Debris

3.

I learned to cover the suit if I wanted to sleep.

Any resemblance to jewellery ended with the silver. The fixtures were large and ungainly, as wide as the length of my middle finger. They were thick too, half an inch at least, so I couldn't pull sleeves down to cover them if the jacket was too tight, and most of the boots I owned were now unwearable.

Worst of all was the way the silver bands moved. At the centre of each was another ring, a thinner version of the whole apparatus that spun slowly, constantly. I hadn't gathered enough courage to touch it. This extra ring seemed to float on something liquid, it moved so smoothly. Around the floating ring were symbols, signs and letters of scrolling silver, and these were the bastards that glowed. As they moved – not with the floating ring, not with any apparent symmetry or reason – they flickered. Some dipped into dull nothingness while others rose from the silver shining, beaming their arcane meaning proudly.

I couldn't decide what Devich and the puppet men had fitted me with. Six bands of silver drilled into my skin were hardly what I could call a suit. If it was liquid, then why didn't it spill when I moved my hand? If it was solid, then how in all the Other's worst dreams did it move? And I wondered, dimly like a dull headache, what the pions were doing. Surely they were there, spinning the silver, shining the ciphers.

The veche returned me to my apartment after the suiting, and left me there. I lost track of days. No one visited. Not the puppet men, not Devich. No member of my circle. I couldn't do much other than throb with my collective pain and hope I was healing.

I went through the days like I was a puppet myself, someone else pulling the strings. Slowly my hand knitted together, fingers started to look like fingers again. Twisted. Stunted. But fingers. A few days, and I could bend my left knee. I slid from my bed each morning and struggled the length of the apartment, moving, walking as much as I could. Gradually, my strength grew. I cleaned my wounds, washing the bandages in my bathroom sink. I stared at myself in the mirror each morning, wondering what kind of scars would they leave.

Then I sat in the study, shutters drawn and only one lamp burning low. I had to turn the lamp on manually: remove the small latch on the side of its base – the Otherdamned thing was stuck, and I snared a fingernail in the process – stick my finger in and twist and curse until the valve opened enough to allow the pions to flow. For countless days I did nothing but peer at its light and wonder why I could see it, but not the pions that drove it. I supposed that was the point. In a factory somewhere on the outskirts of the city pions were being asked to create this light. Then, when they knew what was expected of them and were ready to perform it, they were rushed down one of the many great systems that spread across the city, just so they could arrive here, in this lamp, to bind this light for me. I didn't really know what they were doing to create the light. I was an architect, not a lamplighter. The pions had to be generating some kind of reaction, inside that ornate glass tube on its sculptured brass fittings, but I didn't know what it was. I'd never bothered to learn.

I thought about the pion-binder, sitting in a lamplight factory with hundreds of others all bound in complex critical circles, coaxing an enormous number of pions across Movoc-under-Keeper to give me this small amount of light. A man, I decided, after much staring and thinking, there in the semi-dark, balding and fat. With poor hygiene. The members of his circle can't stand the way he stinks. And he sits there, in seven-bell shifts, after which he is even more pungent, and earns maybe two hundred kopacks a day with the rest of them.

I sat for days alone in the study, at least a sixnight and one, probably more. Days covering my wrists, ankles, waist and neck with blankets.

What was I doing?

Giving up? That didn't take long, did it, Tanyana? A little push, a few cuts, some creepy statue-men and a bit of new jewellery and already you're sitting in the dark nursing your misery. That's the Tanyana who worked her way to the centre of a nine point circle, is it? Did you win the contract to build Grandeur by sitting around? Do you remember how you did all that? Hard work, skill, determination. Hardly the traits of a debris collector.

I stood, left the room, and opened the valves for every light in the apartment.

I shouldn't be a debris collector. And I wouldn't be, if someone hadn't pushed me. If the veche knew I was telling the truth.

I rinsed my face and hair in the bathroom basin, and rubbed as much of myself as I could with a wet towel. I worked honey-scented nut oil into my skin, and dabbed vanilla onto my neck and wrists. My stomach gurgled with awakening hunger at the smell, and I allowed myself a chuckle as I pulled open the lacquered closet. Bears growled down at me from its corners, their eyes inlaid with beechwood, their teeth glinting mother-of-pearl. My hands shook slightly as I pushed aside the highnecked navy jackets I had worn on construction sites. Instead, I pulled on thick pants and a pale angora sweater. I had lost weight, and even these small, shapeless clothes were baggy on me. I rubbed gel over my hands and ran them through my short blonde hair so it stuck out around my face, not that different from the sleep-messed look, to be honest. I owned little in the way of cosmetics and jewellery. Nothing dusky to compliment my pale, almost grey eyes. Nothing to cover the freckles and sunspots endemic of a fair complexion subjected to too many days working in the sun. The only adornment I had to add was a watch that would remain hidden in my jacket.

The watch was a gift from Jernea, the old architect who had mentored me through university, given on the day I earned my own critical circle. It opened with a small catch: inside concentric circles rotated slowly, tracking and chiming with the bells. No pions had crafted it, and none worked the gears that moved it now, all it took was the turning of a tiny wind-up key. Old-world technology and craftsmanship, and that meant it was at least two centuries old. For that, it was precious. For the skills that were lost, far more so than its polished brass and coloured glass inlay.

At the door I squashed my feet into heavy black boots. I pulled on a dark coat. It was cut for a man, but far more comfortable than any ridiculously-long-sleeved-draped across-the-shoulders-and-narrow-at-the-waist woman's wear would be. Outside I pressed fingertips to the pionpowered lock. It had a flat, crystalline panel designed to read my touch alone. Normally, I would have watched pions buzz about my fingers, glancing against those busy within my own body and checking I was, in fact, the person who lived beyond the door they guarded. Now, I only felt a tickling over my skin and had to take the security they provided on faith.

Outside, a crisp Movoc morning breeze carried the tolls of thirdbell up from the city centre and set the skin on my face tightening. It irritated my stitches. I turned into it, discomfort or no, and started to walk. Slowly, shuffling, limping slightly. But at least I was walking. The centre of Movoc-under-Keeper was more than bridges, grand old houses, and romantic spots where pions danced. I could find veche chambers there. The project halls. The tribunal.

The veche couldn't silence me. I would give them no choice but to listen.

Where pions should have stretched from rooftop to rooftop in light-beaded banners there was only empty, cloud-grey sky. Movoc was a strange, dim place without the busy lights and complex systems that gave it life. It felt haunted. Not only because of the countless unseen presences I just knew were there, hidden beneath it all. But things just seemed to move, to work, all on their own. Metallic doors opened or closed themselves, so did the windows. I had to cross the street to avoid a fountain I had once thought of as beautiful. It was built with gaps in the stonework, so the complex bindings could be better appreciated and the very colour of its pions added to its form. Now it just looked like a lot of blocks of carefully shaped stone suspended in thin air, dribbling water that came from nowhere. Unsettling. Unnatural.

I passed beneath a walkway between two tall buildings of silver and glass. It floated, unattached to anything, roaming left and right, up and down, to collect and ferry passengers between the towers. And I flinched, every time its dark shadow passed over me, because to my limited senses, the damned thing should have fallen. It didn't, and it wouldn't, while its bindings and systems still supported it. But I couldn't see any of them. I couldn't even tell whether the circle that set it up in the first place had done a good job, and were up to date with their maintenance.

I was watched the whole way. A lone, scarred, bandaged and slightly glowing woman was not a usual sight for the centre of Movoc-under-Keeper. I kept my head down, my slow progress steady. But I could feel them, and catch them in the corner of my eye. A gaggle of young, rich girls flocked around a table at the open window of a coffee house. I turned, slightly, at the sound of their surprised, screeching cackle and realised they were pointing at me while they did it. What must I have looked like to them, compared to their beautiful hair, artfully painted skin and layers of lace-tipped silk? Frightful enough for a young boy in a miniature enforcer's uniform to take one look at me and run, bawling, to wrap his arms around his mother's knees.

With each look, each expression of shock, of disgust, of fear, I lifted my head that little bit higher. But I was grateful that the walk was only short, all the same. One of the advantages of being a pion-binder paid two hundred thousand kopacks by the veche was the closeness of my apartment to the city centre and the Keeper's Tear Bridge.

As I neared Tear River, Movoc changed. Newer, pionbuilt complexes withdrew, to be replaced by older, smaller buildings with leadlight windows. Small garden plots, bumpy stone roads, narrow streets. I realised, as I walked, how lovely these buildings were without pions to distract me. Bears carved out of stone roared from cornices. Welcoming faces made from small pieces of multicoloured glass smiled above doors. And images of the river was everywhere, etched into the sandstone to flow, one building to the other, wrapping Movoc in the Keeper's Tear.

I had missed all that beauty, looking only for the lights within the stone.

Like most veche buildings the tribunal hall was close to the Keeper's Tear Bridge. As I neared it, I started to wonder if this was, in fact, the only reason I was here.

Beside the bridge, on the eastern bank, stood a building of bluestone and quartz. My design. I had surrounded it with gardens, with pine trees cut to catch the snow and create smaller, pale mirrors of the building's domes. It climbed in ice cream scoops, rich like a dessert. Sun caught in the crystal, water from melted ice or summer rain kept the stone streaked and mottled with rich blue. When the gardens bloomed the clover was a mix of white and indigo, of snow and moist bluestone. A structure of beauty, a place of warmth. An art gallery, where people met to sip wine beneath paintings and sculpture, renderings and light shows. My first commission from the veche as the leader of a nine point circle.

I stalled in front of it, toes between pathway and springy grass.

"My lady?"

I didn't turn. Couldn't have been for me.

"My- My lady?" Closer, more insistent. And a voice I knew – Other, I knew.

"Volski?"

"It is you! My lady!"

"Don't call me-" but my words were whisked away as Volski wrapped me in his arms.

My stitches roared their protest up through my throat. "Put me down!" I screamed, and he dropped me. I caught the fuzzy edge of his shocked expression as I sank to the path and plunged my left hand in lovely, cool grass, stitches screaming all over my body and the suit burning like fire.

"What's wrong?" He dropped to his knees beside me.

I could see feet gathering on the path. "Nothing," I gasped at him, struggled to stand, and finally took his offered hand. "Please, I'm fine." Sure enough, a small group had gathered on the pathway to watch me struggle. Older men, suits grey. An aging woman with silver peeking through the dye in her hair pressed her hand to her lips, partially obscuring an exaggerated "O".

Volski understood. He always had. He scowled at the crowd, held my elbow to help me balance, and maintained an affronted silence. His calm air dispersed them. It took away the drama, and made me thankful I hadn't run into someone like Tsana. When the path was clear again he led me to a bench opposite the gallery, and murmured in my ear, "You don't look fine." His face battled between concern and a fatherly frown. It was easy to think of Volski in a fatherly way. A good ten years older than me, with a solid, square jaw and serious dark eyes he was honesty and responsibility in human skin. We had worked together when I was merely the centre of a three point circle, and I had taken him with me every time I rose. He had been an anchor, reliable and constant. "I was worried about you, my lady."

And he had left me scarred and alone.

I lifted my chin, and held back a wince as the stitching in my neck pulled. "You certainly found a fine way to show it."

"I would have liked to show it. I would have liked that very much. But I didn't know what happened to you, I didn't know where you were. They only told us you had survived a sixweek and one after the fall, and that was because Llada and I went to-" he broke off. "What is it?"

I must have looked as cynical as I felt. "I don't need your excuses."

He swallowed hard. "We are cowards. I know that. We were afraid, we felt guilty. But after what Tsana did to you, can you blame us?"

Blood drained from my face, left me icy and lightheaded. "Tsana?"

He frowned at me. "You don't know?"

"That's why I'm here." I pointed to the veche chambers hulking on the other side of the gallery garden like an ugly older brother. "To get some answers. And make them listen to me." Volski started to follow my finger but his gaze became stuck on my suit where it spun slowly, bright against inflamed skin.

"Other," he whispered. "What is that?"

"Oh, this? This is my new suit." I let out a long breath. "They tell me I'm a collector now. A debris collector."

Volski's face fell the way it would if I had told him someone we both knew had just died. "No. Not you."

"Sadly yes."

"Is that because of-?" He swallowed, neck bobbing visibly. "Of what happened."

"Yes. Whatever that was."

"There was a tribunal, my lady. It wasn't her fault."

"No, apparently it was mine."

"You weren't at the tribunal. We could only go by the evidence."

"Don't you think that's a little strange, Volski? To hold a tribunal while I was in a bed – or missing, or dead, for all you seemed to know – and had no chance to defend myself?"

Emotions fought over his face. Uncertainty, grief, guilt. Not the righteous anger I would have preferred. "What else could you have added?"

"That it wasn't my fault, that it wasn't an accident!" I gripped Volski's arm, drew him closer. "I tried to tell you then, I tried to warn you, but the circle was failing, I don't even know if you heard me." A new emotion now. Fear. Was I that terrifying, with my new lights and bandages over my face? "Someone must have summoned them, set them loose on the construction site. It was their fault, not mine!" I broke off, panting. Weakness shook over aching skin. This might not have been the best idea. Not yet, anyway.

"Them?" Volski whispered. His eyes darted over the seat, the street, the gallery. Anywhere but me.

"Pions." I tried gripping him with both hands, but the fingers of my left had started to swell, and they wouldn't respond. "They broke our circle. They pushed me off Grandeur's palm."

"Other, Tanyana, your hand doesn't look good," Volski said.

I glanced down. Sure enough, the bandage had lifted. Dark stitches crawled out of red, puckering holes.

He stared at the wounds in horror. "Maybe you should calm down. Maybe you should go home."

Calm did settle on me, but not the kind he wanted. A hollow, hopeless cold. "You used to trust me, with your pions, your work, your life. Why don't you believe me now?"

"Tan- my lady." Volski patted my right hand like I was a pet. "I want to believe you, of course, but I didn't see anything. We didn't see anything. There were no pions pushing you. It was an accident. That's all."

That's all? "If I fell, Volski, just fell, then please explain this to me." I held up my mangled, swollen left hand. "Please tell me-" my tongue was a lump in my mouth at the words "-please tell me what Tsana did."

Confusion. Pain. Grief. Volski grieved for me though I was not dead. "It was an accident."

"Tell me."

He swallowed hard again, and took his patting hand away. He looked to the gallery, its permanence and beauty. I couldn't bring myself to do the same. I would find no comfort there. Instead, I watched the emotions on his face. Wondered if he wished he had not noticed me at all. "She panicked, when Grandeur started to come down. You wouldn't have believed it, Tanyana. On the ground, with all that glass and metal and stone falling on us, it was all we could do to keep ourselves alive!"

"Yes, it must have been terrible." And yet the very image of peace and quiet from my position, eight hundred feet up and falling fast.

"Nosrod caught you first, he made a webbing, soft, strong. Ingenious. But it disintegrated. Must have been the panic, we all felt it. Nothing we created would hold."

That, or the furious crimson pions none of them believed existed.

"Llada did… something like cushions. Worked well. For a moment. And then-"

"And then?" I felt very quiet and still. In my mind I could see myself falling, the scrambling attempts of my circle to save me, and the pions destroying everything they tried. I could see it as clearly as if I had been awake still. As if Grandeur hadn't knocked me out from the start.

"And then Tsana, she panicked, and she constructed glass."

"Glass," I whispered.

"It was an accident, the tribunal said-"

"Fell through it, did I?"

"Y-yes."

"Lots of blood, I imagine."

He nodded, looking ill. "It was terrible. Just horrible."

I stood too quickly, swayed, and grasped the back of the seat.

"Where are you going?" Volski leapt to his feet, hands out to hold me, but I leaned back and steadied myself. "Can I help you home?"

"I'm going to the tribunal chamber. They need to know-" I blinked dizziness away "-I need to tell them!"

"Let me help you!"

But I didn't need Volski, not any more. He buzzed around me like a fly as I crossed the gardens, climbed the steps, and entered the tribunal chamber.

Tribunals were held in a grand old hall built of smooth marble. Carvings glared down from a high and imposing ceiling. I glanced up at them as Volski and I walked the long path to the single desk barring the way to the tribunal chambers. The Other, his face twisted and monstrous, seemed to follow us. Why had they carved so many of him? His distorted form, his red eyes, his long and leering tongue. A horde of Others surrounded the Keeper Mountain, where a single large light fitting had been installed. I supposed it was symbolic, the way Grandeur was supposed to be symbolic. The Keeper was more than just a mountain; in the old world myths he was a guardian too, a barrier between us and the terror of the Other. He was a light holding back the darkness.

Volski, I could tell, was more concerned with the people around us than the Other on the ceiling. The hallway was crowded, hushed words rose to the ceiling like humming smoke. Eyes watched us, whispering mouths turned our way.

The desk was a wide slab of roughly cut stone with a polished surface. A bored-looking woman sat behind it, a lamp in the design of a lily lighting her face.

I stormed the desk in my tired, shaking style. She looked up, eyelids heavy, her own pink handprint on her cheek. "Documentation?" she droned, before I had opened my mouth.

It wasn't what I had expected, and I realised I didn't really know what to say. "I- er- I need to speak to someone." Who? "Someone who presided over a particular tribunal." How were tribunals identified? Dates? Numbers? I turned to Volski. "Do you remember the date it was held? Do you have anything to prove-?"

"Don't bother." The woman behind the desk straightened. No sleepiness remained in her face. Her hazel eyes were sharp, her face suddenly angular and hard. "No documented slide, no tribunal. No point."

"No." It wasn't that simple. "I need to speak to someone about a tribunal that was held without me. I need them to set up another one, or reopen it, or whatever it is they do. What's the word? An appeal! I need an appeal. To tell the truth!"

She lifted an unimpressed eyebrow. "Listen. You can't walk in here and demand to talk to a veche representative. They're not dogs to bark at your command."

"But-"

"I said no! The veche calls you to a tribunal, not the other way around. Who do you think you are that you expect the veche to jump when you shout?"

I realised the whispering had gone quiet.

"What about me?" Volski, until this point hanging back uncomfortably, leaned on the desk beside me. The silver veche bears on his strapping navy coat shone in the lilylight. "Can you help me?"

The woman let out a rather overstated groan. "And what do you want?"

"He's just going to ask you the same thing!" I jumped in. "But you'll listen to him, won't you, because of those damned pins on his coat."

She gave me a firm, level look. "We are all equal before the veche. No matter how… dirty."

"Other's shit."

"One more word like that and I'm throwing you out." She lifted a hand. Enforcers I hadn't realised were there materialised from the crowd. Their bears were roaring, furious and large, and they shone from belt buckles, hats and shoulders.

"You can't just-"

"Tanyana!" Volski slapped a heavy hand on my shoulder and I gasped into silence. Bastard had hit my left side. "I assume you cannot direct me to a veche member who oversaw a particular tribunal?" he asked the woman behind the desk, and positively reeked urbane diplomacy. "Even though I was there?"

"That kind of information is sealed." She glared at me. "For what must seem at the moment to be obvious reasons."

I glared right back.

"What kind of information can you give me?" Volski pressed on.

"Transcript slides are available to the public. All sensitive information removed, of course."

"May I have one, then?"

So, as it turned out, I needed Volski after all. The woman grudgingly gave up the records: two small glass sides, each about the length of my finger and as thin as a fallen leaf. Every word crowded inside them was written in pions. They held answers more securely than any lock could have. At least from me.

"I haven't given up," I told the woman behind the desk, even as Volski started to walk away. "I won't let this stop me."

"How exciting for you."

I followed Volski to one of the few empty stone benches that lined the hallway. The enforcers watched us, the crowd watched us, even the woman behind her desk. My bandages were hot. My stitches ached.

"What more can I tell you?" Volski asked. "I told you about Tsana, I explained-"

"I don't think this will help." I pressed the bandage down on my hand, looked up and held the shocked gaze of a wealthy woman in satin and pearls. Wasn't the bell a little early for pearls? What did she have to look so scandalised about? "I need to tell people what really happened. I need to make them understand that I shouldn't be, well, like this." I scowled as the unruly bandage started to curl. "How will reading those lies help me do that?"

Volski was silent for a heavy moment. "Tanyana. It's all we've got."

We? This was hardly his fight; my circle had made that very clear. He would leave, as soon as I let him, as soon as his failing sense of duty and guilt abandoned him. But when would I have this opportunity again? "Fine. The stitches then, tell me about the stitches."

Volski held the slide out at arm's length, and lifted it so he could peer through it. A gentle flick of his fingers and the pions inside leapt out of the glass, shining their words in a bright golden light that I could only imagine. All I saw was a faint mist that gathered in the space between Volski and the slide. He scanned, mouth moving, fingers occasionally twitching. And frowned. "Are you sure you want-"

"Tell me."

Even so, he hesitated. "Your injuries were horrible."

I laughed, a little too loud. It echoed from marble floor and walls. An enforcer twitched my way before realising my bitterness wasn't actually a threat. "I know that already."

"The glass-" he hesitated, coughed "-you fell through the glass on your left side. But, you see, falling steel beams had already hit you, on the head, so the healers had to choose." Volski lowered the slide, dismissing its invisible information. As the mist dispersed I saw three tiny dark specks form. I looked away, horrified. Debris. "They saved your life, did things in your head you do not want me to read out. But it meant you weren't strong enough for them to heal the glass cuts. So they had to resort to stitches."

"I see." Did that help, knowing where the Other-cursed patterns in dark fibre came from? Didn't make them any less sore. Wouldn't make them heal faster. But, at least, I knew.

"And what does it say about pions in there?" I bit off each word. "Does it detail the chaos? The crimson pions that tore up everything you tried to do to help me?"

"You know it doesn't. I was there, I didn't see them, none of us saw anything like that." Volski hesitated again. "It does include the inspectors' reports, though. They determined that you tried to do too much, because you felt like you were under pressure, and pushed yourself too far. You created so much debris that it destabilised the systems, but you didn't realise that was happening." He swallowed. "It was a mistake to do an inspection without more warning." He coughed. "The veche has even set down a new edict: three days' notice, in all cases, from now on."

Those Other-damned inspectors. I stood. This time, Volski didn't follow. "Thank you, Volski. I'll leave you alone now."

He still didn't stand. "Can I see you again? Is there anything more I can do to help?"

I snorted. "Do you really want to?"

"Of course!"

"My door is open to you. Always open."

"But where-?"

I started walking away. I didn't need to watch Volski pretend to care about the crazy, damaged woman he once respected. A few steps, however, and I stopped. Looked over my shoulder. "Who did they replace me with?"

"Who? Oh." Volski fidgeted and looked uncomfortable. "They made Llada the centre. Brought in someone new to fill her spot. Not the same, though. Not without you."

That was nice to say, at least. "Llada?" I could imagine her bullying the circle the way she did her pions. Didn't think it would last. "Not who I would have chosen."

I left Volski sitting in the veche chamber, the tribunal slides between his fingers.

As I limped my way home, I came to realise just how much of a fool I had been. I should not have left Volski so abruptly while he was offering help. I should have taken what favours I could get. But he wasn't the only avenue still open to me. If I couldn't reopen the tribunal just by asking nicely, or rudely, then maybe I wasn't asking the right people. I had been an architect for the veche. Surely someone in Construction for the Furtherment of Varsnia knew someone who could ask nicely and not be ignored.

When I made it home, the courtyard was not empty. Devich stood there, pressing the lock, bending over, frowning at it. How long had he been standing there, doing that?

I said, "I should have known you'd come the one day I step outside this place."

He spun, smiled at me, blinked confusion. "Good to see you walking."

I pushed past him, touched the pion lock, opened the door and let him stand there as I leant on the door frame.

"Tanyana." His gorgeous green eyes swam with emotion. It took me a moment to realise that was because the suit on my wrist was shining in his face. "Will you let me in?"

I lowered my hand. "Are you going to give me a good reason to?"

"Hmm." He lifted a finger to his lips, tapped with exaggeration. "So I can admire your beautiful home?" And he winked. With his smooth cheeks and the boyishness in his smile I couldn't imagine anyone as different from Volski.

"Not quite good enough."

Devich dropped his finger, and his act. "I have this, to ease the pain." He took another glass tube from his pocket. "And I'd like to come inside to make sure you are healing."

A sneer twitched on the edge of my lips, but I stepped back to let him inside. I crossed my arms as much as I could without hurting my wrists. "I'm sure you say that to all the girls you trick, tie down and mutilate."

The glance over his shoulder was guilt-ridden and puppy-eyed. Dangerous combination. "Only the interesting ones." His voice was thick.

Scowling, I closed the door. "What do you want? What more could you possibly do to me?"

"Tanyana, please." He took a half step closer, before simply twitching his hand. A hopeless gesture. "Forgive me. I didn't want to. I'm so sorry I hurt you."

"Hmph." I approached him, setting the buckles on his pale jacket sparkling.

It was strange, I suddenly felt powerful. In my hurt, my ugliness, I was stronger than him in his tailored shirt and polished boots.

I held out my hands. "What is this?"

"Your suit, my- Tanyana."

"Try again."

He smiled, sad and slow. "I will explain. I'm here to help you." He flicked a glance back at the door. "Now that you're well enough, they let me come and see you."

I lowered my hands, still scowling. My wrists had started to ache again, right up into the elbow joint.

"Please." He said that an awful lot. "Sit down. Do you have tea? Can I make you some tea?"

I gave in to him, and pointed him to the kitchen. As I settled into my reading chair I could hear him rattling around. The clang of cutlery, the hollow knock of cups, and finally the hiss of heated water. It was rather pleasant, to have Devich in my small kitchen.

Too pleasant. I reminded myself to scowl as he entered the study, cups fitted with knitted warmers balanced in his hands. My stitches pulled.

"Here." He handed me a cup, and I wrapped my hands around the warmth. The light from my wrists created sparkling patterns on the dark liquid, the crests of a false ocean.

He sat on the footrest, knees close to my own. I didn't shift away.

"Explain."

He took a sip of his own first. This seemed to involve sniffing the tea, blowing away steam, and gradually touching the rim of the cup to his lips. "To be a debris collector, you need a suit. See, you can't go around picking the debris up, not with your bare hands. No one can do that. So we need to make suits. Special suits. And that's what you're now wearing."

"But these don't look like any suit I've seen." I flicked my wrist, wincing slightly at the stiffness there.

"True. Your suit is dormant now."

"Dormant?" Suits weren't dormant. Suits were wool and buttons and dye.

Another sip. "It'll be difficult while you're healing, particularly if you're going to insist on running around upsetting your stitches." His eyes slid to the red, angry skin of my left hand. I had to fight not to slip it from the cup and hide it between my knees. "When we can be sure everything has stabilised then I'll show you." The edges of his cheeky smile peeked above the rim of the cup. "It's not something I can really explain."

I gulped my hot tea down, enjoying the warmth it left in my throat and stomach. "Why are you here then, if you refuse to explain anything?"

"Told you." He placed his still-full cup on the floor and shuffled forward. His hands rested lightly on my knees and his raised eyebrows challenged me to pull away.

I sat very still. The heat of his palms travelled through my pants to leave a tingling.

"I'm here to help." He leaned in closer. "You're tired, Tanyana."

I didn't pull away, but I did make a face. "You should try sleeping with these sometime."

"It's the small things that are hard to get used to at first. Here." He kept one hand on my knee as he slid open the buttons on his jacket and pulled dark cloth from a pocket. "You might need to wait a few more days for your skin to heal, there's nothing I can do about that. But these are for you."

There were five of them, tight circles of a dark cloth that stretched in my hands. "What are they?"

"To cover you. So you can sleep." He took one from me and ran his fingers along it, demonstrating the elasticity. "These will hide the light." He placed the fabric back with its fellows. "Helps you sleep." And the cloth would hide the horrible metal bands from the rest of the world. He didn't say it, but I could read it in his face.

I had never hidden before. Would I do so now?

Devich collected his cup from the rug.

I lifted an eyebrow at him as he sipped, carefully. "Is that all?"

Crestfallen, he replaced the cup on the floor. "Well, I still need to help you with the pain. Show me your wrists."

Wary, I did so, shoulders tense, ready to snatch them away.

"How are your wounds?" He inspected the suit and lifted bandages along my arm.

"Healing slowly."

"Do they hurt?"

I described the pain, the changes and the rises and the rare, rare dips. He listened, expression hidden.

"I will show you some exercises. Keep the muscles working, and they will heal faster. Pay special attention to your neck. You need to keep the blood vessels and nerves there healthy."

I lost track of the bells as Devich tortured me some more. He bent my wrists, he rolled my ankles and bowed me from the waist. He massaged the tender muscles around my shoulders. Hurt like the Other's own claws, left me feeling twitchy and sore and irritable. The monster even waited for his tea to cool to room temperature before drinking. What kind of Other-spawn would do that?

Finally, he loosened more pions across my skin, to ease the damage he had done. "It hurts now, I know."

"Oh, do you?" I wrapped myself in my arms as he took the cups away, determined to stay in the chair for at least another sixnight, and possibly never move again.

"It won't hurt as much tomorrow. Trust me."

"Why would I ever trust you?"

Devich smiled, and drew his jacket from the corner of my desk where he had tossed it. His sleeve disturbed two old-fashioned graphite pencils I had bought for the novelty, never imagining I might actually need to use them. I watch him rearrange them. His hand was shaking.

Was I really that horrible? To look at, to touch, to force himself to speak to?

"Because I know a lot more about debris than you do, Tanyana." He kept his back to me as he shrugged on his coat. "You might be able to see it, but I've spent my life studying it. I worked with suits more primitive and painful than yours will ever be. I coached dozens of collectors, helped them through the beginning, when everything is nasty, painful and new. You're not the first collector I've visited to teach them how to sleep, whose knotted shoulders I have eased, who's resisted the exercises I designed for their own good. You're not the first, and you will not be the last." Smiling, open and easy, he flicked buttons into holes. "You're not the first, Tanyana, but by Other, you're the strongest."

Curled into a chair, sulking, I snorted a laugh. "What could possibly make you think that?"

"You can't know how quickly you tied to the network. Some collectors take weeks to heal as much as you have in the past, what is it now, sixnight? Yes, it's only been a sixnight. And your suit is generating, it started generating the moment it touched your skin. You are strong, Tanyana. Please, in the coming moons, with the coming changes, remember that. You are strong."

I had no idea what to say, so I didn't reply.

"And do your exercises." Grinning, Devich left me. I heard the door close, the sizzling click of the pion lock, and silence. Lovely silence.

The skin around my suit stung when I pulled the dark covers on. My left hand screamed protests. But it was worth the discomfort to sit in darkness – actual darkness – and silence. Didn't have time to move from my chair before I fell asleep.