I waited for the gasps, the wide eyes, the "How ever did you come by such a remarkable piece?"
Lad leaned back again, and wrinkled the skin at the top of his nose. "Oh." His eyes slid sideways to his brother. "That's not very interesting, is it?"
With a chuckle, Kichlan shook his head. "Not really." He turned the book over in his hands. "But it is very old. Isn't it?" His gaze flicked to mine in a question.
"Yes," I said.
"Old things can be valuable. Can't they?" Again, that quick, but searching and suspicious glance.
"Yes," I said again.
Lad bobbed his head as he searched for something valuable in the old book. "Doesn't look it, bro. Doesn't look it."
"People with too many kopacks have strange ways of seeing things," Kichlan said, grinning.
"Oh." Lad squinted at the book and leaned even closer to it.
I scowled between the both of them. "If this becomes a morality lesson, I'm going outside again."
"No, you won't." Eugeny, who had remained silent and in the background, pushed his way forward. He rested the tray on my knees, and a far more appetising bowl of soup stared up at me. "You're going to sit and eat, and Kichlan will put that somewhere safe. Where hands, unwelcome or simply curious, won't find it."
My gaze followed the book as Kichlan took it from the drying room. My life was in those pages, all that was left of my memories, my ambition and achievements. Something wrenched in my gut as I watched it go, but it was in Kichlan's hands and strangely that was enough. I knew it would be safe, because he carried it.
Eugeny watched me; I caught his pursed lips in the corner of my eye. Then he placed a spoon in my hand, and I was occupied by rich vegetable-and-grain stew.
Without anything new to excite him, Lad drooped. When Kichlan returned he managed to convince Lad to go back to bed. I received a wet kiss on the cheek before Lad was led upstairs, stumbling on the way.
By the time my bowl was empty I was feeling warm – no longer hot while tickled at the extremities by cold – tired and comfortable. I sat among the cushions and closed my eyes to the quiet conversation between Kichlan and Eugeny. Whatever decision they came to, I didn't hear it. For the couch was soft, the room was warm, and for the first time since I had unlocked my front door, I felt secure enough to fall into an easy sleep. I felt like I was home.
12.
We kept the details from Lad. All he needed to know, Kichlan said, was that I had left my old home and needed a new one. He didn't need to know about large and violent men who burst into the one place you're supposed to feel safe, and take your life away. I rather thought I didn't need to know about such things either, but the choice had, unfortunately, been long taken away.
Wetday and Thunderday I spent under Eugeny's herbobsessed supervision, not allowed to move, not allowed to do much other than drink strong doses of various herbal tea and eat stew until I was tired of the very sight of it. For Frostday and Olday, Eugeny pronounced me well enough to join Kichlan and Lad in the collecting field. The team showed me small sympathy.
"About time you toughened up to the cold," Sofia told me with a superior sneer.
"I've spent half of my life with a fever because of this Otherdamned collecting," Natasha muttered. "Get used to it."
I gathered Kichlan hadn't told them the whole story, and rather marvelled that Lad hadn't let my homelessness slip. I felt a deep thankfulness to both of them.
By Rest, I was chafing to be free of Eugeny's scrutiny and stew, and wished to be a burden on Kichlan no longer.
Lad woke me early, tangling and stomping through the drying clothes. "Tan! Early morning, Tan! Time to get going."
My bed had once again been made before the fireplace. I levered myself up on my elbow and squinted at him. "Today is called Rest, Lad. Rest. Don't you get the hint?"
He blinked at me, bird-like, studying me separately with each eye. "But it's time to go. Kich said we won't have time if we don't go."
"Go where?" I sat up and stretched. No amount of use could make this temporary bed comfortable.
"To find you a home, of course," Kichlan said, from behind veils of drying sheets. "What did you think we were going to do?"
In all honesty, I hadn't considered it. I scooped my clothes from the floor and struggled into them. After my late-night flight, two days of rest and two days of collecting, these clothes needed a wash the way a drowning woman needs air. Unfortunately, they were the only ones I had.
"Continue to enjoy my company for a little while longer?" I swept past the clothes, Lad in tow, and smiled at Kichlan where he leaned against the door frame.
He flashed a grin that reminded me, for a moment, of Devich. My stomach lurched and I wondered if he was missing me. If he had called at my apartment and found the place ransacked, blood-splattered and empty. If he feared for me.
"A man can only do that for so long." Kichlan chuckled. "Before he starts to lose his mind."
Lad let out an explosive laugh, although I wasn't entirely convinced he understood us.
"No houses on an empty stomach!" Eugeny called from the kitchen. As Lad ran in, the old man peered at us across the hallway. "And if you two keep that up I'm going to lose my appetite."
I felt hot and flushed as I spooned runny, honey-drizzled porridge into my mouth. Judging from Kichlan's red face he felt much the same, but I could guarantee he wasn't as confused about it. That he didn't have Devich, out there, somewhere.
Once we were fed to Eugeny's satisfaction, he tipped us out of the house in a way that made me feel like a child sent to play. "You remember what I told you?" he asked Kichlan. "Here." Eugeny placed a heavy bundle, wrapped in felt, in my hands. "I'm afraid you'll need that." Then he closed the door on my forming question, and left us milling on the step.
"Shall we?" Kichlan gestured to the street, as I pried the edge of the material apart, and recognised my book nestled within.
I covered it, and ran a hand slowly down the spine. It was worth enough kopacks to build a life with, surely. And in a way, it was a fair bargain. An old life for a new one.
"You know you don't have any choice." Pragmatism was somehow better than sympathy, at least coming from Kichlan.
I held the book tightly against my chest, and said, "I know."
We walked in silence below a bright blue sky. Cold fingers of wind played with the flaps of the overlarge jacket Kichlan had lent me. The ice had melted, and the faint colours of small flowers could be seen peeking through cracks in the poorly tended paving stones.
"What is it?" Kichlan asked. He seemed to know where we were going, and I had been following him out of unconscious habit, seeing the city only as a grey haze, unclear and unreal. "The book. Why does it mean so much?"
"A gift," I answered him. "A symbol."
"It's a book," Lad added helpfully. "It's a book, isn't it, bro?"
"Sometimes books are more than books," Kichlan said. He hesitated. "It's rare, Tanyana. Isn't it?"
"You know that already." I sighed, and gave in. "Eldar Velchev was a leader in the critical circle revolution. He composed a set of principles for nine point pion circles that architects still use today. The usual concerns: weight and pressure, distribution of mass. And the broader ones like propriety and symmetry. But more so, he applied the same concerns to the pion circle working the building. He came to realise that a circle must also be balanced, that too much pressure on one point could destabilise-" I broke off. Two blank faces were staring at me, as though I'd started gibbering in another tongue.
"Um… What?" Lad asked.
"My thoughts exactly," Kichlan added.