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nothingness to be. So I let it take me.

5.
     
    Movoc-under-Keeper’s wall was gone. It had stood strong for centuries, unbent by storm or quake or the force of an invading army. Tan, however, had destroyed it in one night.
    Figured.
    Kichlan climbed the ruins of the wall to escape the cemetery, and headed back into the city. It was difficult with one arm. At least the metal stump where his elbow had been didn’t hurt, no matter how hard he knocked it. But it wasn’t a hand, and it couldn’t grip.
    His city had moved on from chaos into a heavy melancholy. The fires had been doused; in their place smoking timber and scarred stone remained. The streets were torn, some made impassable by fissures in the cement, others risen up into jagged peaks spouting pipes and the ragged ends of steel frames. So few buildings remained. Most were shells. How could anyone survive this?
    Yet they had. The citizens of Movoc-under-Keeper dug through the ruins of their city, shocked, numb, every movement slow, every word hushed. It felt like a great silence had fallen over the city, broken only by bodiless weeping coming from somewhere in the distance.
    Hunched over, elbow hidden beneath his coat, Kichlan walked steadily down the broken streets. He wasn ’t really sure where he was going, or what he was hoping to do. He just knew he had to keep moving. Because if he stopped, if he just sat at the side of the road like he so desperately wanted to, then everything would come crashing down on him, and he might never get back up again. He was exhausted beyond anything he had ever known. Yet he walked, threading a slow path among the pion-binders dragging bodies and body parts out of the rubble.
    Where were the bodies being taken, now that the cemetery beyond the wall had given back her dead? Perhaps the Tear River could have them, drag them down into darkness and nothingness. Like it had done Tan.
    Tan.
    He ran the back of his sleeve over his face. He ’d always thought she needed looking after. Liked to pretend strength, to push her way forward and bear the brunt. But he would never forget her standing small and near frozen on his doorstep, that precious book in her hands. Or the defiance in her eyes, the challenge, when she had first shown him her scars.
    Other damn her. Prideful and stubborn and oh so blind.
    And gone. With his brother. Because he had failed them both.
    He couldn ’t think about that. Just keep moving .
    He grasped his silver elbow as he walked. His shoulder hurt; it was so much heavier than a normal arm. What had Tan been thinking, when she forced it on him?
    He walked until his legs could hardly move. A constant mess of tiny debris grains brushed against his feet like sludge, but he ignored them. His debris collecting days were well and truly over. A ragged looking street vendor pressed poorly roasted sweet potato into his hand, but Kichlan couldn’t find the will to eat it. Just to walk. Deeper and deeper into the city, past leaking effluent channels, collapsed factories, smouldering apartment blocks. Over broken glass, inches thick in places. The city grew hazy, his head spun, and everything smelled like sewage, and death.
    Until a shadow passed over him, and Kichlan looked up. He blinked. Where was he? How long had he been walking? Somewhere, he ’d dropped the sweet potato, but he was still clinging to its wrapper.
    Two Strikers flew low above, passing overhead with the deep rushing of displaced air, leaving heat and debris in their wake. Strikers were the ultimate soldiers, held aloft by invisible pions, their mutilated faces hidden in sleek hoods of white leather. All around him, recovery work stopped. Stones were dropped, bodies placed gently back against the earth.
    Kichlan paused, glanced around. Something didn ’t feel right. It was unusual to see Strikers deployed above the city, yes, but given the circumstances Kichlan wasn’t all that surprised. The veche had imposed martial law even before Tan had