Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  The rathawk circled high and then flew north. When it saw and smelled the water far below, it rested its wings and circled down, singing a unique song as it went. By the time it reached the rooftop, there was a man standing there. The rathawk, usually afraid of people, alighted on the man’s outstretched arm.

  The man took the dead rat from the bird’s claws. He placed the corpse gently on the parapet, noting the blood-speckled note tied to its tail, and picked up a chunk of swine meat for the rathawk. The bird took it with a gentle respect it probably did not understand, then lifted away. Within moments it was a speck in the sky, and when he blinked the man lost sight of it altogether.

  “Now what’s this?” he said, a little annoyed. A naked woman lay on his bed in the room below, and his mouth was still wet from her. But the rathawk call had shrunk his enthusiasm, and he had a feeling that he’d remain unspent for the rest of this day. A message sent in such a risky manner could mean only one thing: important news.

  The question was, good or bad?

  He snipped off the message roll with the tip of his knife and nudged the dead rat from the parapet. He unrolled the paper. His eyes widened.

  “Oh,” said the man. He rushed down the stone steps, and though the woman was still lying with her legs splayed, his mind was already far away. He waved off her objections, shrugged on trousers and a jacket, slipped on his boots, and left the room.

  Out in the street, he looked around nervously as he hurried along. This felt like something that could bring only danger and upset with it. Danger for all the Watchers. And upset for Gorham. He never had got over that fucking woman.

  Alert for any indication that he was being followed, he waited in a spice garden for a while, hunkered down among a profusion of bushes and vines, low plants and trees, breathing in deeply and trying to pass the time by identifying each spice. When he was certain he was alone, he slipped through the garden and emerged on the banks of a canal, startling a pair of mating ducks into flight. The female pecked at the male. I know how you feel, he thought, watching the drake take flight.

  Farther along the canal, a woman lived in a boat. He knocked on one of the small round windows and her face quickly appeared, almost as if she’d been awaiting his arrival. She opened a hatch in the roof and climbed lithely out, sitting above him with a small crossbow in her right hand. He’d seen it before—crafted from the finest of metals, and it was whispered that it came from one of the older Marcellan Echoes, though no one had ever hazarded a guess as to how she came to own it.

  “Malia,” the man said. “I have a message passed down the route.” She raised one eyebrow. He’d never felt comfortable around this one, even when her husband was still alive.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  “Peer Nadawa,” he said. “She’s back.”

  Malia’s expression did not change. Her eyes glimmered as she shifted slightly. Her pale fingers grew pink again as they loosened around the handle of the crossbow. Then she slid from the barge’s roof and landed a step in front of him, and wafting from her he could smell the intoxicating aroma of pure, unrefined slash.

  “Forget this, Devin,” she said.

  He nodded, turned, and walked away, hoping that the angry naked woman would still be in his room when he returned.

  Peer could have sat there forever, but she knew it was time to go. Gorham would know what to do. Even after she’d been caught and banished, the old network might have remained operative. Either way, she was certain that he’d still have contact with the Watchers.

  Besides, she was desperate to see him, and every pause was another moment when they were not together. There were thoughts that had reared their heads but that she would not entertain: He’s dead; he’s moved and changed his name; he’s given me up for lost and is with another woman. Though she had long ago given up hope of ever seeing him again, she had never stopped loving him. He’ll be just the same, she thought. Yet a flicker of nervousness had seeded in her chest, and she could do nothing to extinguish it.

  She and Rufus stood, and she left a couple of shillings for the wine. She glanced around for anyone who might be watching them. There was a group of women sitting in front of the next building along, all of them sucking on flexible pipes leading from a central smoke pot. Two of them were looking Rufus up and down, and one of the two had a hungry look in her eyes. Rut-slash smokers, out looking for men. Other than that, Peer and Rufus seemed to go unnoticed.

  “Where now?” Rufus said.

  “My friend used to live a couple of miles from here. If that’s not changed, we’ll see him soon.”

  Rufus started to follow her again, and Peer saw a flash of drug-fueled jealousy in one of the smoking women’s eyes.

  “Rufus,” she said, “walk with me, not behind me.” He smiled softly, but his eyes never stayed on her for long. They were drinking in the surroundings, flitting here and there and back again, and she envied him seeing all this for the first time. For her, returning here from Skulk, Six Step Bridge had a vital freshness to it. She could barely imagine what Rufus was thinking and feeling.

  She wished he could tell her. Soon, she thought. Gorham will know what to do and how to get him to the Watchers. Rufus is what they’ve been watching for forever. Proof of something beyond.

  As they left the bridge and started across a large park, the bustle faded away. There were still many people around them, but they were sitting or lying in the grass, eating or reading, staring or loving. The sound of a hooting heron came from the lake on the park’s far side, and wind whispered through the numerous barch trees, setting their thin, heavy branches swaying.

  In a grove of low trees halfway across the park, as Peer felt more relaxed than she had since escaping Skulk, a man stepped into their path.

  Peer froze. Rufus’s left hand reached out and grasped her arm.

  The man glanced around quickly before moving forward, right hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  There’s something … Peer thought, then saw a blur of movement from her right. Rufus dropped to his knees, letting go of her arm and bringing his strange spider-poison weapon up from his side.

  More people appeared around them, emerging from behind trees and bushes, and Peer knew them. Watchers. “Rufus!” she shouted, leaning sideways to try to knock him off balance. It almost worked. She heard the gentle cough of his weapon as he fell, and the man before them looked down at the left knee of his trousers.

  Peer staggered to the right but kept to her feet.

  The others closed in quickly, knives drawn, and if Peer had said something different, perhaps the man would have lived. But her thought then was for Rufus. “Rufus, they’re friends!” she said. And as the visitor from beyond Echo City lowered his weapon, she saw the man bending, reaching to his knee, touching the wet sticky patch there and raising it toward his face.

  “No!” she shouted, but it was already too late. Maybe all it took was the smallest contact with skin.

  He moaned a little, frowned, then started to shake. He stared down at his hand as if it was something he had never seen before. Then he began to scream.

  “Gerrett!” one of the others shouted, pushing him so that he fell. “Quiet!” But Gerrett—and Peer remembered him now, a Watcher with whom Gorham had spoken a few times, a man whose children fished in the Western Reservoir and whose wife made the most amazing salted fish rack—was beyond listening. His screams were loud and high, and he was shaking his hand so frantically that it slapped hard against the ground, the crack of breaking bones almost hidden beneath his cries.

  A woman clapped her hand across his mouth.

  “Don’t touch,” Rufus said. “Poison.”

  The woman glanced from him to Peer and back again, then moved away.

  Gerrett’s screams died down suddenly, as though his throat had been clapped shut. The convulsions started then, and the bloody foam from his mouth, and the darkening of his eyes as something in there burst.

  A man and woman beat Rufus t
o the ground. He let them.

  When they came for Peer, they were not so rough, but the gag they forced into her mouth stank of chickpig and tasted of shit, and the blind they tied around her eyes was so tight it made her head ache.

  “Gerrett …” one of them said.

  “No time.”

  As Peer was led away, she could still hear the impact of thrashing limbs on the ground.

  “They killed Gerrett.”

  “What?”

  “Gerrett died. The one with her, he shot him with something. Some poison.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gorham walked faster. They’d taken Peer and her companion to a boathouse on the shore of the reservoir—a place with a hidden basement where they’d sheltered people before. But his initial enthusiasm about seeing Peer had been shattered. He had so many secrets to tell her, so many apologies to make—and now it seemed she had the same.

  “Has anyone told his family yet?”

  “Of course not,” Malia said. “I only just found out myself.”

  “Keep it that way for now.”

  They hurried along the well-trodden path around the reservoir. It was seven miles all the way around, and it involved crossing the border with Crescent twice, but many people used it to exercise or walk away the excesses of every eighth-day feast. That was the reason why the boathouse was such a good hiding place: It was so close to activity. A row of vacation homes lined the road to their left, owned mostly by rich people from Marcellan Canton and used irregularly. But behind them were smaller buildings, retreats from the busier areas of Course and Crescent, and these were occupied for at least half of the time. Hiding people beneath the Marcellans’ noses pleased Gorham immensely.

  They slowed as they approached the boathouse, and Malia went ahead, disappearing through the door into shadow. Gorham looked out over the lake, trying to appear calm even though his heart was thumping hard. Peer is back, he thought. The idea seemed so surreal and alien to him, because he’d spent the best part of three years attempting to forget. Whatever confident face he presented to his fellow Watchers and the other people around him, deep inside Peer had always been a shameful scar.

  I’ve got so much to apologize for.

  Malia stepped from the boathouse. “Don’t stand there with your head up your ass. Come on!” But even her brusque signal that the coast was clear could not raise a smile from him today.

  Peer was back, sweet innocent Peer. And he wondered what secrets she had brought.

  He went inside and followed Malia into the basement. The first person Gorham saw was the cowering man, tears streaking his bruised face and hands raised to protect himself. He had striking white hair and looked weak and thin, but looks could be deceptive. The three Watchers he’d sent with Gerrett to bring in Peer were there, and the air was loaded.

  “Peer?” he asked.

  “Here.” She was on the other side of the basement, strapped against a wall.

  His heart broke for her. She looked just as he remembered—her dark hair longer, perhaps, her face a little thinner and harsher—and right now her expression was one of misery. She looked at him with a naïve hope, and something else.

  “Peer,” he said awkwardly, “it’s so good to see you again.” He crossed to her and knelt, glancing at her bonds. They were tied well. Her left wrist had bled a little from where the rope had tightened and twisted in, but the dribble of blood was already drying. He scanned her face for any hint of abuse and saw none. Good. The Watchers were determined but not brutal. Not unless the occasion called for it.

  “Gorham, what’s happening here?” Her voice was soft and uncertain.

  “I came to ask the same thing. Your friend killed Gerrett.”

  “That was an accident. He stepped out in front of us and—”

  “You remember Gerrett,” Malia said. “We haven’t told his family yet. His youngest developed heart canker a year ago. The shock might just kill her.”

  Peer closed her eyes, and Gorham saw true sorrow there. Careful, he thought. She’s from Skulk.

  “So who’s your friend?”

  “Gorham, he’s the only reason I managed to get out. I thought you might still have contact with the Watchers, even after everything, and I was bringing him to you so that—”

  “Assassination,” Malia breathed, the word like a revelation. “Those fucking Marcellans are hiring from Skulk now, are they? Can’t do their own job because it would be too dirty?”

  “Assassination?” Peer said, looking from Malia to Gorham.

  “Of course,” Gorham said. “You don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “We should get away from here,” Malia said urgently. “Deal with him, take her somewhere safer for interrogation.”

  “Gorham,” Peer persisted, “know what?”

  Gorham looked at his old lover, whom he’d let go. He reached out and touched her face. She did not flinch, but neither did she lean into the caress.

  “That I’m leading the Watchers now,” he said.

  Peer’s eyes grew wide, and Gorham sighed deeply as he stood and turned away.

  “Bring them both,” he said. “We’ll go down into Jail Ten. Then we can find out why they came.”

  “Gorham, I don’t—” Peer’s voice was high, confused.

  “Quiet!” Malia shouted, then she grinned. “That’ll be my job for the day.”

  Gorham was shaking, confused, emotions in turmoil. He forced himself to walk away, because he could not afford weakness. Not now. He knew how Malia found out things. And he hoped that, when the time came, Peer would tell the truth.

  Twice in as many days. Gorham hated coming down into the Echoes.

  Jail Ten was in the first Echo below Course Canton. It had been abandoned almost a hundred years before, soon after the salt plague and subsequent purge had turned Skulk Canton into a wasteland. The jail’s prisoners had been moved to Skulk in stages, all three thousand of them, and legend had it that the brutal jailmaster had remained behind in Jail Ten, never to be seen again. The story went that he still considered it his duty to incarcerate anyone who wandered into the underground complex, whether by accident or on purpose. Gorham and his fellow Watchers had sensed phantoms down there, and some even claimed to have seen them, but no one had seen the jailmaster.

  It served them well to perpetuate the myth.

  They carried oil torches similar to those the Baker used in her own underground retreat. There were no chopped down here to guide them, however, and Malia and the other Watchers navigated by memory alone. They had been using the jail for little more than a year, and they went there only when it was absolutely essential.

  Gorham was feeling unsettled, uncertain, yet he could not let that show. The Watchers had almost been destroyed three years before, the crackdown by the Marcellan bullies and their Hanharan priests reaching deep into the heart of the organization and all but tearing it out. The memories of those times were still vivid and depressing, and he tried not to dwell on them too often. But seeing Peer walking ahead of him brought it all back. Her wrists were tied before her, and he wondered how painful her right arm would be. She limped slightly, and he wanted to ask about her hip. But he could not, of course. If he voiced his thoughts, guilt would break him down, and it was his job now to be strong.

  We should be in each other’s arms, he thought. Normal lovers separated for so long would have swept each other away. But they were not normal people and never had been. And these were not normal times.

  They reached one of the few entrances to Jail Ten that was still functioning. Malia signaled a halt, and she and another Watcher, Devin, edged toward the heavy steel door. It was propped open by a bundle of rags. Malia whispered some words that hissed around that subterranean space, and beyond the jail door something moved away. The darkness in there was suddenly not quite so deep, and Malia nodded that the coast was clear.

  The Baker had given them that. She said it was chopped from
a razorplant and given a rudimentary mind, and for three nights after learning that, Gorham had not been able to sleep, terrified at what such a mind might think.

  Peer stood fast, the tall man she called Rufus beside her. Gorham heard her breath coming harsh and scared, and the man seemed to be shedding a tear.

  “This way, killer!” Malia said to the man, but Gorham stepped forward.

  “Let me,” he said. He stood before Peer and looked her in the eye, closer than he had yet been. He inhaled her breath, and it sent a thrill of nostalgia and recognition through him—a warmth that had been missing for so long. “We’re not bringing you down here to hurt you,” he said.

  “Really.”

  “Things are changing, and the Marcellans think we’re finished. We can’t let them know otherwise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s much to do. I’ll tell you all of it soon, Peer, I promise.”

  “So we’re down here for your own protection?”

  Gorham almost smiled. There, the strong-minded Peer still lives. But she did not look strong right then, and he remembered the terrible truth he had yet to reveal. There was no way he couldn’t, but he dreaded every word.

  “And yours,” he said. “You and your friend.”

  “He’s more than you think,” Peer said.

  “Tell me inside.”

  “Bastard.”

  Does she know? he wondered. But, no, she could not, because there was no way she’d be able to keep such knowledge to herself.

  “I never forgot you,” he said.

  “Nice way of showing it.” Her voice broke on the last word. He went to say something else, but Peer shoved past him.

  They made their way down through corridors lined with doors, all of them closed. There could have been anything in those small dark rooms, but the doors had been locked shut for decades, and whatever dwelled inside remained alone. Their echoing footsteps disappeared into the warren of rooms and corridors. The stench of stagnant water and old secrets hung heavy in the still air. It was a place never meant to be empty, and being so filled it with stark potential.

  As they neared the center of the jail, Devin ran ahead and went about lighting scores of torches lining the walls. The huge room revealed what had once been an exercise area, three stories high and open to the sky until this part of Course was developed overhead. That was perhaps two centuries ago, according to Gorham’s advisers’ best guess. They trusted that this place was all but forgotten.