5.

 
 
 
 

Snow began to fall before we reached Darkwater. A final flurry of winter, like a childish swipe at the approaching spring. I tilted my head to catch the light, icy flakes in my mouth, and let them melt away some of the dust and the thickness of sleep. I kicked into the thin drifts that draped across flagstones, leaving dirty footprints, and feeling that bit cleaner. Its soft touch on my head soothed the throbbing, but stung in the freshly made cuts.

  "That's the end of that day, then," Uzdal murmured as Kichlan worked the old-fashioned lock and let us into the sublevel. I wasn't sure what bell it was, anymore. Pale white clogged the bottom of the windows, and didn't give much of an indication of the time.

  Kichlan brushed away flakes from his eyebrows and hat. "Jars in the corner, please. Tanyana." He waited for my attention to continue. "Do you see what they're doing? Full jars go on the shelves until the veche come for a collection. Empty jars only on the table. Do you understand?"

  I nodded, still feeling heavy and dull, not much better than I had in the sunlight and on the rubble. He frowned at me.

  "Everyone hurry home," he said, and took Sofia's remaining jars. "Don't want anyone getting caught when this gets worse." As it was bound to do. Movoc-underKeeper loved her snowstorms.

  I watched as Kichlan filled the shelves with jars, and the rest of the team left the sublevel. I counted them. Ten jars. Was that enough? Would we meet quota? I didn't want to be responsible for an inspection, not when Kichlan's thundercloud face hovered hazy but dark in my memories.

  Pincers. Tweezers. How had they done that?

  I clenched my fist. Silver oozed from my wrist to coat my hand and ballooned into something round and twice its size. That was a fist then.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan's voice sounded dim, like my ears were stuffed with wool. "What are you still doing here?"

  Gently, I opened my hand again. Whether I moved my hand at all I couldn't tell, all I could see was the silver bulb flatten, and that was all I could feel. I cupped it carefully and slow. A flat palm. Like a spade.

  "It's time to go home." Kichlan was closer. Was that Lad I could hear, murmuring and worrying in the background? "You can practice tomorrow, don't worry about it now."

  I twitched the corner of my mouth. It was all the same, all part of me. The bulb was my fist, the spade was my palm. And I knew how to extend my arms, I knew how to grasp something with my thumb and forefinger. So I reached, as though there was debris in front of me. Slowly at first, my second arm, that dull silver almostliquid grew. Then faster. I opened my thumb and forefinger and the silver split.

  "Watch out!" Kichlan cried.

  Silver crashed into the ceiling. Cement spilled in a waterfall onto my aching head. I jerked my hand back and the silver rushed into my wrist, pushing me to the ground, sending spasms to my shoulder. I could feel it, I was certain. That almost-solid, almost-liquid, strong silver in my skin, my bones, and all the spaces in between.

  Kichlan dropped to his knees beside me. "Tanyana," he sighed. "Didn't I tell you? Go home. Don't, for the love of Keeper, try that again. Not until you've had some sleep at least."

  I glanced up. A large hole, a good two feet wide, was cracked into the cement. At least, from this vantage point, it appeared to be only a few inches deep. "I'm sorry."

  "You will be, when Sofia sees this." He gripped my hands and helped me stand. "Just go home, Tanyana."

  I nodded, still numb, and climbed the stairs.

  But I could go no further than the eaves of 384 Darkwater. Snow built on the toes of my boots, and I wondered how I would get home. I stank, my body hurt and my head swirled like the snow drifts growing in the street. No coach would pick me up in this state. There was a ferry on the Tear. I could try that. Did it run in a snowstorm? What bell was it anyway?

  I dug my watch from its niche between my coat and the uniform skin. It rattled alarmingly. Pieces of glass fell to the snow when I drew it out. My hand shook. It had borne the brunt of the stones and rested shattered, broken, in my palm. The bear's head was unrecognisable. Glass had come loose from its inlay. When I pressed the latch the cover fell off, and the circles and bells tumbled with soft chimes to the ground.

  All I could do was stare at it. My watch – my life before any of this had happened – shattered in my hand. I couldn't move.

  "You need to be careful, Lad. Don't you remember what happened last time?" That was Kichlan, emerging from the sublevel.

  "Course I do. But wasn't my fault, Kich. I was just following," Lad said, tone teasing between sullen sulking and genuine apology.

  "Tanyana got hurt."

  "Tan." Lad hesitated. "She okay, brother?"

  "This time. But that's what I mean, you need to be careful."

  "I will tell him." Lad's voice hitched. "Tell him to be careful."

  "I know you will, Lad. I know you will."

  Dimly, I wondered when I had become Tan.

  "Just next time, don't listen to him so much–" Kichlan stepped onto the street and saw me. He stopped, startled, and raised an arm to hold back his brother. Or perhaps shield him.

  "He knows better than me, brother." Lad, oblivious to my presence, pulled the door closed. It locked with a heavy clang that echoed from the stairwell behind it. He made a great show of pushing against it, checking, it seemed, that the lock would hold. "Can't ignore him–"

  "Lad, hush."

  Lad finally noticed me, hands still on the door handle, eyes wide. Perhaps I wasn't supposed to have overheard that particular conversation.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan approached me slowly, one hand half-extended. I felt like a stray cat in the snow.

  "Tan!" Lad bustled up close. I thought I should probably flinch, or step back, or do something. But as it was I stood there, hems soaking up the snow. The cold sent chills through my legs, and I shivered.

  Lad smiled at me, but this faded as I didn't respond. He glanced over his shoulder at his hesitating brother. "Kich?" He waved his hands, a gesture of uselessness. He reminded me of a fat honeybee, with his hands flapping out from his sides like that. I wanted to laugh, but only shivered instead.

  As Kichlan approached, Lad leaned over him and cupped his hands around his mouth. "She's cold," he whispered. Hardly conspiratorial, I would have had a harder time hearing him if he'd spoken plainly. "Why isn't she moving?"

  Why indeed? I frowned to myself, skin on my forehead numb. Home was so far away, and there was all that snow in the way. It was too hard, I realised. I was standing still in the cold, in the snow, because it was all too hard.

  And my watch was broken.

  Kichlan pressed his finger to his lips and Lad shuffled over to give his brother room. "Tanyana, shouldn't you go home?" Kichlan asked.

  I stared down Darkwater. The useless signpost was lost in thick haze, as were most of the buildings beyond it. The roads were not left to the snow this way in the second Keepersrill. Already the snow-shifters would have swept the powder away. I didn't expect to see them here, their great shapes hulking dark against the white, their wide metallic wings brushing the snow away with stiff feathers. Their drivers knew the streets to keep to, knew where they would be tipped for keeping a lady's skirts dry and preserving the integrity of a man's shoes. There were no spare kopacks to pay them with as far out as the eighth Keepersrill.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan placed a hand on my arm and tugged gently.

  What had he been talking about? Ah. Home. "It's so very far away," I murmured, and looked down to the useless silver in my hand. "It broke."

  Lad made a strange hiccupping sound, like a distressed animal.

  "What's far away?" Kichlan leaned closer, gaze darting over my face. His once-smooth cheeks were rough now with stubble. Heavy for less than a day's growth. Kichlan made to take my outstretched hand and I snatched it away. The rest of my watch fell, silent into the white. A breath of air, and it was gone.

  He took my elbow as I wobbled.

  "Home." I tried to pull away but his grip tightened, and I realised he was not so much holding me back, as holding me up. I recalled leaning on his shoulder, head throbbing and bleeding. "It's eight hundred kopacks away. That's what the bastard coach driver wanted to charge me, can you believe it?" The words rolled out of me, drawn by some invisible thread. "And my watch is gone. And it is snowing. And my head hurts." I tapped the sore spot beneath my hat for emphasis, and winced.

  "That must be a long way," Lad said, very serious.

  "It is indeed." Kichlan studied me.

  "We got to, brother. He says we should."

  Kichlan brushed snow from my shoulder in a gentle, distracted way. "Does he now? What did I say about following him blindly?"

  "He's right though."

  "I suppose he is."

  "Who is?" I didn't like their riddles.

  Kichlan didn't answer. Instead, he slipped his hand to my upper arm, like I was an old woman and he a tired but conscientious son. "You should come home with us. Just this time." He exerted gradual pressure and took slow steps, moving me forward before I realised it was happening. "Come home with us. Until you feel more yourself."

  More myself? Did I even know who that was any more?

  "No, really..." I tried to rouse the part of me that screeched protests. That told me it wasn't proper to go home unaccompanied with two brothers I had just met. The part that clamoured for my home, my bed, my hot water. The part that longed for the comforts of an earlier life not buried in snow, soaked in sewage, and heavy with the dust of ancient stonemasonry. But that part of me was muffled, buried underneath the rubble of the day. And Kichlan was guiding me gently, and Lad was on the other side, grinning like a child with candy in his pocket. "Is it far to go?"

  "Home should never be far," Lad declared.

  "No, it is not," Kichlan said, making far more sense than his brother.

  So I let them guide me. I watched my feet most of the way to Kichlan's house, and kept feeling for the watch that should have rested close to my heart.

  The brothers lived in the attic of a squat house dwarfed by taller buildings, solid slabs that were nightmares of poor construction and ugly design. Their house was old enough to escape such a horrible fate, but that was the only good thing about it. Its stonework looked suspiciously similar to the wall that had fallen on me, and I wondered how much of it had been built by hand rather than pions. A heavy wooden door creaked as Lad pushed it open, and ushered us into a dim room heavy with smoke and shadows. I blinked against the slants of orange fire-glow, coughed in the smoke, and couldn't see very much at all.

  "We're back!" Lad called, so loudly and suddenly that I jumped a little with surprise.

  "Lad?" A voice warbled from an adjacent room. "Is that you, boy?"

  "He owns this house," Kichlan whispered as Lad bounded into the room. "He's a good man. He won't mind if you stay, as long as it's only one night."

  So this wasn't Kichlan's house after all. He was simply, what, boarding here? Somehow, I found it difficult to reconcile. Kichlan, who organised his collection team with such authority, didn't even own his home?

  "What's got you so excited then?" The voice came nearer, accompanied by the shuffling of feet. "Oh." A short, ancient man turned into the hallway. He was wrapped in layers of clothes made from what looked like mainly quilts, all patches and mismatched colours. Faint wisps of pale hair, lit a coppery gold from what must have been a fireplace behind him, escaped a tea-cosy hat to float with the smoke around his head. He carried a large pipe in one hand, and gripped the door frame with the other.

  Tiny embers dropped from the pipe as we stared at each other, to touch bright on the wooden floor before winking out.

  "Kichlan." The old man collected himself, tapped his pipe against his cheek, and drew a small breath of smoke into his mouth. It curled up to his nose. "You aren't going to introduce us?"

  "This is Tan!" Lad filled the quiet to overflowing. "She had to go a long way and it's snowing and bricks fell on her, so Kich and I thought she could stay here." He paused only to breathe. "Is that all right?"

  I couldn't see Kichlan's face. He stood behind me, holding me upright. But whatever the old man saw there must have convinced him. I doubted it was Lad's rambling that did it.

  "Of course. You're welcome, dear Tan. I'm Eugeny, and my home is yours." He made a strange bow, touching the mouthpiece of his pipe to his hat.

  "It's Tanyana." My voice sounded soft and breathless, and I tried to push more force into it. "And thank you."

  He nodded. Lad whooped and clapped his hands above his head.

  "Now," Eugeny wrinkled his nose, "something tells me the lady would care for water to bathe in?"

  How he could smell anything through the smoke escaped me.

  "She has had a difficult day," Kichlan said. I wanted to argue, to tell him I didn't need anyone to excuse or explain for me, but he was already leading me down the hallway to a set of stairs leading up to a second floor.

  "I can hardly imagine." Eugeny waited until we had passed before commanding Lad to collect a couple of buckets, which he took outside. I decided they couldn't have running water, which was something of a shock. I thought every building in Movoc-under-Keeper was supplied with running water. It operated on the same, essential system as the light and the heat, with factories across the city, where pion-binders sat in large, compounded circles, gathering pions and convincing them to push clean river water through a complex series of underground pipes. Each tap was just another valve, keeping the water out until it was needed. Some of the pions were also asked to heat the water as they ferried it along, although I believed that required a slightly higher level of skill than simple plumbing.

  I supposed this also explained the fireplace and the darkness. Was anything in this house powered by pions?

  They might not have had running water, but Kichlan and Lad certainly had a bath. The attic room was a wide one, with a high peaked ceiling and a few elongated windows near the floor. Rugs carpeted the sound of their feet and hugged the warmth wafting up from Eugeny's house below. There were beds in two opposite corners, each with a rickety stand and water jug of its own.

  The bathtub was old, solid metal with bear-claw feet and pale, chipped enamel. Lad filled it steadily, with water that looked clean enough. He heated the full buckets in Eugeny's fireplace before pouring the warm water into the bathtub and hurrying away for more. While he did this Kichlan found a thin bar of soap and a towel big enough to be a blanket.

  As the bath water grew Kichlan began to fidget and look decidedly uncomfortable. There was no screen in the room, nothing to separate the tub from the rest of the attic. And as the steam rose, inviting with its promise of warmth, of being clean, I was already weighing up a little more immodesty for a nice hot soak.

  "Eugeny will be cooking," Kichlan said as Lad brought the final bucket of water up the stairs, puffing from his exertions, and poured it proudly into the tub. I eyed the water and wondered how long it was going to stay so nice and warm.

  Kichlan grasped his brother's hand, earning a startled expression, and Lad dropped the pail. "Clean yourself up before it cools down." He flushed redder than the warm room could account for. "We'll be downstairs until you're ready." He had to drag his younger brother toward the stairs. "Come on, Lad!"

  "Downstairs?" Lad's deep voice echoed up from below. "But what about her back, Kich? Who's going to scrub her back?"

  Kichlan's splutters echoed also.

  I shrugged off my jacket. It dropped with a squelch to the floor. I pulled the hat from my head and the gloves from my hands and kicked the lot as far from the bath and its promise of cleanliness as I could. My pants were sodden; the only clothes to have escaped the sewage appeared to be my shirt, kept safe by the coat, and the uniform itself. Would such strange material even stain? If it was designed for daily use, perhaps it was beyond such needs as washing.

  The uniform peeled off like a layer of stiff skin, and hurt like it too, where it tugged on stitches and poked at bruises.

  Voices made their way up from the ground floor.

  "They got to her too, eh?" Eugeny's rattling baritone was clear despite the floor between us. "Be careful around her. You know they won't be far behind."

  Kichlan was too tactful to be overheard, and I couldn't make out his answer.

  "I know. But your kindness mustn't put the boy in danger."

  I leaned into the water and watched coils of dirt and oil spread over its taut surface.

  Just who were they?

  The soap was plain and made a kind of half-lather, more like a film of white than any real suds. It smelled like faux flowers, sweet and manufactured, but at least it wasn't sewage. I rubbed the flakes into my hair and wherever my skin was free from bandages before ducking beneath the water, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and rubbing again to get it out.

  When I sat up and slicked hair from my brow, I realised I looked worse clean. The bandages along my neck and left shoulder had been jarred out of place, the normally thin lines of pink scarring beneath them red and puckered. I could still see some of the grit stuck around a dark stitching cord.

  "Other's hairy arse," I growled. Dirty, wet, and no clean bandages. "Damn it!"

  "Ah, Tanyana?" The top of Kichlan's head bobbed in and out of view at the top of the stairs. "Are you all right?"

  I allowed myself a rueful chuckle. I dipped myself lower in the tub. "No, Kichlan. Not really."

  A moment of uncomfortable silence. "Can I help?"

  "Why not?" What was one more indignity on top of a day full of them? "Do you remember the bandages...?" I let my voice trail away. "You might as well come and see for yourself."

  I hadn't realised how uncomfortable silence could get, and resisted an urge to push it, to see what I would need to say to make Kichlan's discomfort worse. More references to the Other's backside would probably not help.

  "If... if you think... I will..."

  Grinning at Kichlan's stumbling, his overflowing discomfort, I shifted myself around in the tub so I sat with my back to the stairs. It was big enough to allow me to pull my knees close to my chest. "This is as decent as I'm going to get, I'm afraid. I'm part of your team now. Supposed to look after us or something, aren't you?"

  "Yes." The word came out as a tangled cough.

  "Kich?" Lad's voice was loud, boisterous and distinctly comfortable. "See, told you! Everyone needs help with their back."

  "Lad! No!"

  The scrapes and bangs of a struggle reached me from the stairs. I rested my head against my knees, thankful for the warmth that added flexibility to my strained and bruised neck, and grinned against wet skin.

  "No, Lad. Eugeny! Eugeny, a hand?"

  More struggling.

  "But, Kich, what about her back?"

  "Your brother can handle it, Lad, my boy." I could hear laughter in the old man's voice. "Why don't you help me with supper? We can make something especially for your friend. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  "Oh, yes. I guess." Lad hesitated, torn. "Are you sure you can handle, Kich?"

  "Yes," Kichlan answered in a squeak.

  A moment more, then footsteps descended.

  "What can we make, Geny?" Lad asked as his voice faded.

  "I'm coming up," Kichlan called ahead. A warning of sorts, I supposed.

  I waited until he was closer before turning my head.

  "What's the matter?" His thin lips and serious expression were out of place on his blushing, flame-red face. "Is it your head?"

  Looking over my shoulder was not helping my aches and pains. I turned around. "No, the stitches. From the glass, when I fell. Well–" I gestured to my left shoulder with a flick of my head "–you can see for yourself."

  I leaned on my knees as Kichlan touched my shoulder and back. His soft fingers were cold compared to my water-warmed skin, and they shook, but he didn't knock the bandages or brush the sensitive stitching. "The dust, from the wall," he whispered.

  "And the Other knows what else," I muttered.

  "The old man is good with these things." Kichlan stood. I heard footsteps retreating. "Doing things without pions, that is. Wait a minute."

  Left alone in the attic I righted myself, and stretched gingerly. The water was beginning to cool.

  There wasn't much in Kichlan and Lad's shared room besides their beds and bath. A hamper of old wicker slouched beside a small chest of drawers. Two pairs of boots, cleaned well but betrayed by faded and cracked leather, leaned against the hamper. Could they only have enough clothes, enough possessions, to fill a basket and three drawers? I searched the room, to the bare wooden walls, rug and freshly swept floorboards. Simple, empty.

  And, as I lay in a warm bath while an old man made evenbell supper in the house below, unavoidably comfortable.

  Second glance at the dresser, and I frowned. There was something on top of it, something dull, metallic and ugly in such a bare-wooden room.

  I frowned at it. What was it? It almost looked like a hand. A metal hand.

  "I'm coming up, miss!" Eugeny called from the stairs.

  I turned my back to the old man entering the room.

  Eugeny whistled lowly, a soft rush of air under his breath. "Nasty." But he didn't ask what had happened, or comment further. "Can you remove the bandages? Got the boys tearing up an old towel to fix them."

  Gingerly, I unwound the tucked-in knot and began unwrapping my shoulder. "I–" I swallowed on a sudden lump. "I'm sorry to make you do that."

  "No fuss, miss." Eugeny took the wet, dirty bandages as I pulled them away. "Old anyway, just sitting in my cupboard tempting the moths."

  I nodded, but wasn't entirely convinced. "Well, thank you."

  "Not me you should thank."

  I had to rearrange myself to undo the bandages around my hips and upper thigh. Eugeny had foreseen this, and was already facing the stairs. He clasped his hands behind his back. His fingernails were short and clean.

  "It's your house, though." I shifted again. "You can turn around now."

  He took the remaining bandages. "That's true. But the boys wanted to help you, and they're good boys, both of them. Help an old man out. So I do the same. Now, I'm going to leave this for you." Something tapped on the bath beside my shoulder. I glanced down. Eugeny was holding a wide glass jar, filled with a yellow paste. I took it from him.

  "What is it?"

  "Golden roots of the waxseal plant," he said, as though that explained anything to someone who'd never heard of a waxseal plant. "When you're dry, put it on the wounds, and then replace your bandages. Ah, here we go."

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Eugeny shuffle to the stairs and take a bundle of pale material from a curious-faced Lad.

  "They're on the boy's bed, with your towel. When you're ready."

  I realised, in the tone of that "when you're ready", that I had spent too long getting clean.

  "Lad's helped me finish the apple pie." The old man shepherded Lad before him, and left me alone.

  With little choice, I stood and stepped carefully from the water. As I wrapped a large, pine-smelling towel around me, something gurgled in my gut. I was ravenous.

  I did as the old man had instructed. I smeared the gunk – I couldn't bring myself to think of it as golden – on my stitches. Kichlan and Lad had no mirror, so I couldn't be entirely sure I had got all of them, but I had cleaned the wounds enough times to do it mostly from memory. It stung at first, before easing the aching skin into a warm kind of numbness. Despite myself, I couldn't help a surge of affection for the old man as I tied the fresh bandages. For bits of an old towel they worked surprisingly well.

  For a moment I considered leaving my uniform in its heap on the floor. Then I imagined Kichlan's reaction. I collected the dark cloth from the floorboards. It was dry. I lifted it close to my face and sniffed. Again it surprised me, giving off not so much of a hint of the sewer. I dragged it on.

  The silver hand on the dresser caught my eye. I picked it up. It was heavy, and clinked on the inside as I weighed it in my palm. Where the wrist should be was a jagged hole, metal ending in burns and rust. I peered inside. Dimly, I could see thick wires coiled in on each other. They reminded me too keenly of the fibres in their metal tube, those that had become my suit. What was this hand, that it resembled the suit so closely? And why was it on Kichlan's dresser? Something told me it did not belong to Lad.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan called from the floor below. "Are you coming?"

  I dropped the hand. It fell with a crash that sounded louder to my ears than it should have. I stood, stone still, waiting for Kichlan to run up the stairs. No one came. Heart knocking against my chest I collected the hand, placed it back on the dresser. It hadn't bent, or scratched, although it seemed to rattle more than before. I gave it a last pat, and hoped Kichlan didn't move it often.

  Kichlan had left me a long woollen shirt and a pair of pants that were so baggy I had to tuck them into my uniform to keep them up. But I enjoyed the looseness of the material, and its warmth, and it had a fresh, woodsy smell that made me think they probably came from the same cupboard as the towel.

  As dressed as I could be, I ran my fingers through my hair. It had grown longer than I usually allowed it, so it puffed out around my ears and curled lightly near the top of my neck. I replaced the lid on the jar, and descended.

  I found Kichlan, Lad and Eugeny waiting by a crackling fire in a room I realised was the kitchen. It had a low fireplace built of dark stone, above which were suspended great metal plates. A round, flat tin container sat on one of them, and I guessed that was where a rich cinnamon smell was wafting from. My stomach growled again.

  "Tanyana?" Kichlan spoke as I entered the room. I think he must have heard my stomach before my feet.

  I found it strangely easy to smile as I met his concerned brown eyes. "I didn't know what you do with the water."

  "Lad will fix it later," Kichlan said. His face was guarded, not entirely reassured. "How are you feeling?"

  I nodded, and noticed I could no longer feel stiffness or pain in my neck. "Better. Thanks, I'm sure, to you all." I handed Eugeny his yellow gunk. "Thank you."

  The old man nodded; Kichlan shrugged as though it didn't matter and turned his face away. Lad, however, beamed. "I helped Geny with his pie," he said, reaching for the tin above the fireplace. "From apples Geny got from the old woman who has a cellar and keeps them in there even when they're not the best." He barely breathed. "Geny says it doesn't help, keeping them cold like that, they still go brown but she won't listen to him, she won't." He tried to lift the metal lid, fingers dancing around the hot handle. His silver suit, where it wrapped around his wrist, reflected warm embers from the fire below. "So Geny made them into a pie, and I helped him finish it. You can eat them like that. Can we have some?"

  Kichlan, exasperated, gripped his brother's hand before he could make another try for the handle. "It's hot, Lad. And no, supper comes first, pie comes last."

  "Oh." Lad's face fell, but only stayed down a moment. "I can help, Geny. We need plates." He shook his brother off and buzzed to the sagging wooden cabinets in one corner of the room.

  "You rile him up," Kichlan snapped at me.

  The calm of a bath cracked at his tone. I bristled. "This was your idea."

  "Not one of my best."

  "And I'm not doing anything, he didn't give me the chance to say anything either. How could I possibly rile him up?"

  "Your presence alone, Tan."

  I clipped any possible retort when Lad, arms laden with plates, hurried between us. "You gotta sit down to eat," he told me, as he passed.

  The dining table filled the second half of the kitchen. It was strange to eat in the same room as the cooking fire and cutlery cupboards, and it reminded me of home. The home of my childhood, the one I had shared with my mother before my binding skill earned me enough kopacks to afford a apartment close to the city centre. I sat on a wooden chair with a faded patchwork cushion. Kichlan set two thick candles in the centre of the table and lit them with a flame borrowed from the fire. The warmth and light made the pale beech table seem deeper. I knew that colour, remembered the scent of smoke and food. I had worked so hard to leave that life behind, a world of few pions, fewer kopacks, of hungry nights and my mother's aged, worn face. Why, when Eugeny's home reminded me of it so clearly, did I actually like the feeling? I had never reminisced about the past before, I knew I had moved on to better things. Why start now?

  Then Eugeny placed a thick-edged saucepan in the middle of the table, filled with a bubbling concoction of vegetables and meat. He spooned the thick stew onto rough clay plates with a wide silver spoon that had tarnished with age. The dancing bear designs on the handle gave it an heirloom air, and I wondered if anything else in his house was as precious as this piece of silverware undoubtedly once was.

  Neither Kichlan nor Lad waited on any ceremony, but began eating as soon as Eugeny had served them. I hesitated. What had my mother done, before each meal? Said thanks to the Keeper, or something similar...

  "Eat," Eugeny said. He gave me a sad little smile. "You'll be hungry."

  I took his advice, and the moment the food touched my tongue I was lost in hunger and wrapped in thick gravy. The meat might have been beef, or something more common, even deer. I didn't care. It was tender, it was tangy. Potatoes dissolved in my mouth; turnips were rich with flavour and still a little crunchy. I had no idea what Eugeny could have done to make something so very basic taste so amazing. A hint of spice also, what was that? Not heat like Hon Ji noodles, not quite. It was like he had waved the chilli over it instead, only touched the stew with flavour.

  The plate was empty before I knew it, and I was acutely aware that there was no more in the pot. Had I eaten into their meal and forced Lad, or Kichlan perhaps, to settle with that bit less?

  Kichlan and Eugeny ate at a far more sedate, polite pace.

  Eugeny took his time spooning the contents from his plate into his mouth, and chewed each bite extensively. Did he have all his teeth left, and were they whole? Could they be, without a well-paid healer to keep the bone sure? "Finished already?" he asked me between chews.

  "It was lovely."

  He concentrated on his spoon.

  Lad, who seemed to be shovelling as hard as I had but obviously had more on his plate, grinned widely. Gravy dribbled down his chin. "You were hungry," he observed.

  Kichlan leaned over and wiped his brother's face with a small, pale blue towel he had folded and placed beside his plate. Perhaps put there in anticipation of this very need.

  "Tan was hungry, wasn't she?" Lad said as his brother cleaned him, reminding me yet again of an overlarge child.

  Kichlan flicked me another see how you rile him up look before answering. A whole day on his collecting team and I already had a look. "Yes, very." He refolded the towel and arranged it beside his plate. "Now, finish your food or it will be too late for apple pie."

  I wouldn't have believed Lad could eat any faster than he was, but he did. Kichlan, on the other hand, had left a third of his food untouched. When Lad, still chewing his final mouthful, peered hopefully into the empty pot, Kichlan scraped the rest of his meal onto Lad's clean plate. I caught a look of tenderness on Kichlan's face as his brother happily kept eating.

  Nothing like the look he gave me, that one.

  "Good boy, Lad." Eugeny cleared the table. I started to stand, but the old man touched a thin hand to my shoulder, and I stayed seated. "Help us with the pie, there's a boy?"

  I felt uncomfortable and acutely useless as the men left me at their table and fussed with the food. It wasn't the same as being waited on by the servants of friends or associates.

  The pie was good, the apples soft, the pastry cinnamonspiced and sugary. And I told them so, Lad especially, and found myself thanking them over and over for their time, for their effort, for their food and water and soap. Finally, when the food was all cleared and I was no longer bound to sit and be waited on, Kichlan's look had become something quite different. I saw confusion there and even, if he turned his head to a certain angle, pity.

  Pity was new. I was still getting used to it.

  "Well, the bell is late," Eugeny said as I hovered in the kitchen door, unsure what I was expected to do next.

  "Is it?" I couldn't hear the bell peals this far from the Tear River. And my watch was gone.

  "You and the boys will be leaving early, I expect."

  Lad was already sleepy, full and warm, wearing a heavy-lidded expression. He yawned. "Always."

  I thought of my long coach ride. "Indeed."

  "Bed then, I would say." Eugeny rubbed his hands together; they sounded like fragile pieces of paper.

  Kichlan jerked his head toward me. "You can have my–"

  "Nonsense," Eugeny cut across him, voice quiet but firm. "We will make a pallet for her before the fire. Cushions and blankets." He glanced at me. "You do not mind, do you?"

  After the bath and the bandages and the food, I could hardly gripe about sleeping arrangements. "Of course not."

  "Settled then." Eugeny shuffled through the corridor and into the second downstairs room. "You two go and get to sleep," he called.

  For a moment Lad looked at me, Kichlan looked at Lad, and I glanced between them. Then Lad jumped up, wrapped his arms around my shoulders and squeezed. "'Night, Tan!" He placed a wet kiss on my ear, before letting me go and heading up two stairs at a time.

  "See what I mean." But as Kichlan followed his brother he wasn't giving me the look. If anything, he seemed relieved. Maybe a little pleased.

  "In here, miss," Eugeny called from the base of the stairs, where I stood listening to the brothers' footsteps over my head. What would happen to the water?

  Another fire was lit in the second room, but this time nothing cooked above it. Clothes had been strung up between the rafters of the squat ceiling and the room smelled like damp cloth. Eugeny was putting the final touches on a very basic bed on the floor: draping a woollen blanket over three large cushions. The clear stems of goose feathers peeked out of a corner seam of the most worn of the three.

  I'd seen more comfortable places to sleep in my time. But it was warm, and dry, and my stomach was full.

  "Here." Eugeny passed me a thick quilt. "Don't mind the firelight, do you?"

  I was used to sleeping in darkness, used to an apartment warmed by busy pions that had travelled across the city skyline just for me. I shrugged. "I can face the other way if it's a problem." Silently, I wasn't sure I wanted my back to the flames. What if a log fell and sent embers into my highly flammable bedding?

  "Good." Eugeny fussed with the improvised bed for a moment. From the frown on his face I guessed he was worrying about more than stray goose feathers. Possibly flying embers in the middle of the night?

  "They're good boys," he said again. My possible death by inflammable bedding was not on his mind, then.

  "Yes." So he'd said.

  "Likes you, Lad does." Eugeny glanced at me, and gave up all pretence of bed-making. "Be careful with him, girl. He's likable now, in a good mood and has his brother with him. But Lad, he's not all there. If the mood takes him..." He hesitated. "Well, you be careful."

  A chill settled over me that had nothing to do with the corridor at my back, or the damp clothes surrounding me. "Tell me what you mean." And perhaps some part of my old identity as the centre of a nine point circle reasserted itself, then. I think he heard it in my voice.

  "Kichlan can keep him calm, can keep him settled," Eugeny whispered to the flames. "You would not know Lad if you saw him in a dark mood. Not his fault, mind you. Just sometimes his thoughts won't go in order, his hands and feet and words won't do what he wants them to do. That's what he told me, anyway."

  Eugeny approached me. He clutched at my hands, forcing the blanket from my fingers. In his intense gaze, watery eyes pale and worried, I thought I caught a glimpse of my own face rimmed by dark shadows. One hand held my wrist, vice-like, while the other pulled up the sleeve of his patched shirt.

  A jagged scar tore through his upper arm and disappeared toward his shoulder. I shuddered at it, at the premonition of what my own skin would look like. My face and neck and shoulder and side.

  "They stitched me up too." He confirmed my fears. "Couldn't afford the healers. Nice old woman who worked in the hospital, just emptying food trays and chamber pots is all she did, she told me about the golden root. Would have been much worse if she hadn't. Sure of that."

  I was paralysed by his scar – a mirror of mine. "Why–?"

  "Lad did this to me."

  I balked, tried to pull away. After a moment's tugging the old man gave in.

  "You find it hard to believe. Trust me, there's more than one Lad in there, more faces than you've seen. And when Kichlan isn't beside him, he can be dangerous." Eugeny pulled his sleeve down and smoothed the cloth. "But don't blame him, girl. Not Lad's fault he is the way he is. Just thank Kichlan for being there, always with him."

  Still feeling numb, I nodded.

  "And be careful." Eugeny pushed past drying clothes, draped in his way like enormous leaves in a musty forest. "He hurt a girl once, Kichlan told me. Veche would have imprisoned him if Kichlan hadn't been there. If he hadn't promised them he'd stay with Lad for the rest of his days. He protects Lad, and he protects others from Lad. The boy likes you. So be careful."

  Eugeny left me to my fireside bed. It took me longer than it should have to fall asleep on it, and that wasn't all due to the feathers sticking into me through the blanket.