Debris (31 page)

  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 o
n 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.