Debris (25 page)

  I had Devich.

 
 
 
 

I'd promised Devich.

  The next Olday night, I dug clothes I'd assumed I would never wear again from the bottom of my closet. Somehow they needed to look respectable, fit over my uniform and hide as much of my suit and its lights as possible. Tailored pants of black silk and satin; they wouldn't do up around the band at my waist and I was forced to wear them low, so my heels stood on the hems. A fine layered shirt, with a gauzy top layer, of white and icicle blue, and a loose undershirt in silver. It opened wide at the neck and wrists, and I stood in front of the mirror for bells, trying every scarf and necktie I owned. Finally, I settled on a cream silk scarf with bluebell stitching. It was long enough to loop twice around my throat and I tied it tightly. My wrists were harder to hide. I did the buttons on the overshirt, glad the cuffs were solid against the gauze, and hoped any glimpses of silver might be mistaken for jewellery.

  Hair, at least, was still simple enough, although it had grown over the past sixnights. I ran a handful of the remnants of my precious cream through the blonde strands so it swept back from my face and curled into wisps behind my ears. There was hardly any of the cream left, a faint clogging at the bottom of the jar. I couldn't remember how many kopacks I had paid for it, and that said enough, really. I wouldn't be able to afford it again.

  I lacked the appropriate cosmetics and jewellery. With bandages still stuck to my neck and shoulders, and pink scars wriggling on my face, neither would have helped.

  I pulled on flat-heeled boots that were low enough to button up, and examined myself in the standing mirror. A parody of my old self smiled grimly from the glass. The pants no longer hugged my hips and thighs; indeed, they hung baggy and too large over my abdomen and legs. The extra length and the flat shoes made me short. The shirt too had lost its once-feminine look. No longer tight around my breasts, no longer tailored to highlight my waist, it was floppy and loose.

  I wavered in front of the mirror. Feeling short, feeling baggy, feeling tired from a sixnight of debris collecting and missing the Darkwater sublevel, with its smells of Kichlan's cooking and its footprints of ash across the cement floor.

  Then Devich knocked.

  He greeted me with a grin as I opened the door, and swept inside. One arm wrapped around my waist as he pushed me up against the hallway wall and kissed me.

  "You are lovely," he said, as he allowed me to catch my breath. His eyes flickered over me, starting with hair, to scarf, to shirt and pants. "Like I imagined."

  With a frown, I straightened, and pushed him away. "The trousers certainly look better on you than me."

  "Hardly." And he whipped out a pale lily from his jacket.

  I took the flower, not entirely sure what I was supposed to do with it. Devich wore pants similar to mine, of a thicker cotton and with a satin stripe down the side. His shirt was the colour of sunset, his jacket black with a crimson satin lining. He looked roguish, charming, and his clothes fit altogether too well.

  "I don't think this is a good idea," I murmured, more to myself than Devich. But he heard me.

  His face grew serious, not quite stern. "You promised me, Tanyana."

  I lifted my eyebrows at him.

  "I don't understand the problem." He shoved fists into his jacket pocket and actually pouted. "You look lovely, you will fit right in. You belong with us."

  With a controlled breath, I kept my hand from my face. "Too late to back out now, anyway." Oh, I wished there was a way.

  "Not that you want to." Devich smiled again. "Trust me."

  He helped me into my jacket like a true gentleman and I realised it probably wasn't suitable for a ball, or whatever this event was going to be. It smelled like the streets, like damp snow and road dust. But the other jackets I had owned were veche-marked, or sewn with the pattern of Proud Sunlight. Still, Eugeny's fire-drying room scent was there, somewhere in the weave, as well as traces of Kichlan's cooking. I took the comfort they could give.

  Devich tucked the lily stem into an empty buttonhole on my breast, and I hoped it was enough to draw the eye away from the smudges, the dirt and the damp patches.

  There was a waiting landau hovering in the silvering twilight. I sat beside Devich, his arm wrapped around my shoulders and pressing my hair against his cheek, and tried to forget the last coach ride I had taken. I tried not to compare the icy night that whipped us through the torn doors of Kichlan's coach to the pion-heated air and down-soft cushions in Devich's. I closed my eyes to the four small lamps lighting the interior, looked down from the gold inlaid handles and ignored the plush, bloodcoloured carpet.

  We headed into the centre of Movoc-under-Keeper.

  The veche chambers took up most of the centre of the city. They spanned the bridge itself, local courts on the east bank, national and province buildings on the west. In the shadow of these buildings, the city changed. It still looked haunted to me, but instead of the apparently unaided movement of otherwise inanimate objects – from walkways to coaches to food stalls – the older parts of the city were occupied by the ghosts of time. Age wore down on them. Not in a way that dulled the handcrafted beauty of polished marble, or blunted the pointed grace of rows upon rows of tall conifers. Rather, as the apartments and the factories fell away behind us, as the streets narrowed and the landau was forced to slow down, it felt like a weight of memory, of bells and moons and years, draped over us. These were the foundations of Movoc-under-Keeper as we knew her, built in the protective shadow of the Keeper Mountain. Our history, our ancestry, our past. And my own face, reflected in the coach window, could have been the spectre of any longdead debris collector.

  Not all the buildings we passed were veche chambers. Indeed, some of the most beautiful were the homes of the oldest families in Varsnia. My reflection paled further as we pulled up at the gates to one such family home.

  Devich was from a younger family, I had been certain of it. How could he have been invited to a place like this?

  "Just what circles do you swim in?" I asked. To my horror, my voice shook.

  Devich simply laughed. "Me? Oh, I'm not much of a circle swimmer. But some veche members are interested in what we do. They consider debris somewhat of an oddity, they're curious. Lord Sporinov is one of them." His face brightened. "Oh, he'll be happy to talk to you!"

  "Wonderful." Just what I wanted. Now I was an oddity in baggy, inappropriate clothes.

  But as I glanced at Devich from under my eyelashes I realised what this meant. Lord Sporinov? An old family, then, and a member of the national veche. If he was interested in debris then maybe he would be interested in listening to how I came to be able to see it. And just why I needed a tribunal of my own.

  "It is a great opportunity," Devich said.

  More than he could know.

  A small army of servants pulled the large silver gates open. At first I thought that was odd: I'd expected them to be powered by pions. But perhaps a wealthy man with an interest in debris collectors liked the old-fashioned touch.

  The landau glided down a long driveway, flanked on either side by dormant fruit trees. They would look beautiful as the weather warmed, sprinkled with pale flowers and the bright green buds of leaves. For now they were all gnarled branches in bare grey.

  The house itself was big enough to be a veche chamber, and as intimidating. Marble steps, warmed by the light from many lamps, led up to a set of large wooden doors opened wide. Colour and light spilled from them. Silhouettes meandered at the top. Fainter shapes danced behind.

  All too soon we were at the steps. Devich leapt from the landau with unhealthy enthusiasm and held out a hand for me. What would he do if I refused to come out?

  "Come with me, Tanyana." He smiled his beautiful smile, and his large hand didn't waver. "You belong with me."

  I gripped his hand and let him lead me down the coach's tight steps. Then he hooked his arm in mine and was sweeping me up the carpet of light, to the open doors and certain doom.

  There were a few men smoking fragrant cigars at the top of the steps. They spoke in a low and constant whisper that lulled as Devich led me past. I held my head high and tried not to step on my hems.

  An aging servant dressed in a shirt and pants of imitation gold thread gazed down his nose at us as we stepped through the open door. Devich flicked his fingers – doing something I couldn't see to invisible pions – and with a nod and a sweep of his arm, the servant invited us inside the Sporinov home. I realised, as I stepped into warmth and light and noise, that the whole exchange had happened without a word being said.

  But then I entered Lord Sporinov's home, and it cast all other thoughts from my mind.

  I may have been employed by the veche, but I had never been invited to an old family ball. I had worked for those newer to power. Architecture and planning were not high on the veche agenda. Old families, whose pion strength had established them as rulers long before the revolution even happened, they controlled the enforcers, they dealt with foreign powers, they dictated how much of Varsnia's binding knowledge we wanted to share. I had never been important enough, never been vital enough to the future of Varsnia, to warrant an invitation before.

  I couldn't imagine why I was now.

  Gold-edged carpets ran in smooth lines over a polished marble floor. Different coloured lights shone in flameshaped glasses that hung from the ceilings on gold chains. Curtains the colour of buttery cream swept over wide windows. And the house was full of beautiful people. Women in dresses that hugged their body shape and were sewn of silk and light-reflecting glass beads. Some women wore a wider skirt, layered with satin and lace. No colour repeated itself in their attire. I saw blue like the sky before dawn, green as the newest sprout from the trunk of a tree, and icy white. Jewels sparkled from ear lobes, necks, wrists and hair.

  I realised, with a strangely satisfying kick in the gut, that I wore jewellery far brighter than these women ever would.

  Men followed these painting-perfect images of femineity around like shadows. Each was a mirror image of Devich, only older and without the mischievous smile.

  Still latched firmly onto my arm, Devich guided me past these, the oldest, the richest, and the most beautiful in Varsnia. I caught sight of a thin young woman, dressed in a skirt that nearly swallowed her. With her large eyes, dark skin and ever-so-charmingly mussed hair, she looked closer to a skittish deer than a woman at a ball. Men hung about her in a circle and vied for the attention of those dark, luscious eyes. I had never seen anything as beautiful, yet Devich's expression darkened when he noticed her, and he looked away. The awkward way she stood, the jerking, fumbling way she tried to walk, started me wondering. What was happening to the pions inside her body? I remembered the rumours, the members of the old families who would snatch pretty women from the streets like gems hidden in mud for their entertainment. What better chains to keep her here than those that already existed beneath her skin?

  Devich kept up his pressure on my elbow and she was soon lost in the crowd.

  "Here we are," Devich murmured. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright and focused with a frightening determination. "Our host."

  A tall and greying man stood straight, proudly, on a small step that kept him a few inches above the rest of the ballroom. A much younger but no less proud woman held on to the crook of his elbow. She wore so much silver sewn into the fabric of a long, thin dress that she shone in the light like she was a jewel herself. Together, the couple surveyed the ballroom like shepherds over their flock. They listened politely to the men and women before them, nodding, answering in monosyllables when appropriate, and being altogether gracious and lordly.

  I wished I could have taken off my jacket. Surely there was a servant hovering around for that express purpose. But Devich didn't slow, and all too soon we had broken through to the front line of the Lord and Lady Sporinov's audience.

  Devich released me long enough to bow, but hurried to grip my elbow again as if I was about to make an attempt to escape.

  "My lord Sporinov," Devich said grandly, silencing the constant twitter of the people around us, their bird-like vying for attention. "And my lady Rana. I thank you, again, for your gracious invitation."

  The lord and lady turned their faces toward us in a slow and bizarrely coordinated movement. "Devich," the lord said. "You came." His regard was an abrading wind, his wife's cold as ice.

  I dipped into the best bow I could manage with Devich still attached.

  "I did, my lord."

  "And what have you brought?" Rana asked.

  I flicked my eyes up, met hers and held them until she looked away. I was no thing.

  "Allow me to introduce Tanyana Vladha." Devich didn't seem to realise how uninteresting I was to these people, how low. "The debris collector."

  A murmur ran though the crowd around the lord and lady, and gradually spread. I could feel heat beneath my cheeks and knew it would make the scars stand out more.

  The lord Sporinov suddenly seemed to animate. One moment he was doing an accurate imitation of a wax statue and the next he was alive. Even had colour in the face and movement in his eyes. He shook off his wife and descended from their single step.

  "A collector? Truly?" He held a hand out to me. I shook it, fairly certain I was about to wake up.

  "Indeed, my lord." Devich glanced around at the jealous faces, and his smile turned from enjoyment to triumphant. I wished it hadn't. "You spoke to me of your interest in my work, and I thought I could bring a friend who knows far more about it than I do."