Suited by Jo Anderton

Author:Jo Anderton [Anderton, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-01T17:02:58+00:00

Beside me, Lad shrank against my shoulder, quite a feat for someone as large as he.

I shook my head. “We don’t know, Natasha.” I understood the worry, bright with fear in her eyes. Yesterday – Mornday – we had managed to fill another jar and a half of debris. It was already Highbell on Thriveday and we hadn’t done much better. Time was running out. We had collected so little that it didn’t matter that the Keeper had not returned to receive his share. We would never make quota.

So I understood her concern, even if I wished she would stop shouting at Lad about it.

Natasha growled an inarticulate noise and snatched a jar from Mizra. She shoved the debris in, forced the lid down and continued along the street. “Get moving!” she called from over her shoulder. “We’re not finished yet.”

Mizra let out a low sigh, something closer to a groan. “I’ll be glad when this day is over.”

“What makes you think tomorrow will be any better?” Aleksey asked, his voice strained.

“A man needs something to hope for.”

“What are you doing?” Natasha yelled, already far ahead. Too many curious faces glanced in our direction at the noise. I wished she could keep her frustrations to a slightly quieter level.

We hurried to keep up, and Mizra watched me critically. “How are you handling this, Tanyana?”

“Better than you might expect,” I answered, and it was the truth. Ever since Rest night the pain and the battle of wills, had quietened. I’d even managed to eat my dawnbell supper two days in a row. Valya was delighted.

Mizra narrowed his sharp blue eyes at me, obviously sceptical. “And have you made a–”

“No, not yet.”

“You should–”

“I know, Mizra. I know.”

Aleksey listened, trying to be unobtrusive about it. Lad, it seemed, was too frightened of Natasha to pay attention to much else.

“You certainly seem to be feeling better,” Aleksey murmured, as Natasha set us to work on a street lamp. The driver of a cheap coach with unsteady wheels had stopped her in the street, complaining of faults in the steering mechanism and an uneven acceleration that no amount of maintenance seemed to be able to fix. Lad and Mizra crawled beneath the chassis while Natasha climbed to the driver’s seat and started digging up the upholstery.

I knelt, and was able to bend forward and scrape a long, thin strip of suit into the gap between lamp base and paving stones. “Yes, I am feeling much better actually.”

“So suddenly?” He focused on extending his suit into a pointed, narrow implement as similar to mine as he could make it. Aleksey had not yet mastered his suit, but he learned quickly, and I had to admit the result was pretty good.

“It wasn’t that bad to begin with.”

“Ah, must have looked worse than it was, then.”

“Exactly.”

Together, we poked at the greening copper, carefully avoiding each other’s gaze.

“Nothing,” Aleksey muttered, inspecting his clean suit. “No debris at all.” He sat back. “Damn it, I’m starting to understand why this is getting to Natasha.

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