19.

 
 
 
 

Devich stood on the hastily erected stage accepting thanks he in no way deserved. Not only because he was just a technician, and it was the collectors who had saved Movoc-under-Keeper, but because he was one of the scheming veche bastards who had put her in peril in the first place.

  Not that Kichlan and I had mentioned that to anyone.

  Still, it made me furious to see Devich up there. To listen to the veche representatives give speeches thanking all of us who were involved in such a rescue, from technicians to collectors. An old man, with a large bear-face hanging from a chain about his neck, droned on about the sacrifice we had made. I knew what he really meant. The veche had sacrificed us. I didn't know the number of collectors who had been killed by the Keeper's debristwin. But the injured surrounded us. Teams missing members. So many with bandages, splints, even though the veche had commissioned healers to help us.

  We were no exception. Mizra and Uzdal had suffered fractures where the Keeper's dark twin had thrown down their shield. Sofia had a broken rib, Kichlan an arm. Only Lad and Natasha had escaped unscathed. I wore my new scars in silver.

  "Just be glad Lad isn't up there," Kichlan whispered in my ear and touched a finger to the fists I hadn't realised I was making. "He doesn't need to draw any more attention to himself."

  He had a point. Lad stood beside his brother, humming and rocking and generally paying no attention to anything that was going on. I wondered if Keeper was here, somewhere. If this was some strange form of communication.

  Puppet men shared the stage with the veche and the technicians. They stood, so still against the wind even their jackets didn't seem to move. Vacant eyes stared out over the small crowd. Since we had been found at Grandeur's grave the puppet men had left us alone, but they certainly hadn't disappeared. They were always there. I caught sight of them on the edges of crowds, listening to healers give reports, following the more important members of the national veche who had come to survey the damage. Always there, always watching.

  The speeches droned on. Technicians applauded. The debris collectors around me watched the proceedings with apathy.

  Finally, thin ranks of pathetic trumpeters sounded an ending to the torment, and the puppets and veche representatives filed into waiting coaches. The technicians milled around, aimless without ceremony.

  Devich looked at me, and approached the end of the stage. "Tanyana?"

  Kichlan stepped between us, drawing Lad's concerned attention. "You need to get out of here," Kichlan said in a low, dog-growl voice I had never heard him use. "Now."

  "Bro?" Lad whimpered.

  I placed a hand on Kichlan's shoulder and drew him back. He flashed me a surprised look. "Look after your brother," I murmured. And as he turned to Lad, who had began wringing his large, fretful hands, I met Devich's eyes.

  He looked haunted. A man who had seen things he never wanted to see. "Tanyana?"

  Or done them, perhaps?

  At my back I could feel the presence of my team. Even injured and scarred they were a strength to me. This was that new life, I realised, the one the puppet men and their debris-creature had threatened to take away. But they had failed, and so would Devich.

  "What do you want?" I asked him, trying to keep my tone civil.

  "I–" He stretched his hands out to touch me, I kept out of his reach. He dropped his arms and his head, and I quelled a lurch in my heart, a pull of pity. "I'm sorry."

  "Is that all you have to say?"

  "I didn't have a choice! You must believe me. You know what they are like now, you know I didn't have a choice."

  "Pathetic." Kichlan hooked an arm through mine. "You're pathetic."

  Devich nodded. "I know."

  "And we will not waste our time on you." Kichlan smiled down at me, like sunshine against Devich's low clouds. "Shall we go?"

  That was the best thing I'd heard all day. I smiled back. "Yes, let's." Without another glance at Devich's lowered head, I allowed Kichlan and his brother to bundle me away from the stage. Sofia, Uzdal and Mizra said their farewells to us at the Tear. Natasha had wandered away without a word. Kichlan, Lad and I boarded one of the few ferries still running, and headed for the city centre.

  The wind that rose up from the Tear was fresh; it was clean. And Other, did Movoc-under-Keeper need it. No amount of scrubbing could clean away all the dirt that had spilled into the city. No amount of spring rain could wash all the blood.

  I gripped the railing, tipped my head into the wind, and breathed deeply.

  The silver notches in my ear and at the back of my head buzzed pleasantly in the cold. The silver-filled scars in my arms were too rugged up to join in.

  "Careful," Lad said, by my side. "Don't fall."

  I grinned at him and leaned back, hands firmly on the rail. "I won't."

  Movoc was taking a long time to heal. Gradually, its population returned. But they returned to devastated houses and infrastructure so ravaged it would take moons to rebuild. And there was worse. Those few too young, old, poor or sick to escape had suffered terrible fates when the pion world went mad. The stories that ran through the survivors were horrifying. A child, huddled and hiding in her bathroom, drowned when uncontrollable pions filled the room with water. An injured man pulled apart by the roaming threads of a tattered factory system. An old woman on Darkwater found burned alive by the pions of her own heater. I often wondered if that was her we had heard screaming. Mostly I tried not to think about it.

  We left the ferry on a quiet, almost empty dock. "Come on." Kichlan, good hand in the pocket of his coat, hunched against the wind.

  "Any rush?" I asked, but peeled myself away from the river anyway. I held Lad's hand and together we walked away from the Tear.

  Kichlan shifted his shoulder. His arm was hurting again, I suspected. The bone had been healed, the veche had seen to that, but it ached regardless. It would take time, the healer had said. We had waited more than a day at Grandeur's grave before anyone had found us. It was a long time for a wound to fester.

  A small group of men stared at us as we walked. They recognised the suits on our necks, and wrists, and bowed. Thanks, I realised, could make up for a lot of things when you got them.

  And we were getting a lot at the moment.

  "It won't last," Kichlan said. "They'll forget, eventually, and go back to ignoring us."

  "All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts." I nodded to the men, and was graced with a hesitant smile.

  Lad ran ahead, gaping at the grand veche buildings, sitting on every bench, picking pale spring flowers. I was glad the city remained so empty. There were few eyes to be drawn to him, few attentions to grab.

  "What do we do now?" Kichlan asked as we both watched Lad play.

  He had asked this question more times in the past sixweek and one than I could count. I still didn't have an answer.

  "Our duty. What else would we do?" I asked.

  "You know what I mean."

  I did. I had no doubt the puppet men would set up another test. I was their weapon, wasn't I? The veche's precious investment. And the Keeper's warnings would not leave me, his talk of doors and worlds and the kind of destruction I could only sum up with fear for everything. Whatever the puppet men and the veche tried next, we had to resist it. Because I would not be used. And because the Keeper's fear and pain was real, too real.

  But I couldn't do any of that right now. I said, "Our duty. I mean it. Do what we do, what you have always done. Save the city from its waste. Give the people a reason to thank us." My voice dropped. "Keep Lad away from them." Them had weight on it. From now on them could only mean the veche's men, the puppet men. Or whatever Other-cursed creatures they were.

  "They will come again."

  "Then we will be ready, and we will survive."

  I was not a weapon, and I would not let the veche turn me into one. The Keeper had put his faith in me. Kichlan believed in me now, and Lad always had. This time, we knew the puppet men would be coming for us. This time, we would be ready.

  I would not fall again.

  We crossed beneath the bluestone arch and into gardens. I smiled as I watched the haggard expression fall from Kichlan's face.

  "Tanyana," he whispered.

  My gallery rose out from behind the foliage in icecream scoops and cream. It was closed, of course, but seemed to have come through the whole event unscathed. There was little in the way of infrastructure here, I supposed. Most of the old city, after all, had not been built with pions.

  "Oh, it's beautiful," Kichlan said, his fingers reaching, apparently without thought, to tangle in mine.

  "It looks nice enough to eat," Lad said.

  I laughed. "We'll have to return when it's open. You should see what they put inside."

  Streaks of deep blue gave the gallery an early-morningsky hue. It was beautiful, and delectable, and permanent. And a memory. A pleasant one, yes, but gone.

  And I didn't much mind.