Jo Anderton - Debris

This was me, the truest me. Tanyana Vladha. Pionbinder, architect, centre of a circle of nine and good – Other-damned good – at all of it.

"Help me up there," I whispered to the pions. They hardly needed convincing.

We fashioned stairs out of the very air. Tied thousands of tiny drops of water with miniscule fragments of sand, and ash, and whatever trace metals the pions could find, and froze them, then burned them, crushing them together until something like glass appeared. And we did this with every step I took, binding and rebinding, until I stood on the bones of Grandeur's incomplete palm, eight hundred feet high.

The tension of a site full of riled-up pions travelled through her steel beams and hardened glass tiles in a constant tremor. Nothing she couldn't handle, I was sure. I had designed and built her to be strong.

"Are you ready to begin, my lady?" Volski's pions carried his words to me, up a current of wispy blue lights that smelled of dust. Each member of my circle was different. Llada bullied hers along on a solid track of authoritarian purple. Tsana's touch was green, sharp as the eyes of a child.

"I am." The tiny bright particles couldn't speak, of course. Rather, they replicated the vibrations of my words, carrying and depositing them where instructed. I could ask them to shout across the whole of the site, if I wanted, but these words I kept for Volski alone, "Are the inspectors watching us, Vol?"

A pause. Either Volski was collecting his thoughts or – and, I thought, more likely – his pion stream was struggling to push its way through to me. The construction site was so full of light, countless different streams and loose particles attracted to us but not yet incorporated; a single thread could get tangled on its journey.

"Of course they are," he answered, finally. "You really don't know why they're here, my lady?"

"Vol." It took several attempts to get down to him. "Don't let it upset you." I opened up my pion thread and sent my words to everyone in my nine point circle. "Let's use this opportunity to show these so-called inspectors, and the veche, just how good we are."

The pions, at least, surged with agreement, even if I couldn't quite make out all of my circle's reply.

"If you say so, my lady," Volski said. Then, after another pause, "The first block is on its way to you now."

I stepped to the very edge of Grandeur's palm, lifted my arms, spread my hands wide and urged the circle on. They gave everything I could have asked for. Colours surged as the pions they had gathered travelled up their threads toward me, like blood through veins. From nine points spread out across the site below me, my pionbinders coaxed power from the world around them and sent it all up to me.

"The block is nearly there!" Tsana's words came across clipped, and I hoped she wasn't tiring already. Grandeur was, well, a grand lady. She would take many more sixnights to complete, and for the two hundred thousand kopacks the veche was paying, I'd make sure we built her well. For moons we had crafted her, from sturdy, sand-filled legs to the crystalline squares of her glass-sewn gown. Hands, face and neck were all that remained to be done. But a face takes longer to sew than a dress, expression needs time and care. A light touch, the delicate detail.

The rock the lifters hauled past the hem of Grandeur's sparkling, crystalline sleeve was enormous. To my architect's eyes it was a tangle of bindings, of tightly knotted energy giving it structure and form. Dense with material, shining with ore and sand and potential. I would build a hand from that rock.

"Have you got it yet?"

I took a small step from the edge, feet steady, steel the only thing between me and the ground. The obliging pions in the girder shone a bright path to follow. The boulder wobbled as it rose, jerking in the sky. The lifters were having trouble.

"Hurry, my lady," Volski murmured by my ear.

I shook out my fingers. "Ready now?" I whispered to the lights buzzing around my head like fireflies. I must have looked like flame from the ground, a tiny lit wick in an enormous candle. The toes of my boots hung out over space and a humid updraft.

It seemed we had, in fact, already loosened a lot of debris. Debris was always followed by heat.

I cupped my hands, repeating the gesture, and imagined holding the boulder there in my palms. The pions caught on quickly. They had trailed over my fingers like streamers woven from flowers. Now, they wrapped around the rock, cupping it in a tight, bright mesh. "Good little girls and boys," I whispered again. Then I sent down to my circle, "Patience, Tsana, Vol. Art and beauty, these things should not be rushed."

Laughter does not carry up the circle. But I imagined a smile brightening Volski's ever-serious eyes. "Lifters are getting weary. The site is thick, so don't work them too hard."

It was a lot of stone to lift so high and hold for so long, even without a throng of pions clogging the sky.

I brought my cupped hands together, with more care than I had placed my feet. Falling didn't worry me; if I couldn't create myself something safe to land on, then I had nine people below me who could. But the pions guided by my hands, with their jostling, in their zest, they needed a focused mind and a firm grip.

A gust of wind, warmth-tipped, billowed my jacket. The high collar of densely woven wool tugged at my throat. I locked fingertips and sent the pion horde drilling. They rushed to their duty, pushing inside the rock, sticking to its bindings, prying at its knots. Undoing its old form, and preparing it for a new existence in Grandeur.

Once I could feel every grain as though they were pressed against my fingers – from smooth iron-ore to fine sand – I instructed Volski to give the lifters some rest.

The rock was a sudden weight, and I braced my feet on the steel beam, leaning into the wind to compensate and regain my balance. I was not alone. The circle throbbed below me, around me, and even as I fed pions into the rock, even as they set about their dismantling and reconstruction, the circle found me more.

Sweat on my neck, clammy wool. All part of the thrill, wasn't it?

First, cement separated in a flurry of mud. I padded the hand bones with it, filled out the palm, was careful to lift my toes as it solidified at my feet. Next, more steel.

Another gust of wind, and I staggered a half step onto thankfully dry cement. My interlocked fingers jerked in reflex. Particles tugged in an attempt to escape, but I had knotted them so tightly they could not slip out of place. Somewhere below me, the structure rattled. Just wind, surely, trying to knock Grandeur around like it was doing me.

"Are you all right?" Tsana asked. "The wind's come up."

"I noticed," I snapped off the words. "Be quiet and keep working. We're being watched, remember."

Tsana was silent. The pions didn't carry sulking, either.

Fingers are hard to fashion. I guided pions to the squareend edges of the metacarpals and set them to building knuckles out of steel. Grandeur was a statue, so she was hardly going to flex her hands or pick anything up, but I needed sufficient mass there and a strong enough supporting structure to keep the fingers stable. Grandeur had her arm outstretched, hand cupping. When I'd vied for the contract to build her I'd described this as a poignant way to show that Varsnia, even as wealthy and advanced as we are, was not beyond lending a helping hand to lesser nations, not beyond carrying an extra weight. Didn't mean I believed it, of course, but it had certainly convinced the veche.

Another shudder ran through Grandeur's frame. Fine dust from her shoulder trickled in a soft waterfall behind me.

"Did you feel that?" Tsana put aside her hurt ego.

"Of course." I was standing on it.