Debris (47 page)

  "Did you feel strong?"

  "Did it feel good?"

  "What did it feel like, that suit all over you? Warm? Nice? Or did it hurt?"

  "Did it hurt?"

  "Did it hurt?"

  "Why do you care?" Finally, I shouted at them, hearing terror in my voice I couldn't control. These ancient faces, this taste for pain, was far more frightening than planes of debris that could throw a building from its foundations. This was twisted; this was cruel.

  It reminded me of the puppet men.

  "We're just interested in your progress, dear girl." One of the old men, tall and thin, most of his body hidden in his strange clothes, stepped out of their circle. "We have a lot invested in you."

  "A lot?" I sharpened my gaze on him. "You're all part of this, aren't you? You and the puppet men." They laughed at that. My pulse quickened, I could feel its pressure in my head. "Worked well? Other damn you! You don't need me to tell you about the suit, you know about the suit. Why are you doing this? What is going on?"

  "Now, now." The veche inspector, again. His face creased like worn leather as he smiled an impish smile. The same look he had given me at Grandeur's construction site, on the day of her fall. "You should be proud, little girl. It was an honour to be chosen. To secure Varsnia's future."

  I could feel the suit in my veins, feel it surge hot like my anger. As I tightened my hands into fists I was certain the symbols would be spinning faster, glowing stronger, ready to work with me, ready to show these men how powerful I was, how wrong they were, how little I cared for their honour. Varsnia could go to all the Other's own hells.

  "Was it you?" I asked between gritted teeth. "You had no other reason to be there. Did you knock me from Grandeur? Did you set this up from the beginning?"

  Then Devich reappeared. He stepped out of shadow, face blank, closed, guarded.

  "Time?" He reached for my hand and I snatched it away.

  "Answer me!" I shouted at the old men, turning to face them all, and found Vladir right behind my shoulder.

  "Going already?" His smile was reasonable, a terrible mask surrounded by hunger.

  "No! Answer me, I deserve answers."

  Devich reached for me again, this time clamping his hand around my elbow and holding harder than I could have believed. "The debris collector is tired." His voice was as empty as his face. "She has had another long day."

  "I'm sure."

  Silence settled over the gathering. It set my skin prickling.

  "Well, you've been entertaining," Vladir told me. "I think we'll miss you when you go."

  We'll miss you.
I'll miss you
.

  If the old men were behind this, if they were pulling puppet strings or even watching just for the fun of it that meant Devich... Devich who had convinced me to meet with them both times. Devich who always just happened to appear at the worst possible moment. Devich who seemed to know details I couldn't remember telling him. Who suited me, who listened to me, who had supported me... was a lie. Everything he was, everything he had said.

  If these old men were behind everything, then so was Devich.

  I let Devich help me into the waiting coach in a daze. We sat in silence as it glided into the night. But not for long. "You're one of them, aren't you?" I turned to him, still too shaken to shout, to rail, like I knew I should. Like I wanted to. "What are you doing to me? Did you know the truth all along?" I swallowed bile. The thought that everything – that the love he had shown me, that the love I had shared with him – was all a lie made me sick to my stomach. "Was this all a game? Did you plan it?"

  His blank expression did nothing to ease the tension clutching at my voice. "Don't be angry with me."

  "How dare you! Did you get yourself hurt just so I would rescue you? I cared about you. You knew I did."

  "I don't want you to be angry with me. Not now."

  "Why, Devich? What happens now?"

  The coach jolted to a sudden stop and I was thrown against the seat opposite. Devich, less agile, let out a weak-dog cry as he slammed into the door and slid to the coach floor. Face bloodless, he gripped his injured shoulder, gasping for air.

  "Are you–?" I stopped myself. Did it matter if he was hurt? Instead, I pushed myself from the seat, focusing at the same time on the suit that had sprung to cover my legs and arms. Gradually, it retreated.

  "What happened?" Wincing, Devich hauled himself from the floor. He leaned back in the seat, hand gripping his shoulder so hard his knuckles were white.

  I glared at him. "That's what I want to know." I forced open the door on my side, gripped the rails, and swung myself up beside the driver. "What's going–" But I saw it. The driver's hands wove pointless patterns in the air, tugging at pions that wouldn't respond. Because the street was flooded with debris. It rolled down the stones in waves, like the Tear had burst its long-held banks and was flushing darkness into the city.

  "Other," I whispered.

  "It won't work!" The driver, panicked, clutched at the sky. "They won't listen."

  I glanced at my suit, cool, slow, dim. No emergency. So what was this? "It won't. There's too much debris."

  The driver flinched. He too, it seemed, knew of the accident at Devich's building.

  Accident? I shook my head. Was this just another test? Another trial set up by Devich and the veche and their puppet men? But how did they set the debris off? Debris wasn't pions, it couldn't be controlled. At least, not that I knew. And maybe there had been a way, in that history Yicor so lamented. Perhaps it had survived, as twisted and undermined as the language of the symbols.

  "Don't worry, it's not going to kill us." I wanted to reassure him, but what could I do to explain the difference? No planes were attacking, no chunks of Movoc-under-Keeper dropping out of the sky to kill us. This was sludge, passive, horrible. But where had it come from? And why now?

  "Can you do something?" the driver asked.

  I considered standing in the middle of all that, sweeping it back with suit spread wide. I didn't want it touching me. Not again. "There's too much, I don't think I can."

  I swung back down into the cabin. Devich, still holding his shoulder, was hitched up against the opposite door, breathing long, controlled breaths. "Debris," I told him. "Too much of it. Interfering with the driver. But then, I don't need to tell you that."

  He just stared at me, face blank.

  Then the landau lurched forward and I was flung outside again, my hold on the rails the only thing keeping me from falling into a sea of debris. I clambered back to the driver's seat.

  "It's moving!" Sweat shone on his face from flickering lamplight as he fought for control of his pions. "Slowly, but it's coming back."

  Sure enough, the tide was receding. But something in that disturbed me more than the debris had in the first place. "Get us going as soon as you can, as fast as you can."

  "I will." The driver sucked at his bottom lip in his concentration.

  Debris brought us to a halt three times before the coach could take me home. Once, when it had wrapped itself tightly around a lamp and throbbed, like a terrible insect sucking the light away. Then debris dripped from the window of a high apartment, onto the heads of a crowd that had gathered in the street, oblivious of what they were showering in, knowing only that the lights wouldn't stay on, the sewage had backed up, and the heating had died.

  Each time the landau sagged to a halt and the driver struggled to get it moving again I looked to my suit, but it remained calm, quiet. No maps, no warning lights. No emergency.

  I watched Devich as we finally made it home; still he showed no emotion.

  "Goodbye," I said, trying to set my voice as hard as I felt. "I won't see you again."

  Devich shook his head, he opened his mouth as though to speak, and for a moment I thought I saw something spark in his eyes, some terrible desolation. Then his face clouded over. "No, you won't."

  "Why did you do this?" The words rushed from me, unbidden and foolish. "What are you trying to do to me?"

  He shook his head. "You know I won't answer you."

  "Bastard. Other take you."

  He released a great breath and looked away. "I'm sure he will."

  I yanked the handle down and pushed the door open with my foot. As I teetered between paving stones and coach floor, I looked back at him. "Then at least tell me this." I waited for him to look up again. "Why me?"

  A shudder ran through him. He winced, touched a hand to his shoulder, but held my gaze. "Just bad luck, Tanyana. Bad luck."

  I leapt from the coach and slammed the door on his Other-forsaken face. As I watched it lurch away, with debris tugging beneath it, my suit remained still. Quiet.

 

I did not sleep that night. Debris raged through the streets in a wild stampede, sending Movoc into chaos, and I watched from the top of the stairs. Half-repaired buildings fell. Lights stuttered on and off in a violent dance across the city. The enforcers were out, carrying gas lanterns, emptying buildings one by one. They wouldn't wait for a repeat of the last disaster.

  Where were they taking everyone? Where could be safe, with waves of debris rolling through the streets? I couldn't wait to find out. Valya wouldn't listen to my entreaties as I tried to convince her to join the evacuation.

  "Nowhere to run," she told me, her expression haunted.

  Nowhere but the sublevel, and my collecting team. So that was where I went. Kichlan and Lad were already there, though I had no idea how early the bell was. Their anxious faces greeted me. I lifted a hand and said, "Good morning." What else could I say?

  "Not a good day," Lad said with perfect seriousness. "Not a good day."

  Watching his sweat-slicked face, I wondered what the voices were telling him. And how could I ask him without Kichlan knowing?

  "Have you seen it out there?" Mizra burst into the room, cradling debris in great scoops on his hands.

  "That's a good idea." I stood, extended my suit and offered to take some from him. "I should have thought to do that."

  Mizra hesitated, his energy and my words battling with the cold distance he was trying so hard to maintain between us. Eventually, he allowed me to pinch a large chunk that had started to float from his pile.

  Kichlan retrieved empty jars. As we contained Mizra's collection, Uzdal arrived with more debris. Lad, arms wrapped around his chest, sat on the couch and stared darkly into an empty corner.

  "Something's going on." Sofia and Natasha arrived together, balancing debris between them. "Did you see all the debris?" Sofia started decanting.

  "Walked through it." I kept an eye on Lad as I answered her. He had started to rock, slowly back and forth.

  "You need to look again."

  Lad could not be convinced to climb the stairs so we left him huddling into himself. I felt it before we even reached street level. A tightness in the air, a constriction. And heat. Waves of it like a summer day funnelled down the stairs, whooshing with noise and pressure.

  Outside was dark. Clouds hovered over Movoc in a swirling mass that had nothing to do with rain. Lights flashed on and off around us. Something rattled against a door down the street and water gushed in a torrent from beneath it. Someone screamed in the distance, over and over like an ineffectual dog's bark.

  "What is this?" Uzdal murmured.

  I lifted my wrist, stared at the suit. It was dull, spinning slowly. No lights, no map, no call.

  "Can't be right."

  "Maybe it's the technicians' laboratory?" Natasha ventured. "Maybe they can't call us because it collapsed and that's where they normally do it from?"

  Did we really need to be called? I glanced between the faces of my team members and understood their fear. But why were we standing here waiting to be told what should have been so obvious, what should have been so natural?

  I had thought about that a lot, as I sat at the top of my stairs and kept my dormant wrist heavy on my knees. Why did we need to be called, to be told what debris to follow, what emergencies to attend? Because that was all we ever knew, and our tools to do otherwise, the things that could have made us powerful, had been taken away. Our language, our rituals, our history. On our wrists we had – at the very least – a map, a way to know where we needed to go, what we needed to do. If we could read it on our own, read it properly, who knew what we might discover? So we had been told we were useless in this bright new world, useless and dirty and not particularly smart. How often did you need to be told something to believe it?

  But they were wrong, the veche and the technicians who seemed happy to hold us down. We could be so much more.

  At a juncture between two buildings, debris was growing. Like a fungus, a body, it bulged out of bricks and cement. One tendril snaked over the cracked footpath to wrap around the base of a nearby lamp. Light flickered fitfully against the glass like a terrified insect.

  An explosion rocked the street. As one, we crouched, hands over heads. Fire leapt from the window of an apartment three blocks away. The same screaming continued.

  "We shouldn't be here. Everyone was leaving, as I walked here," Sofia rattled off words as she crouched. "Enforcers were leading them all away. To the Tear. Boats on the Tear. Other, we need to get away."

  Lad, panting, crashed into Uzdal's back as he ran from the stairwell. "Bro!" he screamed into the preternatural silence. "What happened, bro?" Clapping eyes on Kichlan he launched himself onto his brother and wrapped his arms around Kichlan's waist. Great tears ran over his cheeks. He gasped in hitching, sobbing breaths.