I half stumbled on the road's uneven stones. "What? Really? Why didn't you say anything?"
"This isn't something Lad needs to know about. Listen to me, Tanyana, please."
I shut my mouth against more questions.
"I thought I could find out what was wrong with Lad, I thought I could help him. But he didn't give me enough time. He has always been like this. Listening to voices no one else can hear. But they can't find out about it, do you understand? They can't."
"They?" I whispered.
"The veche men. Technicians. Because every one of those people I met, those people who fell hard, were found by the veche, and they were taken away." He drew a deep breath. "I know, because I was there. Because I helped."
I stared at him blankly.
"I wasn't always a collector, I wasn't born like this. Not the way Lad was. And before I fell I thought I could help him, I wanted to use-" he struggled, his hands quivered against the bags he carried "-my skill to help him. My binding skill."
Cold that had nothing to do with the Movoc-underKeeper weather made me shiver. "I thought you didn't know anything about pion-binding?"
Kichlan couldn't meet my eyes. "I tried to help him. I learned things, but not enough. And when Lad hurt the girl, I knew I had to make a choice. Fall, and protect him. Or watch him being taken away. You know what I chose."
"I don't understand, Kichlan. What was your skill? What did you do-" But I did. The silver hand, that dull metal with its thick cords that had reminded me so much of my suit, on Kichlan's dresser. "You were a technician?" My tongue felt frozen, the words impossible to say.
"In a way. I didn't make suits, not like the ones we wear. The veche had me experimenting, making changes. I was quite skilled."
"You must have been." He wasn't bad at lying, either. "Any reason for the pretence? Or just amusing yourself by lying to the new collector?" The bitterness in my words was too sharp to contain.
"The team don't know this. Lad, I think, doesn't really understand. I gave it all up for him, Tanyana. When he hurt that girl, he took away any chance I had to find out what was wrong with him. To fix him. I fell, so I could protect him. He doesn't need to know. He shouldn't have to carry that." His voice hitched. "It isn't his fault."
I wondered, numbly, why he had told me. Did he think I had the strength to carry his grief around with him? The love in those words, and the resentment, and the failure.
"Where did the veche take them? The collectors you said fell hard?"
Kichlan shook his head. "I didn't find out. I wasn't there long enough. But they never came back." He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw the kind of fear, the kind of desperation and terror I would have associated with his brother's confused mind instead. "I will not let that happen to Lad. They cannot take him away. He's all I have left, Tanyana. He is my everything."
"I know, Kichlan. I know."
I wanted to touch him, to hold him or pat him in a way Lad would have let me easily. But, even if we weren't laden with my new clothes and their calico bags, I wasn't certain Kichlan would let me get that close.
"I'm still going to find a way," Kichlan whispered so softly I almost missed him beneath my own breathing. "I'm going to find out what the voices are, and I'm going to stop them. Then the veche can't take him, they'll have no reason. Then he will be safe."
I watched Lad's back. His head was tipped, with his song reaching a roaring chorus without discernable words.
Did any of this make sense? Did I fall from Grandeur and land beside Kichlan and his brother for a reason? Was it anything more than terrible, devastating luck?
Uric's twelve pointed circle burned too brightly in my mind, and I stood beside him, fighting pions of my own. I had known from the beginning, hadn't I, that this was more than Yicor's luck. Kichlan had thrown himself from his Grandeur, I had been pushed.
What, exactly, was I going to do about that? I felt backed into a corner. Devich and the powerful people he knew weren't accessible to me any more. Pavel and the thugs who had thrown me from my apartment felt like warnings, as though someone was telling me in brutal terms to cast aside all thoughts of Grandeur, of pions, of justice and a veche tribunal. To let that life fall forgotten into the past, and get used to being a debris collector.
And most of all, to stop asking questions.
But what frightened me most was how comfortable this corner could be. Lad's friendship, Kichlan's loyalty, Eugeny's care, I wanted these things. I liked them. It would be too easy to embrace this new life, to stop fighting for the truth, to leave the past alone. It even sounded like the most sensible thing to do.
After all, nothing was holding me to my old life anymore. My circle was gone, my apartment was taken, and I had just sold the last piece, the last memory.
Maybe it was time to let go?
13.
Lad leaned into the river spray, one hand wrapped around the railing, the other tangled in mine. I was keenly aware that I had nowhere near enough weight to keep him on the ferry if he fell, and would be sucked into the Tear's icy current behind him.
"Feet on the floor, Lad, not the railing." I tugged at the large man, a lot like trying to shift a steady wall of brick and mortar with my little finger.
"The water is nice, Tan." He leaned over further.
"Not if you fall in it, it won't be."
With a sheepish glance, Lad slipped his feet from the first rung and back to the deck, landing loudly. The few ferries that ran on Rest were filled, but not in a crowded way. There were tired young men making their way down from the city. Middle-aged chaperones supervised younger women who fluttered their eyelashes and were rewarded with leering, sleep-deprived smiles. An elderly couple huddled on seats by the doorway, watching the Keeper Mountain grow slowly smaller, blinking against sunlight on the river. A gaggle of children were doing a fair imitation of Lad's unsafe climbing. I felt sorry for the two governesses trying to pry them all down.
Kichlan stood beside me, also watching the Keeper Mountain. "They weren't like him, you know," he said, soft against the rush of the wind, not loud enough for Lad to hear. "Neither. Both were good binders, respectable people working hard for Varsnia and their children. It's not in the blood. My parents weren't collectors."
"Pion skill has got nothing to do with blood, although the old families won't want to hear that." My mother was proof of that.
"Don't you wonder, then, what it is?" Kichlan's hands gripped the railing, knuckles white, skin blue in the chill. "What made us?"
"I know what made me." I touched the side of my face. "And you made yourself." Kichlan had not been forthcoming with any more details of his fall, but I refused to be dissuaded and continued to pry. "Fling yourself eight hundred feet into the air, did you?"
He said, "Doesn't take eight hundred feet to break a person, and not all of us have to be quite so dramatic." Kichlan looked over my head. "Him then." In the corner of my eye I noticed one of Lad's feet had crept back to the bottom railing. I poked him in the side, and he lowered it with a chuckle. "What made him?"
Over the last sixnight and one, Kichlan, Lad and I had explored the backstreets and alleys between the seventh Effluent and the eighth Keepersrill. Narrow, dark capillaries between wide veins, shaped without reason, blocking often in dead ends or gates. It was this constant companionship, I told myself, that had stopped me searching for Devich. How could I head into the city, or try and find the building where he had suited me, with Kichlan and Lad like dogs, constantly at my heels. And Olday evening, as the brothers had said their farewells at the bottom of Valya's rickety stairs, Kichlan had asked me to come with them the next morning, to visit his parents' graves. If I hadn't been so surprised, I might have thought up a way to decline.