Suited (16 page)

The remainder of the sixnight was slow, burdened by Natasha’s ever-increasing concern over the small amount of debris we collected and brightened only by those few moments when I passed Lad over to Kichlan’s care, and our hands touched. Even the briefest brush of his gloved fingers against mine set me shivering. Kichlan smiled at me then, a small, shy smile, and I knew I replied with just the same expression. Fedor had thanked us for our information, but did not give us any more assignments. At first I chaffed for another excuse to spend the evening together, for the closeness it had brought us. I wanted more of it, so much more – like Kichlan was food and I was starving. But exhaustion dogged me as the days wore on, and Kichlan’s shy smile grew to worry as Lad whispered in his ear. What was he repeating? How many times I had almost tripped over my own feet, saved only by Lad’s constant attention and steadying hand?

When Rest finally came, I got none of it. Early morning light had just woken me when Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia came knocking.

“How are you feeling, Tanyana?” Sofia asked with a don’t-even-think-about-lying-to-me expression.

I sighed, and tried not to think about how the day would have been spent if Kichlan had appeared at my doorstep instead. “I could have done with more sleep.”

That look deepened. “You know what I’m talking about.”

I balled my hands into fists and tucked them deep inside my pockets. “I’m exhausted, I feel sick most of the time, and I’m sore just about everywhere. Answer your question?”

“It’s early on,” Mizra said, where he and his brother walked ahead of us. “Maybe things will settle down.”

I thought of the suit, and didn’t think that would happen.

“You look absolutely terrible,” Sofia said.

I glared at her. “Well, thank you.”

“And Mizra told us about your collapse a few days ago. It worries me, Tanyana.”

For a long moment we walked in silence, the scrape of our boots against icy streets the only sound. It sent shivers up my spine. “It worries me too.” More than I would say.

“I’m sorry we have been so forceful about this.” Sofia even had the decency to avoid my gaze when she said that. “But your health is important to us.”

“And the health of–” unable to say it, I gestured to my stomach.

“Yes,” Uzdal answered. “And the health of your child.”

“Possible child.”

With a sad look over his shoulder, Uzdal nodded.

Sofia, Mizra and Uzdal did not lead me to the Tear River. This surprised me. I had assumed that we would catch a ferry up the Tear to the centre of the city and a university or healer’s college. Instead, we marched further from the river, down the stark and dirty streets of outer Rills and Effluents.

“This, ah, healer,” I murmured. “He is accredited, I assume?”

“Of course.” Sofia flashed me a disdainful look. “But you’re a collector now, remember? Collectors don’t go to colleges under the bluestone of the bridge. Collectors take what help they can afford.”

“Well, yes. But still.” I glanced up at the blackened windows of a rundown block of apartments. The entire western side of the edifice had crumbled, crashing into bricks and broken mortar on the street. It left the steel framework and windowpanes naked like bones, bare in the face of the wind whipping up from the river down the narrow streets. “If I’m going to let someone prod at me, I’d rather they knew what they were doing.”

We stopped at another complex a few doors down. This one was not in quite so bad condition, but cracks still wound their way through the walls. Mould coated the walls of its airless stairway, the steps littered with the desiccated corpses of unfortunate insects.

A short, round man with thin stands of dark hair and unkempt stumble over his chin opened the door to an apartment on the top floor. An unhealthy pion lock by the handle buzzed constantly. Of all the lights down the long hallway, only two worked, and they were faint. “Sofia,” he said. “Not having problems, are you?” When he spoke, he reeked of something like very old onions. I reared back, but Mizra and Uzdal at my shoulders kept me from turning around and giving up on the whole idea.

Sofia shook her head. “No, I am well. I am here for a friend.” And she pointed to me.

The healer looked me up and down with red, tired-looking eyes. He coughed loud and wetly into a hand. “All right.” He said, fished out a kerchief and spat into it. “You’d better come in.” He turned, and lumbered away into a dim room.

I didn’t move. “And this is your idea of a bad joke, right?”

Sofia gave me a sorry shake of her head. “Edik might not look it, but he is a good healer.”

“We would not bring you here otherwise,” Mizra said.

I allowed myself to be led inside.

Edik’s apartment was large, larger than I would have expected so far from the Tear River. But that was where any resemblance to luxury ended. The windows were all shuttered. Dust floated in the few narrow beams of light that crept past them. The room was filled with old furniture: leathers split, fabrics unravelling, wood stained and peeling. Slides were piled haphazardly in corners, some cracked, most heavily burdened by dust. I wondered when the words and images stored by pions inside their thin glass had last been read. Sofia led us down a hallway, just as dusty and rubbish-filled, to a wide room with a tiled floor. A tap dripped over a stained sink in one corner. A hard bed on wheels, covered with dirty blankets and surrounded by trays and metal instruments, took up most of the space. It reminded me of the metal table on which the puppet men had suited me, and I stopped at the sight of it.

“So, what’s the problem?” Edik sat on a stool that looked far too flimsy for his weight, and it creaked worryingly beneath him. It seemed he was alone in this apartment, that he did not belong to a circle – not even a three point – and did not care much about basic cleanliness. “Not another one like her, are you?” He unwrapped a handful of seeds and nuts in a paper bag, and started chewing, spitting out any husks on the floor.

“Like her?” I tried not to gag as I spoke. The room stank of drains and stagnant water and not enough air.

Sofia sighed. “Yes, Edik. We think she’s pregnant too.”

“Think?” he asked.

“Too?” I turned to Sofia.

She couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “I told you Edik was a good healer. I can personally recommend him.”

“Do you remember when she fell?” Uzdal said, his voice quiet. “Your first emergency, all those moons ago. She was hurt, came here, found out something more than a fracture to her wrist.”

I did remember. That first time I had tried to tie us all together in a circle, when we had stood against an enormous mass of debris grains and planes, and worked as a team to subdue it. It had lashed out when we tried to control it, knocking Sofia to the ground. She had looked so pale, almost dazed, for many sixnights after. But I had not known why.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked her, mind reeling, trying to understand.

She flashed me an angry look. “Because it didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Oh, like the way this has got nothing to do with you?”

Edik chuckled. “Please, keep this up. I started charging you the moment you stepped in here.”

Mizra touched my arm, lightly. I realised I was breathing hard, fast, and that the bands on my wrists – where I could see them – were spinning in time with my hammering heart. “Sofia was not alone. She had us to help her. Just like you do.”

I held Sofia’s indignant gaze. “So you removed it, did you?”

She nodded, but beneath her hard expression I thought I saw pain, hurt, and something I could barely understand. Relief and grief, acceptance and guilt, all at once. “It was broken.”

“Broken?” That word made me sick.

“Sometimes that’s the best option. For mother and child both.” Edik levered himself off his stool and approached me. “There are pions present in every living creature, and a developing child is no different. A relationship between the pions in a child’s body and those within its mother’s body is vital for the creation of a fully functioning individual. However, if the woman is a debris collector, this connection can be hindered. Her child’s pions are unwilling, or unable, to interact with her own. We don’t fully understand it, but whatever it is that debris collectors lack – that which prevents them from communicating with pions – interferes with the way the pions in their body interact with others. In some cases, such as Sofia here, mother and child appear completely severed. Blood still travels between them, true, but it’s like a wall is raised along the edge of her womb and pions simply cannot pass through it. Children who develop without contact with their mother’s pions are rarely born whole.”

Whole, broken. Who was the filthy man to determine what either of those words meant?

“Such children do not grow up in the usual way. Though their bodies mature their minds are left behind. They might struggle to grasp language, to interact with other people, or function in society. Sometimes they can be violent and difficult to control. While they have suffered no obvious, physical trauma, they will never be able to see pions or communicate with them in any way.”

I stared at him in horror, then glanced at Sofia, Mizra and Uzdal. Did they understand what this man was saying? He was describing Halves.

“In such cases, termination is often the most humane choice.”

They were killing Halves.

“So you understand why it is so important to know what’s happening in your body, in advance. You need time to make a decision.” He patted the edge of the bed. “Just sit here and I will have a look at you.” He smiled. His teeth were stained. “It won’t hurt.”

Feeling numb, I sat on the edge of the healer’s bed.

“Could you remove your jacket? Your shirt?”

I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Why? You should be able to see pions through my clothes quite clearly.”

“Ah, not born a collector then, were you?” He was looking at my scars, probably putting cause and effect together in that cunning little brain of his. “Look, I’m a healer, yes, but one without a circle. Let’s make it easier for me, shall we? There are pions in your clothes, and they can make it difficult to differentiate the pions in your body.”

I scowled at him. Not only was this man disgusting, he was untalented. He was also all I could probably afford. “Fine.” I shrugged off my jacket, unbuttoned the shirt and let it fall. Then I peeled away my uniform top, until I was dressed only in a light shift.

His eyes widened at the twisted lines of jagged scar tissue down my left arm. “Nasty.” He sucked air in through his teeth. “And the shift.”

I baulked at that. He did not need to see the metal crossed over my skin; the new, deep scars, and the older nicks and scrapes the suit had been steadily filling in. My hair hid the notch in my ear and the new grazes across my forehead. The shift, while thin and hardly dignified, at least hid my abdomen.

“It stays,” I said, and placed my palms flat over my stomach to emphasise the point. Sofia, Uzdal and Mizra were worried enough about me as it was. And I couldn’t have them carrying tales of new scars back to Kichlan.

“Now really–”

“I said, it stays.” I held his gaze firmly. I wasn’t sure if he recognised the nine point circle centre still deep within me, that power and authority I had once worn so well, or if the spinning of my suit as it increased in speed convinced him. Or maybe he just wasn’t being paid well enough to take on battles with his clients.

“As you wish. Roll down the top of your pants then, at least.”

I unbuttoned my loose woollen pants and eased them – and the uniform underneath – down a few inches. The shift was long enough to keep me covered. As Edik dragged his stool across the floor Sofia leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Why are you making this harder for yourself?”

I made a disgusted noise. “If he is skilled enough to tell me whether I am with child, and if that child will be a debris collector, then he has the strength to see pions through a thin layer of clothing. I think he just likes watching women undress.”

Uzdal turned away, covering laughter with a fit of coughing as Sofia – bright red – leaned back.

“Now, let’s look at you.” Edik perched on his stool and stared intently at my stomach.

It was disconcerting, to say the least, made even worse by his constant murmuring conversation with lights I couldn’t see and the perilous way his stool complaining so loudly beneath his weight. I knew what he was doing, knew he was watching and coaxing pions, but I struggled to stop myself fidgeting. While I waited I placed my hands on my knees, spread the palms wide and watched the suit on my wrists, ready to catch any unruly activity.

“This isn’t right,” he said, after a long inspection that seemed to stretch – heavy with the sense of lost kopacks – for bells.

It was hardly encouraging. “What isn’t?” And I wasn’t about to remove the final layer of my clothing, no matter what he said.

“Isn’t she–?” Sofia stammered. “Is there a child?”

Edik shook his head. “I think so, but I can’t say for sure. It’s difficult to see.” He scanned my torso, down my arms, almost fell from his stool to look at my legs. “This simply isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice as reasonable as I could manage. My suit spun faster with frustration, whipping up a need to wrap a silver-coated hand around his podgy neck and force answers from him. “What can’t you see?”

“You.” Edik leaned back on his stool and stared at me down the short length of his nose. “Well, parts of you.”

“How is that possible?” Mizra asked. He touched my shoulder. The suit convulsed in its bands in response, but I held it down. “I mean, she’s right here, she’s real.”

“It isn’t possible.” I was amazed at the calm in my own voice. “It’s ridiculous. So explain it to me.”

“I might not look like much to you now, collector, but I have been a healer for many years.” Edik sighed, stood, lumbered over to his collection of seeds in their split paper bag and started chewing them again. “I know what I should be seeing. But instead, there are gaps. I can see your heart working, your lungs drawing in air, but anything below that is fragmented. Like, ah, I don’t even know how to say it, like something came in and cut the pions away.”