Debris

That was strange. "Yes, we met, accidentally. A few sixnights ago now. Didn't he tell you?"

She shook her head before glancing around the room, and I realised how terrified she was, how much she didn't want the elite here, the old families who had always counted her among their kind, to know what she had done to me.

I took pity on her.

And it felt good to have someone to pity.

"Is there a balcony somewhere?" I asked. "I could do with some air."

A grateful nod and Tsana gripped me by the hand. She led me across the ballroom, through a throng of revellers gathered to watch as the dances started, and out of one of the large, gold-edged doors that rimmed the ballroom. She ignored the calls from a group of young men gathered to smoke by the carriageway, and found a seat in the shadows between house and nightflooded garden.

With a graceful sweep of her skirts, Tsana sat. With a wince at my uncomfortable and out of place waistband, I joined her. I wondered why Volski had kept our meeting to himself. Was he ashamed of me, of what I had become? Or was he trying to spare us both? Tsana her guilt, and me my humiliation.

"What happened to you?" Tsana breathed the question into the cool night. Beneath my layers, and with my wine to warm me, I barely noticed the bite of the chill.

"Isn't that my question?" I swallowed a large mouthful of the wine. It was spiced with cloves and elderflowers, their combined scent threatening to make me sneeze.

Tsana shuddered. "Oh, my lady. I am so sorry. Grandeur broke. I saw you fall. I tried to catch you but glass was falling and I got, I got-" she made a hiccuping noise in her throat "-I got confused."

If I was still the lady she called me I would have drilled her on that. How could a professional pion architect get confused and nearly cost the circle centre her life? But I wasn't, and I didn't know how long it would take Tsana to realise that. The relationship between us was as fine, as fragile, as the thin glass stem in my hand.

"Do they hurt?" she whispered.

"Less than they used to."

A moment of silence.

"What happened?" Tsana did not give up, and it made that glass stem that much finer.

"I was-" Pushed? Did I really want to tell that to another of my old circle who wouldn't believe me? Was there really any point trying that again? I knew the answer. "I don't know. Grandeur broke, as you say. I fell, as you say. But Grandeur hit me on the way down." I touched the top of my head, the wound for which there was no scar. "She knocked something out, and took the pions from me." I rested the glass on my knees to keep it steady. "When I woke up I couldn't see them any more. I could see something else instead."

And for the first time that exchange didn't seem quite so poor. Not with Kichlan's cooking scenting my clothes.

"There was something strange happening, wasn't there?" Tsana stuttered.

"When?"

"On Grandeur. Something, I don't know how to say it, it felt like something was pushing us around. Like every time we tried to help you, something got in our way. I thought you might know what it was. I thought you might be able to explain it. But if you can't…" She gave a shrug with one smooth, graceful shoulder.

I gaped at her. Of course, the one person who would believe me was the one person I had decided to lie to. "Did you tell the tribunal that?" I eased my hand where it gripped the glass too hard. Wine rippled. "Did you tell anyone that?" Maybe this was what I needed? Maybe, with Tsana supporting me, someone would listen!

"But it was nothing. You said you didn't see anything."

"No, but did you-?"

"I was lucky to get out of the tribunal in one piece, my lady. Considering what happened, what I did to you." She swallowed hard; I could see the moment in her neck. "I could have lost my place in the circle, I could have been charged for negligence and shipped to the colonies to- to-"

She closed her eyes, and my stomach dropped.

"So I held my tongue."

"And now? You know something happened out there, Tsana. You're the daughter of an old family; you're a member of a nine point circle! The veche would listen to you. Have them open another tribunal, I will stand beside you and together we will tell the truth!"

Tsana touched a shaking hand to the diamond at her throat. "A tribunal?"

"Yes!"

"But they already had one."

"So we make them open another. They will listen to you."

But Tsana shook her head. "Oh, I couldn't. I disgraced myself. So did you. And I don't think I really saw anything that day, maybe I'm just feeling guilty. It was my fault you got hurt so badly. That must be it. I'm sorry. Really."

I looked away from her pale face, from the panic and the fear there. Perhaps she was not the best ally to have. Perhaps she wasn't strong enough to help me. Or so inclined.

"So." She cleared her throat. "What are you doing now?"

With a frown, I turned back to her. How could she not know? But then, I hadn't known what it took to make a debris collector before my fall.

"I can see debris, Tsana. I'm a collector."

"Oh." She lifted her head from its conspiratorial tilt, levering her shoulders away from mine. And as cold air rushed into the distance she had put between us I realised this was where residual respect ended, and the realisation that I was different began. I had told Devich. I had always known. I did not belong with these people any more. "That explains why Vladir likes you. He's fascinated by debris." She shifted, barely half an inch, but away from me. "Is it that terrible?"

"Collecting? Not really. Dirty, disgusting sometimes. Not terrible."

Tsana gazed into the garden as I answered, showing the graceful line of her jaw, the fine muscles in her neck.

"There's a lot of walking," I continued.

"Oh."

When would she excuse herself? Had she assumed I was still an architect, was that why she had bothered to talk to me again? A scarred architect with a horrible past, but a binder of some skill?

Something in me refused to let her go, refused to be snubbed by a pretty fool with family connections who had nearly succeeded in killing me.

"Will you do me a favour, Tsana?"

I regained her attention. "A favour?"

"Yes. Repayment, let's say."

Her straight back grew rigid, her jaw set. But she nodded jerkily. "Of course, anything I can give you."

Did she think I was going to ask for kopacks? "I need to borrow your skill to fix something. I can't do it. Not any more."

"What is it?"

"A hole in the ceiling where I work. Foot or so wide, a few inches deep. Cement."

"Is that all?"

I remembered days when that could be considered small. "That's all."

"Payment." She dug into a small pocket in her skirt and drew out a slide. Small, glass and impenetrable. "Have a messenger contact me. We will arrange where and when."

That easy, was it, when I couldn't use the slide and couldn't even afford a coach ride to her door? But I took it anyway, rather than explain. I would walk to Tsana's doorstep one Rest, and arrange a time with her maid. I wasn't above those things, was I? To get Sofia off my back.

I held the slide tight against my palm. Its edges were hard, and bit into my skin. "Thank you, Tsana."

"You are welcome, Tanyana." She stood with the same sweep of her skirts. "I should return. My mother can fret if she does not know where we are. Old families are made and broken by their honour."

I remained sitting. "I'll contact you soon."

Tsana nodded and hesitated for a moment, before gathering her dress and hurrying out of the shadows and back into the mansion.

I held the slide and sat in the darkness.

Above and behind me, music played, people laughed, and the smell of food wafted out to churn my stomach.

How long could I sit hidden in the cold shadows?

"There you are."

I turned to see Devich leaning against the mansion wall, looking down at me like I was a lost kitten, or an errant puppy. Light from the window striped his face with warm, diffused lines.