Suited by Jo Anderton Read Free Book Online

going to be collecting with us he would work out pretty quickly that Lad was not a normal man. Whether we tried to hide it or not.
    “Tanyana,” I said. “And no, I’m not his brother.” Lad chuckled at my attempt at humour. Aleksey just lifted his eyebrows. I couldn’t loosen my right arm from Lad’s grip, so resorted to twisting my left around and touching Aleksey’s fingers, smiling ruefully. “You’re with us, are you?”
    “That’s what the card says.” I caught the roving of his eyes, the way they touched on my eye and cheek, then dipped to my neck between cap and coat collar, following the track the scars on my skin. I tried not to mind. After all, I had done the same to him. “But it doesn’t look like the right building.” He turned, placed hands on his hips and tipped back to look at the uppermost heavily barred windows. “Oh, actually–”
    “Tanyana!” I looked up as Mizra’s voice echoed down the street. He was waving a suit-bright hand out of a high window, between two of the bars. “Around the back!”
    Ah, the ever-helpful veche and their light-on-the-details instructions.
    Aleksey, Lad and I headed down a small side street and discovered a heavily barred – but helpfully unlocked – door. Natasha and Mizra waited for us in the toplevel. It was a wide, carpeted room with a low ceiling and no couches. Apart from the bare shelves awaiting full jars, and a table laden with empty ones, it looked nothing like the sublevel we were used to. Strangely, even with sunlight streaming in from windows that took up most of one wall, it felt darker and colder than the underground ever did.
    Perhaps because Kichlan wasn’t here.
    “They gave her the keys,” Mizra said in a disgusted voice as Aleksey opened a door at the top of the stairs and we all filed in.
    “You can have them if you want.” Natasha span a set of iron keys hooked into a ring around her right index finger. “I couldn’t care less.”
    “It’s the principle,” Mizra snapped. He folded his arms, cast about for a place to sit, found none and resorted to hunkering against a wall. “Even on my bad days, I’m a better collector than you. I could be asleep and still collect more debris than you do!”
    “No offence taken,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.
    “Tan,” Lad whimpered. “I miss my bro.”
    Well, this was starting well.
    “They also gave me this.” Natasha threw a poly-wrapped parcel at Aleksey, who fumbled with it, dropped it, and sheepishly bent to pick it up.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Uniform.” Lad finally let go of me. He hiked up his right sleeve to show Aleksey the black, boned material underneath. “You need to wear it under your clothes, and all the time. Even when you’re sleeping.” He smiled at me, and I nodded encouragement.
    “Why don’t you and Mizra help Aleksey into his uniform,” I offered.
    “Have you been shown how to use your suit?” Mizra asked, as he and Lad stood between the new collector and Natasha and I.
    “You mean these bands?” Aleksey said over the sound of torn poly. “Why do they call it a suit?”
    “Here, let me show you.”
    Natasha and I turned our backs and stared out of a barred window in an attempt to give Aleksey some privacy. I felt his confusion keenly. Hardly four moons ago I was just like him. Scarred, alone in a new team, with a new life, and a living suit drilled into my bones.
    “They should have given the keys to you,” Natasha murmured.
    I blinked down at her. Natasha was not usually so loquacious.
    “Despite what Mizra thinks, you’re the most capable collector among us. He might have been doing it for longer, but you’re better at it.”
    “Ah, thanks.” I’d never heard Natasha string so many words together before.
    She shrugged. “Like I said, it doesn’t bother me.”
    We stood for a moment in silence.
    “Other’s farts!” Aleksey hissed behind us, and Lad started giggling. “How did you do that? Where did the metal come