Suited by Jo Anderton

watch Kichlan as he squeezed through. He scanned their faces, started to dust off his clothes and paused to say, “Fedor?” in surprise.
    Fedor? Then I realised why the single, suited man looked familiar. Not so sickly-looking now, though still thin and pale, he was the second new collector. “Kichlan?” he sounded just as shocked.
    “You know him?” Lev asked.
    “He is in my collecting team.”
    A moment of subterranean tension before Fedor stepped up beside us. “We have heard that Eugeny vouches for you.” In the sure lift of his head and the firm command in his eyes I saw none of the quiet man who had allowed himself to be herded by Aleksey. From Kichlan’s continued surprise, I gathered he was seeing a different side of his new team member as well. “So you are welcome.” He introduced his Unbound group, names I was sure to forget: Egor, Kirill, Yan, Anna... I stopped listening after a while. “We thank the Keeper for bringing you to us.”
    Kichlan snorted, instantly shattering the fragile calm. “The Keeper? That must be a joke, surely. He’s led us around for moons now. If he cared about any of you I think he’d have introduced us earlier, don’t you?” The scorn in his voice was a too clear, his utter disrespect obvious on his face.
    Ah, Kichlan’s ever-absent tact.
    Fedor tensed, as the Unbound behind him muttered darkly. “What do you think you know about the Keeper?”
    No point even trying for diplomacy now, was there?
    “I know he doesn’t look like those statues out there.” I jerked my thumb back at the doorway. “Though they got the eyes and the mouth about right.”
    A moment of silence, of puzzlement. Then understanding sunk in. “You have seen him?” Fedor asked me, his expression a mixture of hope and disbelief.
    “We brought her here for a reason,” Yicor murmured, and almost sounded affronted. “You should have more faith in your elders, Fedor.”
    “But that’s impossible,” one of the Unbound gasped – Egor, I thought.
    “Not even Halves see the Keeper, though they hear his voice,” another, older woman, said. Anna?
    “How is it you can see him?” Lev asked. He remained calm.
    I lifted an arm. The suit spun faster, glowed brighter, and all voices within the ancient chamber died.
    “The suit?” Fedor peered closer, and then glanced down at his own quiet, dim wrist. “But how does that work–?”
    I shook my head. “Our suits are not the same, Fedor.” When he looked up again hope had turned to jealousy. Such foolishness. “You’re lucky not to have a suit like mine, trust me. Anyway, all that matters is I can communicate with the Keeper, and he with me.”
    Lev studied me for a silent moment. “So you say. Then you already know what we must do.”
    “We must close the doors,” I whispered.
    “We must do more than close them.” Fedor grinned, and there was something unhinged in his expression, something that made me shiver and wish I’d never even mentioned the doors. “We must ensure they cannot be created, we must destroy the tools with which they are built, we must splinter the wood, melt the iron, burn the–”
    “How, exactly will you do that?” I interrupted and wondered if he realised the doors he was so enthusiastically destroying weren’t physical at all and wouldn’t, I was fairly sure, catch fire.
    “With these.” He lifted his hands, and nodded to the bands of suit on his wrists “I chose to be shackled with them. Of all of us, I volunteered. To become a collector, to lose my freedom.”
    “Why?” I choked. Memories of lying on a silver table, of great needles suiting me with living fire, threatened to overwhelm the dimly lit chamber. Why would anyone willingly give themselves over to the veche and their torture?
    “Isn’t it obvious?” Lev gripped Fedor’s shoulder, possessive, protective. “Fedor is infiltrating the veche.”
    “The veche?” Kichlan asked, sounding just as sceptical as I felt. “We’re not the veche, you