Debris

16.

I hadn't returned to Proud Sunlight since I had graduated: Three Point Circle, First Class, Architect with Distinction. I would have been welcome before, particularly as my binding skill improved, my circle increased and the number of kopacks I could have donated rose with both. It was strangely satisfying to think that the first time I would return was when I was no longer welcome, when I had no pion-binding skill left, no circle and a pittance for an income. Maybe the fall had twisted something in my sense of humour.

On Thriveday we filled our quota early, with a large cache barely a few yards from the Darkwater door. We scooped it out of a pothole in the street, had not been forced to lie face-down in muck, wade through sewage or scale the side of buildings. However unnatural that enormous heap of debris lying easily accessible in the middle of the street was, I couldn't help but be thankful. Just this time. With our jars filled the remains of the day were left empty. I was not invited to shop, to travel to graveyards or enjoy Eugeny's cooking. I took the ferry into the city and tried not to see the patches of darkness hugging walls, lampposts, even the deck of the boat.

And I returned to Proud Sunlight.

The university was an imposing building of sandstone and marble close to the banks of the Tear River, a few rills north of the bridge. It hulked above the old city buildings, ancient as they yet larger, its pale walls broken by dark stained-glass windows. The Keeper had been sculptured into the stone at every corner, above every doorway. Both the mountain and the myth it was named after, he who defended us from the Other. That kind yet stern face, strong and everlasting.

A tall iron fence enclosed the building and the manicured gardens that stretched to the river. An old jetty reached out into the Tear, but I had never known it to be used. Before Proud Sunlight had opened its gates and heavily reinforced doors to anyone with sufficient binding skill, that fence would have been guarded, old family children alone invited to study in its halls. Now the main gates were left open, and enforcers no longer patrolled the corridors or garden paths, but to me it felt no more inviting. As I passed through the gate I felt like an intruder. So I hunched my shoulders and jammed hands in my pockets and hoped I could remain unnoticed. Just in case enforcers from the distant past did, somehow, remain. In case they could see through my secondhand clothes to the suit on my wrists and the honour I had lost, and throw me from the rooms I had once studied in so proudly.

But no one did. I attracted few second glances as I made my hopefully unobtrusive way past the main hallway. Pion-binders were practicing, bathed in colour from the tall windows. They huddled in groups of three and seemed to be altering the temperature of the room. I wondered at that. If Proud Sunlight had stooped so low that it was teaching binders to work in heating factories, then it shouldn't have been so quick to strike me from the honour roll. The university I remembered specialised in disciplines that required precision and skill, disciplines that if not done correctly could put lives at risk. Architecture, healing, military technologies and the more arcane investigation into circle formation and pion skill.

I continued beyond the main hallway, beyond offices and classrooms on the lower floor. A voice droned from somewhere, lecturing in a dull monotone that even Kichlan would have struggled to match. The thought made me smile and realise I missed his lecturing, at least compared to his silence and his distrustful glances.

The building was roughly divided between the disciplines; the kind of unofficial rule new students spent their whole first year trying to work out. Ground-floor rooms were allocated to the military; architects preferred the upper hallways. I knew the ways well, even after all these years. How many was it? Ten years? Yes, it must have been.

I found the half-hidden stairs behind an out-of-place bookcase in an old, empty office. The stairs themselves were an architectural wonder, and I could understand why the first architects who had come to learn and teach here had been attracted to them. They wove their tight way through the building, bypassing the rest of the levels to reach the top. Proud Sunlight had a strange roof. Designed with odd angles, some areas made of great sheets of glass that let the sun or the moonlight in, most built from the stone itself. What might have once been an attic had been divided into rooms, and these the architect lecturers had claimed as their offices. It was here I would find Jernea. If he was still alive.

I made my way down a thin hallway. Deep afternoon sunlight glanced in through patches of glass above me. It lit some of the offices, while others were left in dark shadow. A few faces I did not recognise watched me from desks as I passed them. A small group of ridiculously young students passed me in the hall. They whispered circle theories and hardly noticed me. I remembered what that was like, to have such passion, to be so skilled, and ready to create your future with both.

I had almost given up when one of the faces I didn't know did more than just watch me pass. Young for a teacher, his black gown too big for him, his silver bearclaw too bright, he was twitching through the invisible contents of a slide when I walked past his office. He looked up, surprised, placed the slide on the desk and strode into the hallway.

"You!" He pointed to me, and I stalled as a streak of warm light touched my face. "Who are you?" He approached me, hands hidden in folds of black cloth. The crimson satin edging on his gown surprised me. He must have graduated young and with high honours to have made second-senior lecturer by his age. "You're not a student."

I wondered what tipped him off? The scars? The clothes, or just because I looked colossally older than everyone in the Other-damned place? Which was exactly the way I felt.

"What are you doing here?"

I repressed a sigh. "Just looking for someone."

"Just looking?" He stepped into the sunlight and I noticed sporadic pale hairs dotting his chin and upper lip. Didn't help my mood. "You can't just look. This is an exclusive university, only the best-"

"What's going on here?"

I turned as a woman stepped out of the office at the end of the hallway. She strode toward us, step sure and brisk, and the young teacher took an involuntary step back.

"Who are you, what is-" Then she saw me, bathed in the light from the roof, and she stopped. "Ah. So, you did come." She was still in shadow so I could not see her face, but I could hear the rueful smile in her voice alone. "I suppose they were right." Another step, and the light touched her as well. I realised I knew her. Her sun-browned face carried more lines than I remembered, her dark hair was pulled back where it had always floated free. Dina. Only now, she wore a gold edge upon her black gown. Architect dean. It was rare for a woman to lead any university faculty, but she had always been skilled. Jernea's assistant when he had mentored me, a sub-senior lecturer those ten years ago. Quite a rise.

"Petr, thank you, but you can go now."

The young lecturer made to argue, but Dina cut him off.

"Please. Leave us."

With a final scowl in my direction, Petr returned to his office. Dina watched him go before casting her hard eye on me. "They did better work on your face than I expected, when I was told you were scarred."

Of all the students Jernea taught, why would she remember me? "It will never be the way it was."

"No, it won't." She seemed to hesitate, to be debating something silently within. "I suppose you have come to see him."

"It was my last resort." I had already steeled myself to hear of Jernea's death.

"I'm sure it was." Instead, she gave me a sad smile. "I will let you see him, but you should be prepared. He can't help you, he can't help anyone anymore."

"He is still alive then?"

Dina laughed, full and throaty. "That old bear will outlive us all. He refuses to hear the call of the Other, and you know what he is like when he sets his mind on something. The Other can shout as loudly as he wants, the old man won't listen."

I couldn't help but grin. "That's true." Jernea was one of the most tenacious people I had ever known. A powerful binder, a highly skilled architect and a determined teacher.

Dina gestured to me, and I followed her back to her office. "I must warn you, he is not the man he once was."

Her office was large, but narrow, almost a corridor of itself. Full bookshelves lined the walls, floor to partstone, part-glass ceiling. Only section of the university's ancient and priceless library. A desk, a few chairs and a rug alone broke up the uniform tones of wood and sandstone and leather-bound paper. Jernea was sitting at the far end of the office, beneath a large glass section. Late afternoon gold seemed to make him glow.

"He is no longer employed by the university," Dina said, softly. "He has not worked here for years. However, he feels safe in this room, he feels more at home here than in an old and empty house." She rubbed the back of her neck and looked at the floor. "Truth be told, I feel better when he is here with me. I don't remember a time at Proud Sunlight without him. He has carers, of course, and they came to me. Explained his situation. His distress. I was glad to have him back, to care for him. He doesn't need much. They feed him every day…" She trailed off as I slowly approached my old mentor.

Jernea sat in a strange chair, wrought of some kind of thick poly. It couldn't have been comfortable: too straightbacked, legs out, arms on hard rests. Not a cushion or any kind of padding in sight. He wore a gown of faded blue that was done up loosely down the front. His bare skin was thin and withered across stark ribs, and there were countless tiny holes in his chest.

"Other's hell," I hissed. "What have they done to you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Dina said, behind me. "I should have thought of this. You can't see them."

"See what?" I glanced at her, angry. There were more holes on his forehead, down his neck, even his arms.

"The pions, of course. It's a complicated system, tied in to the chair itself. It keeps him alive. They're pumping blood down to his extremities, monitoring and compensating for oxygen loss, as well as maintaining the workings of his left kidney-"

"Stop." I held up a hand, closed my eyes. "I- I don't want to know." I could imagine pions looping around him, in him, binding him to the chair, to this life, like colourful chains. And I wished I couldn't, because I didn't want to remember Jernea like that.

He looked like he had been spun from glass. Nearly transparent skin stretched across the bones of his face and hung in wrinkles around his neck. I could make out the veins at his temples, every sunspot that had ever dotted his cheeks. His eyes were white with cataracts, his hair thin. A blanket was tucked in around his legs and his once powerful and expressive hands were curled and skeletal, shaking on his lap.

"Jernea." I crouched beside him.

His head turned, ever so slightly, but his sightless eyes passed me by. He mouthed words, but they came out only as wet sounds.

"Today is not a good day." Dina stood close to my back. "He cannot talk today. He cannot stop the shaking. Some days he will ask after people I have never heard of. He will talk to the pions in the walls as though they were his friends. Today is not one of those days."

I stood and realised my own hands were shaking, almost as much.

"You picked a bad day."

"I did." I clasped my hands, squeezed them as I fought tears. I would not weep for my stubborn old mentor. It was good, in a way, that he did not know that I had fallen. That he would not understand it, or hear it, even if he was told. In that mind, locked behind age and blindness, I was always the centre of a critical circle.

"Why did you come here?" she asked.

When I turned, Dina's expression was hard. She crossed her arms, bunching the loose fabric of her gown. "You're not really here to try and persuade an old man to open a tribunal for you, are you?"

I gaped at her.

"Because he would be hurt, Tanyana, to think that was all you wanted from him."

"How did you know I wanted a tribunal?" And why did she remember me? Of all the students, why me?

"Tell me why you are here."

I looked back to Jernea, to his shaking and crippled fingers. "No, that is not why I came. Although I might have, if I had thought of it earlier." I shook my head. "I came to ask the greatest pion-binder I have ever known for his expertise, his knowledge, his mind. I came here for nothing."

Dina's shoulders sagged. "I should have known. No one he had touched could use him so thoughtlessly."

"So tell me," I said. "How did you know that?"

The edges of Dina's mouth twisted into a grim smile. "Come now, you must know."

"The veche?" I whispered. "Did they come here, did they threaten you?"

She was looking at Jernea again. "I should not be talking to you. I believed them, when they said even talking to you would be dangerous, that helping you could be fatal. Even for an old man." But when she looked back up at me her face was set, eyes dark and furious. "But I will not be threatened, and as ancient and distinguished an institution as Proud Sunlight will not be bowed into submission. They can take away our funding, divert kopacks into weapons research and warmongering, but we will not compromise our integrity. We will not be beholden to the veche any more than we already are. No matter how many more pale and strange-looking thugs they send!"

Ice shuddered over my skin. "Pale? Did they have no expression, nothing in their voice that sounded human? And did they walk like they were unreal, like they were built of wood?"

"That's an accurate description, if I've ever heard one." Her expression grew disbelieving. "Don't tell me you didn't know it was them. They're watching you, Tanyana. They made a point of coming here, of telling me you were looking for help to open a tribunal, and if I dared to help you both Jernea and I could be in some peril." She chuckled. "They can't understand the calibre of binder Sunlight produces if they think they can threaten us."

I stared down at the old man for what felt like a long time. "I'm sorry to bring them to your doorway."

"I know you are." Suddenly Dina placed a hand on my shoulder. "But I am more fearful for you. The veche must be very, very interested in you. Watch yourself."

I nodded. "I will go, and hope I take all my trouble with me."

She lifted her eyebrows. "What did you want to ask? I might not be the old man, but I have stood beside him for a long time." Dina softened as she spoke of him. "I learned a few things here and there."

"It doesn't matter now. And I won't give them any reason to come for you."

I crouched again, took one of Jernea's hands and then held him. He felt thin and fragile, like so much of my life now. And as I thanked him silently, I realised those questions I had thought so important really didn't matter. Why broken people like me could see debris, whether we could be fixed. What mattered, what really mattered, was why the puppet men had taken such an interest in me. And what, if anything, I could do about it.

A final pat on skin that didn't seem to feel me, and I stood. "Thank you," I said to Dina.

She nodded, seemed to hesitate. "Listen, I don't know if I should tell you this, but I think I will." She looked down to Jernea. "For him. When they came, the strange veche men, I heard a rumour. Kopacks are being withdrawn from us, here and at other universities, and thrown into something very secret. I overheard members of the military discipline talking about war with the Hon Ji, and those veche men seem to be involved. So be careful, Tanyana. Those are very powerful men."

When I left the university the bell was late, the sky streaked with long, drawn-out clouds shining crimson in the sunset. As I travelled the ferry I wondered if I was being watched.

Trudging back to my room above Valya's home, I realised I had no appetite. Of course, that wouldn't make a difference to her.

"You're late!" she called as I entered the house. "Busy, busy day."

I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over a chair before sitting at her table. It was constantly hot in Valya's kitchen. There was always a fire burning and something cooking. "Not really." I rested my elbows on the table and sank my face into my hands. "I was looking for something and I didn't find it."

"Eh?" She placed an earthenware bowl in front of me and spooned it full of thick soup. She and Eugeny would have agreed on the apparent universality and infinitely appropriate virtues of soup. "Debris?"

"No, we found that." I stirred chunks of potato, parsnip, carrot and onion. Valya ate little meat. "Found that easily."

"It is everywhere now."

I blinked, slowed my stirring. "You've noticed that too?"

"Impossible not to." She shook her head. "Dangerous times. Explosion in the night. Debris left lying on the street. Too much to pick up. Not a good sign."

A sign of what?

"So then, what were you looking for?" Valya asked.

"Answers, explanations. Hope." I caught myself. "Don't let it bother you."

"Answers, eh? Eat." Valya sat at the other end of the table with her own bowl. She watched my spoon like a hawk watches a mouse. I forced myself to eat, if only to appease her keen gaze. "You need someone who knows many things. You know who knows many things?" She sipped delicately. Always gave me most of the chunks. Apparently Valya still believed I needed fattening.

"Who?"

"Yicor. He sees much, he hears much, and he has many books."

I swallowed a large slice of onion without bothering to chew. I had seen books, hadn't I? Hidden in those shelves.

"Lots of books. Books other people don't have. Books other people aren't interested in having. Books only certain people care about."

Slowly, I looked up from the table. It was like surfacing from a fog. Valya's eyes were bright and sharp, stars in a clear sky.

"Only certain people?" I released the spoon and it slid into the soup, leaving only the very end of its wooden handle dry.

"Only some." Valya gestured to the soup. "You eat and you go. He'll be happy to see you, he will want to help. Likes girls."

I pried the spoon up and wiped sticky fingers on a napkin. "I owe you thanks, Valya."

"Eat. Those are my thanks."

I finished the bowl so quickly I burned the top of my mouth. Valya, taking the time to taste her food, waved me away as soon as the bowl was empty. I took it to the tub of cleaning water, grabbed my coat and headed out into twilight.

I hadn't returned to Yicor's shop since he gave me Valya's address, but I could remember the way. He wasn't far. Street lamps sprang into light as I arrived. His windows were dark, the door closed, but as I stood on the step and listened, I could hear noises inside. Footsteps and a solitary voice.

I knocked, rapping cold knuckles so hard on the wood they stung, and the noises ceased. Then a lock turned, the door opened a crack, and an eye looked out at me, lit by the lamps at my back, the only bright thing against the darkness of the shop.

"My dear!" The door opened wide and all of Yicor's face was washed in lamplight. "Now this is the kind of surprise I wish I had more of."

"Thank you, Yicor. I hope I'm not intruding."

"You, my dear, could never." He stepped from the door. "Please, come in from the dark."

I didn't mention that it was, in fact, darker inside his shop.

He shut the door and I waited a moment for him to light an old portable gas lamp.

"Come through, come through." He led me down the shelves, his lamp bobbing like a firefly. "Is everything all right, my dear?"

I hesitated a moment, and blurted out, "Did you find a home for it? The book I sold you."

He placed the lamp on his desk. The face he turned to me was piteous and full of compassion. "I did, if it helps you to know. Somewhere it will be treasured."

I nodded, more than a little surprised by how relieved that made me feel.

He added, "But I'm certain that is not the reason you are here."

No, it wasn't. "Valya suggested I speak to you."

"Good woman, that one."

"Yes, she is."

"Obsessed with food, though."

That made me grin. "So it's not only me then."

With a chuckle, Yicor patted his generous stomach. "Not in the least."

"She thought you could help me. You see, I'm looking for answers."

"Answers?" Yicor's eyes left my face, travelled too casually over the shelves we had passed to rest on the ceiling.

"And Valya told me to ask for your help."

"Did she?" he asked.

"She said you'd be happy to give it."

Yicor stood rigid a moment longer. Then he released a great sigh; his shoulders sagged. "Valya is a good woman. She knows who to trust. If she sent you here, then she had her reasons. I won't argue with her."

Who to trust? Why did I feel like there was a conversation going on that I couldn't hear? Hidden meanings behind innocuous words?

"Come with me." Yicor collected his lamp from the desk again, and headed into the forest of shelves, junk and dust.

He did not take me to the door. The shelves turned around on themselves, became a maze that spread deep into the shop. More deeply than I had realised it had space to go. When we got to a point where I was thoroughly lost, and quite convinced that I could wander here until I starved to death, Yicor stopped. He put the lantern on the floor beside a rug. He flipped the mat up by its corners to reveal a trapdoor in the floor.

He gripped a large iron ring and hauled the door open. The room below was small, walls cut from earth, ceiling low and supported by wooden beams.

"Down you get."

I stared at him in sudden panic. What was he about to do? Lock me in this hidden cell?

But he shook his head. "I'm not about to hurt you, my dear. If I wanted to, which I don't, it wouldn't be worth crossing Valya. She's a good woman, like I said, but Other's little curlies, she can be frightening. I'll hand you the light."

I gripped the edge of the trapdoor and climbed down. It wasn't much of a descent. Standing in the room, my head peeked out of the trapdoor and was about level with Yicor's shins.

Yicor said, "Here."

I accepted the lamp.

"You call when you've found what you were after, and I'll come get you. Coffee drinker?"

I nodded, still not sure what to say.

"I'll boil us a pot." Then Yicor left me, wandering into the darkness. It seemed he did not need the light to find his way.

Crouching, one hand braced on the floor and the other holding up the lamp, I turned into the room. It was longer than it had looked, although narrow and low. And it was full of books. They were stored on metal shelves, behind glass that reflected the lamp if I brought it too close. There was nowhere to sit, no room for a desk or a chair. Only books.

I shuffled further into the room, placed the lamp in an indent on the floor of packed earth so it would stay upright, and approached one of the cabinets. With a little effort the doors slid open. The books inside were clean, free of dust, earth, or damp. They felt new, leather soft, paper crinkly. How old were they, how precious, considering Yicor's rather extreme methods of keeping them?

And what could they tell me?

None of the spines were labelled. I drew one out, and the cover too was blank. I sat, conscious that the dirt would mark my jacket. I shivered. The earth was cold.

When I opened the cover I did not find words. Symbols rose at me from the page. Not imprinted in ink and applied with pressure on the vellum, they floated from the paper, hooked somehow into the weave but struggling always to escape. Like bubbles in black.

I shut the book with a snap that echoed through the room.

A breath and I opened it again. The symbols were still there, flattened by the board and leather, but rising gradually as though filling with air.

One symbol caught my attention. Smaller than the others, down at the very bottom of the right-hand corner. But I had seen it before. I had, I realised with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold, followed it. An eye stuck in a gate.

Lad's symbol.

What was Lad's symbol doing written in a strange bubbly I lost all feeling in my fingers and watched the book as it fell. It dropped gradually, like a feather, spreading over the packed earth in a smooth motion.

"Worked it out, have you?" Yicor was peering from the trapdoor, one hand holding onto the floor, the other gripping a steaming mug. I hadn't heard him approach, hadn't noticed footfalls on the wood above me.

"How?" I swallowed a multitude of questions that struggled in my throat; they fought each other to be voiced and choked me. "It's written in debris, isn't it?"

"Yes. Here-" he wiggled the mug "-you'll need it."

I crawled to the door and took the drink. "But how?"

"I don't know." His face was a mask. Impossible to tell if he was lying, if he was sincere. If he cared, or had any opinion at all. "That art is lost. Long gone. And so much else with it."

A viciously strong coffee smell smacked into my nose. It cleared my head. "What about the symbols?" I lifted my wrist. I had followed them, read them like a map. But if books were written using the things, then perhaps they meant more.

"No." Yicor, however, did not look at my suit. "I cannot read them. Another art lost with the revolution. Taken with our history, our dignity."

Then why was I inscribed with them? If none of us could read them, if even the technicians didn't know what they were for, then who had decided to use these symbols? And why?

"Our history?"

Yicor gave me a sad smile. "We did not always collect debris. And we had a language in those symbols, a language just for us. Traditions and ceremonies and more, gone from memory, lost from history. Before the revolution came. Before it brought the technicians, the national veche, and their twisted men."

"What good are the books, then?"

"Not all of them are written in cipher, my dear. Persevere." Yicor left. This time, his feet were heavy above me. They sent trickles of dust through the wooden ceiling.

Coffee in one hand, I crawled back awkwardly to the book. I dusted dirt from the cover. I flicked through more pages and found nothing but more bulging symbols. So I replaced the book and began my hunt.

The first book I found that I could read sent quivers into my stomach so fierce I had to swallow deep mouth fuls of coffee. The liquid was thick, so strong my head buzzed with each sip. The book was a long description of a ritual that, while I could understand the words themselves, made no sense to me. It ranted about invisible body parts – hands that were not, mouths that were not – and a way to connect with them that seemed to involve a barbaric level of violence. It sickened me to see something so brutal written about debris. I felt culpable, somehow. Because only collectors could have read those words, so only collectors had wanted to do the things they described. Collectors just like me, although I could never imagine myself driving a metal skewer into the head of a friend.

I was halfway through the shelves by the time I found it. The coffee was long gone, although its scent remained, keeping with it that tingling buzz. Yicor had not returned and I couldn't begin to guess how late the bell was. I had no thoughts of giving up, however. The symbols alone, that impenetrability alone, was enough to keep me looking. Even if I ran out of books.

I knew the text was different the moment I drew it from the shelf. Where the others had been plain, covers unadorned, this had a single symbol in embossed silver pressed into the bottom right corner.

The gate and the eye.

Lad's symbol.

My hands shook as I opened the book. I had wished for few things with the fervour I now wished that the book contained words – legible, readable words.

The first thing that must be made clear is the childishness. The Bright world will see this as a defect. This is a lie brought on by misunderstanding and fear.

What may look like childishness at first is but an eye divided. In experiencing both worlds one cannot truly live in either. Distraction is not distraction: it is looking at things we cannot see. Talking to oneself is not talking to oneself: it is conversing with those who we cannot hear. Idiocy is not idiocy: it is understanding a world beyond ours.

I sat so hard it was almost falling. This was it, it had to be it. Distraction, hearing voices, a degree of idiocy. There was Lad, spelled out in rising black. And there was his symbol, cool against my fingers as I held the book open.

Shuffling, I sat up straight to ease a crook in my upper back. The desire to read quickly, to turn chunks of pages and hope I landed on the right one was so tempting I ached to deny it. But I kept reading, moving through the text slowly.

Halves are born into this world already cut in two.

Halves? Uzdal and Mizra immediately came to mind.

Half in this place, half in the world beyond. No ritual can create them, no blade or blow. The Keeper calls them for his purposes. Who are we to second-guess him?

I glanced up, though I could not see the Keeper Mountain though floor, shelves, wall and buildings. I scanned the words again to make sure I had read them properly. The Keeper. Our Keeper, weeping over Movoc? Or the mountain's namesake. A guardian against the Other and his darkness. In myths he was a kind guide, an unseen presence who heard pleas for help and protected us from nothingness and death.

But he was a myth, an ancient deity no longer needed in this pion-bright world. Now, he was just a mountain.

So look for them within the first years of life. Halves will not learn speech easily. They will not take to play as other children do. They are slow to understand, slower to obey. Walking may be difficult, games even harder.

I did not know about Lad's childhood. This wasn't helping.

I gave in and flicked through further. How would this help Lad? How could it help Kichlan? What did he want, what had he always wanted for Lad? An end to it all. A normal life that did not involve hiding and random acts of violence he could not control.

…because without them, we are surely lost.

I stopped, frowned at the end of a sentence and scanned to find its beginning.

A Half within the family is a blessing. Do not send them away. Do not lock them behind walls. Do not wish they had been born other than they are. Each Half is more precious than gold, because without them we are surely lost.

Halves will hear the words of the Keeper.

When the Keeper comes to close the Gate, who will hear him if the Halves are gone? And fear for the worlds, both Dark and Bright, if the Gate is opened and he is not there to close it.

Fear for everything.

Fear for everything?

I continued to skim, and the book gave up more of the same. Tales of a Half who had heard the words of the Keeper and not understood him. He had thought the Gate would open in the heart of a girl he loved, and had opened her body instead. But mostly it was full of warnings against the very thing Kichlan was trying to do. To rid Lad of his affliction. To make him – to use a term too close to the book to make me comfortable – whole.

But how could I tell Kichlan any of that? To let Lad hear his voices, to pay attention to them, to try to make sense of what they were I closed the book with a loud, echoing snap. I had heard his voices. What was more, I had spoken to them, communicated with them. With an unseen presence. Was that the Keeper, talking to me from the debris? The Keeper warning me about the puppet men, about debris he could not control?

Fear for everything? What did that mean? And why could I talk to the Keeper? I was not a Half like Lad.

Fear for everything. I thought of the puppet men, and shuddered.

I replaced the book, closed the cases, collected the lamp and the mug. At the trapdoor I stood, placed both on the floor and called Yicor before climbing out. He meandered out of his maze as though he had been waiting only a few shelves away. I wondered how late it was as I rubbed redness from my eyes and suppressed a yawn. The old man didn't look tired.

"Did you find your answers?" Yicor asked. He retrieved the lamp. I carried the empty mug and followed close.

"Only more questions," I replied.

"The books are like that." The light bobbed as he watched me over his shoulder, feet finding their way with surprising surety and steadiness. "No matter how many times you bring them out, they fill only the gaps they want to fill, and leave too many spaces."

I tapped earthenware against my fingernails. "There's lots of knowledge that has been lost, isn't there? About us, I mean. And the debris."

"Yes," Yicor said. "Lost, and taken away. I don't like it. It frightens me."

"I know what you mean." Fear for everything. Yes, I understood him well.

Yicor took me to his front door. He opened it to an icy, black night, pierced with lamplight like icicles. "It is not a nice night for walking," he said. "I can offer you a bed."

I shook my head. "I don't think Valya would approve." And that was not an excuse. That was the Other's own truth.

He grinned. "Yes, you're right about that. Will you be safe?"

The streets were empty. I didn't think anyone would brave that cold to wait for me to wander by, unaccompanied. "I will." And I had my suit, didn't I? If such a person did exist, now I knew how to use it. If I was given no option.

"I'll trust you then, to know your own mind."

I stepped into iciness, and hugged my arms to my chest. "Thank you, Yicor."

"I doubt I was much help," he said.

"Some pieces are better than none," I replied.

"If you insist, my dear. But the whole is our right. When I read the pieces, when I realise how broken they are, it angers me. And it frightens me. Oh yes, it frightens me."

I plunged into the night as the door closed with a soft, well-carried click. I hurried, walking as fast as I could, to get the blood flowing and because the allure of a warm bed pulled me like a rope tied around my waist. A large growth of debris hung springy and well hidden between a set of flickering lampposts near Yicor's shop.

I considered what I'd read as I strode along and every twist of thought, like the turns of the street, led to the same place. The same realisation. One I could never tell Kichlan, even if it was the truth.

I didn't wake Valya, but went straight to my upstairs room. The door caught in the cold and I was forced to shove it open. "Other," I hissed under my breath as I stepped inside, hoping I had not woken Valya. I had started tugging my boots off before I realised a gas lamp was lit in the sitting room, and Kichlan sat at my table, light and shadow draping him in layers.

Gaping, I stared at him, hand still on the doorknob, one foot in the air with the boot half tugged off, the other wobbling as I struggled not to fall. Then Kichlan snored.

He was slumped in the chair, cheek pressed into his hand, elbow propped up on the table. And, it seemed, sound asleep.

I slipped the rest of the way out of my boots, hung my jacket on its hook by the door and tried to tiptoe through to my bedroom.

Kichlan gave another half-snore, coughed, and opened a single eye. "Other, Tanyana, do you know what bell it is?"

With a sigh, I gave up my inept attempt at stealth. "I have no idea." I hadn't heard the chimes. "And why are you here?"

"Came to talk to you. Old woman told me you'd be back so I waited." He stretched his mouth in a giant yawn, and spread his arms wide. He rolled his wrists in the air, wincing slightly. "Didn't realise I'd have to wait this long." One hand dropped to his lower back. "This did me no favours."

"Maybe you should have gone home then," I muttered. My room was warm from Valya's downstairs fires, and the comfort had eased me enough to realise how exhausted I was. I didn't want to deal with whatever Kichlan was here for. All I wanted was sleep.

"I probably should have." Kichlan stood, rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms some more. "But I'm still here. And now you're here."

I had no idea what he was talking about. "If this is going to become a talk that starts 'You're a woman and I'm a man' – could you warn me? I'd like to throw up in advance."

He glared at me. With the gas lamp below him and the night at his back, I was reminded again how tall Kichlan was. He said, "We've spoken about being serious before."

"So you know not to expect it to come easily," I replied.

"At all would be nice."

I held my tongue.

Kichlan let out a huge sigh like a giant bellows emptying. "What is going on, Tanyana?"

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not an idiot, none of us are. We might not have your education-"

"-don't start that again-"

"Stop acting like you think we're all simple debris collectors without a brain between us, then."

I scowled at him before rubbing at my eyes. "Kichlan, I'm exhausted. Get to your point or I'm going to start sleeping on my feet."

"Fine," he snapped, and crossed his arms. "What's going on? These emergencies, events, whatever you want to call them, you were right. They're not normal. This is so far from normal I don't have a category bizarre enough."

"I thought so," I said.

"I saw it, don't try and deny it. That debris, those planes, they were attacking you. Not us, Tanyana, you. It shouldn't attack anyone, why you?"

Why me?

I stared at him, and realised I had no answer. So instead, I said, "I told you about Grandeur-"

"About what?" he interrupted.

"The statue, when I fell. The pions that attacked me."

"And now you think debris is doing the same thing?" He lifted a sceptical eyebrow.

"I don't know, I just don't know. It isn't possible, it shouldn't be possible. But-"

"It's an awful lot of coincidences, isn't it?"

I smiled at him, hope like a tenuous fluttery bird in my heart. Kichlan, of everyone, might just believe me.

"So, what does this mean?" Kichlan asked. "Either everything is out to get you, from the bindings of the world to the waste it creates, or someone is directing them." He rubbed his face again. "Do you remember making anyone really, really angry?" He flashed a cheeky grin at me from beneath his hand. "Because that I would believe."

"Not anyone in particular."

"I'd imagine you have lots of people to choose from." His grin fell away. "The team is confused about this. Some of us are frightened."

I thought of Lad and my heart gave a little jump.

He said, "They're not trying to be malicious."

I nodded. I understood. I believed him. I really did.

We stood in my rented room, the silence heavy and straining. It was some kind of understanding, I supposed. The awkwardness and the hopelessness of it all.

"Is that where you went?" Kichlan asked, his voice softer, easier. "Tonight. To look for answers?"

"I'm not even sure anymore." I released a pent-up laugh. "I found something. Not an answer for me though."

"Oh?"

I hesitated. "In other times, Kichlan, you might not want to change someone like Lad. He might have been accepted the way he is."

"Another place too, perhaps." His expression hardened. "But this is not either. And in this place, and at this time, we have to protect him, we have to keep him hidden. Because the veche love debris collectors with skill. They love to test suits on them. Yes, like the suits I used to make. I was a part of it, I've seen it, and I will not allow it to happen to Lad."

Was I part of the we again?

"The only way I can think of," Kichlan continued. "The surest way, is to cure him."

I nodded, unsure whether I still agreed.

Then Kichlan pulled his jacket from where it had draped over a chair. "I should go, Tanyana."

"It's late," I said. "Maybe you should stay and we'll collect Lad together? I have a rug and some blankets. And if that doesn't tempt you, Valya makes a mighty dawnbell supper."

Kichlan chuckled. "Nothing is quite as tempting as the idea of sleeping on a rug on the floor. But no, I sadly must decline. I should be there for Lad, when he wakes up."

"I know."

"Thank you though," he said.

"No need."

A smile each, and Kichlan left my room. I didn't envy him the walk.