"You can see the plane form?" Mizra came to deposit his full jars in the bag.
I nodded.
"Haven't got any more surprises hidden there, have you?" Mizra grinned. How could he be so relaxed?
"Could we please focus on the debris?" Kichlan asked with a long-suffering groan.
"Exactly!" Another voice from the crowd followed by rumbling, general agreement.
The suit on Kichlan's right wrist expanded, narrowed into tweezers and stretched until he could grip one of the debris's dark protuberances. His left hand curled into a long, fine blade and sliced it free from the mass.
"I am." I grabbed Kichlan's elbow. "We need to focus on all the debris. The planes too."
"Then how would you like to handle this?" Kichlan rounded on me. His grip on the piece of debris slipped. It spilled into the air and floated, wiggling like a maggot, back to its friends. "There're only four of us who can differentiate plane from grain. Me, Sofia, Lad and you. What do you want us to do, try and catch them all ourselves?"
I ignored his scorn. "Can we catch them?"
"If you can hold a beam of light in your hand, then yes, you can catch them."
For a long moment I studied the planes. They stretched across the air, from grain mass to rooftop, lamp, or the ground. They lanced out of any debris the team was trying to collect like rays of sun through cloud, only black, or a very dark grey. But they did not set out on their own, arcing over the city like the sails of some ghostly ship. In fact, all of the debris, even the grains I had watched Kichlan and Sofia collect, had tried to return to the body.
"We need to spread our suits out-" I started thinking out loud "-if we can wrap around the whole thing, I think we could contain it enough to cut it from the wall."
"We don't want to contain it." Kichlan breathed heavily, like was all he could do to keep himself from shouting. "We need to get rid of it."
The team had started to converge. Sofia watched me avidly, like I was a fire about to run out of control. Lad, no longer tired and violent, smiled broadly. Natasha, Uzdal and Mizra appeared cautious.
"But we can't get rid of it if we can't contain it." I poked my toe at the bag of jars. They rattled loudly in the night. I found it curious that debris made no sound. Its planes should have rocked the street with thunder, its shuffling grains like snake scales.
"She's right," Mizra said in my defence, against the gathering shadow on Kichlan's face. "Isn't that what the jars do? Contain the debris, so it can be taken away?"
"Who has the strength to hold all that?" Kichlan shouted as he pointed at the debris. His suit sliced out into a long, thin spike. The spectators behind us gasped, and shuffled back a pace. "You think you do, is that it? You might be able to pick up bits and pieces we find in old lamps but this is something far beyond you!" Spit flew from his mouth. My suit lit it brightly as it fell. Both my wrists were shining fiercely and I was certain, if I rolled down my collar, untied my jacket, or undid my boots, the rest would be too.
"Not on my own, perhaps. But I am not alone, am I?" I turned to the others. Apart from Lad, who had began nodding violently and grinning like a madman, they stood like statues. "I thought we were a team. Why can't we do this together?"
"We were doing this together," Kichlan said between clenched teeth.
"Not properly."
Not the way a critical circle would.
I rolled my collar down and pushed up my sleeves. Bending, I undid the few laces I could tie on my wet leather boots, and hiked up my woollen pants. I shrugged my jacket from my shoulders and let it fall onto the wet street. My ankles, wrists and neck beamed cold blue light into snow and ice and stone, brighter than any of the others, brighter than Kichlan where he stood, gaping at me. It shone from my waist too, when my clothing moved enough to allow it to peek through.
I could forget the gaze of crowd behind me, and the small sense of decency and decorum I had left, to be working as a circle again.
"Are we ready?" I asked the collectors – my collectors – and tried to ignore how silly I must have appeared, with my clothes rolled up and my jacket in the sludge.
"We can't do this without you," Sofia told Kichlan, saying what I had not been able to.
"She doesn't understand any of this," he muttered. "She has no idea what she's doing."
"But we will need you anyway." Sofia placed a hand on his shoulder, and he seemed to shake himself beneath it.
"What would you have us do?" he asked me, voice thick and rasping.
"Make the circle." The words slipped from me before I could check them and my collectors took up the call. They spread out in a crescent around the corner of the building. "Alternate. Sofia, Mizra, Lad, Uzdal, Kichlan, then Natasha." I squeezed myself between Uzdal and Lad, and longed for the days of Grandeur, for standing high above the earth and watching as the sky filled with energy. "Right." I rubbed my hands, I loosened my wrists. "Plane first."
I raised my arms and extended my suit, using its silver to reach for sails of plane debris. It responded easily, eagerly, knowing what I wanted, doing what was needed. Why was that a surprise? It was, after all, a part of me. I flattened it, curved it, linked left and right hand together and arched toward the debris like my hands – my suit – were a domed metal ceiling.
Kichlan, Sofia and Lad followed my example. Their suits spread out, spread up. Edges knocked mine like seams without stitches. Together, we slipped between plane and building, between debris and lamp, street, rooftop. The planes flickered, at first. Unsure. Then they fought back.
One large grey arc buzzed out of existence, then flared back into life a deeper, solid black. It battered against my suit with a sharp, clutching corner, fighting for the building, for the purchase I denied it. I felt each blow. Vibrations echoed through the suit, down into my arm and further, deeper into my skin, bones, head and mind. I steadied myself against it, pushing away memories of crimson pions and what it had felt like to be dragged to the edge of Grandeur's palm. I would not let debris undo me the way the pions had. I would not fall from this statue, eight hundred feet in the air.
Sofia yelped, and her suit withdrew like a frightened cat.
"No!" I shouted over the rattling in my ears. "Keep your suit up."
Expression pained, Sofia extended her suit again.
"That's it! Now-" I glanced over at Mizra, Uzdal and Natasha waiting in anticipation. "We'll contain the planes, you slice the mass from the wall! Hurry!"
The planes flickered faster, as though in desperation, as though they knew what we were about to do. Sofia began to shake, but held her line.
Mizra and Uzdal darted beneath our silver dome. They reached the building wall, aligned their hands with the brick and shot sharp blades up through the clinging debris. The spectators gasped again. Quiet words reached me.
"Other!"
"How can they do that?"
"How horrible."
Natasha hesitated, suit extended to short knives.
"It's starting to give!" Mizra called. Natasha, with a jerking shake of her head, darted in to help.
"That's it, keep it going-" I called. The next smack against my suit knocked me to one knee. "What happened?" Another crash. Sofia faltered, her suit retracted, and Natasha leapt away from the wall with a curse.
I wasn't about to fall. My suit shot out from my ankles and tunnelled thick spikes into the road. The next push didn't budge me, I was buried too deep.
"Tell me what's happening!" I demanded.
"Doesn't want to, Tan!" Lad yelled, his voice high pitched and panicked.
"What doesn't?" I jerked my head around, searching for only the Other knew what. Some kind of interference, someone wielding fierce and fiery power.
"It's the debris," Kichlan answered.
Sofia faltered again. A wide plane flashed out from the debris mass and threw her to the ground. Her limp body jerked as her suit whipped back into her wrists. Kichlan withdrew and ran to her. Uzdal abandoned the attempt to cut debris from the wall and was tugging on his brother's hand, begging him to do the same. And still the stuff was growing, planes lacing the sky, grains bulging and wiggling. It pushed against my suit, but my ankles held firm and I realised that my legs would break before my metallic supports ever gave way.