Debris (6 page)

  I thought about the pion-binder, sitting in a lamplight factory with hundreds of others all bound in complex critical circles, coaxing an enormous number of pions across Movoc-under-Keeper to give me this small amount of light. A man, I decided, after much staring and thinking, there in the semi-dark, balding and fat. With poor hygiene. The members of his circle can't stand the way he stinks. And he sits there, in seven-bell shifts, after which he is even more pungent, and earns maybe two hundred kopacks a day with the rest of them.

  I sat for days alone in the study, at least a sixnight and one, probably more. Days covering my wrists, ankles, waist and neck with blankets.

  What was I doing?

  Giving up? That didn't take long, did it, Tanyana? A little push, a few cuts, some creepy statue-men and a bit of new jewellery and already you're sitting in the dark nursing your misery. That's the Tanyana who worked her way to the centre of a nine point circle, is it? Did you win the contract to build Grandeur by sitting around? Do you remember how you did all that? Hard work, skill, determination. Hardly the traits of a debris collector.

  I stood, left the room, and opened the valves for every light in the apartment.

  I shouldn't be a debris collector. And I wouldn't be, if someone hadn't pushed me. If the veche knew I was telling the truth.

  I rinsed my face and hair in the bathroom basin, and rubbed as much of myself as I could with a wet towel. I worked honey-scented nut oil into my skin, and dabbed vanilla onto my neck and wrists. My stomach gurgled with awakening hunger at the smell, and I allowed myself a chuckle as I pulled open the lacquered closet. Bears growled down at me from its corners, their eyes inlaid with beechwood, their teeth glinting mother-of-pearl. My hands shook slightly as I pushed aside the highnecked navy jackets I had worn on construction sites. Instead, I pulled on thick pants and a pale angora sweater. I had lost weight, and even these small, shapeless clothes were baggy on me. I rubbed gel over my hands and ran them through my short blonde hair so it stuck out around my face, not that different from the sleep-messed look, to be honest. I owned little in the way of cosmetics and jewellery. Nothing dusky to compliment my pale, almost grey eyes. Nothing to cover the freckles and sunspots endemic of a fair complexion subjected to too many days working in the sun. The only adornment I had to add was a watch that would remain hidden in my jacket.

  The watch was a gift from Jernea, the old architect who had mentored me through university, given on the day I earned my own critical circle. It opened with a small catch: inside concentric circles rotated slowly, tracking and chiming with the bells. No pions had crafted it, and none worked the gears that moved it now, all it took was the turning of a tiny wind-up key. Old-world technology and craftsmanship, and that meant it was at least two centuries old. For that, it was precious. For the skills that were lost, far more so than its polished brass and coloured glass inlay.

  At the door I squashed my feet into heavy black boots. I pulled on a dark coat. It was cut for a man, but far more comfortable than any ridiculously-long-sleeved-draped across-the-shoulders-and-narrow-at-the-waist woman's wear would be. Outside I pressed fingertips to the pionpowered lock. It had a flat, crystalline panel designed to read my touch alone. Normally, I would have watched pions buzz about my fingers, glancing against those busy within my own body and checking I was, in fact, the person who lived beyond the door they guarded. Now, I only felt a tickling over my skin and had to take the security they provided on faith.

  Outside, a crisp Movoc morning breeze carried the tolls of thirdbell up from the city centre and set the skin on my face tightening. It irritated my stitches. I turned into it, discomfort or no, and started to walk. Slowly, shuffling, limping slightly. But at least I was walking. The centre of Movoc-under-Keeper was more than bridges, grand old houses, and romantic spots where pions danced. I could find veche chambers there. The project halls. The tribunal.

  The veche couldn't silence me. I would give them no choice but to listen.

  Where pions should have stretched from rooftop to rooftop in light-beaded banners there was only empty, cloud-grey sky. Movoc was a strange, dim place without the busy lights and complex systems that gave it life. It felt haunted. Not only because of the countless unseen presences I just knew were there, hidden beneath it all. But things just seemed to move, to work, all on their own. Metallic doors opened or closed themselves, so did the windows. I had to cross the street to avoid a fountain I had once thought of as beautiful. It was built with gaps in the stonework, so the complex bindings could be better appreciated and the very colour of its pions added to its form. Now it just looked like a lot of blocks of carefully shaped stone suspended in thin air, dribbling water that came from nowhere. Unsettling. Unnatural.

  I passed beneath a walkway between two tall buildings of silver and glass. It floated, unattached to anything, roaming left and right, up and down, to collect and ferry passengers between the towers. And I flinched, every time its dark shadow passed over me, because to my limited senses, the damned thing should have fallen. It didn't, and it wouldn't, while its bindings and systems still supported it. But I couldn't see any of them. I couldn't even tell whether the circle that set it up in the first place had done a good job, and were up to date with their maintenance.

  I was watched the whole way. A lone, scarred, bandaged and slightly glowing woman was not a usual sight for the centre of Movoc-under-Keeper. I kept my head down, my slow progress steady. But I could feel them, and catch them in the corner of my eye. A gaggle of young, rich girls flocked around a table at the open window of a coffee house. I turned, slightly, at the sound of their surprised, screeching cackle and realised they were pointing at me while they did it. What must I have looked like to them, compared to their beautiful hair, artfully painted skin and layers of lace-tipped silk? Frightful enough for a young boy in a miniature enforcer's uniform to take one look at me and run, bawling, to wrap his arms around his mother's knees.

  With each look, each expression of shock, of disgust, of fear, I lifted my head that little bit higher. But I was grateful that the walk was only short, all the same. One of the advantages of being a pion-binder paid two hundred thousand kopacks by the veche was the closeness of my apartment to the city centre and the Keeper's Tear Bridge.

  As I neared Tear River, Movoc changed. Newer, pionbuilt complexes withdrew, to be replaced by older, smaller buildings with leadlight windows. Small garden plots, bumpy stone roads, narrow streets. I realised, as I walked, how lovely these buildings were without pions to distract me. Bears carved out of stone roared from cornices. Welcoming faces made from small pieces of multicoloured glass smiled above doors. And images of the river was everywhere, etched into the sandstone to flow, one building to the other, wrapping Movoc in the Keeper's Tear.

  I had missed all that beauty, looking only for the lights within the stone.

  Like most veche buildings the tribunal hall was close to the Keeper's Tear Bridge. As I neared it, I started to wonder if this was, in fact, the only reason I was here.

  Beside the bridge, on the eastern bank, stood a building of bluestone and quartz. My design. I had surrounded it with gardens, with pine trees cut to catch the snow and create smaller, pale mirrors of the building's domes. It climbed in ice cream scoops, rich like a dessert. Sun caught in the crystal, water from melted ice or summer rain kept the stone streaked and mottled with rich blue. When the gardens bloomed the clover was a mix of white and indigo, of snow and moist bluestone. A structure of beauty, a place of warmth. An art gallery, where people met to sip wine beneath paintings and sculpture, renderings and light shows. My first commission from the veche as the leader of a nine point circle.

  I stalled in front of it, toes between pathway and springy grass.

  "My lady?"

  I didn't turn. Couldn't have been for me.

  "My– My lady?" Closer, more insistent. And a voice I knew – Other, I knew.

  "Volski?"

  "It is you! My lady!"

  "Don't call me–" but my words were whisked away as Volski wrapped me in his arms.

  My stitches roared their protest up through my throat. "Put me down!" I screamed, and he dropped me. I caught the fuzzy edge of his shocked expression as I sank to the path and plunged my left hand in lovely, cool grass, stitches screaming all over my body and the suit burning like fire.

  "What's wrong?" He dropped to his knees beside me.

  I could see feet gathering on the path. "Nothing," I gasped at him, struggled to stand, and finally took his offered hand. "Please, I'm fine." Sure enough, a small group had gathered on the pathway to watch me struggle. Older men, suits grey. An aging woman with silver peeking through the dye in her hair pressed her hand to her lips, partially obscuring an exaggerated "O".

  Volski understood. He always had. He scowled at the crowd, held my elbow to help me balance, and maintained an affronted silence. His calm air dispersed them. It took away the drama, and made me thankful I hadn't run into someone like Tsana. When the path was clear again he led me to a bench opposite the gallery, and murmured in my ear, "You don't look fine." His face battled between concern and a fatherly frown. It was easy to think of Volski in a fatherly way. A good ten years older than me, with a solid, square jaw and serious dark eyes he was honesty and responsibility in human skin. We had worked together when I was merely the centre of a three point circle, and I had taken him with me every time I rose. He had been an anchor, reliable and constant. "I was worried about you, my lady."

  And he had left me scarred and alone.

  I lifted my chin, and held back a wince as the stitching in my neck pulled. "You certainly found a fine way to show it."

  "I would have liked to show it. I would have liked that very much. But I didn't know what happened to you, I didn't know where you were. They only told us you had survived a sixweek and one after the fall, and that was because Llada and I went to–" he broke off. "What is it?"

  I must have looked as cynical as I felt. "I don't need your excuses."

  He swallowed hard. "We are cowards. I know that. We were afraid, we felt guilty. But after what Tsana did to you, can you blame us?"

  Blood drained from my face, left me icy and lightheaded. "Tsana?"

  He frowned at me. "You don't know?"

  "That's why I'm here." I pointed to the veche chambers hulking on the other side of the gallery garden like an ugly older brother. "To get some answers. And make them listen to me." Volski started to follow my finger but his gaze became stuck on my suit where it spun slowly, bright against inflamed skin.

  "Other," he whispered. "What is that?"

  "Oh, this? This is my new suit." I let out a long breath. "They tell me I'm a collector now. A debris collector."

  Volski's face fell the way it would if I had told him someone we both knew had just died. "No. Not you."

  "Sadly yes."

  "Is that because of–?" He swallowed, neck bobbing visibly. "Of what happened."

  "Yes. Whatever that was."

  "There was a tribunal, my lady. It wasn't her fault."

  "No, apparently it was mine."

  "You weren't at the tribunal. We could only go by the evidence."

  "Don't you think that's a little strange, Volski? To hold a tribunal while I was in a bed – or missing, or dead, for all you seemed to know – and had no chance to defend myself?"

  Emotions fought over his face. Uncertainty, grief, guilt. Not the righteous anger I would have preferred. "What else could you have added?"

  "That it wasn't my fault, that it wasn't an accident!" I gripped Volski's arm, drew him closer. "I tried to tell you then, I tried to warn you, but the circle was failing, I don't even know if you heard me." A new emotion now. Fear. Was I that terrifying, with my new lights and bandages over my face? "Someone must have summoned them, set them loose on the construction site. It was their fault, not mine!" I broke off, panting. Weakness shook over aching skin. This might not have been the best idea. Not yet, anyway.

  "Them?" Volski whispered. His eyes darted over the seat, the street, the gallery. Anywhere but me.

  "Pions." I tried gripping him with both hands, but the fingers of my left had started to swell, and they wouldn't respond. "They broke our circle. They pushed me off Grandeur's palm."

  "Other, Tanyana, your hand doesn't look good," Volski said.

  I glanced down. Sure enough, the bandage had lifted. Dark stitches crawled out of red, puckering holes.

  He stared at the wounds in horror. "Maybe you should calm down. Maybe you should go home."

  Calm did settle on me, but not the kind he wanted. A hollow, hopeless cold. "You used to trust me, with your pions, your work, your life. Why don't you believe me now?"

  "Tan– my lady." Volski patted my right hand like I was a pet. "I want to believe you, of course, but I didn't see anything. We didn't see anything. There were no pions pushing you. It was an accident. That's all."

  That's all? "If I fell, Volski, just fell, then please explain this to me." I held up my mangled, swollen left hand. "Please tell me–" my tongue was a lump in my mouth at the words "–please tell me what Tsana did."

  Confusion. Pain. Grief. Volski grieved for me though I was not dead. "It was an accident."

  "Tell me."

  He swallowed hard again, and took his patting hand away. He looked to the gallery, its permanence and beauty. I couldn't bring myself to do the same. I would find no comfort there. Instead, I watched the emotions on his face. Wondered if he wished he had not noticed me at all. "She panicked, when Grandeur started to come down. You wouldn't have believed it, Tanyana. On the ground, with all that glass and metal and stone falling on us, it was all we could do to keep ourselves alive!"