Suited (25 page)

When I collected Lad the next morning, he was waiting at his corner alone.

“Bro said I was big enough to wait by myself.” His tone made it an apology. “Tan,” he took my hand and together, we headed for Ironlattice. “Is bro angry with me?”

“Oh no, Lad.” This wasn’t fair on him. “Not you.”

He sighed. “Well, he is angry at someone. Maybe it is Geny – they didn’t talk at all after we got back – and bro didn’t sleep, he kept turning and turning and mumbling.” Lad yawned, widely, half-hiding his gaping mouth behind his hand. “It kept me awake.”

“Ah, sorry, Lad.”

“Not your fault, Tan.”

I smiled at that. Maybe he was right; maybe Kichlan’s fitful sleep wasn’t my fault. Maybe it had nothing to do with the secrets, and the Keeper, and my circle and his fear for Lad – ever Lad – crowding between us, building as sure as a wall. At least, that was how I had imagined them, as I lay in my bed above Valya’s rooms, also unable to sleep, the memory of his hands stinging, and Devich’s child heavy within me.

“Don’t ever blame yourself, Lad.” My voice echoed sharply from the stairwell to the toplevel. “Your brother does not blame you.”

“I think you are right. But I don’t always understand” Lad opened the door to a room full of puppet men.

Lad tried to drag me back into the stairwell, but not before I had seen Natasha’s pale and frightened face so small amidst a sea of fake, stretched skin. And I knew we could not leave her to their tortures but Lad was dragging me, keening like an animal or a broken soul. Like a Half.

He did not get far. More puppet men materialised out of the shadows in the stairway itself, three of them, all mould-like eyes and emotionless expressions that did not sit well on the bones of their faces. So we were squeezed between them – Lad still gripping my hand and panicking, searching the bland unbroken walls for a way out – and shepherded back into the toplevel.

Yet, when the puppet men stepped back to allow us to enter the room and stand by Natasha’s side, I realised there were only four. Not the countless, unsettling faces.

I clutched Lad’s hand tighter. I would not let go, no matter what they threatened, no matter what veche powers or debris monsters they summoned. I would never give him up.

“Your team is late this morning,” the puppet men spoke to Natasha and she flinched. I didn’t blame her. When one spoke, it seemed like all moved their mouths. When one set of eyes pinned me, it felt like the pressure of uncountable stares.

I reached for Natasha’s hand with my fingers, but she shifted her weight so I could not touch her. “There are no more to come–” She tried, but sandpaper laughter floated through the room as the puppet men grinned for an instant – one horrid, synchronised motion.

“Two more,” one hissed.

“The twin.” It was impossible to tell their voices apart.

“And the enforcer that once was.”

Lad whimpered beside me and those eyes snapped in his direction; thoughtful, considering, scheming beneath their false veneer. I had to get him out of here, away from them. I should never have allowed this to happen!

My suit spun as though in answer. I gritted my teeth and held it down. “What do you want?” The words scratched with kicking wires in my throat. When the puppet men turned on me they grinned again and this time I knew the expression was genuine. Did I amuse them, with my battles against the rising silver in my blood? “Are you going to punish us because we have not made quota?” I barely pushed the words free. “This is happening all across the city, isn’t it? We aren’t the only team struggling to fill their jars. There simply is not enough debris for us to collect!”

“Quota?” An eerily co-ordinated cocking of heads. “No, Miss Vladha. We do not care about your quota.”

“Then why–” I stopped. Why? Because Lad was a Half and I was their weapon and poor Natasha was caught in between. That was why.

They had split us up once before, weakened us. Well, not again. I was not going to let this happen.

“I don’t care why.” The suit slid from my right wrist to encase Lad’s hand in an unbreakable bond. “We are not your puppets.” It spread out from my left to take Natasha’s hand whether she wanted it or not. “And I will not let you divide us again.”

With Lad locked on one side of me and Natasha on the other, I lunged forward. Suit-boots gave me strength to crash past the puppet men, to slam open the door and careen down the stairs. The suit kept me from falling – metallic spikes from the soles of my shoes maintaining my footing – and it held Natasha and Lad upright as they struggled to keep up, half-dragged, half-running, screaming and yelling, filling the stairwell and my head with sound.

But when we fell out onto the street I was forced to an abrupt halt.

Mob ringed the building. Not enforcers. The puppet men had brought Mob against us. A dark stain on the cold city morning, they hulked above us, unnaturally tall, wide faces hidden behind helmets. The hilts of swords, knives and other pion-powered weapons I could never understand peeked from their black armour of leather and painted steel.

The suit flared into knots of heat and pain, at each of the bands on my body. It clamoured for release. There, surrounding us, was a challenge like none we had ever faced. I didn’t even need to see the pions that bolstered the Mob, that strengthened them, it was obvious in their size, in the way they stood, in the weapons only hinted at in glints of reflected sunlight. And the suit knew it too, and wanted to test itself against them. Weapon to weapon. I hissed, crouched, as the suit released Lad and Natasha. It shone so brightly I was forced to squint, and the symbols whirred, meshing into solid blocks.

Lad crouched beside me. “Tan?” The fear in his eyes set my heart lurching. “Tan, who are they? Tan, Kich should be here! Where is he, why can’t he be here?”

I forced myself to stand. What would happen if I gave into the suit? Could it kill the Mob surrounding us? These were not petty thugs come to evict me. If I took on the Mob I would take on the veche. Varsnia itself.

Yes, and we would win
, the suit seemed to say in its spinning and the thrill rising up like flames from somewhere deep inside me. It could fight against the world, this weapon inside me. It longed to.

“That’s the one.” One of the Mob stepped forward. Dark gloved hands the size of bear paws and ridged with sharp claws reached for us. But not for me, not even for Lad.

The Mob took Natasha’s wrist, twisted her arm around, and bound her with a thin chain. It looked weak, its loops like thread instead of steel, but then I couldn’t see the pions working inside it. She didn’t struggle. Something resigned draped over her face. The Mob spun her around and her eyes met mine. Fear there, but acceptance. I was not sure which was worse.

I didn’t know what to do. In my confusion, the suit eased a little, enough to allow me to move without the sharp lancing of deep splinters. “What are you doing with–?”

“Miss, step away!” The Mob – gripping Natasha’s bindings so that she was forced to stand awkwardly, shoulders strained – lifted a bear-claw hand. Lad shuddered a faulting step back. The suit held my ground.

“What are you doing with her?” And why her, I wanted to scream. Why not me, aren’t I the one the veche want? Or Lad. I actually thought that. Why aren’t you trying to take Lad away?

“Miss, I encourage you to back down.” I caught glimpses of the Mob’s eyes through the slits of his helmet. His iris had been replaced by a kind of mirror, something flat and slightly golden that seemed to glow. And his pupil was moving, roaming wild across the whites of his eye. “Unless you also wish to be charged with conspiracy, collusion and treachery.”

Treachery?

“These are troubling times.”

I spun as two of the puppet men emerged from the stairs. They walked with a light step, footfalls soft on the cement, arms loose at their sides. Too relaxed, too languid.

“When our own citizens betray Varsnia. When we cannot trust them to do their duty.”

“What do you mean?” I had no idea what he was saying with those unsteady, stretched lips.

Natasha was held so tightly she was almost lifted from her feet, but she croaked out a rough laugh. “I asked you, didn’t I, I begged you, not to draw attention to us. Not to put us at risk. But you couldn’t stop yourself. Of all the debris collectors in this foul city, this whole country, I had to get saddled with you!” She spat into the street and earned herself a ringing clip across the side of her face.

“I don’t–”

“Miss Illoksy is referring to her work as a Hon Ji spy,” said a puppet man behind me. “Work you do not seem to be aware of.”

Natasha lifted her head slowly. Her gaze was unsteady as she stared at the puppet men, and blood dripped from a cut the Mob had opened up at her cheek. “It seems I did not hide it well enough.”

“Our nations are at war, miss, even if your Emperor has not deemed to inform you. As such, the national veche has decided monitoring you is no longer safe enough. It is time to neutralise you.”

The puppet men stepped past Lad and me, their very presence a chill in the air. My suit tensed and Lad clutched at my jacket sleeve. “You were watching her, weren’t you?” I whispered. “It’s not just bad luck, it never is.” I fixed my gaze on Natasha’s unsteady one. Slowly, understanding dawned there. “You placed me in this team, with her, so you could watch us together.”

The only response the puppet men gave was the twitch of an almost-smile at the corners of their mouths.

“But that was a mistake!” My mind spun. “Natasha knows what I am and she knows what you have been doing. She would have passed on every detail about your so-called secret weapon! The Hon Ji know all about me, you foolish bastards.”

“That’s enough.” The Mob holding onto Natasha made a signal with his free hand and the circle of armoured and reinforced men around us closed in. “You were advised not to involve yourself.”

The puppet men did not seem particularly concerned. One drew a small wooden box from a pocket in his jacket and opened the lid to reveal a horror of a syringe; long and sharp and filled with something that moved. Natasha paled further and attempted to recoil, but the Mob held her firmly in place.

Didn’t the veche care about the spreading of their secrets? Or, if they had known about Natasha, perhaps they had long ago intercepted her messages.

Who do you trust
?

Devich, curse him, did he know the truth about Natasha too?

“Your team will be one collector short, Miss Vladha.” The puppet man raised his needle. “Perhaps another redistribution of resources is required.”

“Please, no,” Lad whispered in my ear.

The Mob closed in. Fire lanced through my arms and legs as the suit tore itself from my control, as it coated hands, arms, feet, neck–

“That’s about enough, I think.” I could only see half of Natasha’s face behind the approaching wall of dark armour and golden eyes, but she was smiling.

Then energy crackled through the air. Something like lightening, something like the misfiring pion-lock on the technician’s laboratory. The Mob who held Natasha cried out, and was flung back to crash into the approaching soldiers. As they fell and faltered it was enough, just enough, for Natasha – hands still tied behind her back – to break free. Head down, shoulders solid and hunched, she ran past us, and yelled, “Follow me!”

I grabbed Lad’s hand. Mine was still coated in metal and bit deep into his skin, but he didn’t even seem to feel it, and together, we ran. But not before I caught a glimpse of the puppet man, needle still in hand, watching us with the closest thing to a shocked expression I had ever seen on their unreal faces.

Natasha sprinted away at an amazing pace, feet nimble on the stones, never slipping, leaping potholes and skidding around corners. Lad and I struggled to keep up, as the Mob and the puppet men fell away in a distance of alleys and buildings and streets. Finally, she halted under the eves of a dilapidated shop. Its windows had dissolved to fine sand, its double door fallen inward and low roof collapsed under the weight of Movoc’s fleeing pions. She leaned against a cracked wall, shoes crunching glass beneath her feet, and struggled to catch her breath. I released Lad and he sagged into a similar position. I tried to ignore a stitch, sharp and suit-splintered, gathering in my stomach and rising to sting in my chest.

Gasping for breath, Natasha watched me over her shoulder. Her wrists were raw against the tight chain, red with the rubbing of sweat and steel. “Well,” she spat, and I noticed the faint pinkness of blood on her teeth “Now you know what I am.”

“Yes.” Scratching in my voice, legs in my lungs. I added them to my list of things to ignore, and approached her. “A traitor, a spy.”

“That’s right.” She tipped her head back as far as her awkwardly strained shoulders would allow. “Working inside Varsnia, to bring down the oligarchy. The old families, the national veche.” She looked meaningfully at my wrists. “The same people who did that to you.”

I sharpened a suit finger, stepped up quickly behind her and severed the chain that bound her.

She winced, kneaded knuckles into her shoulders before rubbing her wrists, and watched me with uncertainty. “What are you doing?”

“What loyalty do you think I owe the veche?”

“Some would say you gave the ultimate sacrifice for Varsnia.”

“Those people have obviously never fallen eight hundred feet and woken up like this.” I raised my suited hand.

A moment of consideration, and Natasha nodded. “This raises interesting possibilities.”

I met Natasha’s piercing green eyes and wasn’t sure I liked what I saw there. She seemed far too pleased with herself. “Does it?”

“We have the same enemies, you and I.”

Lad pushed himself upright. “Don’t like them either,” he declared. “Tash is my friend. I don’t care what they said.” I wasn’t entirely convinced he had understood everything that just happened. “I am still her friend too.”

Natasha’s face eased into a smile and she released her wrists. The chain had rubbed blisters into her skin and torn patches away, leaving them raw. “Thank you, Lad.” She glanced back to me. “Anyway, I’m afraid you’ve gone and put yourselves in the worst possible position. You can’t go back to the rest of the collection team, you must realise this.” She looked between us and her eyes were saddened, sorry. “You can’t even go home.”

“Not to bro?” Lad’s voice hitched. Somehow I didn’t think Kichlan would be particularly understanding about the situation. This was how I looked after his brother, was it?

Natasha shook her head. “What we need to do now is get moving. I have contacts. Higher up than you can imagine. And smuggling routes, ways in and out of Varsnia. But if we really are at war,” for a moment her confident calm faltered, “these will be even more dangerous than usual.” She gazed down the murky alleyway. “And there will be Mob all over the city by now. The national veche does not take kindly to traitors and spies.”

No, the veche did not. But then it wasn’t too kind to simple architects either.

“So where should we–”

The sound of running feet silenced me. As one, we tensed. I shoved Lad against the wall, stood in front of him, suit spinning and starting to draw out from the bands. Natasha crouched beside me, a thick, ugly-looking knife in one hand – how wrong that looked – and a strange, flat disk in the other. She caught me looking and flashed a grin, somewhere between fear and a fierce aggression that reminded me of the suit’s own urges. The disk was small, it fit easily into her palm, and seemed to be made of two separate circles of metal with clay wedged between them.

“The shock,” she said, like I was supposed to understand. “Used one of them on that cursed Mob. Two left.” She rolled the disk between nimble fingers.

Never had I seen something as strange as Natasha armed and ready to attack. I supposed it explained her sudden transformation, her determination to make quota and keep the veche from our backs.

But still.
Natasha
.

“They’re here.” She half-rose from her crouch, disk raised in a clenched fist, when Aleksey and Mizra emerged from the alley-gloom.

Natasha caught herself at the last moment and gaped in surprise as Aleksey grabbed her upraised wrist and forced her into a run. “Mob!” he hissed. “Run!”

Mizra, unable to do the same to Lad and me, waved frantically and gibbered nonsense interspersed with, “Mob, Mob, Other cursed Mob!” until we started moving.

Then we were running again, down more backstreets and alleys, but this time Aleksey led the way. And he did so with determination, with an intense speed and keen eye. He avoided the main streets, favouring alleys covered by corrugated steel or flapping laundry. The entire time, he held two fingers lightly to the tumbling symbols on his suit.

How could he read his map so well? When even Kichlan had not been able to follow my instructions, Kichlan who had worn his suit for many more years than I. Or Aleksey.

“I don’t know how you did it,” he said, even as he ran. He sounded strangely calm, focused. “But you managed to escape the Mob. Let’s try and keep it that way.”

I quickly grew lost. Lad ran close behind me, though he could have overtaken me easily. He was steady and strong. He did not panic, he did not cry for his brother or fear even for his own safety, so focused was he on making sure I was all right. He had changed. Perhaps it was because the Keeper no longer whispered demands he could not understand. Perhaps it was because Kichlan had told him to look after me, and his responsibility enfolded him so completely. Whatever it was, Lad was growing.

It both lightened and broke my heart at once.

I lost track of time along with streets I could not keep up the pace for long and eventually drew to a halt, hand pressed to my chest, fighting for breath I swayed in the sharp light of the high sun. Mizra watched me with concern. “How–” I took a deep breath. Why was no one else struggling just to breathe? “–did you find us?”

Aleksey looked behind me. “We should not stop.”

“Let her catch her breath.” Mizra rubbed my back. “Are you all right?” He whispered. I knew what had him so worried, and forced myself to ignore the pain in my abdomen.

Aleksey studied me for a moment, then nodded. He folded his arms.

“How?” I gasped again, louder. “Tell me! Who are you? Where are you leading us?”

“Tanyana, it’s all right.” Mizra again. I shook him from my back and leaned against a wall. “We saw what happened.”

I heard Natasha shuffle, and glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She had hidden the knife and disk again but watched Mizra and Aleksey with a hawk’s intensity.

“Ran into Aleksey on the way to Ironlattice,” Mizra continued. “Half a cotton-spinning factory had collapsed. Blocked the streets and we had to go the long way. So we were late. I almost walked into the middle of the Mob, but Aleksey noticed them first, and stopped me.” Mizra tried to take my hand. Even as I withdrew to lean against the wall Lad brushed him aside. “We watched when they brought you out. We hid. I’m sorry Tanyana, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

I looked up to Aleksey. “And then you used the map on your suit to follow us?”

“Like you showed me.” Uncertainty in his eyes, and hurt. I felt myself wavering, tried to hold my resolve. “We couldn’t let you run on your own. We’re a team, aren’t we?” He rubbed the scar on his nose.