Suited (35 page)

“Down?” the Shielder asked, and only then did I realise what was going on.

I withdrew my suit connection instantly, and Natasha stumbled without my support. One of the Mob hurried to catch her.

“You cursed, lying, traitorous…” I began sharpening my suit to blades.

But the Striker stepped forward, hand uplifted. “Miss Vladha?” he whispered.

There was something wrong with his voice. A weakening of his lungs, a padding in his throat that softened him to near-silence and made him difficult to understand.

The Shielder hovered behind his Striker like an overly concerned and brightly coloured mother bird. His crimson uniform bore no obvious reinforcements or embellishments; simple wool, cut severely around the shoulders. A dark-glass visor extended from his helmet and covered his eyes.

Natasha struggled to stand, resorted to holding the Mob’s shoulder for support. “Tanyana, please. This is not what you think.”

I lifted eyebrows at her. Only the fact that the Striker had not tried to wipe me from the street slowed my growing knives. In fact, he did not seem to be able to see me at all. His hand groped blind in the air a good two feet from my face, and he turned his head in a slow, strangely birdlike movement. Most of his ears were gone, reduced to small slits in the side of his head. Coupled with his shaved hair and the gauntness of his face, it made him look inhuman. Something closer to a bird, or a lizard. In fact, his armour bore an unsettling resemblance to pale scaling. The tight material was reflective, and segmented, so that it gleamed as he moved.

“What is it then?” I asked.

The Striker took a small step forward. I resisted the need to back away. “You really are here, aren’t you?”

The suit, of course. I was more debris than pion now, I knew that. And to the Striker’s eyes – tuned to deep pions alone – I did not exist. A good feature, I supposed, for a weapon to have.

“I told you, didn’t I? What she was.” Natasha finally released her hold on the Mob, and regained her balance. “My thanks, Taras.”

Without withdrawing the half-formed blades I shook out my hands to loosen the knots their stalled creation had tightened into my arms. “This is not an explanation.” I pointed to the Mob. He had the good grace to flinch. “The last Mob we ran into bound you, hit you, and tried to arrest you.”

“Not all of us are loyal to the national veche,” Taras growled. His golden, roaming eyes narrowed behind his helmet.

“Who else would you work for?”

“We work for the interests of Movoc-under-Keeper itself,” the Shielder said.

I paused. “The local veche?” What good would the support of the local veche be? The national veche and the old families controlled Varsnia’s wealth, her pion-binding skill, and her military. Local veche tended to co-ordinate nothing more important than the sewerage systems and street repair.

“I told you,” Natasha said. “I have contacts.” She nodded to her Striker, Shielder and Mob. “The local veche doesn’t approve of this city and its inhabitants being used as the national veche’s personal experiment, any more than you do. At least, some sections of the local veche don’t.”

“Some sections?”

“The veche is not as unified as you have been led to believe. Not locally, regionally or even nationally.”

“Miss Vladha,” the Striker said again, in his unstable voice. I wondered what the veche had done to him, to his throat and lungs, to make him sound so. We were similar, in a startling way, the Striker and I. Both mutilated into weaponry. “The local veche is not alone.” He gestured toward Natasha. “You know we work with the Hon Ji. With the Emperor himself.”

“So I’ve heard,” I answered. Immediately, the Striker turned toward the sound of my voice. His eyeless gaze was discomforting.

“The Hon Ji armies will help us overthrow the old families. We will free Movoc-under-Keeper, all of Varsnia, from their tyranny. Miss Vladha, you would be a powerful ally. Will you help us?”

I glanced away from his stretched, smooth skin.

“The first thing we would do is help you flee the city,” Natasha said. “As I’m sure you have been trying to do yourself.”

I didn’t answer, but thought of the weight of an impossible hand.

“We tried to help you before,” the Mob muttered. “If you had just come quietly with Barbarian and Comedian we could have saved–”

“Taras, be quiet!” Natasha snapped.

But it was enough. Thugs? I blinked a moment, considered. “Barbarian and Comedian?” I whispered. “That was you?”

“Tanyana, listen–”

“You sent those men to drag me from my home? You were behind that? You were the strange, mysterious men who would, apparently, break me?” I had always assumed the puppet men had orchestrated the removal of my studio. Just another part of my life they had decided to strip away, at will. But Natasha?

“It would have happened anyway,” Taras said. “You need to pay your bills.”

“It was the best way,” the Striker said. “To free you from the veche. Quick, quiet, in the shadows. So much could have been avoided. If you had come to us earlier.” He gasped for air by the end of his speech, and his already sallow face blanched further.

“Stanislav,” Natasha chided. “Do not push yourself.”

The Striker flashed a sorry smile in my general direction. “We are designed for the air,” he whispered. “And for killing. Walking, talking.” Another gasp. “Are difficult.”

I refused to feel sympathy. Natasha and her cronies did not deserve it. “And now you think I will help you? After what you did to me?”

Natasha nodded, a short, sharp motion. “Yes, because this offer does not extend only to yourself. Kichlan comes too.”

Kichlan? My weakness, was he, now that Lad was gone?

“We offer you both safety, out of the city, away from the national veche, in exchange for your help.”

“What makes you think–”

She cut across my words with a flat palm. “That’s what you were trying to, wasn’t it? That’s why you both left the underground ruins. To run.”

Ice sunk down into my belly. I did not believe, not even for a moment, that Kichlan would run.

“Kichlan did not leave with me,” I whispered.

“Truly?” Natasha asked, surprised. “Then where did he go?”

I felt the brush of a phantom hand again on my shoulder.

Hurry
.

I could not go with them, even if I had wanted to, not if Kichlan was missing. Natasha, I think, understood, though she did not approve.

“We have a revolution to start,” she said, by way of a goodbye, and turned her back on me. She and her traitorous Mob, Shielder and Striker disappeared into the Movoc streets. They were, I had to admit, the best camouflage she could have found.

I returned to Lev’s shop through backstreets and hid in what shadows I could find. The city was changing. Smaller groups of soldiers had split from the initial mass of the army. They clung like dirt around corners, at doorways, watching commuters, stopping coaches, prying and questioning. The groups were uniformly made of three Mob, one Striker. I wondered just how foolish I had been to get off that ferry and turn back into the city. To all this.

I snuck back into the shop through a window, and descended, closing the trapdoor safely behind me. Fedor glanced up as I pressed through the ruined door to the domed building.

The smell of cooped up bodies, of not enough fresh air, and – I hated myself for thinking this – the unburied dead, hit me before I’d even cleared the passageway.

Another reason not to come back.

“Where did you go?” But then he stood, and I realised Fedor was not angry. In fact, he did not seem to feel anything at all. His shoulders drooped, and his expression was empty and slack.

Sofia leapt to her feet and stared behind me. “Is Kichlan with you?” Her whole body thrummed with intensity, as though she could just will him into existence if she tried hard enough.

I did not answer, and glanced around the room. More faces. Lev; at first I didn’t recognise him with his head in his hands. Valya close beside him. And Eugeny. The concentration in his eyes matched Sofia’s, only he was focused on me.

I could only shake my head.

“When did he leave?” Sofia asked, voice cracking.

“It must have been after I did,” I answered. “I do not know where he went.”

“And where did you go? What are those clothes you’re wearing?” Zecholas asked.

I said nothing.

“If you won’t tell us, then it does not matter.”

I glanced between them all. Zecholas’s distant look, Volski tense. Fedor, empty. Eugeny, grieving. Mizra and Uzdal sitting close to each other, opposite the Unbound. Sofia still standing, still staring, still believing Kichlan would appear at any moment, her conviction sharp and clear and written all over her face. My heart hurt for her. I knew what I had done when I joined her collection team. I knew she cared for Kichlan more than, it seemed, she’d ever had the courage to tell him. Or more, at least, than he had ever noticed. But still, she had detected my pregnancy before anyone – even me. She had cared enough to take me to her healer, and not to judge, not even to hate me.

I wondered if Kichlan would have been better off if he had cared for her and not for me. Perhaps she deserved him more.

Lastly, I turned to Lev. So broken, face pressed into his palms. I could not be sure, it was hard to tell with so many faces I did not know but there did not seem to be as many Unbound as there had been. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

“They took him.” Lev’s words were so muffled I barely understood them.

Eugeny began to weep, and Valya crossed the circular floor to hold him.

“Strikers.” Lev looked up and over his shoulder at me. I drew back before I could stop myself, from the bruises, the cuts and the blood. One eye was inflamed and closed, his lip was split, knuckles grazed, his wrist purple and swollen.

Somewhere, as though from a great distance, as though through a thickening mist, I heard a faint wail. A sound of grief, or horror.

“They intercepted us. They were looking for him. They had been sent. Collectors without bands, they were told, carrying bodies through the streets.”

“Him?” I whispered.

“Tore the shrouds until they found him. Knew who they were looking for. Took him away. Left the others in the street like trash, only after him. We tried to stop them. Arrested, dragged away. I grabbed Eugeny and ran. Other, I ran.”

“Him?”

“Lad!” Eugeny, tears streaming. “Of course it was Lad! Those disgusting creatures sent Strikers – Strikers! – for Lad’s body. Who else could we be talking about?”

I staggered, reaching for the rough wall to support me. Volski gripped my shoulder. The image of Lad’s pale face, torn free of its shroud, exposed and dragged away… I had to fight not to be sick.

And Yicor, that strong, dignified old man, left in the gutter.

What could they want with Lad’s body? What would they be doing to him? Kichlan–

“Did…” I could taste bile. “Did Kichlan hear this? Was he here when you returned? Did he know what happed to Lad’s body?”

“We don’t know,” Volski murmured by my ear. “We didn’t realise you were gone either, not until Lev and Eugeny returned.”

None of them even mentioned Natasha. But then, she had always been so silent, hidden in shadow and apparently uncaring, that maybe they simply had not noticed her absence.

I stared at my shoes. Old, compared to Devich’s trousers. Encrusted with mud, leather worn and patched. Kichlan had done that, stitched a small, miscoloured square over a hole I had torn while clambering down a rusty drain, with a careful and well-practiced hand.

Kichlan. Had he heard what had happened to Lad’s body? Had he gone, then, to take his brother back?

There isn’t much time
.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Standing on the deck of the ferry, held by the icy Tear River wind, seemed so far away, an impossible dream.

“Tanyana?”

I glanced up. Expectant eyes watched me. “What?”

Fedor sighed. “Options. What should we do?”

I said nothing. Hard to answer when I didn’t know myself.

You will need to choose
.

“Where did you go, Tanyana?” Volski asked, voice low. “You wandered around up there for bells, while the veche sent Strikers for us, and yet you were unmolested.”

I thought of voices in the mist, of faces leering in broken glass. Yes, I wasn’t arrested or recruited or assaulted and dragged away. But I would hardly say the veche had left me alone.

I can take you to him. I feel what they are doing, I know their cruel touch. Do you want them to use his body as their new vessel; do you want him to take your place in their experiments
?

My gut clenched, fierce pain low and hard. Did I owe a dead friend anything? A dead Half? Whatever they did, however horrible and unfair, he was gone. I had watched it happen. They could not hurt him anymore.

Yes, the Half is gone. You do not need to hurry after him. He does not need you any more
.

Just like Kichlan had said. So maybe I should have stayed on that ferry, in that dream.

But I was not referring to him. Lad might not need you. But Kichlan does
.

“We have to do something,” Fedor was saying. “We try to run,” his eyes flickered toward me, and radiated contempt, “go out there and risk capture. Or we stay down here, and slowly starve to death. Because there isn’t enough food hidden in Lev’s shop to sustain this many people for more than a few days. One way or the other, we will need to go outside.”

“Or, we could do neither,” I said, even before I realised I’d made my decision. But as I spoke it grew so clear, I wondered why I had not seen it before. Freedom? What was my freedom, without him? “And save Kichlan instead.”

Sofia focused on me, then, “Kichlan?”

Fedor turned a kind of dying-sun red that, when mingled with the faintly blue light from our suits, made him look more purple than anything. “We could what?”

“Kichlan needs us–”

“No! Enough. We need to look after ourselves, Tanyana. Not Kichlan, not anyone else. Not even the Keeper.” Oh, I could see how much that cost him. So much he had believed crumbling beneath the weight of the soldiers’ boots above us.

“I thought you didn’t know where he was?” Volski asked.

I held in a sigh at their foolishness, at their mistrust. It was exhausting to stand in the middle of such pressure. “I don’t.”

“And it doesn’t matter,” Fedor pushed on. “Because that’s not an option. Hide, or flee. We need to decide which of those we’re doing.”

“You can, if you like. I am going to help Kichlan.”

Sofia nodded. “Yes.”

“How?” Volski gripped my elbow. “You don’t know where he is.”

I looked up into his face and realised he thought I was finally broken; more so than I had ever been after Grandeur, after suiting. He worried and he feared for me. But he would never understand.

It had been foolish to drag him into this, and selfish. But that was not something that could be undone with remorse.

“No, I don’t.” I pulled myself from his grip. “But the Keeper does.”