"Tanyana?" Kichlan placed a hand on my arm and tugged gently.
What had he been talking about? Ah. Home. "It's so very far away," I murmured, and looked down to the useless silver in my hand. "It broke."
Lad made a strange hiccupping sound, like a distressed animal.
"What's far away?" Kichlan leaned closer, gaze darting over my face. His once-smooth cheeks were rough now with stubble. Heavy for less than a day's growth. Kichlan made to take my outstretched hand and I snatched it away. The rest of my watch fell, silent into the white. A breath of air, and it was gone.
He took my elbow as I wobbled.
"Home." I tried to pull away but his grip tightened, and I realised he was not so much holding me back, as holding me up. I recalled leaning on his shoulder, head throbbing and bleeding. "It's eight hundred kopacks away. That's what the bastard coach driver wanted to charge me, can you believe it?" The words rolled out of me, drawn by some invisible thread. "And my watch is gone. And it is snowing. And my head hurts." I tapped the sore spot beneath my hat for emphasis, and winced.
"That must be a long way," Lad said, very serious.
"It is indeed." Kichlan studied me.
"We got to, brother. He says we should."
Kichlan brushed snow from my shoulder in a gentle, distracted way. "Does he now? What did I say about following him blindly?"
"He's right though."
"I suppose he is."
"Who is?" I didn't like their riddles.
Kichlan didn't answer. Instead, he slipped his hand to my upper arm, like I was an old woman and he a tired but conscientious son. "You should come home with us. Just this time." He exerted gradual pressure and took slow steps, moving me forward before I realised it was happening. "Come home with us. Until you feel more yourself."
More myself? Did I even know who that was any more?
"No, really…" I tried to rouse the part of me that screeched protests. That told me it wasn't proper to go home unaccompanied with two brothers I had just met. The part that clamoured for my home, my bed, my hot water. The part that longed for the comforts of an earlier life not buried in snow, soaked in sewage, and heavy with the dust of ancient stonemasonry. But that part of me was muffled, buried underneath the rubble of the day. And Kichlan was guiding me gently, and Lad was on the other side, grinning like a child with candy in his pocket. "Is it far to go?"
"Home should never be far," Lad declared.
"No, it is not," Kichlan said, making far more sense than his brother.
So I let them guide me. I watched my feet most of the way to Kichlan's house, and kept feeling for the watch that should have rested close to my heart.
The brothers lived in the attic of a squat house dwarfed by taller buildings, solid slabs that were nightmares of poor construction and ugly design. Their house was old enough to escape such a horrible fate, but that was the only good thing about it. Its stonework looked suspiciously similar to the wall that had fallen on me, and I wondered how much of it had been built by hand rather than pions. A heavy wooden door creaked as Lad pushed it open, and ushered us into a dim room heavy with smoke and shadows. I blinked against the slants of orange fire-glow, coughed in the smoke, and couldn't see very much at all.
"We're back!" Lad called, so loudly and suddenly that I jumped a little with surprise.
"Lad?" A voice warbled from an adjacent room. "Is that you, boy?"
"He owns this house," Kichlan whispered as Lad bounded into the room. "He's a good man. He won't mind if you stay, as long as it's only one night."
So this wasn't Kichlan's house after all. He was simply, what, boarding here? Somehow, I found it difficult to reconcile. Kichlan, who organised his collection team with such authority, didn't even own his home?
"What's got you so excited then?" The voice came nearer, accompanied by the shuffling of feet. "Oh." A short, ancient man turned into the hallway. He was wrapped in layers of clothes made from what looked like mainly quilts, all patches and mismatched colours. Faint wisps of pale hair, lit a coppery gold from what must have been a fireplace behind him, escaped a tea-cosy hat to float with the smoke around his head. He carried a large pipe in one hand, and gripped the door frame with the other.
Tiny embers dropped from the pipe as we stared at each other, to touch bright on the wooden floor before winking out.
"Kichlan." The old man collected himself, tapped his pipe against his cheek, and drew a small breath of smoke into his mouth. It curled up to his nose. "You aren't going to introduce us?"
"This is Tan!" Lad filled the quiet to overflowing. "She had to go a long way and it's snowing and bricks fell on her, so Kich and I thought she could stay here." He paused only to breathe. "Is that all right?"
I couldn't see Kichlan's face. He stood behind me, holding me upright. But whatever the old man saw there must have convinced him. I doubted it was Lad's rambling that did it.
"Of course. You're welcome, dear Tan. I'm Eugeny, and my home is yours." He made a strange bow, touching the mouthpiece of his pipe to his hat.
"It's Tanyana." My voice sounded soft and breathless, and I tried to push more force into it. "And thank you."
He nodded. Lad whooped and clapped his hands above his head.
"Now," Eugeny wrinkled his nose, "something tells me the lady would care for water to bathe in?"
How he could smell anything through the smoke escaped me.
"She has had a difficult day," Kichlan said. I wanted to argue, to tell him I didn't need anyone to excuse or explain for me, but he was already leading me down the hallway to a set of stairs leading up to a second floor.
"I can hardly imagine." Eugeny waited until we had passed before commanding Lad to collect a couple of buckets, which he took outside. I decided they couldn't have running water, which was something of a shock. I thought every building in Movoc-under-Keeper was supplied with running water. It operated on the same, essential system as the light and the heat, with factories across the city, where pion-binders sat in large, compounded circles, gathering pions and convincing them to push clean river water through a complex series of underground pipes. Each tap was just another valve, keeping the water out until it was needed. Some of the pions were also asked to heat the water as they ferried it along, although I believed that required a slightly higher level of skill than simple plumbing.
I supposed this also explained the fireplace and the darkness. Was anything in this house powered by pions?
They might not have had running water, but Kichlan and Lad certainly had a bath. The attic room was a wide one, with a high peaked ceiling and a few elongated windows near the floor. Rugs carpeted the sound of their feet and hugged the warmth wafting up from Eugeny's house below. There were beds in two opposite corners, each with a rickety stand and water jug of its own.
The bathtub was old, solid metal with bear-claw feet and pale, chipped enamel. Lad filled it steadily, with water that looked clean enough. He heated the full buckets in Eugeny's fireplace before pouring the warm water into the bathtub and hurrying away for more. While he did this Kichlan found a thin bar of soap and a towel big enough to be a blanket.
As the bath water grew Kichlan began to fidget and look decidedly uncomfortable. There was no screen in the room, nothing to separate the tub from the rest of the attic. And as the steam rose, inviting with its promise of warmth, of being clean, I was already weighing up a little more immodesty for a nice hot soak.
"Eugeny will be cooking," Kichlan said as Lad brought the final bucket of water up the stairs, puffing from his exertions, and poured it proudly into the tub. I eyed the water and wondered how long it was going to stay so nice and warm.