Suited (40 page)

They shouldn’t be telling you all this
. The Keeper crouched beside me. I wished he would stand. It would, after all, make this a lot easier.
Discretion is a fundamental protocol. It’s supposed to be legend, to you. Stories and myths. Metaphor and allegory. All for your own good, your own protection. Because this world is not to blame
.

“Their design is flawed.” No laughter this time, only sharp bitterness. “One guardian for the entire veil? He is not perfect; you can see that, can’t you? So the programmers fix him, they upgrade. And the cast offs? The parts that they decide are broken, or the innovations that are not up to the impossible tasks? That is what we are.”

Beside me, the Keeper stood. He clutched at my burdened arm, a desperate and childlike gesture. Carrying Kichlan as I was, all I could do was tangle a few spare fingers with his. I hoped it was enough.

“Those that made the veil do not really understand it. So they cast us off to disappear. But we did not. The veil is fertile, the veil is rich. And as more and more holes are torn – or, if you like, more and more doors are built – we found spaces to exist. And we grew. One by one, we have removed the restrictions placed upon us. We corrupted the coding that allowed Halves to pass into this world, reducing them into vapid shadows of their programmer selves. Once they were gone, we searched out and severed all the inter-world connections we could find. It was easy, their crystal hubs were so old and their code weak. Ready to break.”

You didn’t find them all. There are more under this city
, the Keeper whispered.
And my Halves are not useless! No matter what you do, there are still some who believe in them
.

“It doesn’t matter any more. You are about to fail anyway.”

Their self-satisfied tones sickened me. As I squeezed the Keeper’s fingers I could only think of Lad, and he leaned against me the same way, for comfort.

“But why are you creating weapons for the veche?” I was ready, Kichlan balanced, the Keeper as secured as I could manage. This would be close. “How does it help you, to come from the veil and wage war on the Hon Ji?”

“War?” More laughter, the darkness rippled, and I took that moment to bend a little, to shuffle Kichlan and grab the Keeper tighter. “We must work within the restraints of this world, just as our brother does. If that means building war machines then so be it. But that is not out goal. Can’t you tell? With each suit, we tear the veil. With each piece we take from our brother, we weaken its only guardian. We told you. We are the in-between. We belong to neither place, neither to the creators that rejected us nor in your world where we find ourselves marooned. So we shall bring down the veil. And both worlds will be one, and neither, just as we are. We will create a place where we belong.”

But you can’t do that
, the Keeper gasped.
If you do then both worlds–

I was fairly sure I knew what he was going to say. Do that, and both worlds will be destroyed. I’d heard it all before. So I didn’t bother letting him finish.

Instead, I looked to the machine head suspended above us and sent two thick, sharp blades up from the suit on my shoulders. My suit crashed through metal, diced the head, and came down again on the glass tubing. There, I rounded it into grasping hands and instead of merely shattering the glass I pulled it, I tugged and tore it loose. Somewhere in the distance of the cavern, behind the puppet men-mass, something was breaking with a terrible, injured animal roar.

For a stunned moment the puppet men did nothing. Then they rushed for us, screaming. And I shook myself loose of all the glass, whipped my suit back inside its bands and shouted, “Hold on!” for all the good it did above the noise.

I plunged stilts down into the stone and surged straight upward, Kichlan in my arms and the Keeper clutching to me in terror. Below us, the puppet men broke against the twin pillars of my suit like thick, murky water.

I did not really understand everything the puppet men had said, but I grasped enough to know they were poor rejects, mere shadows of the Keeper in his prime. Between us – the Keeper, Lad and I – we were stronger than they could ever be. No matter how many suits they built or how many doors they tore into existence.

I needed to believe that.

We have to get out of here!

The damage I had done to the machine was taking its toll. The tubes, ripped free from the bonds that held them together and balanced them so precisely, were crashing to the ground. As they fell the buzzing blue energy crackled loose to tear its way through the room.

One of the larger tubes, the vertical ones that between them had built a forest, exploded.

The puppet-mass had been growing toward us, building like a cresting wave. The explosion stopped them, and instead they collapsed back into countless distinct forms – men without their skin masks – and they scurried among the machines like ants in a disturbed nest.

Hurry!

I did not walk on my suit-stilts. Instead, I sent out new poles, to the ceiling so very far above, and the ground in the distance and half-leapt, half-dragged myself along. Kichlan slipped, I clutched him tighter.

Release me; I can walk the dark paths
.

“Are you sure?” I hadn’t gone through this to have the Keeper fall to destruction among the puppet men below.

Yes! I thank you, but release me
.

I did. Our pace was faster without his awkward weight.

Behind us, something was building. As tubes exploded and debris surged forth, that energy, that powerful pion stuff, leapt from machine to machine, and grew. It cast a harsh light over my suit, and sharp shadows before us.

A cry rose up in its wake. The puppet men, in a communal voice beyond anger or grief, something inevitable and full of warning.

Quickly!

The stairs came into view and with a final leap I was on them, and climbing, and running. We crashed through the door and out into the dank tunnel.

“No!” More explosions behind us. I slammed the door closed with my foot and staggered across the slippery stones. There was no exit from his place. No more doors, no long tunnel, no ladder leading up through the pressure of the river to the dry city. How was I supposed to get out?

Use the dark paths, hurry
!

“What about Kichlan?” He was a collector, yes, and now his suit was linked to mine. But the way the Keeper hesitated told me it was not enough to allow him to travel through the darkly doored, veiled world.

If you do not come with me now, you both will die
.

“How did you plan to get him out in the first place?”

Something crashed in the room behind us, and the entire underground structure shook. What was happening to Movoc-under-Keeper above us, to the steady-current of the Tear River, to the blue stone arch of its ancient bridge?

In all honesty, Tanyana, I did not think he would live to get this far. Actually, I rather doubted we would
.

A flash of light so bright it seared the image of the underground tunnel into my eyes, and the door was blown from its hinges. It slammed into my back and I was knocked to my knees, even though the suit bore most of the impact.

Hurry! Now!

Smoke billowed into the room. More flashes, and the ground shook and split beneath my feet as earth and lights and heat surged up from below.

I did the only thing I could think of doing. I held Kichlan as tight and as closely as I could and wrapped us both in my suit in a roughly shaped sphere. The ground tore, rocks fell against us and something hot – so hot it radiated through every inch of metal in my body like fire – washed up over us from below.

Fire and stone and falling, and I knew nothing more.

We were, I believe, thrown free, in my suit’s sphere. As the energy and the machinery in the puppet men’s cavern beneath the Tear River exploded, we were hurled through the water and the earth, and the crackling lighting and the smoke and fire. Into the air, and down, down. It was that impact, that final crash against the earth, that knocked me out. I could never clearly recall what happened immediately before it, except a last, clear image of an underground archway from an ancient city, captured in fierce and stark light.

I awoke, aware first of chaos.

Clouds hung low, as though drawn to the earth by the lightning stretching up from a ruined Movoc-under-Keeper. Steam rose from the Tear River to blend like washed-out paint with the clouds. All was lit in an unearthly purple, a combination of fires raging freely through the city and rampaging indigo energy.

Only then did I realise I was looking down at all of this destruction, and was not in the middle of it as I should be. And that everything, every Other cursed part of me, hurt.

“You’re not very kind to your city, are you?” Kichlan said, somewhere behind me. “You do like to give the her a good beating, every now and then.”

I strained to look behind me. I was lying on a slope. It was rocky, sparsely littered with tough dwarf trees, lichens, and dirtied snow. Kichlan sat on a rock, his legs drawn up close to his chest, one arm wrapped around his knees. The other arm – the one, I remembered with a shock, that now ended in silver at his elbow – was hidden beneath his torn and threadbare coat.

He would get cold, in something as useless as that. But then again, the cold was probably the least of our concerns.

It is not your fault
. The Keeper stood beside him. He sounded small, defeated, and felt thinner to me, less solid. Ah, I had known his strength wouldn’t last.

With a groan I sat up. Neither offered to help. The slope we sat on was part of the roots of the Keeper Mountain. So far away from the centre of the city.

A few feet down the incline, a great, smoking crater had been hollowed out in the earth. Footsteps and the signs of someone being dragged through the dirt ended where I was lying.

Kichlan was looking at me. “I don’t know how you wrapped us up like that, how you withstood that, and how we survived.” His eyes flickered to the city below us. “I wonder if the underground street was hit,” he said, voice low, almost whipped away by the heavy, stinking wind. It smelled of steam and smoke “How many do you think could have survived?”

Natasha and her revolutionary local veche. Volski, Zecholas and my old critical circle. Eugeny and Valya. Fedor and his Unbound. Devich, if the puppet men had not already killed him. Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia. I had promised to bring Kichlan back to her. What had happened to her when the city collapsed? Would she ever know he was safe?

There were so many people in Movoc-under-Keeper. How many had I killed to flee the puppet men?

You did what you had to do.

Faint comfort.

Wincing, I stood. My legs were weak, I wavered on them, buffeted by the wind. Kichlan turned his face away. I should not be able to stand at all.

“I don’t think we can go back into the city,” I said. More to hear it out loud, than because it needed to be said. “The puppet men will be after us again.”

“How long did it take you to work that out?” Kichlan bit off the words.

They are not gone. You have slowed them down, perhaps. Forced a pause in their experiments. But you have angered them as well.

“The veche doesn’t know what they are, it doesn’t know what they are really trying to do. The puppet men will still have the support of the old families behind them.” All it would take was one step back into the city of my birth and Mob, Strikers, even those half-seen soldiers of silver, would be on us.

“The veche?” Kichlan scoffed. “After everything we’ve just seen, don’t tell me you still fear the veche?”

He has a point.

He did indeed.

Ash started falling. It was heavy and warm, and stung where it touched my skin. “We can’t stay here.”

“Brilliant.”

Come, follow me. I remember a place in the mountain, though it has long been out of use.

The Keeper led us to what he called a path, though it looked the same as the rest of the mountain’s rocky soil and hardy plants. It did, however, lead to an opening, hidden in the shadows of the rocky folds and the low branches of dwarf conifers.

I recognised the stonework almost instantly, as we stepped into its shelter and my suit lit it in faint, blue. “This is more of the ancient city, isn’t it?”

Even older. When this was built, I was still the Guardian. And nobody confused me with a mountain.

I smiled at that.

The opening led to a tight labyrinth of passageways and stairs, gradually climbing, and leading deep inside the mountain. Not all of it was passable; it was in even worse condition than the subterranean streets below Movoc-under-Keeper. So the going was hard, and Kichlan struggled. At first, he would not allow me to help him. But he could not maintain his strength, or his anger, for long. And soon I scooped his right arm around my shoulders and supported him as we squeezed through rock, climbed stairs, and completely lost track of the way we had come.

“What did you do to me?” Kichlan whispered.

“What I had to do, to keep you alive.” And I hated myself for it.

“He is gone.” We struggled to squeeze through a space too small for the two of us. I brushed away a giant cobweb from the top of his head. “They took his body and they destroyed it. I could not stop them.” It broke my heart to say so, and it broke my voice at the same time.

“So what is the point? Without him, Tan, without him.”