I ignored the criticism, and stared horrified at Mizra and Uzdal. I had heard that some healers could see a baby as it grows by the flow of pions between mother and child. What did a baby destined to collect debris – an Unbound baby – what did they look like to pion sight? Would the flow be interrupted, the womb dull compared to the rest of her pion-bright body?
"That's horrible," I whispered.
"We know," Mizra said.
"That's real life." Sofia pushed past us, to walk with Kichlan instead.
"Why do they kill them?" I asked the twins. "Why are twins, most twins, why are they like us?"
Uzdal glanced ahead, where Lad walked between Sofia and his brother, laughing. "Why is Lad one of us? Because he is broken, Tanyana."
"And we are broken, all of us, in some way," Mizra continued. "We're like that crack in the wall that fell on you. Debris likes broken things. It likes us."
Likes? He reminded me of Lad, talking about debris as though it could think, as though it could feel. But I knew what he meant.
Me, with my scars, with the bone Grandeur had knocked into my brain. Lad, with his crooked smile and childish laugh. But the twins?
"Being twins doesn't make you broken. A shattered skull-" I swallowed "-that makes you broken. So I don't understand. And Kichlan isn't broken, Sofia isn't broken."
"Nice of you to say so," Mizra said.
"Yes, terribly nice," Uzdal said. "But we know what we are. And not everyone who is broken has the scars to prove it."
"Although we-"
"-are not among them."
I blinked at them. "You're not one of the ones who don't… what?"
The boys chuckled. "When we're somewhere warmer."
"Less windswept."
"We'll show you what we mean."
Lamps spluttered into life as we walked, and as I tried to work out what under the Keeper they were talking about. Broken was a good word for it. Broken was the bones in my head, the skin on my left side. And Lad, yes, I could see how he could be broken. There was something in him that didn't work the way it should have. But what? I knew what had broken me. What had broken Lad?
Could any of us be fixed?
"Guess it's dark enough to turn the lights on." Kichlan had started to hang back as the twins, evidently tired of confusing me, moved forward to engage Lad.
Thunder rolled above our heads, low and near. Lightning flickered against the dark sky.
"We still collect in the rain, do we?" I glanced up at Kichlan, trying for an innocent and hopeful expression.
He nodded. "Today we do. We just scraped above quota last sixnight, and that was with an emergency. But those are rare, we can't rely on another one and I will not risk something that close again."
Lightning flashed, suddenly bright, suddenly plunging the street into darkness. In the heavy silence that followed Kichlan and I looked to each other and turned to the lamp we had just passed. In a moment it flared, so bright I expected the glass to break with the strain, then it cut off suddenly into the cloud-weary darkness.
"That's not lightning," I whispered. As if on cue, my wrist sprang into brilliant light. "Again?"
As soon as our suits lit up, then Lad, Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia hurried to Kichlan's side. Even Natasha, dragging further behind than I had noticed, ran to join us.
"Where is it?" Uzdal asked. Kichlan drew his sleeve up, exposed his wrist and tilted it at the bare wall of a nearby building. It shone steady, sharp and bright, while down the street the lamps blinked on and off.
"It must be near," Natasha murmured. She stood beside me, watching the lights.
But Sofia shook her head. "No, I don't think so." She pointed at Kichlan's projected map. It was larger than the one Devich had helped me to produce, the ciphers clearer. I found Kichlan's me sign easily. It was solid, bright and purposeful. I remembered my own, lost in the jumble of images, and twitched the sleeve of my jacket to cover my suit. But as my fingers brushed the band, I felt the symbols move in short bursts of pressure and warmth. With a gasp, I flicked the sleeve up again and I saw it. The symbol, my symbol, throbbed beneath my fingers as if I had called it.
"There." Kichlan pointed to his map, and soon the rest of us saw the debris cipher. It flickered in a far corner. Not bright, not steady, not close.
"Why is it so far away?" Mizra asked.
Something large and wet splashed on the top of my head. Then another on my arm. Even as I realised they were raindrops, I felt the symbols move again. They rolled beneath my touch, tugged and pressed, tilted and guided. I followed them, smoothed my fingers to the left and turned my wrist. When they stilled, and I peered beneath my fore and middle finger, the debris cipher was there, ready like my own. Beating. Living.
I considered the path my fingers had followed. The crests, the dips and the corners. I looked at the symbols sprayed on the building wall.
Didn't make any sense to me.
"Why are they calling us?" Mizra continued. "We're too far away! There has to be another team closer than us."
"That's why." Sofia gestured to the flickering lamps.
Kichlan, who had been studying his map, turned to her. "Factory?"
"Has to be." She looked grim.
Kichlan said, "Then we need to hurry. Time to run."
"Run?" Mizra's voice rose, in both tone and volume. "What, no horse?"
"There's no time, Mizra. Shut your mouth and run."
Kichlan grabbed Lad and pushed him forward. The big man easily outpaced us as we struggled to follow Kichlan. My legs and lungs quickly ached. Rain fell in ever larger, ever more frequent drops. The wet pavement was slippery, and in the darkness of the skies and the uncertain light of struggling lamps, I came close to losing my footing and crashing face first to the stones.
Kichlan grabbed my arm and helped keep me steady.
"It's raining!" Mizra yelled, as he ran ahead of us, breath loud and hoarse in the artificial night. "That's even better than snow."
"What's happening?" I gasped to Kichlan as we skidded around a corner. He stopped long enough to flash his map against a nearby wall. My fingers itched to touch my suit, to follow the symbols like he was doing.
"It's probably a factory." We waited as Sofia screamed at Lad, who had continued to run ahead, and the large man returned. "Hub of pions, large amounts of debris can collect unnoticed. If it's left long enough this is what happens." We both glanced at the dancing lights. "Someone hasn't been doing their collecting properly."
I gasped in breaths, sagged against a wall and clutched at my chest. "What has that got to do with us?"
"Problem like this could shut down the city. Imagine no light on the streets when night comes. No light at home. How do other factories work if the lights go out?"
"Quite well, I imagine." I swallowed against a very unladylike urge to spit on the paving stones. "Don't need light to see pions. But I get the idea." And on a day like this, in the storm and the darkness bearing down on Movoc-under-Keeper. I couldn't think of a worse time.
"They call in more than one team for work like this. For factories, construction sites."
I knew too well what he meant.
"Sorry!" Lad, only barely out of breath, ran to Kichlan's side. "Sorry, bro!"
Kichlan shook his head. "Pay attention from now on. This way!" He pointed, and set off again. With a groan, I pushed off the wall and followed.
This time, I gave in and I kept my fingers to the symbols at my wrist. They hummed with the pace of my running, jostling with the stones that threatened to slip me, with the hidden dips and sudden, uneven steps.
That's when I realised that wasn't all they were doing. My fingers were guiding me. A moment before a loose stone came close to tripping me, a cipher pushed up against my touch. I knew a corner was coming before Kichlan took it because my fingers were guided that way first.
When Kichlan stopped again to check his map I realised I wouldn't have had to. My fingers, my suit, already knew the way.