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."