So I followed Valya while Kichlan and Lad continued to eat.
"You eat down here, so I know you have enough," Valya said as she lifted a key from a hook near the door and pressed it into my hand. "Everything else you do yourself." We stepped into the street, and I realised how warm it had been in her kitchen. How pleasant. "Careful of the stairs, stay to the left." The iron stairs rocked as we climbed them, metal creaked beneath our feet and flecks of rust came off against my gloves. "Here." There was a small platform before the upstairs door, barely wide enough for one person. "Open it."
I edged around Valya's ample frame, and turned the key in the iron lock. It undid with a heavy clunk, and the door swung inward at a gentle push.
The upstairs was about half the size of the house below it. It was a living room with a window so close to the building next door there wasn't enough room to push the glass open more than a few inches. A table and a few chairs filled the space; there was an ancient wood stove in one corner. The wall above it had blackened over the years. The floor was cement, but padded with rugs, most made from animal pelts. A bunch of dried lavender mounted on richly stained wood decorated one wall. There was a bedroom behind the main room, large enough for a bed and a small chest of drawers. One of the handles was loose. Beside the bedroom was a bathroom, complete with a narrow, shallow bath. The water worked, although it ran a slightly dirty colour and left tiny grains of sediment in the cracked porcelain. There were wide windows on the back wall of both bathroom and bedroom, draped with lace. They opened out over the rest of the roof and what I realised was a small greenhouse, crowded with plants, at the back of the house.
It was small, not exactly in the best condition, and bare. But, I realised as I peered down into bright glass above newly budding, wavering green, it was home now.
"You cannot bring anything," Valya told me as I returned to the living room. "Only furniture is already here."
"I don't have anything." Absolutely true.
"No, you don't. I can see that." Her eyes bored into me. "Yicor sent you to me, and I will look after you. We won't let them get to you."
"What does that mean? Let who-"
"Tsk!" Valya pinned my shoulder with a hard finger. "You are not so good at lying. You know whom we mean, you know the pet creatures of the veche, they follow you, they use you. Those misbegotten seeds of the Other's lust!"
The puppet men. "How do you know about them? You and Yicor!" And Eugeny, I realised with a sinking certainty. Eugeny had sent me here. Did that mean Kichlan was involved? But no, he hadn't even wanted to listen to Yicor's advice. What was going on? "He said you would be watching, that you would protect me. From what? And how?"
"You are not the first those creatures have set their sightless eyes on. We cannot do much, we are few and old, but we will try. Girl, we will try." Then just like Yicor, she refused to say more, and took me down the stairs, only talking about the room. She lectured me on keeping the door locked, on minding my key. She told me she would ask for one hundred kopacks each sixnight and one, but didn't want to see my rublie until I had stayed there that long. "Don't take kopacks for something not yet given," she said. I would also pay for my food, all of which sounded too reasonable to be true. But I certainly didn't question her.
When we re-entered the kitchen Lad had finished off the chicken dish and was looking very large and sleepy, slumped against the table. We stopped Kichlan in the middle of worried pacing. I shared a nod with him, and he immediately went to Lad's shoulder and started the long process of getting him moving.
"I need to, ah, replenish my wardrobe," I told Valya. She had started collecting the plates from her table, and prodded Lad's arm with a long fingernail to get him out of the way. Had far greater effect than Kichlan's murmured coaxing.
"Come and go as you wish," she said. "Just make certain you eat."
"Fair enough." I helped Kichlan heave Lad to his feet.
"Goodbye," he said to Valya around a yawn as he rubbed his red eyes. "I hope we come and see you again."
Considering the size of the dish he had devoured, I wasn't surprised.
"I think you will," Valya answered.
Kichlan and I supported Lad out the door. Lad started making noises about seeing my new home upstairs, but I feared for the rickety staircase beneath his careless weight.
"And we need to help Tanyana buy some clothes," Kichlan, evidently fearing the same thing, came to my aid. "We need to hurry or the day will be all over."
That was enough to capture Lad's interest. He snapped awake – probably aided by the outside chill – and hurried us along toward the Tear. The shops that lined the water were smaller than the ones I knew in the city, and poorly lit. Their wares were cheaper, secondhand and mended. Kichlan and his brother piled hats, gloves and scarves into my arms. They even found a stiff jacket, tailored for a man but small enough to fit me well, with panels of hard leather sewn onto the thick wool to keep out the wind. As a replacement for the jacket I had left in the apartment it was poor, the leather faded, thin at the elbows, and a large stain sullied the inside left breast. But it felt appropriate, somehow, as Kichlan draped it over my shoulders and tugged it together at my waist, muttering about the need for a belt to hold it together. It was a collector's jacket, to hang in a collector's rented room and brace the cold and the dirt of a collector's life.
I found scissors, small things with wooden handles that wobbled on a loose hinge, but they would do. I had noticed a mirror on the chest of drawers in my new bedroom, and my hair was growing uncommonly long.
The clothes barely scraped the bottom of my newly charged rublie, and we left with arms full of bulging calico bags, the shop owners so flushed with delight they had given us the bags for free. I was sure they would come in useful, somehow. Kichlan certainly seemed pleased with them. I wasn't entirely sure what they were for, but allowed myself to be swept into his enthusiasm regardless.
"For the next time you need to do this, of course," he explained as we trudged beneath a darkening sky to my home at 754 Lightbrick.
"Next time?" I shifted the bag in my arms. "Why would there be a next time?"
Lad, thankfully carrying two of the heavy, awkward things, was walking ahead of us and singing to himself.
"There usually is. They move us, sometimes, break up and rearrange teams. And not all landlords are as accommodating as Eugeny. They don't like having us around for too long."
"Valya seems like the accommodating type."
Kichlan grinned over the bulging bag he carried. My jacket was in there, the heaviest piece of the lot. He didn't seem to mind carrying it. "Don't let her feed you up too much. No use to me if you have to roll around Movoc-under-Keeper."
"Anytime that seems likely just send Lad over for a sixnight," I answered. "Won't be any food left in the house once he's through."
Kichlan nodded, his grin fading. He walked in silence for a long while, expression distant and distracted. "That was an interesting story you told earlier," he finally said.
"Yes." Did he know about the voices too? Had he heard them? Were we all a bit mad?
"Maybe now you understand." He jerked his head toward his brother, singing and walking a yard or so ahead of us. "About him."
"You don't want them to lock him in a castle for the rest of his days. Yes, I understand that."
"It's more than that." Kichlan shifted the bag. His fingers sought purchase in the folds of calico. They squeezed deep indents into the soft clothes. "I think, you see, that some of us fall differently. Like your Ulric fellow."
"Uric," I corrected.
He flashed me a frown. "Yes, whatever his name was. A long time ago I met others who heard things after they fell, who thought they could see faces instead of debris."