Debris

11.

By the time I returned home, it was late Mornday evening and the skies had not brightened once. Rain fell constantly, I was soaked through and so chilled I couldn't keep my finger steady on the lock. It took three tries to convince the pions I was me. And I had just managed to unlock the door and shrug off my jacket when footsteps sounded behind me.

"Vladha?"

I spun. Two large men filled the small, paved courtyard. Both were swathed in coats constructed of dark material, heavily patched, and wore tight knitted hats pulled down to prominent eyebrows.

"Are you Vladha?" the left one asked again. His voice was low as the thunder, his eyes two glinting spots in the shadows of his face.

"Miss Vladha," I answered, already stepping back into my hallway, already reaching to close the heavy wooden door between us.

But large, meaty hands held it open, and wide arms kept it there.

"Landlord sent us," the man on the left said.

"He's not happy," said his fellow.

"Doesn't like tenants who cannot pay."

"Doesn't like losing kopacks."

"Doesn't like it at all."

I stumbled into the hallway, coat dropped to the floor. Suddenly they were inside, filling the small space, invading my home.

"You can't," I whispered.

They gave an identical snicker of contempt. "Oh, we can," the left one chuckled. "We do, in fact, more often than you'd think."

"Places like this." The other was walking down the hall, eyeing the walls, the pictures, the lamps. The little statue of princess Ludmilla that Mother had given me when I graduated, the best she could hope to afford. His eyes were like fingers the way they touched, the way they caressed and pried. "Always in demand. You're not the only one. Buy out of your range, live beyond your kopacks. But there's always someone willing to take what you drop. Always the next arrogant idiot with an overfull rublie in line."

"You wait right here."

The wall I stood against moved. Hands reached from the marble and wallpaper. They gripped my arms, clutched at my waist and thighs. The man chuckled as I strained but had no way to hold back the pions, no way to calm my own wall into submission.

"What have we got, then?" He followed his fellow into my bedroom and left me pinned to the hallway, straining like a fly in a web.

My rublie felt heavy in the pocket of my pants, but I knew with a horrible certainty that they wouldn't go for it. There was nothing left in it, not enough, at least, to cover the debts I had so wilfully ignored. The rent, the water, the pion heat. How many kopacks did I owe and what would these men do to get them?

Unwelcome hands rattled through my bedroom. Voices laughed. Something smashed. I tried to ignore them, as though I could will them out of my home, out of my memory, by staring at the closed wooden door.

"Hey!" A gruff voice spoke and a large hand gripped the side of my head, shaking until I snapped my gaze to his face. "None of that!"

They didn't know that I was a collector and I couldn't have undone the bindings they worked in my wall, no matter how hard I concentrated.

"You should leave," I rasped out of a sore throat. "Don't you know what I can do? I'm an architect, employed by the veche itself. If you don't go, now, I will undo your bonds and turn your pions right back on you! Trap you here, call enforcers, and then who knows what information would get out? I don't think my landlord wants anyone to know the kind of associates he employs, do you?"

The large man smirked between tight knitted cap and unwashed beard. "Yeah, we were told about you. Pity you can't pay your bills, Miss Employed-by-the-veche." He leaned forward. A breath like rancid meat and old onion washed over my face. It set my eyes watering. "We were told to keep you busy, if you went and tried anything. Keep you occupied." He wrapped a hand across my jaw and tipped my face. The back of my head pressed into the wall, my neck strained until I thought the scars would tear. "We could give you prettier cuts than these." He flicked a pink ridge on my cheek. I sucked air through my teeth. "So you keep quiet." He released me, cuffed the top of my head with a casual backhand, like I was a dog that had displeased him, and rejoined his fellow.

They had moved on to my study, I realised as my body sagged against the restraints. To my books, my footstool. The chair I had sat in while Devich drank tea and touched my knees. Devich! I sent out a mental call, a need that welled up from my gut into my head. Come tonight, Devich! Find these bastards and… and what? Walk blindly in through the door and be found dead, clogging one of Tear's more obscure rills tomorrow morning? Did I really want him here, did I want him to fight for me, to suffer for me? Possibly die for me.

Die? I shuddered.

I had to be overreacting. It was just a few kopacks, wasn't it? And this was Varsnia, the civilised world.

I cleared my throat. "Um, excuse me?" No reaction, just more rummaging and plunder. "Hey!"

One of the large men stepped out of the kitchen. "Want us to shut your mouth for you too?"

I refused to be daunted. "What, exactly, is going to happen here?"

A smile broke through the untrimmed beard. "Already happening, bitch."

With a breath I clamped down on sudden anger. But anger was good. Anger was better than cowering attached to the wall, willing for a saviour to come. "Fine. What is happening, then? What-" saying this took a steadying pause of its own, I refused to sound afraid "-are you going to do with me?"

The smile widened as he chuckled. "You're a confident one." He made a sweeping gesture with one thick-as-apylon arm. "We take what you owe. Compensation. Apartment for the apartment, goods for the kopacks. You're lucky there. By the looks of it you'll cover everything you owe."

My throat was suddenly very dry. I didn't ask what would have happened if I hadn't accumulated so many memories, so many treasures with my hard-earned kopacks. How they would have made up the gap.

"So you take my home, you take everything I own. Then you let me go."

He roared with laughter, smacked his own knee and nearly doubled up against the wall. Hardly inspired confidence.

The other man was drawn into the hallway from the study. He carried a small bear statue in one hand and a very old book in the other. The bear was set in solid burnished copper, with an old mechanical clock in its belly. The clock no longer worked. The book was Velchev's Principles of Architecture. An original copy, hand written in ink on vellum, complete with diagrams and pencilledin notes. Both were priceless. Both were gifts, given to me by old family members of the national veche on the completion of the gallery.

I looked away.

"What?" he asked. Biting the word off like a barbarian, barely able to speak the language, let alone appreciate the true value of what he held in his thick hands.

"Reckons we're going to let her go, this one does," the comedian answered.

Barbarian added a chuckle of his own. It sounded hungrier than his companion. He liked his work, liked the consumption of another person's life, particularly someone who thought they were better than him. He enjoyed the process of biting, ripping it to bits and devouring until there was nothing left.

To Comedian it was just all one big, black joke.

"Now why would we do that?" Barbarian asked.

I tried to find his eyes. "Because you'll have got what you came for."

Comedian shook his head. "Apartment goes to the landlord, your stuff gets sold to pay off debts. You, we're supposed to bring in all nice and in one piece. Not the way we usually work it. Most of the time the landlord's happy to let us beat 'em to a right mess. But he's been getting visitors, said they wanted you brought back. You had a lesson to learn-"

"Quiet down!" Barbarian growled.

Comedian shut his mouth, pressed it into a thin smile. "Look at you, got me talking too much."

"You hand me over to the landlord, then?" I tried to remember if I'd ever met the man. Savvin's father had set me up with the apartment in exchange for taking his son into my critical circle, when I had earned my right to head a circle of nine. He had organised everything, and I'd been happily relieved of the chore.

Did Savvin's father know, then, the kind of man who owned these apartments? Was he laughing with Savvin at how low his former centre had fallen, at what would happen to her when she couldn't pay her rent?

"To his visitors, I'd say." Comedian's grin broadened. "And by the look of them, they'll teach you to ask too many questions. Never seen such a strange-"

"Quiet!" Barbarian roared.

"No." I straightened as much as the clutching wall would allow. "No." I would fall no further, and I would not fall away from Kichlan, from Lad. From the twins with their sad humour; Sofia with her serious eyes; even silent, pouting Natasha. I would not leave my team. "I can't go with you. I won't go with you."

Both laughed together.

"Feisty!" Comedian crowed.

"They will break you, bitch," Barbarian said. "I hope I see it. Hope I'm there."

"Break me?" I couldn't control my words anymore, couldn't tell which ones were foolish and likely to get me killed. "You don't know what breaking is! Brains full of the Other's piss, that's all you've got. You useless, little men."

Barbarian strode toward me. "Shut your mouth!" He lifted the solid copper bear, eyes glinting, terrible with purpose and anger.

"One piece, Ngad!" Comedian ran forward, gripped the copper bear and fought to pry it from Barbarian's grip.

"No one breaks a person like Grandeur breaks a person!" I laughed at their shocked faces, at their hulking dance around the bear, held frozen in his roar above their heads. "She smacks you and she cuts you and she leaves you all alone."

"What's wrong with her?" Barbarian paused in a bulky pirouette and peered at me, large eyebrows crunched into a caterpillar frown. His hold on the bear loosened enough for Comedian to yank it from his hand.

"What does it matter?" Comedian scowled between us both. "Stupid bitch's mad, not our problem. They can deal with her."

"She breaks you," I continued, only half hearing the two large men supposedly stripping me of my world. Little did they know how much had already peeled away. "But you find your feet again. Falling just means you're someone else when you stand up." I looked up, met each face. "I didn't get up again to let you push me down."

"Other's stinking balls," Barbarian muttered. "She's insane."

"I'm not coming with you."

"You don't understand." Comedian leaned close to my face, the bear still clasped in his hand and safely behind his back. "You don't have a choice. You'll stay where you are until we're ready, then you come with us. And you either come nice and quiet, or we rig your bonds and drag you the whole way. Don't want that, do you?"

I chuckled. "That supposed to be a threat, is it? Do you dream I still fear humiliation?"

"Insane," Barbarian muttered somewhere behind Comedian's head.

"This is ridiculous." Comedian straightened. "I'm not wasting time with you any more." He smacked me with his empty hand. It knocked my head against the wall, stinging the bruise already there, and cut the inside of my bottom lip. My blood tasted warm and rich, tingling. What could I taste there? Was the suit in my very blood? Was that the silver metal that buzzed on my tongue like something living?

"Shut up or I'll rig one of those binds across your mouth." Comedian turned away, his face red with anger, hand wrapped so tightly around the bear his knuckles were white, and the veins along his wrist and the back of his hand stood out.

But it was too late. Laughter bubbled up unchecked from my belly, from the taste of suit on my tongue, from the crude and simple pion-bonds I had no hope of escaping. And from the thought that things could get any worse. That they could break me, these large and simple fools.

Both turned again at the sound of my laughter and both wore identical masks of rage. This only made it worse. Tears ran down my cheeks, blurred their approach. I was laughing so hard my stomach ached. I could barely breathe.

But somehow, I managed a word. "No."

And the suit reacted. It knew what I needed to do, before I had realised. And out of my control, feral and protective like a bitch over her litter, it did what needed to be done.

The bands at my wrists arched out and over me in a wide, metal shield. The band at my neck grew, it flattened over my body in a second silver skin, while my ankles and waist did the same thing until they met, until I was cased in a metal shell.

Wrapped up, enfolded, I gasped in air already growing stale. I could hear voices, hear the shock and something that might have been fear.

"This is no good," I whispered to myself, to the buzz on my tongue. "We need to get out. Hiding won't help."

Gritting my teeth, struggling for control, I summoned my wristbands back and broke the shield. Comedian and Barbarian were arguing, staring at me in shock and shouting at each other. I pushed their words aside and sharpened blades over my hands. "One at a time."

The blades became snakes and slithered in silver over my sleeves, down my arms and toward my chest. At each bond they stopped and cut upward, severing the chains of cement and paint. My suit was sharp, my suit was strong, and nothing made of such coerced and unimpressed pions could hold against it.

Bond by bond, in a trickle of rubble, I cut my arms free.

"-tell us she was a collector!" Barbarian was shouting. "Why wouldn't they-" He had seen me. "Other! She's getting out!"

"That's not possible-"

The argument shut off as both Comedian and Barbarian snapped into concentration. Bodies still, eyes down, hands set in identical clutching claws. I had to give them that. Brutal, senseless they may be, but they had some discipline, some binding skill.

Not that I was going to let them use it. My blades shot out, and it was all I could do to blunt them before they connected with a face each. My left hand smashed into Comedian's nose. He roared and gargled and fell against the front door, clutching his face as blood ran beneath his fingers. My right was not as accurate. It clipped the top of Barbarian's head, just above the temple. He made no sound as he collapsed, crashing to the marble in a boneless heap.

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. My suit retracted slowly, my left hand red with blood from Comedian's nose, my right strangely clean. It was the cleanness that gripped my gut, more than the blood did. It seemed worse, strangely. A wound without anything to prove it existed.

I hadn't considered the possibility – even after watching Lad launch himself at his brother, and seeing Kichlan respond in kind, their suits like swords and shields – that the suit could be a weapon, that it could do more than scoop debris like so much dog shit on the street. That I could protect myself with it.

Or that it would protect me. Perhaps that was more accurate.

I sharpened my blades again and set them to work on the bonds around my waist and thighs.

The final few shackles crumbled as I stepped from the wall. I was still encased in metal, from my neck to my ankles, with only my arms bare. I kept my blades up, like a sword in each hand, and wished I knew was I was doing with them. Wished I was the son of an old family, and had learned to fence as soon as I learned to walk.

Comedian had sunk to the floor, propped against the wall and clutching at his nose. I hesitated. I had to leave, that was obvious. I had to get out and go very, very far away. But with both men incapacitated, I had time. I could take my memories with me.

Barbarian had dropped the book when he fell. I collected it, trying not to see the trail of blood seeping from his nose or wonder what that could mean.

"Where do you think you're going, bitch?"

I spun. Comedian was on his feet, copper bear in his hand, his face slathered in blood. He launched himself at me before I could raise either of my blades. I turned in the face of his wrath and the copper bear came smashing down on my suit-coated back.

I didn't feel it. Behind me, he cried out again, and I looked over my shoulder to see him gripping his wrist as the copper bear fell from his hand. Its face was dented, squashed into something morbid and horrible. The clock face had smashed, rings loose, bells rattling against cracked glass.

That was it. No more memories were worth searching for. I retracted my blades as I ran past him, book under one arm, and slammed the door behind me. Still coated in suit silver I dashed into the street and ignored the shocked faces of pedestrians and carriage drivers. I just ran.

By the time I made it to the Tear, I could hardly breathe. My chest was afire within me and the book was so heavy all I wanted to do was drop it. I stopped in a narrow, sewage-stinking alleyway. Leaning against cold stone I fought for breath and struggled against the suit. It didn't want to move, to ease the protective shell from my skin. Gradually, as my breathing and my heart slowed, I could convince it everything was okay, that there weren't any strange men to fight and nothing to protect me from.

When the suit had settled, I realised how cold I was. I had left my jacket on the floor in the hallway. I hugged my arms over my chest, hunched forward and plunged into the street. I made for the ferry, and didn't look over my shoulder. Who knew who was following?

I stood outside of 384 Darkwater as twilight fell, and realised as keenly as the wind that was slicing through my shirt and to my uniform that I couldn't stay there. I couldn't get through the door. And as darkness and a true Movoc-under-Keeper night fell, complete with clear sky and stars like icicles, it hit me that I didn't have anywhere else to go. I didn't know where Devich lived, or even if he would have welcomed me destitute and homeless on his doorstep. Would he ever find me now?

There was only one place I knew would let me in. But I wasn't sure how to find Kichlan's home, the last trip was more of a haze than any real and useful memory.

There wasn't much else to do. I tucked the book more tightly into my armpit, thrust my hands as deep into the pockets of my pants as they would go, and wished that longing for a hat, gloves and jacket kept you as warm as the real things. Then I tried to follow the path to Kichlan's house.

I lost the trail several times and found myself on unknown street corners. I could feel the chill settling into my chest and neck the way the darkness settled over the city, creeping but inexorable. By the time I found his squat house nestled between two large and faceless apartment buildings I had developed a shiver that ran through me and rattled the metal in my bones.

Kichlan's house was quiet in the night, windows closed up and dark. For a moment I stood shivering on the step, wondering if I could find where the horse lived and sleep next to him. Apart from straw – or whatever it was horses nested in – I probably wouldn't be all that worse for wear. Then I could work it out on my own. I shifted the book. I could make enough kopacks out of this priceless heirloom to find somewhere to live, to buy a new jacket. But that wouldn't do for tomorrow. And horses had a smell, didn't they? How could I explain straw and a horsey smell?

It wasn't that hard. Kichlan had helped me once, I could go to him again. Grovel like a weak chick cast from her nest, snivel because I had nowhere else to stay.

"Stop that," I whispered to the closed door, my teeth rattling in tune with my bones.

I knocked on the door. The knocker was steel and cold. It bit into my bare fingers and kept scraps of my skin as payment.

The house remained still.

I knocked again; my hand shook so much I wasn't sure I could control it. A long breath of darkness, of quiet and cold, and I started to doubt this was the right house. Started to believe I was standing in front of some deserted ruin knocking my way into a cold and endless sleep.

Then voices murmured behind the door, and I heard shuffling. A light peered out of a gap between door and top step. Keys rattled.

The door opened with a groan, exhausting to hear. It split the darkness with a crack of lantern light that hurt my eyes. And Kichlan was there. Only half of his face, the rest of him was hidden. And that half a face was squinting and scowling, concerned and angry all at once.

Perhaps intended to frighten off an intruder.

Or confuse them.

"Who's there?" His voice cracked. He had been asleep, I realised. A sleep he dearly needed and I had pulled him from it.

"I have a problem," I stuttered. My words jumbled over my rattling teeth, and my breath wove a thick haze in front of Kichlan's widening eyes. "I have… a problem."

I wasn't really sure what else to say, there on the doorstep. Without my jacket.

"Tanyana?" Kichlan opened the door wider, saw me properly. "Other! What are you doing?" He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into the house.

Eugeny and Lad waited behind him. The old man held a fire stoker above his head as though ready to strike. Lad sat on the stairs, chin in his hand, eyes drooping and expression bored.

"Tan!" Lad stood when he saw me, all sleep falling from his wide eyes. "Kich! Tan is here!"

"Yes," Kichlan's gaze took me in with one long, unimpressed sweep. "I can see that. Give me your hands."

I blinked at him. "Hands?" I pried them from my pockets, and still trying to hold the book firmly beneath my left arm, held them out for him. My fingers were blue, the colour broken only by white beneath my nails and red where the door knocker had nipped me.

"Other's eternal darkness, girl." Eugeny joined Kichlan in peering at my frozen, battered skin. "What happened to you?"

I stared at the old man, his scowling tenant, and the younger brother's unconcerned grin. "It's very hot in here." Sweat was running beneath my uniform, itching where it trickled between my breasts.

Eugeny placed a rough hand on my forehead. "Other," he snapped. He turned to Kichlan. "Get her warm, that's a fever I can feel. Lad!" He drew Lad's willing and now firmly wide-awake attention. "Help me, boy. Tan needs medicine or she will be sick."

"Oh!" Lad, shocked, went a strange shade of mottled green and white. "Oh… oh no!" He ran off into the kitchen, overtaking Eugeny.

"Lad locked himself out of the house one Rest a few moons ago, gave himself a fever." Kichlan shook his head. "He hasn't forgotten it. Trust me, he'll hover over you and feel every ache and pain."

"Why is everyone calling me Tan?" I asked him. The idea of a fever was too difficult to understand. It wobbled away in a fog somewhere in my head, ineffectual and quiet.

Kichlan gave me a strange, tilted-eye look and didn't answer. "Why don't you sit down, Tanyana?" He still held my hands and tugged on them gently. I hissed through my teeth. My fingers were numb, but the back of my hands felt fiery beneath his touch. "Come and sit down."

He drew me into the drying room, where I had slept the last time I came here. I suddenly realised how exhausted I was. But Kichlan didn't let me lie down. He found a collapsed couch somewhere behind the forest of hanging clothes and bed sheets. He propped me up in its cushions, drew a blanket from a line close to the dim fireplace and draped it around my shoulders.

I struggled against its weight. "Hot," I murmured.

"No, Tanyana. It isn't. Not really." He wrapped long fingers around the book under my arm. "Give me that. You can sit, then, and have a nice drink."

Was I thirsty? "No." Maybe, it was hard to tell. My mouth felt dry, but the thought of anything in my stomach made me nauseous. "You can't take it."

Kichlan leaned very close. His breath smelled of cinnamon. "It's me, Kichlan. I'm not going to take it away, I'm going to look after it."

Kichlan. That's right, it was Kichlan. Not Barbarian lying on my floor, not Comedian clutching his wrist and howling. Kichlan. Kichlan I could trust. I eased my arm open and he slid the book out. He gave it half a moment's glance and placed it on the floor.

"Be careful," I whispered. "That's all I have left."

Eugeny entered, a tray in his hand and Lad at his heels. Lad carried a mug, steaming faint trails of haze over his face, with a reverential delicacy.

"Drink." Lad bent at the waist to hand me the mug. His eyes were focused on the surface of its dark liquid so intently they nearly crossed.

I tried to take it from him but Kichlan was much faster. He took the cup with a click of his tongue. "Fingers like that, you'll spill it all over your own lap."

"Don't want to do that," Lad told me, solemn. "Need to drink it all."

Kichlan held the mug up to my lips. I scowled at him. "I'm not a child, I can hold my own drink."

"Don't be stubborn." A firm light came into Kichlan's eyes, the kind I had seen when he spoke to Lad in one of his moods. "You came here for help, didn't you? So take it."

Help involved a roof and a space away from the snow. It didn't involve being fed like an invalid or a child. But as I opened my mouth to protest, Kichlan pressed the mug against my lips, and I ended sipping something hot and bitter instead.

I coughed, and Lad gave me a knowing smile. "I know it tastes bad," he lectured me in a fair imitation of Kichlan's voice. "But you need to drink it all."

"What is it?" I made a face at Eugeny, certain he was the cause of this particular problem. "Not another gold plant."

He lifted his eyebrows at me. "Golden roots of the waxseal plant? No, not this time. Hyssop, liquorice root, thyme."

Words in a language I didn't understand. So I glared, puzzled, at him over the rim of my mug as Kichlan – with gentle, but inexorable hands – forced me to drink.

Eugeny shook his head. "You always come here in a state, girl."

I swallowed and leaned my head back long enough to gasp some much-needed air. Kichlan's idea of drinking, it seemed, did not involve enough time to catch one's breath. "Here is a good place to be in a state," I said, before I finished the drink's grass-murky dregs.

"Bro?" Lad, having satisfied himself that I would in fact finish the disgusting but no doubt beneficial brew, collected my book from the floor. "What is this, bro?"

Before I could move, Kichlan smoothly turned, stood, and took the book from his younger brother. "It's Tan's. She brought it with her."

Lad seemed content to peer at the cracking leather cover from over his brother's shoulder. "A book!" Excited, he clamped his fingers over Kichlan's upper arm. Kichlan winced. "What does it say, bro? Do you know what it says?"

Kichlan ran his finger below the embossed lettering on the jacket. It had once been gold, I had been told when given the gift, but years and use had eroded the title to the point where it was almost illegible. "Its title says Principles of Architecture, by Eldar Velchev."

I waited for the gasps, the wide eyes, the "How ever did you come by such a remarkable piece?"

Lad leaned back again, and wrinkled the skin at the top of his nose. "Oh." His eyes slid sideways to his brother. "That's not very interesting, is it?"

With a chuckle, Kichlan shook his head. "Not really." He turned the book over in his hands. "But it is very old. Isn't it?" His gaze flicked to mine in a question.

"Yes," I said.

"Old things can be valuable. Can't they?" Again, that quick, but searching and suspicious glance.

"Yes," I said again.

Lad bobbed his head as he searched for something valuable in the old book. "Doesn't look it, bro. Doesn't look it."

"People with too many kopacks have strange ways of seeing things," Kichlan said, grinning.

"Oh." Lad squinted at the book and leaned even closer to it.

I scowled between the both of them. "If this becomes a morality lesson, I'm going outside again."

"No, you won't." Eugeny, who had remained silent and in the background, pushed his way forward. He rested the tray on my knees, and a far more appetising bowl of soup stared up at me. "You're going to sit and eat, and Kichlan will put that somewhere safe. Where hands, unwelcome or simply curious, won't find it."

My gaze followed the book as Kichlan took it from the drying room. My life was in those pages, all that was left of my memories, my ambition and achievements. Something wrenched in my gut as I watched it go, but it was in Kichlan's hands and strangely that was enough. I knew it would be safe, because he carried it.

Eugeny watched me; I caught his pursed lips in the corner of my eye. Then he placed a spoon in my hand, and I was occupied by rich vegetable-and-grain stew.

Without anything new to excite him, Lad drooped. When Kichlan returned he managed to convince Lad to go back to bed. I received a wet kiss on the cheek before Lad was led upstairs, stumbling on the way.

By the time my bowl was empty I was feeling warm – no longer hot while tickled at the extremities by cold – tired and comfortable. I sat among the cushions and closed my eyes to the quiet conversation between Kichlan and Eugeny. Whatever decision they came to, I didn't hear it. For the couch was soft, the room was warm, and for the first time since I had unlocked my front door, I felt secure enough to fall into an easy sleep. I felt like I was home.