Suited by Jo Anderton Read Free Book Online Page B

Keeper guiding us – it was the best plan we had. “Let’s do it,” I said. I meshed my fingers with Lad’s and pulled him into a walk.
    Our loose collecting team did not go unnoticed as we headed down the seventh Effluent. We stopped at lamps, we poked drains, we peered over fences and into gaps in walls. Before the debris disaster that had almost destroyed Movoc-under-Keeper we had done this, and not been seen. Debris collectors were shadows, invisible to most pion-binders because they simply did not want to see us. But they knew us now; all of Movoc knew it was collectors who had saved them and that even though debris was rubbish clogging their precious pion-powered city, it could be dangerous.
    So now, we were watched.
    A young woman in a thick grey shawl stopped at the sight of us collecting a tiny cache of debris grains from the inside of a crack where two buildings joined. She stood across the street, gloved hands clasped at her chest, and watched until we turned a corner. We walked by a run-down coffee house. Conversation stopped. The scent of burned, cheap coffee turned my stomach even more than the regard of a dozen or so old men.
    I couldn’t decide which was worse – when the only attention we generated was mess-on-the-bottom-of-my-shoe looks, or this silent awe, this uncertain respect? It made me nervous. Would it last? And what did they expect from us now? Saviours of the city carried greater responsibilities than garbage collectors, even if we did exactly the same thing.
    Only Lad and Aleksey didn’t notice the attention. Lad hummed softly, hand holding mine, and scanned the street for debris as we walked. I could sense his nervousness, how much he hated doing this without his brother’s strong and protective presence by his side. It travelled in little tremors from the dips and highs in his tuneless song.
    I squeezed his hand back, not sure what else I could do to assure him that I was here, and I would look after him. Just like Kichlan did.
    Aleksey concentrated on his suit. He held the slowly spinning, faintly glowing band on his wrist close to his face. He peered at the symbols that bobbed in the not-liquid, and scrunched his face into a parody mask of concentration. Trying to work out how to mesh those symbols together, how to induce them to rise and free themselves from the band, to spread across his hand in one shining–
    “Tan?” Lad was staring at me, worried. “What are you doing, Tan?”
    I glanced down. My suit had spread from my wrist to wrap us both in metal, and had even risen to cover my jacket sleeve. It looked so strange, like that. Bright metal from forearm to elbow, skin-tight and solid, then the thick material of my coat puffed out and wide.
    “Sorry.” I gritted my teeth and forced the suit back.
    Lad disentangled himself. He stretched his fingers, flexed them, and caught my hand again. “It’s warm, Tan,” he said. “In your suit.”
    “Sorry, Lad. I didn’t mean–”
    He stopped in the middle of the street, eyes suddenly wide, expression distant.
    I knew that look. The last thing we needed now was the Keeper dragging us on one of his pointless underground quests into who knew what kind of danger. Not in front of Aleksey. Not now, so soon after the door that had almost killed us. “Lad?”
    His mouth moved, whispered words, and his gaze snapped suddenly to me. “Tan, he says he needs you, he says it has to be now! Oh hurry Tan, hurry!”
    He tried to pull away, to set us running, but I tugged on his hand and he stopped, shocked. “Lad, listen to me.”
    “But he–”
    “Remember yesterday; remember what nearly happened to us.”
    He ducked his head down, rubbed at his chin. “Saved us because we ran.” He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. “He is very upset. Very much.”
    My throat felt tight, restricted. Was this fair on Lad, to turn him into a rope tugged between the Keeper and me? I had promised Kichlan I would care for him, even if that meant