12.

 
 
 
 

We kept the details from Lad. All he needed to know, Kichlan said, was that I had left my old home and needed a new one. He didn't need to know about large and violent men who burst into the one place you're supposed to feel safe, and take your life away. I rather thought I didn't need to know about such things either, but the choice had, unfortunately, been long taken away.

  Wetday and Thunderday I spent under Eugeny's herbobsessed supervision, not allowed to move, not allowed to do much other than drink strong doses of various herbal tea and eat stew until I was tired of the very sight of it. For Frostday and Olday, Eugeny pronounced me well enough to join Kichlan and Lad in the collecting field. The team showed me small sympathy.

  "About time you toughened up to the cold," Sofia told me with a superior sneer.

  "I've spent half of my life with a fever because of this Otherdamned collecting," Natasha muttered. "Get used to it."

  I gathered Kichlan hadn't told them the whole story, and rather marvelled that Lad hadn't let my homelessness slip. I felt a deep thankfulness to both of them.

  By Rest, I was chafing to be free of Eugeny's scrutiny and stew, and wished to be a burden on Kichlan no longer.

  Lad woke me early, tangling and stomping through the drying clothes. "Tan! Early morning, Tan! Time to get going."

  My bed had once again been made before the fireplace. I levered myself up on my elbow and squinted at him. "Today is called Rest, Lad. Rest. Don't you get the hint?"

  He blinked at me, bird-like, studying me separately with each eye. "But it's time to go. Kich said we won't have time if we don't go."

  "Go where?" I sat up and stretched. No amount of use could make this temporary bed comfortable.

  "To find you a home, of course," Kichlan said, from behind veils of drying sheets. "What did you think we were going to do?"

  In all honesty, I hadn't considered it. I scooped my clothes from the floor and struggled into them. After my late-night flight, two days of rest and two days of collecting, these clothes needed a wash the way a drowning woman needs air. Unfortunately, they were the only ones I had.

  "Continue to enjoy my company for a little while longer?" I swept past the clothes, Lad in tow, and smiled at Kichlan where he leaned against the door frame.

  He flashed a grin that reminded me, for a moment, of Devich. My stomach lurched and I wondered if he was missing me. If he had called at my apartment and found the place ransacked, blood-splattered and empty. If he feared for me.

  "A man can only do that for so long." Kichlan chuckled. "Before he starts to lose his mind."

  Lad let out an explosive laugh, although I wasn't entirely convinced he understood us.

  "No houses on an empty stomach!" Eugeny called from the kitchen. As Lad ran in, the old man peered at us across the hallway. "And if you two keep that up I'm going to lose my appetite."

  I felt hot and flushed as I spooned runny, honey-drizzled porridge into my mouth. Judging from Kichlan's red face he felt much the same, but I could guarantee he wasn't as confused about it. That he didn't have Devich, out there, somewhere.

  Once we were fed to Eugeny's satisfaction, he tipped us out of the house in a way that made me feel like a child sent to play. "You remember what I told you?" he asked Kichlan. "Here." Eugeny placed a heavy bundle, wrapped in felt, in my hands. "I'm afraid you'll need that." Then he closed the door on my forming question, and left us milling on the step.

  "Shall we?" Kichlan gestured to the street, as I pried the edge of the material apart, and recognised my book nestled within.

  I covered it, and ran a hand slowly down the spine. It was worth enough kopacks to build a life with, surely. And in a way, it was a fair bargain. An old life for a new one.

  "You know you don't have any choice." Pragmatism was somehow better than sympathy, at least coming from Kichlan.

  I held the book tightly against my chest, and said, "I know."

  We walked in silence below a bright blue sky. Cold fingers of wind played with the flaps of the overlarge jacket Kichlan had lent me. The ice had melted, and the faint colours of small flowers could be seen peeking through cracks in the poorly tended paving stones.

  "What is it?" Kichlan asked. He seemed to know where we were going, and I had been following him out of unconscious habit, seeing the city only as a grey haze, unclear and unreal. "The book. Why does it mean so much?"

  "A gift," I answered him. "A symbol."

  "It's a book," Lad added helpfully. "It's a book, isn't it, bro?"

  "Sometimes books are more than books," Kichlan said. He hesitated. "It's rare, Tanyana. Isn't it?"

  "You know that already." I sighed, and gave in. "Eldar Velchev was a leader in the critical circle revolution. He composed a set of principles for nine point pion circles that architects still use today. The usual concerns: weight and pressure, distribution of mass. And the broader ones like propriety and symmetry. But more so, he applied the same concerns to the pion circle working the building. He came to realise that a circle must also be balanced, that too much pressure on one point could destabilise–" I broke off. Two blank faces were staring at me, as though I'd started gibbering in another tongue.

  "Um... What?" Lad asked.

  "My thoughts exactly," Kichlan added.

  "Right." I shifted the book into my armpit to free up my hands. "When I was a pion-binder, I was an architect. I designed and made buildings."

  "Like these?" Lad pointed to an unnaturally ugly mound of cement that, I supposed, could have passed for apartments if one squinted or covered an eye.

  "No." I stuck out my tongue and made him laugh. "No, I made beautiful things. Big things. Important things." Important things? I shook my head at myself. "This book is written by the man who started the pion revolution in architecture. At the same time as they were working out how to put together factories to generate and distribute light and heat, he worked out how to build cities like the one we live in."

  Both brothers nodded.

  "Well, this book is all his theories. Written in his own hand, with his own notes. It's very old, like Kichlan said, and very rare. And to an architect, it's probably the most important thing ever written."

  Kichlan was silent. Lad, after a moment, said, "Ooh." A long and low exclamation, like he'd eaten something particularly delicious. "Why do you have it then, Tan?"

  His acute question surprised Kichlan and myself, and we exchanged a quick, shocked glance. "Well, Lad." I reached up to pat him on the shoulder. "I built something very special. Very beautiful." My throat choked before I could catch it.

  "Very important?" Lad continued.

  "I suppose you could say that." Rueful, I smiled at my own words in his mouth. "When it was finished the people who had asked me to build it gave me this." I patted the book awkwardly. "To say thank you."

  "That was very nice," Lad said, tone approving.

  "It was indeed."

  After a moment, Kichlan said, very softly, "We would like to see this building, one day."

  After a longer moment, I answered, just as softly, "One day, perhaps."

  "Where are we going now, bro?" Lad asked. He glanced between the road and the book under my arm, as though gradually putting the two factors together.

  "Where are we taking Tan's special book?"

  Kichlan's shoulders sagged as he answered. "To a nice man that Eugeny knows who will buy it from Tanyana. So she can have somewhere new to live."

  "Oh." The glances grew worried. "But, bro, it's a special book. It's a thank-you book. Tan shouldn't sell it. Should you, Tan?"

  I patted Lad again. "A home is better than a book."

  "You could stay with us then, and keep the book."

  My stomach gave a different lurch, a fluttering as Lad tugged at my heart. "That's a lovely thing to say. But there shouldn't be too many people in Eugeny's house. It wouldn't be fair."

  "And Tanyana deserves her own home, don't you think?" Kichlan added.

  Glum, Lad nodded. "Guess."

  The man Eugeny trusted owned an odd little shop, built of wooden offcuts and sandstone fragments held together by a clay-based mortar. Its windows were made of many small shards of different types of glass, woven together with lead, and they caught the morning sunlight in a mesh of light and colour. Stone steps led up to a wooden door with an old iron handle, and a sign scrawled into the wood that I could not understand. Strange signage for a shop. It sat in small, squat contrast to the rest of the street: from the hulking apartments to a landau crawling its way past us on invisible insect legs.

  "Lad, will you wait here?" Kichlan asked.

  I expected his younger brother to pout, but Lad, still glum, huddled himself out of the wind beside the stone steps.

  I followed Kichlan through the door and into a quiet, dim world.

  "We don't need Lad trying to convince you not to sell it the entire time," Kichlan murmured as he threaded his way between dark shelves. "Or knocking over only the Other knows what."

  I grunted in agreement.

  The shop was a hushed place, where any voices raised above a whisper didn't belong. It smelled of dust, cracking leather and silver polish. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall – at least as far as the short distance I could see – was full of shelves. These were built of wood that looked like it had, at one time, been dark and smooth, but was now so heavily laden with dust it was hard to tell colour or texture beneath the grey. All the shelves were full of pots, leather straps, old porcelain, dolls or spoons and more, and all were covered in their own layers of dust or marked with rust spots and stains. The further we crept into this rubbish graveyard, however, the thinner the dust became, until the shelves opened up to flickering light and an ancient man standing behind a desk. The desk itself was equally laden, but instead of the haphazard growth of accumulated time, the desk was clean, neat and organised. A long curved sword, with a golden tassel on the hilt, glinted beneath a glass case along the front of the desk. A full set of plates painted with dancing bears was arranged for a meal at one end. The other was heavy with leather-bound, gold-embossed books. These caught my eye more than the old man. They were ancient, but the gold more legible than that under my arm, and the leather softer. I caught some words on the spines: Principles of the Six Pointed Circle, Rural Classes and the Pion Revolution, Old Varsnia: A History.

  The old man had been tinkering with something like a watch. Its face was dark, the glass old and misted, and the inside opened up to reveal dozens of tiny gears and screws. He set it aside as he stood, hands at his back, a smile creasing his weathered and wrinkled face.

  "Welcome," he said. "May the bear be ever at your back." He rocked on his feet and chuckled. I gathered Kichlan's expression was as confused as mine. "Old saying, that one. A greeting, or a farewell perhaps, when meeting travellers on the road. Translation isn't the best, so we cannot be sure."

  "Um, hello," Kichlan stammered. Perhaps Lad, with his easily infectious enthusiasm, might have done us some good. "Eugeny sent us."

  "Ah!" He unclasped his hands and reached over the desk to shake ours with a remarkable display of dexterity for someone so wizened. "Eugeny, you say? How is the old man?"

  "He's well," Kichlan answered, and cast me a by-theOther-say-something expression.

  I responded, "He sent us, sir...?"

  "Yicor." The old man took my hand a second time and held it for longer than strictly necessary. "To you, my dear, I am Yicor."

  I tried to look as flattered and feminine as possible, although I had little in the way of experience. "Eugeny sent us, sir, with something you might be interested in."

  "Well, he was right." And Yicor took my hand again.

  Beside me, Kichlan let out a sigh.

  "I meant this, sir." I shifted the book into my hands. "We have something to sell, something he believed would be to your tastes." Oh, Other I hoped so.

  "Well, let us see."

  I handed the book across Yicor's desk. Its weight left a lightness in my palm when he took it, a brush of air and a understanding that I would never hold anything as valuable again.

  "What have you got here?" Yicor unwrapped the book, lifted it, and turned it to examine the spine. His indulgent smile faded to a thin line as he read, and his breath slowed. Eyes riveted to the worn lettering on the cover, he placed the book on his desk, and tenderly opened the pages. His fingers shook as they caressed the lines of finely written words, stopping to hover above the pencilled-in notes as though they were precious, too fine and beautiful to sully with touch.

  Finally, he lifted his eyes to mine. I felt open to them, bare, and I knew Yicor saw right into me, into scars deeper than those on my flesh.

  "Are you certain you wish to sell this?" he asked, although he knew the answer. Why else would I have brought it here, why else let anyone else touch it, caress it, covet it?

  "I must." It wasn't a real answer, but he accepted it.

  "Then my old friend is right." He closed the book carefully, his shivering fingers gliding over the worn leather. "This is something very much to my tastes. And I will buy it from you, although it grieves me to be forced to do so."

  The shop was too stuffy, the shelves too full and dustcoated. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be out in Movoc's crisp sunshine and stinging air.

  Kichlan, oblivious to the lines of tension strung up between Yicor's eyes and mine, clapped his hands. "Glad to hear it. Now–" he rubbed them together "–how much?"

  I turned my head away. I didn't want to hear them haggle over my old life. But Yicor leaned forward, while keeping one hand on the book's cover, and touched my wrist. "How much do you need?"

  "To live this life?" I didn't truly know.

  Kichlan, however, had begun ticking off his fingers. "You'll need a surety payment, that'll be four hundred and fifty, I'd say. Three sixnights' lease is the usual. Of course, the more you have to spare the better you'll be. What else? Clothes, food, something to sleep on."

  Yicor eyed him with pity and I realised how keenly the old man understood me. How much more he had seen, in that single glance, than Kichlan had for all his lecturing. "I cannot offer you kopacks for something so priceless. At least, I cannot offer you kopacks alone."

  Like a dog on a leash, Kichlan bristled.

  "What will you offer me then?" I lifted a hand to stay Kichlan and focused on the shop owner.

  "Somewhere to house you," Yicor said.

  "We can do that on our own," Kichlan interrupted. What about this man and his generosity had Kichlan so agitated?

  "Somewhere safe, around people I know and can vouch for. Clean, well kept, warm. With furniture and a place to sleep."

  I rather liked the sound of it. Kichlan, sulking, crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders.

  "For I cannot pay you the worth of this." Yicor's hand had not left the book cover. "I only hope to fill the gap with what help I can."

  I nodded. "How much, then?"

  "Twenty-five thousand is all I can spare."

  Kichlan dropped his arms, and whispered a curse under his breath. But I knew how poor a sum that was for something like the Principles of Architecture. Yicor knew it too.

  "I accept," I said, and gave the old man a small and rather shaking smile. "As long as you find it a good home." And, I hoped, not the home of someone I knew, who would realise it was mine and how much further I had fallen.

  "Of course," Yicor said, his eyes solemn.

  I drew my rublie, sad and clunky in its crutch, from my pants. When I held it out to Yicor and he pressed his own against it, only then did I understand. For his was also sheathed in that sad cover, although it read considerably more than the five kopacks left in mine.

  Kichlan, looking away, already muttering about the best way to spend my sudden wealth, didn't notice. Yicor and I shared our understanding alone.

  "Where is your team stationed?" Yicor asked casually, as we watched the bright numbers on our rublies flick over.

  "Eighth Keepersrill," I answered.

  He seemed to think for a moment, and once my rublie was full, he found a scrap of paper in a desk drawer. He scribbled an address using a quill and ink from a crystalline glass jar. The entire odd and antiquated process fit in perfectly with the atmosphere in the shop. "Somewhere close, somewhere safe." His letters were flourished, l's high and g's curled. "Try them."

  Kichlan eyed the paper like it was mess at the bottom of his shoe. "I'll tell Eugeny you were helpful." He rested his eyes on me. "We'll wait outside for you to finish." He strode from the shop.

  Yicor handed me the piece of paper. "Your friend should know better. You need somewhere you can be protected. He just does not want to admit it."

  My fingers stilled, touching the paper lightly. "Protected?"

  Yicor clicked his tongue. "Eugeny sent you to me for a reason, more important than the book. Perhaps you are involved in something you do not understand. Perhaps there are people, strange people, dogging your heels. Perhaps they appear when you do not expect them. Perhaps they are watching, always watching. He sent you to me, so we can watch you too."

  I folded and tucked the paper into my shirt, my hand shaking. "Thank you." My voice shook too. "How did you know all that? You're not even a collector, are you?"

  Smiling, Yicor lifted his arm so his shirtsleeve fell back to reveal a bare wrist. "Not all of us are."

  "How is that possible?" How had he fallen through the cracks while I was caught, shackled, and forced to roam the streets for a pittance of kopacks and less respect? How many of us ran free?

  "Just good luck." And he would say no more. So I thanked him again and left him with the last piece of my old life, knowing I would never see it again, and hoping it would rest somewhere safe now, behind glass.

Kichlan was unimpressed by Yicor's help. "What do you think he knows that I don't?" he huffed as we walked away from the shop. Lad stared sadly at the empty space under my arm.

  "He's one of us, you realise," I said, keeping my voice low and hoping Lad was too concerned by the book's disappearance to listen carefully. "A coll– no, not a collector. But he can see debris, not pions."

  Kichlan puffed up his cheeks and let out an explosive breath. It gave him a froggish air. "Hardly."

  "But he is. You didn't see his rublie!"

  "Didn't need to."

  I was shocked by this. "You knew?"

  "Of course." Kichlan scowled down at me. Just like old times. "Not all of us–" he waved his hand and light flickered from the silver on his wrist "–do the right, the responsible thing."

  "Oh." Still, how exactly did one avoid doing the right, responsible thing? How did one escape the puppet men? The strange men that were, indeed, forever watching, following, appearing. And to be protected against them, to be watched by more faces I did not know in shadows of their own, it hardly filled me with confidence. If anything, it was worse. "Don't you wish you had that kind of freedom?"

  Kichlan looked at Lad as he answered. "Hardly. We have a purpose, Tanyana. Something more worthwhile than selling ancient junk."

  "I don't think a book worth twenty-five thousand could be considered junk."

  "You know what I mean."

  True, I had never seen such a comprehensive collection of dust.

  "Still." I flipped the scrap of paper over, reading the address yet another time. "I want to try his suggestion first."

  "If you'd rather trust an old man you hardly know more than me, that's your prerogative."

  I sighed. "I suppose you already had a plan, did you? Knew exactly where to look?"

  Kichlan said, "You could say that."

  "You were going to wander around and hope we found something, weren't you?"

  "What have you got against spontaneity?"

  "Will you help me find this place? Groundlevel, 754 Lightbrick. It's the seventh Effluent, Section ten. Should be close."

  "Sounds delightful."

  "Will you help?" I asked.

  "Of course we will."

  "Of course!" Lad broke in with a grin. I could tell by the lightness in his face, the ease, that he hadn't understood a word of our argument. "We're here to help Tan, aren't we, bro?"

  "What if she doesn't need our help?" Kichlan asked him, words lightened by the twist in the corner of his mouth. "What if she doesn't want it?"

  "Of course I do." I hooked an arm into Lad's elbow. He squeezed my arm against his chest. "I always do."

  All roads led to the Tear, and so did all rills and effluents. So we headed to the river to get our bearings. The sharp sun warmed us as the morning aged, tempering the crisp wind and melting what was left of the ice, huddled in windows, and the muddy snow crowding the edge of the road. A large street cleaner ghosted by, prying out dust from the walls and muck from the street with wideranging tentacles of now-invisible light. Kichlan and I averted our eyes: there was something disturbing about a floating wedge of clear honeycomb gradually filling itself with dirt. Lad watched it avidly.

  "Spring's finally here," I mused, because it was better than arguing about Yicor.

  "Wouldn't have known it this morning," Kichlan answered.

  I nodded. "And it's taken its time."

  "Hasn't it? Didn't think this winter was ever going to leave us."

  Some conversations are so much safer. Lad, however, was not so interested in the weather. He yawned widely. Pointedly, I thought.

  "Not boring you, are we?" I chuckled, and squeezed his arm.

  He blinked in an overexaggerated, tired way. "Where are we going, Tan?"

  I showed him the piece of paper. "Here is someone who can help us."

  Lad barely glanced at it. "Oh." His hands fidgeted.

  "Your turn," Kichlan murmured out of the side of his mouth. "He's getting bored."

  "My turn to do what?"

  "Entertain him." He grinned, vicious and self-satisfied. "Call it payment."

  I remembered all the effort Mizra, Kichlan and Sofia usually went to, to capture Lad's attention. Stories, speeches, and constant praise. It really was a lot of work to keep him in a manageable mood through the day.

  Was I up to the challenge? "You know lots of stories, don't you, Lad?"

  He brightened instantly, as though I'd opened a shutter and let the sunlight in on his face. "Mizra tells them," he said. "I listen and I remember them. Don't I, bro?"

  "You do." Kichlan cupped his hand and said in a loud, exaggerated whisper, "He's very good at it."

  Lad's light swelled.

  "Well, maybe I can tell you a story you don't know," I said.

  "I know a lot of them," Lad replied.

  "He does," Kichlan said, supporting his brother and enjoying every minute of this. "That would be difficult."

  "Hmm." I pressed a finger to my lips and pretended to be thinking hard. Lad's eyes were wide, his gaze and riveted on my face. "No, I think you won't know this one. I think I'm going to tell it to you, and see if you do."

  "Oh, will you?" Lad scrabbled for my hand, nearly crushing it as he squeezed. "Yes, please!"

  "Careful," Kichlan warned him.

  Lad released my hand instantly and stroked the red skin, his motions awkward, like his hand was too big for his arm to control with any precision.

  "Yes," I said. "I will."

  I waited a moment to collect my thoughts as Lad patted away. I knew few myths and children's stories, but I had learned things in my time at university neither of them would have heard. The history of the revolution, and the great men who made it happen.

  "This happened a long time ago," I began. And didn't get far.

  "They all do," Lad interrupted.

  "I can't tell the story if you are talking, Lad."

  He pressed a hand against his mouth.

  "That's better," I said, with an approving nod.

  Kichlan turned away to hide a smile.

  "Now," I continued. "This happened a long time ago. Before there were cities like Movoc-under-Keeper. When the veche was young, and made up of lots of groups of people who didn't agree with each other. Before lights in the streets, before factories, carriages or debris collectors." I wasn't certain of the last one, but it sounded likely. "Before all this there were men who wanted to create these things. And who worked very hard to make them."

  Lad dropped his hand long enough to ask, "Like the book?"

  "Yes, very good. Like the man who wrote the book."

  He clapped his hand tighter over his face.

  "One of these men was Uric. He came from outside of Varsnia, so he was strange. He thought he was as smart as a Varsnian, and as strong, and maybe he was. For a while."

  Both brothers were watching me now, intent.

  "He was a pion-binder," I continued the story. "And a very good one. But he wanted to be better. And that was when everything went wrong."

  "Isn't it always," Kichlan muttered to himself. Lad shushed him, blowing spittle into the air.

  "He brought together twelve other binders, all as strong as he. And he said, 'If you make a circle around me, all twelve of you, then we will be able to do great things. Greater than anyone has done before'."

  This was the point in the story where pion-binders knew what was going to happen to poor Uric, for his foolishness and pride. Kichlan and Lad continued to listen, expressions blank.

  I continued, "But the pion-binders were Varsnian, and they knew no circle could be larger than nine–"

  "Why?" Lad interrupted.

  "Because that's the limit," I answered. "Any more and the circle will be unstable."

  "But why?"

  "Do you want to hear the story?"

  The hand clamped back on his face.

  "So they told Uric that what he wanted was impossible. But Uric laughed; he said, 'Just because it has not been done by a Varsnian does not make it impossible. Work with me, and you will see a miracle.' And the pion-binders agreed only so they could be proven right."

  "Oh dear," Kichlan drawled. "He was prideful, wasn't he? And rude. I think I know what this particular myth is trying to teach us."

  "This is not a myth," I snapped at him. "It happened. It's in the books, recorded by people who were there at the time."

  "Mizra says his stories happened too," Lad said. "The ones with knights and swords and how they rescue people and sometimes they get hurt."

  "My point exactly," Kichlan muttered.

  I rubbed my forehead with my free hand. Whose idea was this again?

  "Then what happened, Tan?" Lad, less able to foresee the morally dictated ending than his brother, squeezed me again, expression intent.

  I gave up trying to argue the difference between history and legend. "Uric, unable to be dissuaded, set up his twelve point circle. The pion-binders, for all they didn't believe him, really did try to help. For a moment, the circle was bright, brighter than any ever made. It shone like the sun in the village centre, and all the windows were opened, and people peered out to see the light. It shone with many colours, but the centre, where Uric stood, was as white as a star."

  "It sounds beautiful," Lad said.

  "It would have been." I didn't tell him he would not have seen it, that none of us would have seen more than thirteen people making a circle with a dot in the centre, standing still, talking to themselves and possibly moving their hands.

  "For a moment the circle shone. But the Varsnian binders were right, and Uric should have listened to them, because the circle was too bright, too strong, and after that moment it started to collapse. Uric was at the centre and it all fell on him."

  "Oh no," Lad gasped.

  "Oh no, indeed." I left it hanging.

  "What happened?" Lad squeaked out after a moment of silence and tension.

  "If he goes home healthy and well to his family, I'm going to eat that." Kichlan pointed to a particularly filthy heap of grey snow squeezed between the corners of two buildings. The street cleaner must not have taken this path, then.

  I ignored him. "No one really knows," I answered Lad. "All the colour and the shine rushed into the centre, piled on top of him, and when it faded away Uric was never the same."

  "He was hurt?" Lad's large eyes were frightened.

  I squeezed his hand for support. "Not his body, there wasn't a scratch on him. But when the light was gone and the pion-binders tried to talk to him, they discovered he had lost his mind."

  Lad blinked. "Lost it? How?"

  I had to smile. "He went crazy, Lad. Do you know what that means?"

  He shook his head.

  "It means he couldn't do the things he used to do, it means he started seeing things, hearing voices that weren't there–" I stopped. Hearing voices? Oh, Other, hearing voices?

  Why hadn't I realised it? This wasn't the right story to tell Lad, it wasn't the right story to tell myself. What had happened to Uric in the centre of that twelve pointed circle? I knew now.

  He had fallen, and he had fallen hard.

  Lad, considering the story for himself, hadn't noticed my concern. "That's not good. It's not good to listen to strange voices you hear, is it, bro?"

  "No. We know that already, don't we, Lad?" Kichlan was staring at me, so focused I could feel him like two hot points on my forehead. "We didn't need a story to tell us that."

  "No." Lad thought for a moment more. "What did he see?"

  I said, "A man." Not debris. No grains or planes or anything he had described as dog turds. A man.

  "There's a man over there." Lad pointed to an elderly man wrapped in a large coat the colour of dying grass. He was hunched against the wind, and shielding his eyes from the sun with a flat hand.

  "Yes, but he saw a man no one else could see. He heard a man no one else could hear. A man who wasn't there." Saying it out loud like that cooled my sudden panic. Uric had gone mad, it was documented, it was fact. He hadn't become a debris collector; he had started seeing people who didn't exist. He had forced the pions too hard, and they had broken him.

  Still. I shivered as the river wind's fingers started up their prying again. All those pions, too many to control: the image was familiar. Were they crimson, those pions? Had he dug too deep inside reality and pried free a furious force that shattered his circle, destroyed his systems, and turned on him? He hadn't fallen eight hundred feet onto a bed of glass, but had they pushed him regardless? Forced him down onto that cobblestone floor until something inside him broke, something vital that no one, it seemed, had ever understood? And the voices, I couldn't ignore the voices.

  I glanced at Lad. A frown creased the edges of his eyebrows. I wasn't the only one who had heard them, was I?

  "I think that's a good story," Lad finally decided, his voice firm. "It's like Mizra's stories."

  "It is," Kichlan added softly. "A lot like the myths."

  I groaned. We weren't here again, were we? "Except this is real. They locked him up in the ruins of a Movocian castle, three bells' journey from Movoc-under-Keeper. Kept him there until he died, trying to work out what happened to him. They never did."

  "Really?" Kichlan kept his voice low. "How fascinating."

  It was highbell by the time we came to the seventh Effluent. Beneath us, water rushed into the Tear as we followed the slightly raised path. A vent at every five yards released warm, rank air to steam into the cool wind.

  "Not exactly pleasant," Kichlan murmured, pinching the end of his nose between two fingers.

  I said, "I won't be living on top of one of those, you do realise that." The buildings lining the seventh Effluent were painted an insipid grey, and none had windows over the raised path.

  "It's dull."

  "It's not much different from a rill." I had a feeling the houses could be built of marble with gold window-lattices and Kichlan still would have disapproved.

  "They're all pale, how are you supposed to find Lightbrick?"

  "They have street signs here. That always helps." Apart from the vents and the dead-skin colours, the seventh Effluent was in much better condition than the eighth Keepersrill. No rubbish crowding the streets, signs still intact, buildings standing. I kept that observation to myself.

  Lightbrick wasn't too far along the seventh Effluent, and it didn't take long to find 754. The numbers were clear here, and closer together than along the eighth Keepersrill.

  "They're small."

  I sighed, and didn't bother answering.

  Number 754 was wider than the rest of the tall thin buildings, and reminded me of Eugeny's out-of-place home. It had only two stories, with a set of rusty and rather unsteady iron stairs twisting tightly up to the second level.

  "Those don't look safe," Kichlan muttered as I knocked on a wooden door with peeling and faded white paint. Had he noticed the heavy iron lock?

  The door opened slowly, creaking like an old man, and I had enough time to glance at the paper in my hand. A large woman, with ruddy cheeks and silver-laced blonde hair pinned up beneath a blue scarf, peered around the slightly open door. She didn't speak, but her eyes were sharp and settled on each of us.

  "Valya?" I asked.

  In silence, she continued to stare at me.

  "Um, Yicor gave me your name–"

  "Yicor did? Well–" she pulled the door open with a sudden burst of speed and strength. "Then in you get." She shuffled off into a warm, dark hallway.

  I hesitated at the doorway.

  "Hurry now!" she called. "You look hungry. You will all eat."

  That was enough for Lad. He barrelled his way inside and we had to follow.

  The house smelled of food, not the constant stewsmell of Eugeny's home, but something vastly more complicated. Charred chicken skin, fresh bread, potatoes baking and hot olive oil all surged around us.

  "Got anything to say now?" I muttered to Kichlan as we followed Lad, who was evidently following his nose to the kitchen.

  Strangely enough, he was silent.

  Lad, it seemed, could follow food with as much accuracy as he could find debris. He wound his way easily through a dim living room, another small and cool room lined with shelves laden with jars of preserves, and into a wide kitchen. A long table took up most of the space, and the cool wind was blowing in from an open window above an old gas stove.

  Valya stood at the bench, slicing bread that steamed its freshness with each new cut. "You sit," she commanded us without turning around. Soon she placed the bread, sliced and warm, with a tub of garlic-infused lard on the table. "Begin," she told us, and Lad launched into the food as though he had not eaten for days. This was soon joined by a porridge-like dish of chicken, carrot and buckwheat.

  Then she sat at the head of the table and watched us eat. Her sharp eyes took in every bite. "He is a good eater, that one," she said, pointing to Lad, who would have happily eaten everything himself if Kichlan weren't keeping him in check. "I like that. Good eater is a good person."

  Lad beamed at her, mouth full. Kichlan ran his hand over his face, and was forced to protect his own bowl from his brother.

  "So." Valya turned to me. "You are here for upstairs. Yes, you may stay." Her eyes narrowed. "But you should eat more."

  After at least two sixnights and one of living on tea, the occasional stew and Devich's charity, I was finding the rich food difficult. But more than that, Valya's sharp eyes and assumptions were putting me off my appetite.

  "You don't even know who we are." I put my fork down and turned in my chair to face her. I did not eat on command.

  "I know enough." She straightened. "You are collectors, all three of you. Yicor sent you, so he believes you need help. You are the one who will stay here, your friends already have a home of their own."

  Lad stopped eating long enough to show the halfchewed food in his mouth. "How did you know all that?"

  "I have eyes, boy."

  And she called Lad, who hulked above all of us, a boy. Those eyes were sharp.

  "Yicor's recommendation and our collecting suits I can understand," Kichlan said, voice soft. "But how did you know we weren't also asking to stay?"

  Valya gave the first smile I had seen on her face. It wasn't joyful, more a triumphant twist of the lips. "She doesn't eat enough. She isn't happy, she isn't content. You two have been looked after. She is the one who needs a home."

  Lad, swallowing a large chunk of food, nodded. "Yes, and she didn't like her home when she had one. A home should be somewhere you want to go."

  Would I want to go here? Those eyes were sharp, those words were blunt, but really, what did I have to hide from Valya? She already knew me for what I was.

  "I am Tanyana," I told her. "And I appreciate you taking me in."

  Valya made a scoffing noise. "You don't, not a lot. But that is okay." She stood. "You can come with me."

  Lad looked up, despairing of the food he still had in front of him.

  "They can stay."

  So I followed Valya while Kichlan and Lad continued to eat.

  "You eat down here, so I know you have enough," Valya said as she lifted a key from a hook near the door and pressed it into my hand. "Everything else you do yourself." We stepped into the street, and I realised how warm it had been in her kitchen. How pleasant. "Careful of the stairs, stay to the left." The iron stairs rocked as we climbed them, metal creaked beneath our feet and flecks of rust came off against my gloves. "Here." There was a small platform before the upstairs door, barely wide enough for one person. "Open it."

  I edged around Valya's ample frame, and turned the key in the iron lock. It undid with a heavy clunk, and the door swung inward at a gentle push.

  The upstairs was about half the size of the house below it. It was a living room with a window so close to the building next door there wasn't enough room to push the glass open more than a few inches. A table and a few chairs filled the space; there was an ancient wood stove in one corner. The wall above it had blackened over the years. The floor was cement, but padded with rugs, most made from animal pelts. A bunch of dried lavender mounted on richly stained wood decorated one wall. There was a bedroom behind the main room, large enough for a bed and a small chest of drawers. One of the handles was loose. Beside the bedroom was a bathroom, complete with a narrow, shallow bath. The water worked, although it ran a slightly dirty colour and left tiny grains of sediment in the cracked porcelain. There were wide windows on the back wall of both bathroom and bedroom, draped with lace. They opened out over the rest of the roof and what I realised was a small greenhouse, crowded with plants, at the back of the house.

  It was small, not exactly in the best condition, and bare. But, I realised as I peered down into bright glass above newly budding, wavering green, it was home now.

  "You cannot bring anything," Valya told me as I returned to the living room. "Only furniture is already here."

  "I don't have anything." Absolutely true.

  "No, you don't. I can see that." Her eyes bored into me. "Yicor sent you to me, and I will look after you. We won't let them get to you."

  "What does that mean? Let who–"

  "Tsk!" Valya pinned my shoulder with a hard finger. "You are not so good at lying. You know whom we mean, you know the pet creatures of the veche, they follow you, they use you. Those misbegotten seeds of the Other's lust!"

  The puppet men. "How do you know about them? You and Yicor!" And Eugeny, I realised with a sinking certainty. Eugeny had sent me here. Did that mean Kichlan was involved? But no, he hadn't even wanted to listen to Yicor's advice. What was going on? "He said you would be watching, that you would protect me. From what? And how?"

  "You are not the first those creatures have set their sightless eyes on. We cannot do much, we are few and old, but we will try. Girl, we will try." Then just like Yicor, she refused to say more, and took me down the stairs, only talking about the room. She lectured me on keeping the door locked, on minding my key. She told me she would ask for one hundred kopacks each sixnight and one, but didn't want to see my rublie until I had stayed there that long. "Don't take kopacks for something not yet given," she said. I would also pay for my food, all of which sounded too reasonable to be true. But I certainly didn't question her.

  When we re-entered the kitchen Lad had finished off the chicken dish and was looking very large and sleepy, slumped against the table. We stopped Kichlan in the middle of worried pacing. I shared a nod with him, and he immediately went to Lad's shoulder and started the long process of getting him moving.

  "I need to, ah, replenish my wardrobe," I told Valya. She had started collecting the plates from her table, and prodded Lad's arm with a long fingernail to get him out of the way. Had far greater effect than Kichlan's murmured coaxing.

  "Come and go as you wish," she said. "Just make certain you eat."

  "Fair enough." I helped Kichlan heave Lad to his feet.

  "Goodbye," he said to Valya around a yawn as he rubbed his red eyes. "I hope we come and see you again."

  Considering the size of the dish he had devoured, I wasn't surprised.

  "I think you will," Valya answered.

  Kichlan and I supported Lad out the door. Lad started making noises about seeing my new home upstairs, but I feared for the rickety staircase beneath his careless weight.

  "And we need to help Tanyana buy some clothes," Kichlan, evidently fearing the same thing, came to my aid. "We need to hurry or the day will be all over."

  That was enough to capture Lad's interest. He snapped awake – probably aided by the outside chill – and hurried us along toward the Tear. The shops that lined the water were smaller than the ones I knew in the city, and poorly lit. Their wares were cheaper, secondhand and mended. Kichlan and his brother piled hats, gloves and scarves into my arms. They even found a stiff jacket, tailored for a man but small enough to fit me well, with panels of hard leather sewn onto the thick wool to keep out the wind. As a replacement for the jacket I had left in the apartment it was poor, the leather faded, thin at the elbows, and a large stain sullied the inside left breast. But it felt appropriate, somehow, as Kichlan draped it over my shoulders and tugged it together at my waist, muttering about the need for a belt to hold it together. It was a collector's jacket, to hang in a collector's rented room and brace the cold and the dirt of a collector's life.

  I found scissors, small things with wooden handles that wobbled on a loose hinge, but they would do. I had noticed a mirror on the chest of drawers in my new bedroom, and my hair was growing uncommonly long.

  The clothes barely scraped the bottom of my newly charged rublie, and we left with arms full of bulging calico bags, the shop owners so flushed with delight they had given us the bags for free. I was sure they would come in useful, somehow. Kichlan certainly seemed pleased with them. I wasn't entirely sure what they were for, but allowed myself to be swept into his enthusiasm regardless.

  "For the next time you need to do this, of course," he explained as we trudged beneath a darkening sky to my home at 754 Lightbrick.

  "Next time?" I shifted the bag in my arms. "Why would there be a next time?"

  Lad, thankfully carrying two of the heavy, awkward things, was walking ahead of us and singing to himself.

  "There usually is. They move us, sometimes, break up and rearrange teams. And not all landlords are as accommodating as Eugeny. They don't like having us around for too long."

  "Valya seems like the accommodating type."

  Kichlan grinned over the bulging bag he carried. My jacket was in there, the heaviest piece of the lot. He didn't seem to mind carrying it. "Don't let her feed you up too much. No use to me if you have to roll around Movoc-under-Keeper."

  "Anytime that seems likely just send Lad over for a sixnight," I answered. "Won't be any food left in the house once he's through."

  Kichlan nodded, his grin fading. He walked in silence for a long while, expression distant and distracted. "That was an interesting story you told earlier," he finally said.

  "Yes." Did he know about the voices too? Had he heard them? Were we all a bit mad?

  "Maybe now you understand." He jerked his head toward his brother, singing and walking a yard or so ahead of us. "About him."

  "You don't want them to lock him in a castle for the rest of his days. Yes, I understand that."

  "It's more than that." Kichlan shifted the bag. His fingers sought purchase in the folds of calico. They squeezed deep indents into the soft clothes. "I think, you see, that some of us fall differently. Like your Ulric fellow."

  "Uric," I corrected.

  He flashed me a frown. "Yes, whatever his name was. A long time ago I met others who heard things after they fell, who thought they could see faces instead of debris."

  I half stumbled on the road's uneven stones. "What? Really? Why didn't you say anything?"

  "This isn't something Lad needs to know about. Listen to me, Tanyana, please."

  I shut my mouth against more questions.

  "I thought I could find out what was wrong with Lad, I thought I could help him. But he didn't give me enough time. He has always been like this. Listening to voices no one else can hear. But they can't find out about it, do you understand? They can't."

  "They?" I whispered.

  "The veche men. Technicians. Because every one of those people I met, those people who fell hard, were found by the veche, and they were taken away." He drew a deep breath. "I know, because I was there. Because I helped."

  I stared at him blankly.

  "I wasn't always a collector, I wasn't born like this. Not the way Lad was. And before I fell I thought I could help him, I wanted to use–" he struggled, his hands quivered against the bags he carried "–my skill to help him. My binding skill."

  Cold that had nothing to do with the Movoc-underKeeper weather made me shiver. "I thought you didn't know anything about pion-binding?"

  Kichlan couldn't meet my eyes. "I tried to help him. I learned things, but not enough. And when Lad hurt the girl, I knew I had to make a choice. Fall, and protect him. Or watch him being taken away. You know what I chose."

  "I don't understand, Kichlan. What was your skill? What did you do–" But I did. The silver hand, that dull metal with its thick cords that had reminded me so much of my suit, on Kichlan's dresser. "You were a technician?" My tongue felt frozen, the words impossible to say.

  "In a way. I didn't make suits, not like the ones we wear. The veche had me experimenting, making changes. I was quite skilled."

  "You must have been." He wasn't bad at lying, either. "Any reason for the pretence? Or just amusing yourself by lying to the new collector?" The bitterness in my words was too sharp to contain.

  "The team don't know this. Lad, I think, doesn't really understand. I gave it all up for him, Tanyana. When he hurt that girl, he took away any chance I had to find out what was wrong with him. To fix him. I fell, so I could protect him. He doesn't need to know. He shouldn't have to carry that." His voice hitched. "It isn't his fault."

  I wondered, numbly, why he had told me. Did he think I had the strength to carry his grief around with him? The love in those words, and the resentment, and the failure.

  "Where did the veche take them? The collectors you said fell hard?"

  Kichlan shook his head. "I didn't find out. I wasn't there long enough. But they never came back." He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw the kind of fear, the kind of desperation and terror I would have associated with his brother's confused mind instead. "I will not let that happen to Lad. They cannot take him away. He's all I have left, Tanyana. He is my everything."

  "I know, Kichlan. I know."

  I wanted to touch him, to hold him or pat him in a way Lad would have let me easily. But, even if we weren't laden with my new clothes and their calico bags, I wasn't certain Kichlan would let me get that close.

  "I'm still going to find a way," Kichlan whispered so softly I almost missed him beneath my own breathing. "I'm going to find out what the voices are, and I'm going to stop them. Then the veche can't take him, they'll have no reason. Then he will be safe."

  I watched Lad's back. His head was tipped, with his song reaching a roaring chorus without discernable words.

  Did any of this make sense? Did I fall from Grandeur and land beside Kichlan and his brother for a reason? Was it anything more than terrible, devastating luck?

  Uric's twelve pointed circle burned too brightly in my mind, and I stood beside him, fighting pions of my own. I had known from the beginning, hadn't I, that this was more than Yicor's luck. Kichlan had thrown himself from his Grandeur, I had been pushed.

  What, exactly, was I going to do about that? I felt backed into a corner. Devich and the powerful people he knew weren't accessible to me any more. Pavel and the thugs who had thrown me from my apartment felt like warnings, as though someone was telling me in brutal terms to cast aside all thoughts of Grandeur, of pions, of justice and a veche tribunal. To let that life fall forgotten into the past, and get used to being a debris collector.

  And most of all, to stop asking questions.

  But what frightened me most was how comfortable this corner could be. Lad's friendship, Kichlan's loyalty, Eugeny's care, I wanted these things. I liked them. It would be too easy to embrace this new life, to stop fighting for the truth, to leave the past alone. It even sounded like the most sensible thing to do.

  After all, nothing was holding me to my old life anymore. My circle was gone, my apartment was taken, and I had just sold the last piece, the last memory.

  Maybe it was time to let go?