Debris (16 page)

  I swallowed hard. "Of us" seemed to be echoing in my head, like I'd shouted the words down a tunnel. Just saying them felt like a betrayal of my old life, of the hope I had been holding on to. The hope that this was all a big mistake. "Yes." Or maybe it was time to stop fighting the inevitable?

  "No, the old man doesn't see debris."

  "But he doesn't use pions either," I continued. Couldn't stop myself now. "He does things the hard way. Dries clothes and heats rooms with fire, or heals wounds with paste made from plants." I hesitated, and realised the stitches hadn't bothered me at all that morning, not even their usual post-sleeping ache. But I couldn't exactly strip in the middle of the street to check how effective Eugeny's gold mush had been.

  Kichlan said, "No, he doesn't." Ahead of us, Lad was humming to himself, but not walking with the brisk enthusiasm I had seen the day before. How long could memories of Kichlan's anger keep his morning mood at bay? "Eugeny is an old man, and his sight is failing."

  "Oh." That, really, explained nothing. Eyesight had nothing to do with pion sight. Even the blind could navigate a city like Movoc, lit with deeper, bright lights.

  "That's how he explained it to me," Kichlan said. "But then, I don't understand that pion-binder talk. Said his sight was fading, his real sight, and his pion sight. He says he knows they're there, but he's happy to leave them there, not interfere. Happy to do things with his hands instead."

  To choose to abandon one's binding skill. To choose. It was difficult to imagine.

  But 384 Darkwater was so much closer to Kichlan and Lad's house than my own. I hadn't noticed properly, stumbling there the previous evening. A few blocks and slush-wet steps and we arrived. I felt foolish for holding onto my apartment, as Kichlan unlocked the door, collected something from the step, and led us down. My inconvenient, over-expensive home.

  Sofia had been waiting in ankle-thick snow at the locked door. "You're late," she snapped when Kichlan turned the key. She walked behind me down the stairs, her arms crossed. "And she's early." I ignored the jibe.

  "Never mind," Kichlan said. He headed straight for the table and began piling empty jars into his usual battered leather bag. Quietly, the other team members arrived.

  Sofia, arms so firmly crossed they might never unwind again, glowered between Kichlan's hunched shoulders and me. "What have you done?" she hissed at me from the side of her mouth.

  "Me? Nothing." That was true enough.

  "Here, this has arrived," Kichlan said, and pressed something into my palm. "Your pay." He flashed me a dark grin, devoid of any pleasure. "You're really one of us now."

  A scrap of paper. It crinkled as I unfolded it, edges tearing beneath my fingers. Cheap, sewn by pions none too interested in the task. A single figure glared at me from the off-white, fibrous weave. The black letters were blocky, all sharp edges and uneven ink. I blinked, certain there was something wrong with my vision. But no matter how many times I tried blinking, how slowly or how purposefully, nothing changed.

  I became aware of silence and glanced up to find the collecting team watching me. All but Lad, who was struggling with his coat and humming softly in his throat.

  "It's not a mistake," Uzdal said. Was it that obvious?

  Five hundred kopacks.

  Five hundred?

  "How long is this supposed to last?" I asked of no one in particular.

  "We are paid every second sixweek and one," Kichlan answered me anyway. "And it will not change, no matter how long you serve the veche. Or how well."

  The top of my head was very hot, my skin tingling cold. "Oh."

  I couldn't keep my apartment on this, I couldn't afford coaches to travel here, I couldn't eat, and I would have to dismiss the cleaner – if I could catch her before I had to hurry in the morning. Other.

  I contracted a fist around the paper and touched it to my forehead. The edges of the paper scraped against my nose and tore.

  "That reminds me."

  I lowered my hand. Sofia stood before me, holding out a small silver half-disk.

  "Meant to give this to you yesterday. Guess it wasn't much use to you until now." She waited until I took the disk, before guiding Lad into the stairwell and helping him with his coat.

  Footsteps trooped past me. The disk was a hollow semicircle with a small, dark screen, and made of familiar dull silver.

  "It fastens to your rublie," Kichlan said. "That way you'll know how much you have left."

  Of course. I pulled my rublie from its pocket.

  "Come on." Kichlan slung the full bag over one shoulder and gestured to the stairs. "It's time to begin."

  I attached the semicircle to my rublie as I followed him out of the sublevel. The blank screen flickered once, the same green as the lights that flashed when the rublie was transferring kopacks, before shining a clear and steady number.

  Six thousand.

  I very nearly tripped.

  "Watch out." Kichlan grabbed at my arm, but I braced myself on the wall instead. "What's wrong?"

  I stared up at him. Six thousand. What had happened over the past day, what payments had come and swiped kopacks without my knowledge? More debts to veche torturers? The cleaner, the apartment? "How do you live this way?" How could I?

  For a moment, I showed Kichlan my fear. My absolute panic. Because I didn't belong here, he made that clear every time he so much as looked at me, and my old life would fade away with every kopack I could no longer earn. All choices had been taken from me, left me empty as the rublie in my hand.

  He straightened, face firming into a determined expression. "You'll get used to it. We all did, you will too."

  What had I expected, sympathy? Words of advice that would, somehow, miraculously solve my financial problems?

  I flipped the rublie – now clipped like crutches for a crippled leg – into my pocket. I vowed, as I followed the uneven hem of Kichlan's coat into the sharp sunlight of a pale morning, that I wouldn't think about that depressing number again. Not until I had no choice, and certainly not until I had survived the day.

  "What happened to the ceiling?" Sofia waited for Kichlan at the top of the stairs, and glared at me as she asked. Who else could have damaged it, after all?

  "Never mind," Kichlan snapped his answer off.

  "If she did that you know she'll have to repair it."

  If? Sounded to me like she had already made up her mind.

  "Do you hear that?" Sofia addressed me over her shoulder. "You need to repair it. If the veche does an inspection and they see that hole, it's coming out of all of our pay. Not just yours! Are you listening?"

  "She heard you, Sofia." Kichlan jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the cold and, it seemed to me, her tirade. "We all heard you."

  "As long as she'll fix it!"

  "She will."

  "And she understands this is serious. She's not some architect who can get away with–"

  "She understands."

  Six thousand kopacks? How could I repair that break in the ceiling? Before Grandeur I could have done it with nothing but a gentle, soothing whisper. How much would I have charged a collector who came begging at my door?

  Six thousand. How was I going to do this?

  Lad's temper held out until mid-morning. Until then he smiled at Mizra's jokes, submitted to Sofia's fussing, endured Natasha's waspish apathy. It was the debris that undid him, in the end. He sniffed out – or whatever it was he did to find it – a small cache in a crack in a faulty lamp, but couldn't manage to slim his suit down into tweezers fine enough to retrieve it. When Kichlan offered to do it instead his younger brother turned on him.

  I yelped and leapt away as a sword-like appendage sprang from Lad's right hand. It glinted as he leapt at Kichlan, howling like an injured, possibly rabid cat. But Kichlan was ready. He caught his brother's sword on his own suit, which now resembled an iron bar from his right wrist and a large, metallic shield over his left. Kichlan knocked Lad's thrust aside and kneed him cleanly in the gut. As the large man doubled over Sofia was there. She jumped on his back and clamped her own suit over his wrists, ploughing the metal into the cement to pin him to the floor, while Uzdal tipped Lad's head back and Mizra poured half of the contents of a small, dark jar into his mouth. I caught only a small glimpse of the syrupy liquid, but knew the sweet scent well. I had never seen someone take half a jar of it in one go. A few drops in the bottom of a Sweet Night cocktail at
The Bear's Smile
was more than enough to knock you out for the night.

  "Thank you, Tanyana, for undoing all my hard work so quickly." Kichlan retracted his suit with a shudder. Lad, meanwhile, lay limp beneath Sofia, Uzdal and Mizra, breathing evenly and looking almost serene. "He hasn't had one of those since last autumn. Happy now?"

  I glared right back. "You can stop blaming me for everything Lad does."

  "I will when it stops being your fault."

  "Going to blame me for whatever happened–" But I bit my lip before I could mention Eugeny's scar, or his warning.

  Sofia was staring between us, whipping her head back and forward so quickly I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a bone break. Mizra and Uzdal studied the paving stones intently. Natasha yawned behind her hand and glanced up at the sun with an "oh, won't you move faster, please" expression.

  A vein bulged in Kichlan's neck. He opened his mouth, and I braced myself, the image of those swordappendages vivid. How quickly I could work out how to do one? But Kichlan snapped his mouth shut and shook his head instead. "You're not worth it," he muttered.

  I clenched my teeth against argument.

  "Mizra, Uzdal, help me get him up." Kichlan set about giving orders, leaving me feeling that something unjust had happened and I wasn't exactly sure what. "Sofia, will you help us take him home?"

  Sofia's grateful nodding reminded me uncharitably of a starving dog salivating for scraps.

  "Natasha, you and Tanyana finish here." He tossed Natasha his bag of jars. It clinked as she caught it in awkward hands. "Tomorrow is Rest. Do that. See you again Mornday."

  "Fine," Natasha answered.

  "Thanks to this episode and the fiasco that was yesterday we are significantly behind our quota. Mornday will be long. We have a lot of work to do to make up for this."

  I said nothing.

  Kichlan glowered at a carefully selected spot on the road as the silence stretched. Then he gestured at Mizra. "Let's go." The three men hoisted Lad's boneless body up between them, and began half dragging, half walking him away. Sofia scurried ahead, talking over her shoulder to Kichlan about keys.

  "What did you do to poor Kichlan?" Natasha held the bag out to me in loose, lazy fingers.

  "I didn't do anything." I took the bag, uncertain at her growing smirk.

  "Of course not–" Natasha broke off as Sofia ran back, clutching the large, dark iron keys to the sublevel.

  "Make sure you lock up," she said to Natasha, breathless, before returning to Kichlan and the other collectors.

  Grinning, Natasha tossed the keys to me. I fumbled with them, still in the process of slinging the bag over my shoulder. "You must have done something. Bring up a bad memory, perhaps?"

  I swallowed hard. "Maybe." I glanced down at the keys. "You're not staying?"

  "You don't need my help to finish up, do you?" She flicked a suited wrist at the crack in the lamp.

  "Um, I guess not." What was I saying? What was she doing?

  "Didn't think so." She rested a hand on her hip. "What did you do to annoy him so much? Ask him what he did before he became a collector? He used to be a binder, you know, but he won't talk about it. Gets cranky if you so much as mention it. No matter how nicely you ask."

  I blinked at her. Kichlan was a binder? But he'd said he didn't understand pions, or trust them. "Ah, no. It's his brother. He thinks I upset his brother."

  "Oh." She yawned. "Well, you can't expect me to stay here if I don't have to."

  "But isn't it our–"

  "Our what? Duty?" She laughed. A hard, forced sound. "Don't be ridiculous. The rest of this collecting team don't seem to think much of their duty. Why should we?" Kichlan, Lad, Sofia, Uzdal and Mizra had already disappeared around a corner. "You should understand better than anyone. Collecting isn't duty, it's just bad luck. Nothing else. So thanks again." With a toss of her hair and a smirk, Natasha left me. Alone.

  For a moment I stood, holding the bag and wondering how, exactly, this had happened. Other's hell, I still didn't actually know how to use all this silver in my bones. It wasn't like anyone had bothered to teach me. But still, Kichlan had left me here to do this, and I was hardly going to give him another excuse to be furious at me for things I hadn't done.

  I fished a jar from the bag, propped myself on my elbows. Deep breaths steadied my hand, and gradually I extended two metallic prongs. I pursed my mouth and managed to narrow them down to two reasonably sized points, and gently, gingerly, reached inside the crack in the base of the lamp.

  There was only enough debris to fill half a jar. How many were we supposed to collect in a sixnight? Seventy jars, wasn't it? The single jar looked pitiful in my hand.

  But still, I had collected it. Without help, without lecture or instruction. Had to feel a little proud of that.

  It was still early afternoon when I found 384 Darkwater. I'd only spent half a bell wandering completely lost, which wasn't bad for someone with no knowledge of the area who hadn't anticipated being abandoned and as such hadn't paid attention to where she was going. I separated the half-full jar as Kichlan had so laboriously instructed, put the rest of the empty ones on the table and hung the bag up on one of the hooks. Then I left the sublevel, fighting with aging iron to lock the door, and realised I had a day and a half all to myself.