Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  “What sort of a spy are you if you can’t—”

  “I’m not a spy, woman!” Nophel spat. With the immediate threat from Malia abating, their true position was only just dawning on him. Whoever had sent these Blades must want the people—or the person—Dane had sent Nophel to meet. The Baker. Who were they to know she was not here? Maybe they thought she was Malia, or Peer, or …

  “Are you the Baker?” he asked Malia, and his heart skipped a beat. I could watch her die, and then I’d die with a smile.

  Malia actually laughed. “I’m fun to be with, compared to her.”

  “They’ll try to kill us all,” he said softly.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m assuming.”

  Peer appeared with her arms full of weapons—several swords, knives, throwing stars, a crossbow, and a rack of bolts.

  “They won’t be heavily armed,” Nophel said.

  “Don’t need to be with those blades of theirs,” Brunley said.

  “And I doubt they’re wearing armor. Not if they were sent to track me. They’d have been running. Tired.” He was thinking, trying to recollect anything about the Blades he saw every single day that might help them all survive this.

  “Anything else?” Peer asked. She was hefting the crossbow, but it was obvious she had never fired one in her life. Her face was pale and slack, a fine film of sweat across her upper lip.

  “Pull back, click, lock in a bolt,” Malia said. Then she snapped up a short knife and squatted down three steps from the door, sword in her other hand, listening. “Here they come,” she whispered.

  “They’re all right-handed,” Nophel said.

  As the door crashed inward, Malia dropped the knife and lobbed her sword into her other hand.

  “Window!” Malia shouted, darting at the shape shouldering through the remains of the wooden door.

  Peer ducked and turned, bringing the crossbow up, hoping she’d primed it and fitted the bolt correctly. Suddenly she was certain she had not, that it would misfire, and the woman shattering her way through the window—face flushed, teeth gritted, eyes glittering with a fury Peer could not fathom—would roll and bury her sword in Peer’s stomach. She’d feel the warm rush of blood and see her guts spill, and before the poison on the sword killed her, she’d die of shock. So she pulled the trigger, fully expecting that breath to be her last, and someone other than her screamed.

  The woman in the window slumped down and dropped her sword. Her face had changed. The fury had gone, and so had one of her eyes; in its place protruded the last third of a crossbow bolt. One of her arms flapped, thudding against the bulkhead. Her head lowered slowly and thick fluid dribbled from her face, pattering onto the wooden floor, and Peer knew it was the Blade’s brains.

  Peer had never killed anyone in her life. She heard the chaos around her but none of it registered. Her focus was narrowed and aimed entirely at the woman—the woman she had killed.

  Malia shouted. Metal clashed on metal, and Peer was shoved aside as the Watcher backed into her. The Scarlet Blade who had come through the door pushed his way forward. Malia stabbed at him again, holding her sword left-handed so that it sliced in under his defenses. In the confines of the barge’s small room, already filled with people, there was no finesse to the swordplay, only brutality. As Peer scrabbled backward and pulled herself upright against the table, Malia kicked out at the man’s crotch. He turned sideways and took the kick in his thigh, punched her in the face, forced forward as he brought his sword around toward her unprotected neck.

  “Malia!” Peer shouted, and then the soldier cried out as he tripped. Nophel jerked in his chair, kicking up and out with the foot he’d worked free of his bindings, shoving against the man’s hip and tipping him over.

  Malia drew back her sword arm, but Brunley had already buried a knife in the nape of the man’s neck. The Blade hammered his feet against the floor, dropping his sword and reaching behind with both hands.

  “Back,” Malia said. Brunley did as told, and she thrust her own knife through the Blade’s heart. “Two more.” She went for the door.

  “They’ll be waiting for you!” Nophel hissed.

  “Well I’m not getting trapped in here,” Malia said. As if conjured by her words, a round smoking object smashed through another window. The curtain held it back against the sill, but a beat later it erupted in flames, fire splashing sideways and down across the wall. The flames spread too fast and gave off a pungent chemical stink.

  “Flush-fire!” Nophel said, his eyes wide. Though his legs were free, his arms were still firmly tied to the chair.

  Peer heard a shout outside and the clang of metal on metal. Brunley had followed Malia up through the door.

  “Help me!” Nophel pleaded. Peer pulled her knife and started to cut the ropes binding him, the heat from the fire already shriveling hairs on her arm and stretching the skin on the back of her legs. As Nophel’s first arm came free and she started working on the second, Peer thought she could see the wood of the chair through his wrist.

  She paused, shook her head, and he grasped at her. “Cut!”

  Fire flowed and wood started to crack.

  She could see through his head now—the puddle of blood from the dead Scarlet Blade and Brunley’s discarded knife.

  “Cut!” he shouted.

  “You’re going,” she said, still cutting.

  Nophel looked at his hands, paused, then grinned. “Good.” As the last rope fell away, he grabbed Peer’s knife and shoved her toward the door. She crawled through and out into coolness, gasping in the fresh air. And when she looked around, Nophel was gone.

  Malia was standing atop the barge, fighting a female Scarlet Blade. Their swords threw off sparks, feet thumped on the barge roof, and they punched and kicked and bit, trying to get each other off balance. It was a vicious confrontation that could not last for long.

  Peer stepped across onto the bank and looked around frantically, fearing the impact of sharp metal against her neck at any moment. But then she saw the fourth Blade. He was sitting astride a struggling shape beneath a spread of bushes a dozen steps along the canal bank, right hand rising and falling, painting a bloody splash on the air. Beneath him, Brunley lay on his stomach, hands fisted into wet mud.

  She took a couple of steps forward, hand going to her belt, but the knife was gone. Nophel took it! she thought. She backed toward the barge—there were weapons in there—but then a window blew out, gushing flame. Something inside exploded with a dull thud. Malia grunted behind her, and something heavy dropped onto the barge’s wooden roof. Peer glanced back; the Watcher stood over the soldier, sword raised to deliver the final blow.

  Peer heard the impact of booted feet on gravel.

  Malia glanced up. The woman beneath her kicked, catching Malia in the crotch, and she gasped and fell sideways, trying to grab on to something but finding nothing. She splashed into the canal.

  Peer was already turning back to the other Blade, ducking down as she did so, but she saw in a beat that she had no more time. The soldier was coming for her. His face was streaked with Brunley’s blood, eyes wide, and he wanted her blood as well.

  Peer froze. She wanted to roll to the right, stand, and try to run, but her body would not obey her brain’s commands. I killed someone, she thought, and everything felt so hopeless and hollow.

  The Scarlet Blade gasped and fell at her feet, hand reaching for his groin. He glared at her, frowning. Then his head tipped back and his throat opened, eyes going wide as blood sprayed and made the muddy path muddier.

  Peer fell onto her rump and scrabbled backward, feeling the fire’s intensifying heat stretch the skin on her face and singe her hair. The soldier thrashed for a while, his arms waving but his body hardly moving at all, as if a weight sat on his stomach.

  She heard splashing and the unmistakable thunk! of a crossbow firing. Then laughter.

  As she stood and faced the burning barge, the Scarlet Blade still standing on its roof was turned toward her,
priming her small crossbow and raising it in one practiced motion.

  The boat dipped and creaked, fire crackling through rents opening in its roof. Flames licked at the soldier’s feet, but she did not seem to notice. She was aiming at Peer, the shining tip of the bolt pointing directly at her chest.

  Peer dashed sideways, tripping over the dead Blade and splashing down into his blood. She cried out and then thought she heard her voice echoing somewhere—but this was a different cry. The woman on the boat had her legs swept from beneath her and landed heavily on the barge’s roof. Then she was thumped down into it, some invisible force pummeling her head and chest again and again; her waving arms were knocked aside and slashed open. When the flames erupted through the roof and enfolded her like grasping arms, Peer saw a shape jumping through the flames, a hollow where nothing burned. And then it was gone, and the soldier blazed. Her screams were terrible.

  Peer moved quickly along the canal. Malia was swimming away from the barge. She seemed unwounded, pulling strongly with both arms.

  “Here!” Peer called.

  “Be careful!” Malia shouted.

  “They’re dead, Malia.” She squatted by the canal and reached down, beckoning the Watcher to her. Malia swam in and Peer helped her up onto the bank. They fell together, gasping and wet, and then Peer noticed the wound on Malia’s arm for the first time. It was dark, her clothing soaked with blood that still flowed.

  “Crap shot,” Malia said. She stood and stared at the barge—her home, burning now, popping and cracking and sending billowing smoke to the sky. That would attract the wrong sort of attention. The body of the Blade Peer had killed was still visible hanging through one window, fire dancing along her trousers and licking at her boots. The stench of cooking meat tainted the air.

  Brunley and the other soldier lay dead on the canal path.

  “Nophel,” Malia said, nodding at the boat.

  “No. I cut him loose, he got out, and … I didn’t see him.”

  “He ran?”

  “No. I didn’t see him.” Peer was shaking her head, because she didn’t know how to say what had happened and was not sure herself. Something impossible, something unbelievable. When she blinked to clear her vision, she saw that soldier falling and his throat opening up as if sliced by sunlight.

  “I’m here,” Nophel said from behind them. They both spun around, and he was standing ten steps along the path. For an instant Peer thought he was a shadow, because she saw through him. She heard Malia gasp. Then she shielded her eyes against the sun and he was whole, both hands wet and the knife in his right hand still dripping, sticky and bloodied. He was shaking, and fire from the barge reflected from his wet clothes. Been in the canal as well, Peer thought. Then she realized the wetness was blood.

  “We need to get away from here now,” Malia said, then called, “Devin!” There was no answer.

  “They must have followed me,” Nophel said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Come on.” Malia grabbed Peer’s arm and pulled, still looking around for Devin. But for a moment Peer could not move. The fire’s roar was growing, and the associated sounds of things cracking and breaking startled her. Still, she could not take her eyes from the dead soldier in the window. I killed her.

  “Peer?” Malia said more gently.

  “I shot her in the eye.”

  “And it was a good shot. If you’d missed and she got in, I don’t know—”

  “But I shot her.”

  Malia stood before Peer, blocking her view. “This is the first time I’ve killed anyone as well,” she said. And the pain on her face was obvious now, the glitter of the open wound on her shoulder starkly colorful against her drab clothing.

  “They came to kill us,” Peer said. That’s our strength. That’s how we’ll get past this. And then Malia said, “Oh, no,” and Peer turned to where Malia was looking. She could just see the pair of legs protruding from beneath a clump of shrubs along the canal path. Devin.

  “He never had a chance,” Peer said.

  “He and Bethy were …” Malia said.

  “At least she wasn’t here as well.”

  “So what happened to you?” Malia asked Nophel. Her voice suddenly had a cold edge, and Peer feared that the killing was not yet over.

  “I …” Nophel dropped the knife. Looked at his hands.

  “A first for all of us,” Malia said bitterly. “Come on. There’s somewhere nearby where we can lick our wounds and decide what to do next.”

  As they pushed through undergrowth and started to weave their way between some of the canal-side storage buildings, Peer felt a strange calm settling over her. Leaving the scene helped, the retreating fire and stink of burning flesh a fading reminder of what had happened. And there was also an irrational yet gratifying sense of satisfaction about what she had done. They had tortured her, and now she had killed one of them. It was illogical and brutal, but she held on to it for now.

  “Nophel saved us,” she said to Malia.

  “I’ll thank him later.”

  As they hurried away from the blood and the bodies and the rising pillar of greasy smoke, Peer vowed to make sure Malia kept her word. And she also promised herself an answer to what had happened back there. If Nophel doesn’t tell us, he’s not on our side, she thought.

  The disfigured man followed, bringing all his mysteries with him.

  The noise of the Falls had receded behind and below them, a distant rumble that still shook the ground, but Gorham was certain the sound was implanted forever in his ears. Around them were the caverns and crevasses of Echo City’s roots, but he saw little, because he was concentrating on Nadielle’s light bobbing ahead, which sometimes slipped from view entirely as the Baker turned a corner. They were heading in two distinct directions—away from the Falls, and up.

  He was sweating, even though some of these caverns were ice cold. Only some of them—others were quite warm, as if they’d been home to something warm-blooded until very recently. That worried him, but he had no one to ask about it. They’d left Neph back at the Falls after Nadielle had shouted something into its ear and stabbed at its arms. And Nadielle herself was moving much too fast for Gorham to catch. He’d seen her fall a couple of times, and once he thought she’d broken a bone. But every now and then he heard her voice, an unconscious cry that ripped at his heart and set his skin tingling. He’d given up calling after her. He thought perhaps she’d gone mad.

  After the screaming and the thrashing, she’d stared wide-eyed at the thundering Falls for a few beats, not even blinking when a knot of bodies shadowed by. Then she’d shouted to Neph, cut its arms, and left. Gorham had stared at Neph, hands held out in a what’s happening gesture. But the chopped had only looked at Gorham dismissively before sitting down to face the Falls.

  If Gorham had waited a dozen heartbeats longer, he might never have found Nadielle’s light smeared across the darkness ahead of him. And if he’d followed her the second she darted away, perhaps he could have caught her and held her down, hugged the truth from her, shared his warmth to let her know she was not alone. You’re my sunlight, she had told him, and he so wished to share his heat with her now.

  Another scream. He looked ahead, panting hard, and saw Nadielle’s shadow thrown back toward him from the narrow mouth of a smooth tunnel. She was staring away from him, head tilted up, but as he opened his mouth to call, she ran on.

  I’ve got to catch her, he thought. We’re deeper than the oldest times down here, and if I lose her I’ll never find my way out. It didn’t help that Neph and Nadielle had the only two remaining torches. When she was out of sight, he could not see his hand in front of his face. Every moment took her farther ahead—and closer to losing him. With her torch, she could scout her route over rocks and around potholes, while he relied mostly on touch. He could not become too careful, could not let fear make him any slower than he was now. The thought of being lost and alone …

  “Nadielle!” he shouted, wasting a breath and a moment to p
ause and catch another. But his voice echoed strangely, swallowed by the darkness in one direction and sounding off to the deep in another. Nadielle’s light flickered as though paused, but then she was away again.

  Garthans down here, and their traps, those things bred from sprites and cave wisps … The Lost Man and his quest for a return to flesh … Other things, myths, monsters … There were a thousand ways for him to die down here and only one way to survive.

  “Nadielle!” he shouted again, and hated that his voice broke.

  The light ahead stopped once more, but he did not pause to look. He moved on across the smooth, sloping floor of a cave, into a wide crack in its wall, splashing through a puddle that felt too thick to be water and too warm to be natural, and all the while he drew closer to the light.

  “Please wait!” He could see her now, her pale face yellow beside the oily flame. She was looking his way. He hoped her fear had calmed enough for her to be aware of him once more. As he approached, he heard her heavy breathing—part exertion, part terror. Her eyes flickered left and right, never quite centering on him. She stood in coiled readiness, ready to spring away at the slightest provocation.

  “Teeth,” she said, and that single word chilled Gorham to the core.

  “Nadielle, please, just wait. Let me catch … my breath.” He reached her at last, close enough to touch but careful not to do so. His breathing matched hers, but though exhausted she still looked ready to run through these caverns for another day, then up into the Echoes, toward sunlight. You’re my sunlight, she’d told him, but she was now lighting the way for him.

  “We have to go together,” he said softly, shivering. He had no idea how he had not broken an ankle, twisted his leg, dropped through a crack in the world. She held the light between them as if to share, but it could also have been a barrier. “Nadielle, what did you see?”

  “Its teeth,” she said, trembling, not quite catching his eye. “Neph will tell me when it arrives.” Her voice was flat, dead. Her skin was pale and slick. He had never seen her like this.

  In the distance, a low rumble ground through the caverns. Gorham closed his eyes but could not tell the direction from which it originated. Behind us and down, he thought, because that was the most obvious. He looked at Nadielle, raising his eyebrows. She looked sick.