lad as best he could, watched me without readable expression.

  "Tan!" Lad waved. "Thank you!"

  Kichlan looked down to Devich in my arms. "The other technician." He spoke slowly, as though he couldn't believe the words.

  I said, "He needs help."

  Healers were already rushing through gaps in the fence. I allowed them to take Devich, ignored their shock before they closed ranks around him and started to work.

  "Is he going to live?" I asked them.

  The healers did not reply.

  "Tanyana?" Sofia struggled upright. "What is going on?"

  "Good question," Mizra muttered.

  "Here." I pulled the strange debris from my shoulder. As a group, my team recoiled. Only Lad remained still, and looked sad rather than revolted.

  "Other's arse, what is it?" Mizra hissed.

  I said, "The debris." Wasn't that obvious? "I contained it."

  "How?" Kichlan asked.

  I couldn't answer, because I didn't really know. I just pointed at the jars. Moving stiffly, he collected one and opened the lid. I tipped the debris inside, pouring it like water.

  
Goodbye. Again.

  Kichlan sealed the lid. I wondered, numbly, that so much had squeezed into a jar so small.

  As I retracted my suit and my body flared into stiff, painful life, I wondered how much could fit into me. Before I shattered like glass.

 
 
 
 

Movoc was silent as I returned to my flat above Valya's house in the smoky mid-afternoon, her streets empty of anyone but the enforcers, architects and healers scrambling to clean up the damage. I kept as far from all of them as I could manage, head down. But my body had not come through the night unscathed and I wasn't as agile as I would have liked to be, nor as hidden.

  "Tanyana?"

  I stilled with the voice, so out of place in these backeffluents and rills.

  "It is!" A second voice, closer.

  I looked up to see Volski running toward me, arms open, face smeared with ash and dirt, but glowing with fierce joy. "Tanyana!" Those arms wrapped around me and lifted my feet from the stones. I dangled in his embrace, watching the rest of my former circle from over his shoulder. Tsana, hands lifted to her mouth, was stumbling toward me like a drunk woman, legs wobbly. Zecholas broke away from them too, mouthing "My lady?" over and over.

  Then Volski let me go. He beamed down on me and I felt dull – empty compared to their light. Debris to their pions. "They said collectors had been killed!" His hands flexed again, moved for my shoulders before he could pull them back. Did he need to touch me to be certain I was there? "It was an accident, with debris, and six collectors had been killed before they could control it. I thought... we thought... oh, I'm so glad it wasn't you!"

  We thought? Worried about me, were they? Their fallen centre.

  I couldn't share in my circle's joy. "Many more were killed than that." My voice was raw, it sounded like sand scraped down my throat, uncomfortable to my ears. "Technicians, binders. People in the street. So many people in the street." Was that the suit, scraping words with its legs?

  "They were?" Volski's sunlight faltered. "Tanyana, are you all right?"

  Devich had been taken from me, but taken to be healed. I had saved him.

  I had to believe that.

  Zecholas hovered by Volski's shoulder. "My lady?" he asked. His gaze swept from my ash-flecked hair, to the torn clothes, the weight I couldn't put on one leg, the hollowness in my eyes I knew had to be there. A hollowness I could feel tunnelling deeper.

  "Not any more," I told him. Then, to Volski, "Let me go, I need to get home." I needed to tell Valya I was well, tell her it was over. Needed to spend a very, very long time lying down.

  Across the street, behind the rest of my huddled circle and their probably terribly embarrassed new centre, a spot of darkness drifted by. Not ash, this one. Something solid, flesh-like, wiggling. My suit spun that little bit faster, and tension travelled in spasms from my wrists to shoulder.

  It was over. Wasn't it?

  "Oh." Volski stepped back. Something in me pulled tight like the suit, something that told me pushing him away like this was foolish. But I had tried to tell Volski the truth, and he hadn't listened. Volski, who had known me so long and so well. Volski, who I had always believed I could trust. If he wouldn't listen, if he refused to believe me, then what chance did I have to get the others to hear me? To help me.

  "I'm glad you're well." Such sadness in that face, the same look he had given me on the bench in front of the gallery. It felt so long ago. "We all are."

  Were we? Llada's face was so red she shone from the building they were repairing across the street. Was that Savvin's back? I hoped it was, I hoped he couldn't bear to show his face. But Volski was here, and Zecholas, and even Tsana, holding back, still pressing her lips like she was trying not to be sick. That meant something, I supposed.

  "Thank you," I managed. Another glob of debris floated by, closer this time. I clenched my hands to try and control the spasms. "Be careful. There was a lot of debris." More than I could hope to explain. "The effects could linger."

  Volski nodded, grave. "You be careful too," he told me, and didn't move as I started walking again, just watched me with that same, sombre expression.

  A few steps, and I halted. Tsana was here. Tsana, the only person who had believed me. "Tsana, do you remember what I asked you?"

  She hurried forward, removed her hands long enough to reach for mine, realised I wouldn't take them, and pressed them back on her face. "Yes," she said behind fingers, muffled.

  "While you are all here, in this area of the city, do you think you could?"

  "Oh, yes, of course." Her cheeks were growing flushed against her fingertips. Didn't she want the others to know who she met at parties?

  "Can you remember an address? Can you be there, tomorrow, laxbell? It isn't far from here."

  "Ah–" She glanced over at Llada's red face.

  I shifted the weight away from my aching leg again.

  "Of course."

  "Great." I gave her the sublevel address. "Tomorrow."

  And I left the circle, wondering if they would find bodies in that rubble, or if the enforcers had already swept through, diggers in tow, removing every last one. If the healers had saved any of them.