6.

 
 
 
 

I woke with faint sunlight flitting over my eyelids in a drying-clothes-in-the-breeze dance, and a goosefeather poking the soft skin between my underarm and right breast. Wincing, I sat up. I couldn't remember a less comfortable night's sleep.

  "Awake, are you?" Eugeny appeared, sweeping a shirt aside.

  I nodded, mouth padded with dry yarn.

  "Better than the boys, you are. I'll get you water, and a good meal to start the day."

  Eugeny bustled from the room, feeling clothes as he went. Something caught in my throat and I coughed noisily, before wiping flecks of ash from the edges of my eyes. A pleasant start to the morning.

  When Eugeny returned with a large bowl of warm water and a towel I realised there would be no bath today. My clothes had been washed and hung in the room with me. Eugeny passed me everything but the jacket with a rueful shrug of one shoulder. "Couldn't get the coat completely dry, I'm afraid."

  When I left my improvised bedroom, Kichlan and Lad were descending. Kichlan was dressed and ready, his damp hair flat and more organised than I had ever seen it. I wondered how long that would last as it dried. Lad rubbed his eyes, and from the look of his wide, oversized shirt and uneven-length pants, he was not exactly ready to face the day.

  "Took hours to get him to sleep," Kichlan muttered as he caught me looking at his brother. "Can't imagine why that would be."

  It was too early to be lumped as the cause of all of Kichlan's ills, so I ignored him.

  Lad was snappish as Eugeny served us dawnbell supper: bread that was so over-toasted I guessed it was stale beneath the charring; eggs greasy from the lard they were fried in; honey still in its comb. Eugeny's tea was strong enough to clean streets with, and bitter. I finished the meal with a queasy lump low in my stomach.

  Finally, as the sun strengthened and sent ice-sharpened rays through the window above the kitchen bench, Kichlan pushed aside his plate and stood.

  "Lad," he said, in a tight, commanding voice. "You must dress."

  His younger brother continued to poke at a swimming yolk with a tarnished fork. He held the implement so hard his knuckles were white, the veins on his hand prominent and purple. Eugeny sat very still, and I followed his example.

  "Tired," Lad spat gooey flecks of egg onto his plate with the word.

  "I know, Lad. But we have a duty. We need to get up early and work very hard."

  "Tired!" Lad roared, and with a great swing of his arm launched his fork across the room.

  I ducked, lifted arms to cross over my head. But Kichlan was faster. Kichlan was faster than I'd imagined anyone could be. His suit leapt from his wrists, shot out fine and accurate, and caught the fork in mid-air.

  He retracted the thin silver arm slowly, and Lad watched the fork the entire time.

  "Why did you do that?"

  Lad blanched, and I didn't blame him. Kichlan's voice was low, dark with anger and disappointment. Lad twisted in his chair, peered up at his brother, and the pouting frustration fell from his face as tears crested over onto his cheeks.

  "Kich–"

  "Why?" Kichlan didn't let up. He placed the fork on Lad's plate with a clang. Lad's palms pressed the table on either side of the plate, and shook. "Don't you want to come with us? Don't you want to be a collector?"

  "Kich–"

  "After how hard I worked so you could collect with us, don't you want to come now?"

  "I do!" Lad jumped up, knocked the table with his knee and sent cutlery clanging across the surface. "I do!"

  Kichlan eased his straight shoulders and thunderous face. "Then you'd better get dressed, hadn't you?"

  Air returned to the room.

  Lad flashed me a quivering smile as he hurried upstairs. Kichlan, however, only spared me a scowl.

  "This is your fault–" he started, but Eugeny stood, suddenly, and began collecting plates.

  "Now, now, we know that isn't true," he said, voice soft, but his words cut into Kichlan's like glass. "Not at all." The old man glanced at me. "Got your coat, girl?"

  I didn't hear the words, but I caught Eugeny and Kichlan murmuring as I left the room and pulled my coat from the line close to the fire. They were both quiet when I returned.

  Now inspired, Lad only took a moment to dress and was soon back in the kitchen. Eugeny pressed food into his hands, a few slices of bread and possibly cheese, but offered nothing to Kichlan or me.

  "We'd better hurry." Kichlan strode down the hallway, dragging on his patchwork coat as he yanked the door open. Cold Movoc-under-Keeper air reached into Eugeny's warm house, smelling of food and clothes, to slide icy fingers down my collar. I tightened it, and jammed my hat down so it covered my ears.

  Kichlan stepped into the street, Lad ran after him, but I hesitated for a moment in the hallway. Eugeny stood in the kitchen door, watching his boys leave.

  "Thank you," I said. "For everything."

  The old man was inscrutable. "You just remember what I said."

  I closed the door and hurried to catch up to Kichlan and Lad, where they waited on the street corner.

  "Eugeny," I started to say, and waited until I knew Kichlan was listening to me. His face was stony. "Eugeny, is he one of us?"

  One of us. Of us.

  Kichlan's eyebrows rose a half inch before he remembered he needed to hold them still to keep that stony expression going. "You mean a debris collector?"

  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.

  No debris. No walls falling on me. No snide remarks, no being pointedly ignored. No volatile Lad to worry about. And no Kichlan.

  No Kichlan.

  A day and a half suddenly seemed like a whole moon's holiday.

  I couldn't take another coach home, not now that I knew how few kopacks I earned. Instead, I started down Darkwater toward the Tear River, and the ferry.

  Movoc-under-Keeper's ferries were an historical institution. From the sleek wooden ships of antiquity, rowed by gangs of burly men led and enslaved by a single pionbinder, to the steam-driven boats of the city's relatively recent, pre-revolution past. Or so I had learned, on my frequent trips to stare at the wrecks preserved in the Ferry House, near the city's northern gate. My mother had taken me there often. It was a free way to entertain a child, and always heated, even in the darkest of winters. Inside, ferries of all shapes and ages were suspended behind thick sheets of strong poly, protected from time and the elements by the constant attention of caretaker pions. A veritable history of Movoc, written in its ships. Modern ferries didn't need to rely on manpower, steam power or anything in between. Since Novski's critical circle revolution they were propelled through the water on waves lit by the bright crests of busy pions. This meant they were quiet, smooth, not restricted by the flow of the current or worried by the varieties of the weather. But still, Movoc's ferries were designed with that proud history in mind. Polished wooden decks, sleek hulls painted white, glass windows that rattled in the wind, and even dark, ornamental stacks that would never produce steam.

  I planned my evening as I walked. A drawn-out bath in my own home, not constrained by fire-warmed water or meddling old men. Clean bandages and no golden root-gloop to smear on my skin. I wasn't too confident about the contents of my pantry, but knew I would be happy with anything, as long as I was eating it, or drinking it, in my own home.

  I almost broke into a run as the Tear came into sight. It shone like glass in the clear day, like a fold in Grandeur's dress. And for the first time the memory of her didn't tug at my heart with cruel, hooked strings, and I wondered, just briefly, if I was starting to let my poor broken statue go.

  Then I stepped onto the warm lacquered boards of the ferry. The ferry master smiled as I touched my rublie to his in payment. I smiled right back, turned away and met bright, pleased green eyes.

  "Well," Devich said, before I had truly realised it was him. "I know they say all roads lead to the Tear, but this is a surprise."

  All my dreams of a day and a half of freedom fell away. "Devich."

  His smile changed, became less pleased and more pained. But he didn't drop it completely. "Still not happy to see me, I guess." He rubbed at his shoulder, gaze slipping away. "I wouldn't want to dampen a bright Olday afternoon like this one. So I'll just leave you alone–"

  Passengers crowded behind me, pressuring me onto the ferry, pushing me to step forward. "No, please." I summoned a light tone to my voice. "You don't have to go."

  A little encouragement, and Devich swooped. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me cleanly from the gangway, around the steadily filling seats, and into the cabin. Without a word he led me up a tight set of stairs half hidden in a dark corner.

  The second level was nearly empty, its lacquered wooden seats less worn by bodily friction and abrasive river spray as those below. The windows were clean of the long-left imprints of curious noses or balancing hands. Only two more people were pressed into one of the corners, and a furtive glance in their direction told me they probably weren't aware of any presence than each other's.

  A strange place to take me, and I hoped I wasn't blushing.

  "I prefer it up here, don't you?" Devich said, his hand gentle and casual on my shoulder.

  I wouldn't know, and couldn't trust my voice to respond.

  "Not so fond of the noise and the smell below," Devich continued, oblivious. "You know what I mean, of course."

  "Why are you here then? Why not take a landau?" I hoped he wouldn't turn the question back at me.

  Devich simply laughed. "A coach to the city on Olday afternoon? I'm a debris technician, Tanyana, not a veche architect. I could throw myself beneath them and they still wouldn't stop, not on the busiest evening in a sixnight and one."

  Fair enough.

  "Well, my dear lady." Devich leaned against the brass railing beneath the windows and peered through the glass. The ferry was pushing off from the wharf and starting its steady way up the Tear, against the current. Afternoon sunlight glinted on the water. It cast the buildings on the far bank as pale ghosts with shimmering, dark windows for eyes. "Where were you headed when you so carelessly crossed my path?"

  "I told you, I'm no one's lady." But I leaned against the railing beside him. He shifted and his bent elbow touched mine. I didn't move. "And I'm going home."

  "Ah." He watched a small vessel whip past us as it flew downriver. It looked more like a seedpod than a boat, and I wondered what colour the pions were that kept it afloat and gave it so much speed. "Hard day, then?"

  "No words could explain it. No words."

  But even now the past few days were fading, becoming grey like a half-remembered and unsavoury dream. Kichlan's house, Eugeny's warning, Lad's sudden and violent temper hardly seemed real when the sunlight hit the Tear just so and Devich smiled like that.

  "I'll have to take your word for it then."

  I was glad he didn't push the issue. Debris technician or whatever it was Devich called himself, he still didn't need to hear how far I had fallen.

  I listened to the low creak of wood and the drum-like slosh of water below. "And you? Where were you going?"

  "Oh, out for a night of fun!"

  "Olday night and Rest morning," I murmured, and bent forward so my nose came close to the cool glass.

  "The very same."

  I could recall the end of many sixnights so celebrated. Frosted drinks so potent they kept you warm despite their rim of ice; pale pink pions lighting a room where women in improper outfits of snakeskin and white feathers danced to bells; old-world balls where everyone dressed in voluminous skirts of velvet and lace, and I – no matter how many times I arrived in dress suit and top hat – could still cause a stir. Just another distant dream, far nicer than my nightmares of debris.

  "Where will you spend your Olday night?" I asked, before I could stop myself scratching at the old wound.

  "This sixnight? Underbridge ballroom, I believe. I'm meeting someone..." Devich trailed off, perhaps at my expression. I knew the Underbridge. Blue stone, blue lights, blue liquor, the soft blue music of viola and oboe. From the door, on a clear Rest morning when the new sun was touching the Keeper's Edge, you could make out the ice-cream mounds of my art gallery on the opposite bank of the Tear.

  A perfect place to meet a nameless someone. I had done so, at least once before. "Sounds lovely." My words frosted the glass.

  "A night at home after an indescribable day has its good points."

  "I'm counting on them."

  Devich hesitated for a silent moment, then said, "You know, you could join me–"

  "No." Could I tell him the charge just to enter the Underbridge ballroom was more than I earned in two sixnights? Could I tell him I preferred the dream of a past life to remain a dream, for now? A memory softened by pretended sleep. "But thank you."

  "It doesn't seem right." Devich gave up any pretence of watching the river. "You, in that apartment of yours, all alone."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "No." His fingers toyed with a splinter of wood where it had risen close to one of the brass railing's hooks. "No one should be alone after a day they can't even talk about."

  I allowed myself to let his easy charm trickle into my stomach, his smile to warm my cheeks. "You really care about that suit of yours, don't you?"

  He blinked, confused. "I do?"

  "Isn't that what you said? That you wouldn't leave me alone, because you'd put so much work into my suit?" I waved my wrist in front of his face. He tracked the circle of silver that peeked out of my sleeve like a cat with a feather on a string.

  "Sounds like something I would say, yes." When his hunting-cat eyes met mine they lost none of that intensity. "And I should probably check its condition."

  I longed for my bath, for my bandages. I was quite sure I still smelled faintly of sewage and yellow root mush. But Devich had been going to meet someone, out there in that pion-sighted, kopack-rich real world. And now, it seemed, he didn't want to anymore.

  "What about your someone?" I whispered.

  "There's plenty of someones in the Underbridge ballroom. She'll be fine."

  My heart did a small flop, the kind of nervous activity it hadn't done for years, and I answered a messy "Yes" by nodding and waving one hand aimlessly.

  Devich and I disembarked a few wharfs down from the bridge, and walked home together.

  I hadn't entertained guests in my apartment for a very, very long time. Before Grandeur was even a twinkle in the veche's eye, back, perhaps, to a time when my bluestone art gallery was a haphazard sketch in lines of sheer light.

  My home had, since then, been my own. My slice of quiet, of stillness, of the soft dark of half-lit lamps and comfortable chairs. I frequented ballrooms like the Underbridge, and night-stays with views of the Keeper so exclusive you had to hope you were more important than the next amorous couple just to get in. With commissions from the national veche I hadn't worried about being turned away.

  So my home was not fitted to have guests. It was nearly empty of food, particularly at the moment, and never hosted anything to drink stronger than Hon Ji tea.

  But Devich was a different kind of guest. The kind who had already worked his way inside my well-butsparsely appointed sanctuary, and who had done this when I was vulnerable, when I was ill. Like a family member, perhaps. And yet, nothing like family at all.

  We walked in silence too comfortable to bear.

  "Designed any new suits since I've seen you?" I winced at my own staggering lack of tact.

  He took it well enough. "Oh yes, dozens. I'm a hard worker."

  I ignored his wink. "Same as mine, or something special?"

  "Nothing's as special as yours, my lady."

  "I already told you–"

  "–you're nobody's lady."

  Not without a circle of nine, I wasn't. "Then will you stop calling me that?"

  "Not while you are mine."

  We turned onto Paleice and I focused on the buildings so I wouldn't have to look at Devich, with his bright eyes and roguish smile.

  Gate thirteen was closed and wouldn't open for me anymore – or, rather, I didn't have the skill to open it – so I was forced to crouch and scramble beneath it. Devich chuckled, and vaulted over with an unseemly show of strength and agility. Together, we headed to my ground level apartment. As I slipped my gloves off to touch bare fingers against the crystalline lock, Devich bent and collected a folded sheet of paper from the step. He sidled close to me and tapped the paper lightly against my shoulder. "This would be for you, I assume."

  "Of course it is." I struggled to take the paper and unlock the door at the same time. "Anyone else in this building lose their pion sight recently?" The lock rejected me with an angry-wasp buzz. "You're not helping."

  Devich leaned in, nose close to my temple, breath warm against my neck.

  I concentrated, kept my hand steady, and the lock clicked open, echoing from marble tiles.

  "You still are," he breathed into my ear. His lips brushed the very top of my cheek, and the hair along my forearms stood on end.

  "Still what?" I asked.

  "A lady."

  My gloves and the piece of paper tumbled to the tiled, courtyard floor.

  Scowling, I bent to collect them. But Devich was faster – easier to move without stitches and bandages and the bruises from falling bricks – and snatched them up.

  "Give them back." My fingertips were cold and quivering as I held out my hand.

  Grinning, Devich tucked the paper under his arm and wove his fingers through the gloves, as though he and my disembodied hand were clutching each other. It was disconcerting. He said, "You can't pretend. Not to me."

  I held out my hand again, cutting the air, trying to be firm.

  "And ignoring me won't help either."

  "Really?" I swallowed. "Well, what do you know about being a lady?"

  "I know." Devich held the gloves high above his head as he stepped closer. In my previous life, I would have been able to take them, a single jump and a quick snatch with a well-directed hand. A previous, pain-free life. "I know that scars can't make you less than you are." And before I could stop him, he touched the bandages on my neck with his free hand.

  I jerked back. "Don't!"

  "Why?"

  "It hurts." You arrogant, rich bastard, I thought. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea." I sighed. "Give me my gloves."

  But Devich shook his head. "You were a lady because you were a circle centre, is that it? A skilled pion-binder, a rich one."

  A respected one. "That's the way it works. 'My lord' and 'my lady' aren't applicable without a nine point circle of your very own. Unless you happen to be a member of the veche, of course."

  He shrugged like none of it mattered. "You might not be a skilled binder any more, Tanyana, but you are a skilled debris collector. And this city need collectors just as much as it needs binders."

  But it didn't respect them as much, did it? I said, "Perhaps I should have explained the past few days in greater detail."

  "Other!" Devich nearly bit into his own knuckles. "Other's balls, you can be frustrating!"

  I grinned, and again held out my hand.

  "But you're still my lady."

  Devich dropped the gloves, heavy with the warmth of his skin, onto my palm. I tucked them into my jacket pocket and opened the door. The smells of home, and its cool darkness, invited me.

  "Well?" Devich, no longer lounging against the door frame confident and cheeky, stood tall, tense, and hesitating.

  "The door's right there. You know the way in."

  I let Devich into my home and shut the door behind us. In the cool dark his warmth radiated like light. I turned, my back to the door, and he leaned in against me. I pressed my mouth to the hollow of his neck. He breathed into my hair.

  "Welcome home, my lady," he whispered.

  I tipped my head and sought his lips. They were hotter than the rest of him and his tongue, as it slipped out to touch the inside of my lip like a tentative finger, was cat-rough and quivering. Then his hands slid down my shoulders and pulled me forward, away from the door's supporting solidity. I tasted his teeth and wrapped both arms around his waist. He was thin beneath his coat, not an unhealthy thinness, more something lithe and sensuous.

  Then he cupped my head with two hands, pressed our lips together so forcefully they ached, and caught the corner of a bandage with his little finger.

  "Other!" I gasped, and pulled away.

  He resisted for a moment, tried to pull me closer to him, and rocked his hips against mine. The overall effect was nearly enough to overwhelm the simple pain of a stitch tugged out of place.

  "Wait." Cold air rushed between us as I stepped away. "The bandage."

  He let go immediately, almost took half of my neck with his left hand, and ended up torn between an awkward distance and tempting closeness.

  "Your bandage is stuck to my sleeve," he croaked.

  "I noticed. Here, shuffle with me." Somehow, we came to the lamp in the entranceway's far corner. I turned a small valve and let the invisible particles rush in to create light enough to see by.

  "Can you see it?" I asked, unable to work out how, exactly, my neck connected to his shirt.

  "Let me." Devich stuck the tip of his tongue out as he concentrated, and I found myself wanting to nibble it. "Here we go."

  I smoothed the bandage down as Devich frowned at the cuff of his pale sleeve.

  "It's sticky and... yellow." He sniffed the stain. "Why is your bandage yellow?"

  That was far too long a story to tell. "Never mind."

  Another two delicate sniffs and Devich seemed to remember what we had been doing. He smiled, ruefully. "It's a shirt." He leaned forward, warming me again. "Just a shirt."

  Bandages couldn't be dismissed so easily. I didn't let him close the gap, but headed down the entranceway and hung up my coat. "Good. Tell me, were you going to eat anything in that ballroom of yours?"

  Devich checked himself, but had the good grace not to look too disappointed. "I believe that was part of the plan, yes."

  "Pity, because I doubt we'll be able to eat here."

  "Oh?"

  "Let's look, shall we?"

  I brushed past Devich and headed for the kitchen. He hung up his coat beside mine and followed.

  The pantry was more deserted than I had feared. Tea leaves rattled in a large glass jar. Crumbs, and a few remaining nuts, occupied another. Very empty and very clean. I had to remember to speak to the cleaner.

  "How much time do you spend here, anyway?" Devich asked, an eyebrow raised. I couldn't bring myself to tell him the only proper meal I'd had in a long while was in another man's house.

  "Not a lot." I closed the doors. "Would you like to make us tea again?"

  Devich laughed. "Tea won't quite fill my stomach, I'm afraid. But I know what will." He held out his arm, crooked at the elbow. "Care to join me for supper, my lady?"

  I shook my head. "Not really."

  His face and elbow fell. "Oh."

  I tried a tender expression. "Listen, Devich, I wanted a night at home and that's what I intend to have. Food or no food."

  "You need to eat."

  "Not as much as I need to bathe." I could smell worse things than sewage in my clothes, now I had taken off my coat. I could smell Eugeny's homemade soap, clothes-drying smoke, and golden roots of the waxseal plant.

  "For you, my lady, I will compromise." The smile returned. "You clean yourself and I will bring you food."

  I hesitated. The tea leaves rattling in the bottom of the glass jar was really about all I could afford.

  "My treat."

  When I was a real lady I wouldn't have agreed. But I was right about that, and Devich, poor boy, simply wrong. I wasn't that kind of lady, not any more. "That sounds like it could work."

  "Fantastic." Devich clapped his hands together. "I'll, well, get going then."

  Drilled into the wall beside my door was a smaller crystalline screen, a miniature of the pion lock at the front. Reprogramming it without access to pions would have been impossible, but together, Devich and I managed to alter its systems so it would accept his touch as well as mine. He had to tell me what the pions were doing, and move them around while I kept what I hoped was a calming hand on the screen. Pions are not easy to fool, and they rejected him three times before gradually coming to accept that he could be trusted. The whole process left me feeling shaken and exposed. It was like Devich had just helped me walk, or see, or talk: any of those faculties I'd always taken for granted.

  When we were done I kissed his warm lips. "Don't be too long." He didn't quite run out of the apartment, but it was close.

  Alone in the quiet and dim light I had craved all afternoon, I felt strangely at a loss. Rather than dwell on it, I unfolded the piece of paper that had been left on my doorstep.

  I recognised the letterhead before I had read any of the words, scrawled on thick paper in heavy ink. My heart dropped. Walrus tusk and bear claw clashed in vibrant orange and yellow against a pale violet image of the Keeper at daybreak. Proud Sunlight was one of the top universities, accepting only those with the strongest skill.

 

  It is with regret we hear of your misfortune. Please accept our condolences. We trust you will understand our position...

 

  I scrunched the Other-damned thing in my hand. I knew what it would say. Sunlight had a reputation to look after, couldn't have the name of a lowly debris collector sullying its spotless honour roll. For a long and heavy moment I cradled the ball of paper against my stomach like a wound. But there was no point standing like that forever. So I did as I'd told Devich I would. I bathed.

  The bandages came off grudgingly; Eugeny's paste had stuck to the fabric and to my skin with equal vigour. But, when they did come off, they left me surprised and pleased. The horrible red puckering from the night before was gone, the wounds were smooth and pink. Nothing itched, nothing ached. My stitches, my scars, they felt normal.

  Normal.

  A knot, at the arch of my hip, was loose. I gave it a little scratch, and the thread broke, slipping from my skin clean and quickly. A few tugs and the whole thing unwound, leaving only a line of pink skin and the promise of a scar. I stared at my reflection for longer than I should have. The scars from Grandeur's fall were part of me now. They weren't some ghastly second layer of skin that did not belong. Sure, the rest of the stitches would slip away, the raised scarring would retreat, and the whole thing fade to white. But I would never be free of them.

  They were my scars.

  Shivering, despite the room's steady temperature, I ran my bath. A light pat of the switches above two bear's head taps and water gushed from their roaring brass mouths. And it smelled. Eugeny's water, heated by flame and carted up stairs by a volatile young man, hadn't smelled like this. Like metal, like rust, like something else I couldn't identify. The scent of the sky before a lightning storm, heady, and tickling the back of my throat.

  I dropped capsules of aloe and oil into the running water, then a small shovel of earthy Dead Salts, and finally crystalline petals that dissolved and released a smell like roses. Yet, as I eased myself in, wincing as the golden paste washed away and a few of the wounds stung, I could still smell that lightning-sky tang.

  Devich returned as I was dragging myself from the still-warm water. I wrapped myself in a towel as he strode down the hallway, a large box in his arms, and called me.

  "I have a treat for you, my–" he stopped short as he spotted me "–lady."

  I watched his eyes trace over my short hair, darkened by water and slicked out of any shape. As they took in the unbandaged scars on my face, the openings in my neck, the cuts along my shoulder and my arm, and down beneath my towel. I waited for the grimace, for the excuses, the reasons that weren't truly reasons to leave.

  He gave me none.

  "You're beautiful, Tanyana."

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  "And you wear your suit so well."

  The suit. I lifted a naked arm. The cleaned bracelet shone bright ciphers against my shoulder, on Devich's face, on the wall and the ceiling around us.

  "It's beautiful, on you." Was it me he stared at so hungrily, or the shining metallic creature he had created?

  "I have to clean these." I swept a hand over the scars on my shoulder. He spared them barely a glance. "I won't be long."

  And his silent adoration vanished with a grin. "Don't be. I told you it's a treat." He hurried to the kitchen like an excited schoolboy.

  I washed my scars with fresh water, but couldn't quite remove all of the golden paste. The new bandages were rough. My collector's uniform was so uninviting I almost felt physically ill at the prospect of dragging it on. But I couldn't ignore Kichlan's warning, however much I wanted to forget about both brothers. As I pulled it over my head I noticed that the thick, boned, strangely stretching material that held no bodily smells, no dirt, and no stains, somehow smelled like Eugeny's fireplace and a goosedown bed.

  I didn't bother fussing with my hair. Devich had said to hurry.

  He didn't seem to notice the uniform as I entered the kitchen, wearing satin bedclothes over the top and hoping their design of dark water and red carp would keep it hidden. He stood, chest wide and thrust forward, arms open over a feast laid out on the clean kitchen bench.

  And it was a feast. Good enough reason, I supposed, to feel insufferably proud of himself.

  "My lady." He mock-bowed, arms sweeping forward, brushing against a decanter of wine and grabbing it before it could fall.

  "How did you do this?" I gaped at the food, and my stomach rumbled loud appreciation.

  Devich laughed. "Don't question how the food is come by, care only for how it tastes."

  "Devich's own words of wisdom?" I arched an eyebrow.

  "Hardly. Something my father used to say, when his rublie was particularly empty. Now–" he rubbed his hands together "–can I help you to your table?"

  I mused over this small slip as Devich held out a chair and sat me at my small pale lacquered table. Not from a family of debris technicians then? Not the kind of family who had always worked for the veche, always created arcane and complicated suits, and had rublies full enough to prove it. There was more, perhaps, to Devich's easily cultured civility.

  "What can I offer you first?"

  I found it difficult to keep my attention from his shoulders, as they strained a shirt that simply couldn't be wide enough to fit them, or his narrow, belt-tightened waist. Scrounging through the drawers he found cutlery enough to serve his feast, and rolled his sleeves up to do so. His forearms were muscled, well defined, their hair fair.

  I swallowed against a lump in my throat. "Give me a bit of everything." My stomach gurgled at the idea of a measly bit.

  Devich had brought fish. Fish. Raw salmon in slivers with lime and pepper dressing. Two large tuna steaks, grilled, and topped with thickened sour cream. Trout in a gelatinous sauce with root vegetables so fresh they were still topped with leaves. A salad of crab and green beans. Even prawns, darkened to red by a chilli crust.

  More food than the two of us could eat together, even though we focused on the eating in near silence.

  Finally, he heaped sugar-sprinkled strawberries on a plate, and we picked at them.

  Devich leaned in his chair as he dusted pale sugar onto his knees, smugly. I supposed he wanted compliments for the food he didn't prepare, or perhaps, for the kopacks that bought it.

  "Delicious," was all I could get out.

  "Wasn't it?" He stood, graceful and smooth, swept plates from the table and piled them on the bench. For the cleaner. I stared at them. There were boxes in a heap on the floor beside the bench. Had he carried them all himself, or simply directed a young chef's apprentice to do it for him? Had he walked, or hailed a landau for the trip?

  "Now, my lady, if you're still interested in tea." He held out a hand, and helped me to my feet. My stomach felt strange, not what I would call pleasantly full, just heavy. The result of such rich meat and thick sauces, I supposed.

  "Yes. Tea would be lovely." As long as I didn't have to watch him drink it.

  "You look tired." Devich traced his finger beneath my left eye. I glanced away. "Sit in your chair, and I will bring you tea. Can't have you too exhausted, can we?"

  Despite myself, I grew hot as I left the kitchen and sank into the chair in my study. The lamp was low, its flicker unsteady. Like flames in a fireplace.

  Devich brought me tea, and to my unmeasurable relief, hadn't made himself one. He sat on the floor, leaned against my legs, and wrapped an arm around my knees as I sipped. He was very, very warm.

  "There's something I want you to do for me," he murmured, voice as soft as the lamplight.

  "One meal and you'll think I'll do anything, is that it?" I sipped again.

  He didn't laugh. "This is a favour. One friend to another."

  "Is that what you are? I thought you were my overenthusiastic tailor."

  "And this is me being serious, Tanyana."

  "Then this is me listening, Devich." What right did he have to sit at my feet and be serious?

  "Good, then this is what I want you to do. I want you to stop hiding yourself, my lady. I want you to stop believing any of what has happened makes you different."

  The porcelain rim of the cup rested against my teeth. Steam moistened my upper lip. "Stop hiding?" I squeezed the handle so strongly my hand began to shake. "How dare you–"

  "No, I'm not going to take any of that from you." Devich unwrapped himself and sat back. His green eyes seemed darker, the lines of his face stern. But far from making him unappealing, I found him arresting. More than with his smiles and easy laugh.

  I set the cup at my feet. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "Yes, I do." He held up a hand. I surprised myself by shutting my mouth against a building tirade. "I've told you this before. You're not the first debris collector to pass through my door."

  "Only the strongest," I murmured, and didn't say what that really meant. That I'd had more to lose, and fallen further.

  "I fitted a suit once," Devich said. "To a woman not much younger than you. She was beautiful, and had been talented. An artist, I believe. Something to do with sculpture."

  Had she fallen through glass so half her face was unrecognisable?

  "She mastered the suit well, although with none of your natural flair, and was allocated to a team in the outer western rim of the city. Far from the Tear."

  "You followed her around too, did you?" I asked.

  "It was a good suit. I'm interested in the performance of all my suits."

  "Helped that she was young and beautiful."

  Devich flashed me a frown, and looked for a moment like he might argue, but ultimately did not rise to the bait. Pity. An argument would have been more interesting than any moralising tale. He said, "I watched it happen in fragments, in the flashes of her life I saw each time I stopped to check and tune. I watched her fall apart."

  I collected my tea and began sipping again. If Devich was trying to frighten me he had no idea how far I had already fallen.

  "She lost her home," he continued. "Her colleagues, her friends. Then, well, I can't quite say what she lost next. Nothing you can touch, nothing you can buy. I suppose you could call it spirit."

  "She lost her spirit?" I couldn't hide the cynicism I my voice.

  "Whatever made her, her. Her identity, maybe, her reason to be."

  Was he really that blind? Did he really think I was still holding onto those things like a cat clinging to a tree? Surreptitiously, I sank into my antique leather chair. I tried to ignore the food I had just eaten, the bath I had just taken, the apartment address so far from my collecting team I could conceivably take a tent and supplies each time I travelled between them.

  No, not holding onto any vestiges of an old life. Not at all.

  "I saw it happen," Devich said. "Her clothes weathered and her hair grew tattered and her skin dirty and grey. She stopped cleaning, she stopped washing. Finally, she stopped eating. I'm glad I didn't find her. By the time I returned to check on her she had been dead for nearly a moon." He sat back against his heels. "It was a fine suit, some of my best work. A waste."

  "Is that why you bought me evenbell supper tonight? Think I'm going to starve myself to death, do you?"

  Devich jerked his head up. "You don't do serious very well, do you?" he snapped.

  With a sigh, I wrapped my hands around my tea and let its warmth seep into my palms. "I understand what you're saying, Devich. I do. But I don't know what you want me to do about it. This–" I gestured at my face, at my wrists, and nearly unbalanced tea into my lap "–I am different because of this. I'm not even a pion-binder any more, let alone a circle centre. So when I say I'm no one's lady any more, I mean it. That title no longer applies to me. I am less than I was, in many ways. Only you don't see them."

  But when I looked up to meet his fervent eyes, his flushed, defiant face, my certainty wavered. He really didn't care about the scars, did he? Or the bands of silver. Or the loss of status, and lack of kopacks. He saw me, only me. Not the difference between me as I once was, and me as I was now. Just me.

  I swallowed hard. Only me.

  "What do you want me to do?" I whispered, uncertain.

  With a triumphant smile he leaned forward, he eased the cup from hands reluctant to give it up and clutched them instead. "Come with me, back into the world. Put on your old dresses–"

  I arched an eyebrow.

  "–your best suit then," he chuckled. "Come with me and show this world who knew you, who respected you, that you are still the same. That nothing has changed."

  I tugged a hand from his and pressed it to the scars on my face.

  "You have nothing to be ashamed of," he whispered. "So promise me you will."

  Slowly, I slipped from the chair and sank to the floor by his side. I held his face in my hands, kneeled, pressed my chest to his and felt him breathe.

  "I will," I whispered onto his lips. "I will." Then I took his mouth with my own, and his knees gave out and we fell sideways, locked together, fighting the chair legs and the pale-fringed edge of a rug.

  The floor was cold and hard, and Devich soon stood and pulled me to my feet. We made our way from wall to wall. He pressed me against them, ran his lips over my cheeks, my neck, and made no comment when he came to the thick collector's uniform. I realised he probably knew what it was, and had always known I must have been wearing it.

  I no longer cared. My bedclothes fell in the hallway. I yanked his shirt apart, impatient with buttons, and left it hanging from the handle of my bedroom door. His pants were a thick, woollen weave that must have been hot, must have been itchy. I noticed this dimly as I undid more buttons and let him step out of them. They fell smoothly.

  "What about this?" Devich hooked his fingers around the collar of my uniform.

  I stepped back from him, breathing so quickly and strongly my chest strained against the boning. Devich, wearing only underdrawers but not awkward in the least, watched the rise and fall of my breasts with satisfaction.

  "Collector's uniforms are so very interesting. At least, they are on you."

  For a moment, I hesitated. Hysteria bubbled up within me as I realised Kichlan hadn't explained the sex etiquette regarding the uniform. Was I supposed to lie with Devich with the damned thing on too?

  "Not so interesting as what's underneath." Devich grinned at my hesitation.

  Kichlan could be damned to all the Other's hells, as far as I was concerned. I stripped the uniform off. It left lines on my waist and chest, thin pink indents from the boning.

  Devich didn't say anything more. He simply wrapped his arms around my shoulders and nearly squeezed the breath from me as he kissed me.

  I didn't see him remove his underdrawers, but in a moment he was spreading me on the bed, hot mouth kissing my lips, my forehead, my cheeks and neck. And he was hot and hard against me, rubbing the inside of my thigh, smearing something warm and moist onto my skin. Gasping, I arched, thrust up my hips. But he held back.

  One hand stroked my forehead, fingers light and gentle. The other cupped my right breast, squeezed it slowly, tipped my nipple upward so he could dip his mouth down and taste me like cream.

  I groaned and clutched his buttocks. I squeezed them and tried to push him into me.

  A flash of delighted green and a soft laugh. "But, what about..." His hand left my breast to wave softly over my belly.

  "I have the necessary precautions." I didn't want to think about such pragmatic, sensible things. "Don't worry."

  "Gladly."

  Then Devich slid into me and I arched again. He bent his head, tongue flicking over my erect nipples with each thrust, until I grabbed his head and forced him to suck. To squeeze. To nibble.

  I lost all sense of time with Devich upon me. Beside me. Behind me. His touches were warm, his tongue hot, his body muscled but lithe and dexterous. He held me like I was more than a coat rack to hang his precious suit on, like I was indeed a lover. A friend.

  Finally, when I was sore and content, when my bandages were lifted and loose with sweat, he spent himself within me and lay quiescent at my side.

  For a moment I stared down at his face, young in the lamplight, without his serious or mischievous mask on. Too young and handsome for someone like me. He was an image of life before Grandeur, of its pleasures and its beauty. He did not fit with the fallen and scarred.

  I placed a soft kiss on his lips. He stirred enough to return it, but I eased him down and told him to sleep.

  They were in a small jar at the back of one of the drawers in my dresser. I had bought them years ago, and hoped the pions were still active.

  The pills were small and bright red. As I held one up I remembered the way they used to look, filled with buzzing lights, a hive of activity.

  I swallowed the pill with a dry throat, and returned to Devich's side. As I lay flat, hand on my naked belly, I hoped the pions from that pill were already doing their work. I hoped they were destroying the possibility of any child that might have come from Devich and me.