Debris (26 page)

  "A friend?" A dry voice muttered from the circle.

  "Yes." Devich caught my eyes and winked at me. "A very close friend indeed."

  "Well, dear lady, this is quite an occasion." Lord Sporinov maintained a hold on my hand. His palm was cool and dry. "Yes, indeed."

  With a toss of her blonde hair, Rana stepped down and stalked to a table laden with drinks. Most of the crowd hesitated, seemed to notice the lord's distraction, and decided to follow the lady instead. Only a few of the older men remained.

  "I'll return in a moment." Devich headed off in search of a drink himself.

  I was left alone, ringed by the aging heads of old veche families, and feeling like a moth pinned to a board, surrounded by butterflies.

  "Let's have a look at you." Lord Sporinov studied me, from hair to toes. "Bit of a strange one, aren't you?"

  I coughed. "I wouldn't say so, my lord."

  He chuckled. "Got a bit of spirit, then? Always good to have."

  "Do they all dress like you?" asked a large man with a bald forehead bright with sweat. "The women, I mean."

  "No, my lord." I had no idea who any of these people were, but had decided I couldn't go wrong with the title.

  "Just you then?"

  "Just me."

  "Because of that?" He pointed at the scars on my neck and cheek.

  "No, sir."

  "Curiouser still." Sporinov patted my hand. "Now, tell me all about it."

  "My lord?" I asked.

  "Debris, of course. Tell me what you do."

  "Well, my lord, to understand that you must understand how I came to it. I used to be a pion-binder. I was a strong one. Then–"

  "Start early, do you?" A thin man with yellowing skin interrupted me. He touched a long ivory pipe to his lips, drew a deep breath and released smoke into my face. I blinked, coughed. It smelled nothing like Eugeny's tobacco.

  "My lord?" I asked, unsettled.

  "When you collect." He waved the pipe in a slow arc. "Early morning?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Long way to travel?"

  "Yes." What was this? What did it matter how far I needed to go in the morning or how early I rose to get there? "But, really, that's not important. If you will listen, sirs, I will tell you about how I fe–"

  "And do you do a lot of walking?" This time I was interrupted by a truly ancient man. His eyes were white and he carried a long, ebony cane with a gold handle. Walking? What did it matter?

  "Please, my lords–"

  Lord Sporinov had been holding my hand the whole time, his eyes trained intently on me. He patted the back of my fingers. "We're just old men, dear girl," he said. "Interested in your world. Please forgive us our curiosity."

  "My lord, there is nothing to forgive. But I am trying to tell you something no one else has heard. Something strange and unique." I latched onto my oddity status like it was a lifeline. "I know you are curious about debris, and it is vital to understand how one comes to see it in the first place. I fell, my lords, from a great height. And they said it was an accident but I know–"

  "Tell me about this." Sporinov drew back the sleeve of my shirt with a lazy finger. "What is this beautiful thing?"

  So I explained the suit, and was obliged to show it shining on my wrists. I explained about jars and teams.

  "And now," I tried again. "If you will just listen–"

  But all at once the old men turned away, as though they had lost their collective interest in me at the same time. A few smiled at me, a few gave easy nods, then they wandered away and rejoined the ball. Only one hesitated, watching me intently. And I realised that I knew him: the inspector who had visited my construction site the day of Grandeur's fall.

  I lifted my free hand to him, I tried to take a step forward, but Sporinov held me tighter that I had realised. "Wait," I said. "You were there. You saw them, didn't you? The crimson pions, the ones that destroyed my statue. You're a veche inspector. You must have seen them too."

  But the old man just shook his head. "Let it go, girl," he whispered. "It really would be easier if you just let it go." Then Sporinov coughed pointedly, and the inspector disappeared into the crowd.

  I stood, still beneath Sporinov's hand, mouth open and unable to understand why I hadn't managed to tell them the truth. To press for my tribunal. The perfect opportunity and all they had let me talk about was the ridiculous and the mundane.

  "Thank you, dear girl, for sharing that with us." Sporinov patted me again.

  Share what? I hadn't, really, told them anything.

  "You're quite a determined young thing, aren't you?" There was an indulgent humour in Sporinov's smile that I didn't understand. I felt strangely like a pet beneath his gaze. "Even when the world aligns itself against you, you keep trying. It pleases me. But I wouldn't try too hard, if I were you. Not everyone would find it so amusing." Then he caught sight of his wife, and pushed purposefully through the crowd toward her.

  I was left among the guests and their finery, to endure the surreptitious glances and outright stares. I lifted my chin. What did it matter that I stood out among the tailored and the diamond-encrusted like a stone among pearls? What did I care that the host treated me more like a rare animal on a leash than a guest? Or that Devich, who had convinced me I belonged here, who had dragged me to the door, had suddenly disappeared?

  Devich. He had left me with these men. Sporinov's words shuddered through me. They had almost, if I thought about them hard enough, if I twisted them with the image of Pavel leaning so angrily above me, sounded like a threat.

  Where was Devich?

  Shoulders straight, chin high, I pushed my way through the guests to a long table heavy with full glasses. Rich amber brandies, deep red wines and faint blue spirits twinkled in the light like a constellation against the pale tablecloth sky.

  I caught edges of conversation.

  "Let them try it! Hon Ji thinks they can rival Varsnia, we'll show them true meaning of power."

  "Heard they had spies in Movoc-under-Keeper. Even Sporinov is hiring enforcers, just in case."

  "By the Other, I swear it. The veche is hiding something even from us. A weapon that will put Hon Ji firmly back in their place."

  The usual speculations and proclamations of Varsnian supremacy. I'd heard them all my life, and paid them little heed. The critical circle revolution began in Varsnia, but it had spread. Around us, nations grew strong on their borrowed technologies, and occasionally rumours of war would trickle down from the veche. I wasn't sure how much I believed them, because nothing ever came of it. Deals to share pion technologies, promises to stop training soldiers, even the odd skirmish. Part of me had always thought the veche made them all up, just to start conversations like these.

  I selected the largest glass of red I could find and headed to a corner where I could sip it in peace, until the guests and the host and the loss of Devich simply wouldn't matter.

  "T-Tanyana?"

  I turned to a soft, restricted-sounding voice, and found Tsana, resplendent in a gown of rich tree-leaf green sewn with tiny, white beads in the shape of flowers. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat of the room, her eyes – set off so well by the colours in her dress – swam rich and brown. Her thick brunette hair was piled high on her head so her neck seemed longer, the skin paler and more delicate. Another flower, made this time from diamonds, shone on her neck.

  For a moment, I considered pretending I was someone else. Because the bright flowers that decked her so beautifully reminded me hauntingly of the critical circle in which she had once stood. And my scars tightened, perhaps remembering the panic and pion skill that had created them.

  "It is you." Tsana stepped forward as I stepped back, pressing us both into the corner I had tried to hide in, the unsteady shadows an inefficient cloak. "What are you doing here?"

  And that snapped me out of my fear and bad memories. I held the wine easily at my waist and lifted an eyebrow. She had always seemed shorter when I was her critical centre. Somehow easier to look down on.

  "I am Lord Sporinov's guest." I bent the truth just a little out of shape. "As, I assume, are you."

  Tsana, flustered, waved a flat hand like a fan at her face. "Of course. I... I'm sorry. I hadn't expected to see you."

  Ever again, I didn't doubt. I took a larger than usual sip. "You were wrong."

  "Yes. I'm sorry." She glanced over her shoulder. "Grandda is a friend of Vladir. We're always invited. To the balls." She fussed with the pleating below her waist. "It's good to see you, my lady."

  Now she was someone I wasn't about to correct. But I gave a sigh. "I'm sure that's not true."

  If anything, Tsana's flush deepened.

  "Come now, I know what happened. Volski told me." I hoped she could see every bandage and scar, hoped they were all plain and unavoidable.

  "V– Volski?" Tsana began to tug on the pleats so violently I was surprised the seam didn't tear.

  That was strange. "Yes, we met, accidentally. A few sixnights ago now. Didn't he tell you?"

  She shook her head before glancing around the room, and I realised how terrified she was, how much she didn't want the elite here, the old families who had always counted her among their kind, to know what she had done to me.

  I took pity on her.

  And it felt good to have someone to pity.

  "Is there a balcony somewhere?" I asked. "I could do with some air."

  A grateful nod and Tsana gripped me by the hand. She led me across the ballroom, through a throng of revellers gathered to watch as the dances started, and out of one of the large, gold-edged doors that rimmed the ballroom. She ignored the calls from a group of young men gathered to smoke by the carriageway, and found a seat in the shadows between house and nightflooded garden.

  With a graceful sweep of her skirts, Tsana sat. With a wince at my uncomfortable and out of place waistband, I joined her. I wondered why Volski had kept our meeting to himself. Was he ashamed of me, of what I had become? Or was he trying to spare us both? Tsana her guilt, and me my humiliation.

  "What happened to you?" Tsana breathed the question into the cool night. Beneath my layers, and with my wine to warm me, I barely noticed the bite of the chill.

  "Isn't that my question?" I swallowed a large mouthful of the wine. It was spiced with cloves and elderflowers, their combined scent threatening to make me sneeze.

  Tsana shuddered. "Oh, my lady. I am so sorry. Grandeur broke. I saw you fall. I tried to catch you but glass was falling and I got, I got–" she made a hiccuping noise in her throat "–I got confused."

  If I was still the lady she called me I would have drilled her on that. How could a professional pion architect get confused and nearly cost the circle centre her life? But I wasn't, and I didn't know how long it would take Tsana to realise that. The relationship between us was as fine, as fragile, as the thin glass stem in my hand.

  "Do they hurt?" she whispered.

  "Less than they used to."

  A moment of silence.

  "What happened?" Tsana did not give up, and it made that glass stem that much finer.

  "I was–" Pushed? Did I really want to tell that to another of my old circle who wouldn't believe me? Was there really any point trying that again? I knew the answer. "I don't know. Grandeur broke, as you say. I fell, as you say. But Grandeur hit me on the way down." I touched the top of my head, the wound for which there was no scar. "She knocked something out, and took the pions from me." I rested the glass on my knees to keep it steady. "When I woke up I couldn't see them any more. I could see something else instead."

  And for the first time that exchange didn't seem quite so poor. Not with Kichlan's cooking scenting my clothes.

  "There was something strange happening, wasn't there?" Tsana stuttered.

  "When?"

  "On Grandeur. Something, I don't know how to say it, it felt like something was pushing us around. Like every time we tried to help you, something got in our way. I thought you might know what it was. I thought you might be able to explain it. But if you can't..." She gave a shrug with one smooth, graceful shoulder.

  I gaped at her. Of course, the one person who would believe me was the one person I had decided to lie to. "Did you tell the tribunal that?" I eased my hand where it gripped the glass too hard. Wine rippled. "Did you tell anyone that?" Maybe this was what I needed? Maybe, with Tsana supporting me, someone would listen!

  "But it was nothing. You said you didn't see anything."

  "No, but did you–?"

  "I was lucky to get out of the tribunal in one piece, my lady. Considering what happened, what I did to you." She swallowed hard; I could see the moment in her neck. "I could have lost my place in the circle, I could have been charged for negligence and shipped to the colonies to– to–"

  She closed her eyes, and my stomach dropped.

  "So I held my tongue."

  "And now? You know something happened out there, Tsana. You're the daughter of an old family; you're a member of a nine point circle! The veche would listen to you. Have them open another tribunal, I will stand beside you and together we will tell the truth!"

  Tsana touched a shaking hand to the diamond at her throat. "A tribunal?"

  "Yes!"

  "But they already had one."

  "So we make them open another. They will listen to you."