Debris by Jo Anderton Read Free Book Online Page B

add was a watch that would remain hidden in my jacket.
    Â Â The watch was a gift from Jernea, the old architect who had mentored me through university, given on the day I earned my own critical circle. It opened with a small catch: inside concentric circles rotated slowly, tracking and chiming with the bells. No pions had crafted it, and none worked the gears that moved it now, all it took was the turning of a tiny wind-up key. Old-world technology and craftsmanship, and that meant it was at least two centuries old. For that, it was precious. For the skills that were lost, far more so than its polished brass and coloured glass inlay.
    Â Â At the door I squashed my feet into heavy black boots. I pulled on a dark coat. It was cut for a man, but far more comfortable than any ridiculously-long-sleeved-draped across-the-shoulders-and-narrow-at-the-waist woman's wear would be. Outside I pressed fingertips to the pionpowered lock. It had a flat, crystalline panel designed to read my touch alone. Normally, I would have watched pions buzz about my fingers, glancing against those busy within my own body and checking I was, in fact, the person who lived beyond the door they guarded. Now, I only felt a tickling over my skin and had to take the security they provided on faith.
    Â Â Outside, a crisp Movoc morning breeze carried the tolls of thirdbell up from the city centre and set the skin on my face tightening. It irritated my stitches. I turned into it, discomfort or no, and started to walk. Slowly, shuffling, limping slightly. But at least I was walking. The centre of Movoc-under-Keeper was more than bridges, grand old houses, and romantic spots where pions danced. I could find veche chambers there. The project halls. The tribunal.
    Â Â The veche couldn't silence me. I would give them no choice but to listen.
    Â Â Where pions should have stretched from rooftop to rooftop in light-beaded banners there was only empty, cloud-grey sky. Movoc was a strange, dim place without the busy lights and complex systems that gave it life. It felt haunted. Not only because of the countless unseen presences I just knew were there, hidden beneath it all. But things just seemed to move, to work, all on their own. Metallic doors opened or closed themselves, so did the windows. I had to cross the street to avoid a fountain I had once thought of as beautiful. It was built with gaps in the stonework, so the complex bindings could be better appreciated and the very colour of its pions added to its form. Now it just looked like a lot of blocks of carefully shaped stone suspended in thin air, dribbling water that came from nowhere. Unsettling. Unnatural.
    Â Â I passed beneath a walkway between two tall buildings of silver and glass. It floated, unattached to anything, roaming left and right, up and down, to collect and ferry passengers between the towers. And I flinched, every time its dark shadow passed over me, because to my limited senses, the damned thing should have fallen. It didn't, and it wouldn't, while its bindings and systems still supported it. But I couldn't see any of them. I couldn't even tell whether the circle that set it up in the first place had done a good job, and were up to date with their maintenance.
    Â Â I was watched the whole way. A lone, scarred, bandaged and slightly glowing woman was not a usual sight for the centre of Movoc-under-Keeper. I kept my head down, my slow progress steady. But I could feel them, and catch them in the corner of my eye. A gaggle of young, rich girls flocked around a table at the open window of a coffee house. I turned, slightly, at the sound of their surprised, screeching cackle and realised they were pointing at me while they did it. What must I have looked like to them, compared to their beautiful hair, artfully painted skin and layers of lace-tipped silk? Frightful enough for a young boy in a miniature enforcer's uniform to take one look at me and run, bawling, to wrap his