"No. We know that already, don't we, Lad?" Kichlan was staring at me, so focused I could feel him like two hot points on my forehead. "We didn't need a story to tell us that."
"No." Lad thought for a moment more. "What did he see?"
I said, "A man." Not debris. No grains or planes or anything he had described as dog turds. A man.
"There's a man over there." Lad pointed to an elderly man wrapped in a large coat the colour of dying grass. He was hunched against the wind, and shielding his eyes from the sun with a flat hand.
"Yes, but he saw a man no one else could see. He heard a man no one else could hear. A man who wasn't there." Saying it out loud like that cooled my sudden panic. Uric had gone mad, it was documented, it was fact. He hadn't become a debris collector; he had started seeing people who didn't exist. He had forced the pions too hard, and they had broken him.
Still. I shivered as the river wind's fingers started up their prying again. All those pions, too many to controclass="underline" the image was familiar. Were they crimson, those pions? Had he dug too deep inside reality and pried free a furious force that shattered his circle, destroyed his systems, and turned on him? He hadn't fallen eight hundred feet onto a bed of glass, but had they pushed him regardless? Forced him down onto that cobblestone floor until something inside him broke, something vital that no one, it seemed, had ever understood? And the voices, I couldn't ignore the voices.
I glanced at Lad. A frown creased the edges of his eyebrows. I wasn't the only one who had heard them, was I?
"I think that's a good story," Lad finally decided, his voice firm. "It's like Mizra's stories."
"It is," Kichlan added softly. "A lot like the myths."
I groaned. We weren't here again, were we? "Except this is real. They locked him up in the ruins of a Movocian castle, three bells' journey from Movoc-under-Keeper. Kept him there until he died, trying to work out what happened to him. They never did."
"Really?" Kichlan kept his voice low. "How fascinating."
It was highbell by the time we came to the seventh Effluent. Beneath us, water rushed into the Tear as we followed the slightly raised path. A vent at every five yards released warm, rank air to steam into the cool wind.
"Not exactly pleasant," Kichlan murmured, pinching the end of his nose between two fingers.
I said, "I won't be living on top of one of those, you do realise that." The buildings lining the seventh Effluent were painted an insipid grey, and none had windows over the raised path.
"It's dull."
"It's not much different from a rill." I had a feeling the houses could be built of marble with gold window-lattices and Kichlan still would have disapproved.
"They're all pale, how are you supposed to find Lightbrick?"
"They have street signs here. That always helps." Apart from the vents and the dead-skin colours, the seventh Effluent was in much better condition than the eighth Keepersrill. No rubbish crowding the streets, signs still intact, buildings standing. I kept that observation to myself.
Lightbrick wasn't too far along the seventh Effluent, and it didn't take long to find 754. The numbers were clear here, and closer together than along the eighth Keepersrill.
"They're small."
I sighed, and didn't bother answering.
Number 754 was wider than the rest of the tall thin buildings, and reminded me of Eugeny's out-of-place home. It had only two stories, with a set of rusty and rather unsteady iron stairs twisting tightly up to the second level.
"Those don't look safe," Kichlan muttered as I knocked on a wooden door with peeling and faded white paint. Had he noticed the heavy iron lock?
The door opened slowly, creaking like an old man, and I had enough time to glance at the paper in my hand. A large woman, with ruddy cheeks and silver-laced blonde hair pinned up beneath a blue scarf, peered around the slightly open door. She didn't speak, but her eyes were sharp and settled on each of us.
"Valya?" I asked.
In silence, she continued to stare at me.
"Um, Yicor gave me your name-"
"Yicor did? Well-" she pulled the door open with a sudden burst of speed and strength. "Then in you get." She shuffled off into a warm, dark hallway.
I hesitated at the doorway.
"Hurry now!" she called. "You look hungry. You will all eat."
That was enough for Lad. He barrelled his way inside and we had to follow.
The house smelled of food, not the constant stewsmell of Eugeny's home, but something vastly more complicated. Charred chicken skin, fresh bread, potatoes baking and hot olive oil all surged around us.
"Got anything to say now?" I muttered to Kichlan as we followed Lad, who was evidently following his nose to the kitchen.
Strangely enough, he was silent.
Lad, it seemed, could follow food with as much accuracy as he could find debris. He wound his way easily through a dim living room, another small and cool room lined with shelves laden with jars of preserves, and into a wide kitchen. A long table took up most of the space, and the cool wind was blowing in from an open window above an old gas stove.
Valya stood at the bench, slicing bread that steamed its freshness with each new cut. "You sit," she commanded us without turning around. Soon she placed the bread, sliced and warm, with a tub of garlic-infused lard on the table. "Begin," she told us, and Lad launched into the food as though he had not eaten for days. This was soon joined by a porridge-like dish of chicken, carrot and buckwheat.
Then she sat at the head of the table and watched us eat. Her sharp eyes took in every bite. "He is a good eater, that one," she said, pointing to Lad, who would have happily eaten everything himself if Kichlan weren't keeping him in check. "I like that. Good eater is a good person."
Lad beamed at her, mouth full. Kichlan ran his hand over his face, and was forced to protect his own bowl from his brother.
"So." Valya turned to me. "You are here for upstairs. Yes, you may stay." Her eyes narrowed. "But you should eat more."
After at least two sixnights and one of living on tea, the occasional stew and Devich's charity, I was finding the rich food difficult. But more than that, Valya's sharp eyes and assumptions were putting me off my appetite.
"You don't even know who we are." I put my fork down and turned in my chair to face her. I did not eat on command.
"I know enough." She straightened. "You are collectors, all three of you. Yicor sent you, so he believes you need help. You are the one who will stay here, your friends already have a home of their own."
Lad stopped eating long enough to show the halfchewed food in his mouth. "How did you know all that?"
"I have eyes, boy."
And she called Lad, who hulked above all of us, a boy. Those eyes were sharp.
"Yicor's recommendation and our collecting suits I can understand," Kichlan said, voice soft. "But how did you know we weren't also asking to stay?"
Valya gave the first smile I had seen on her face. It wasn't joyful, more a triumphant twist of the lips. "She doesn't eat enough. She isn't happy, she isn't content. You two have been looked after. She is the one who needs a home."
Lad, swallowing a large chunk of food, nodded. "Yes, and she didn't like her home when she had one. A home should be somewhere you want to go."
Would I want to go here? Those eyes were sharp, those words were blunt, but really, what did I have to hide from Valya? She already knew me for what I was.
"I am Tanyana," I told her. "And I appreciate you taking me in."
Valya made a scoffing noise. "You don't, not a lot. But that is okay." She stood. "You can come with me."
Lad looked up, despairing of the food he still had in front of him.
"They can stay."