by Tim Lebbon
He spoke the same line again and again, and the potion Rose had given him did something to his words. They became abstract and meaningless, as though he were hearing them in an unknown language, yet the feeling as they were formed in his throat and left his mouth transmitted complete understanding. He saw the words in pictures that placed him anywhere in the city, yet always with the knowledge of where Skulk lay in relation to where he was. It was a mental map, and his words provided the route.
When he realized how thirsty he was and opened his eyes, the moths had gone. He looked up into the endless space above him, and he knew that somewhere up there they flew. They carried his words with them. He hoped people would listen.
When he left the moth room, he could see Rose’s feet where she stood beyond the nearest vat. She was motionless, silent, and he watched for a while, waiting to see if she moved. She did not. He thought of walking around the vat to see if she was well but decided against it. What can she be making? he wondered. What can save all those people? Nadielle had mentioned rackflies, their spreading of germs, but she had kept her ideas close to her chest.
Rose had set him on his task, and her own was something he could have no part of. He’d watched enough monstrous things birthed from these vats, and he had no real wish to see what she was making next.
So he went to the next room, the one with deep holes in the walls where the sleekrats lived, and started whispering his message again.
After the sleekrats, the bats; and after the bats, the red-eared lizards. These creatures he had never used before, and he approached them with caution. They had a reputation for being vicious and cruel, their surprising intelligence balanced with a hatred and fear of humanity that kept them deep, or in places where few people lived. But he trusted Rose and trusted what Nadielle had initiated here. The lizards watched him with their stark yellow eyes as he whispered. Then they left, flitting through cracks in the walls to the Echoes outside and from there up into the world.
He worked until there were no more creatures left. His throat was sore and dry, and the message repeated itself in his head: an endless, doom-laden echo.
Just before the last of the lizards had left, a distant impact shook the small room, dust drifting from the ceiling and stone shards pattering down in one corner. He’d paused and held his breath, but no more noises came. Rose, he’d thought, because she was working outside on her vat.
Leaving the room, stretching and craving a drink, he saw her sitting on the vat’s top lip.
“Did you hear it?” she asked. “Feel it?”
“Was that you?”
She shook her head, then looked down into the vat. An array of bottles and pouches sat on a board beside her, and she picked up one bottle and dripped several splashes of its contents inside. Gorham went to ask her more, but it already felt as if she’d never spoken to him. The Baker has a talent for being dismissive, he thought.
As he stood at the toilet at the back of her rooms, rebuttoning his fly, another thud transmitted up through his feet. In the pale-yellow water below him, ripples.
He went back out to see how else he could help.
It had been a long time since Dane Marcellan had fought. As a young man he’d spent some time as an anonymous soldier in the Scarlet Blades—a rite of passage required of every Marcellan who did not make the shift into the Hanharan priesthood—and he’d been involved in the short but brutal Seethe War in the south of Marcellan Canton. Drug dealers and pimps had come in from Mino Mont, united to try to assert their authority over a small neighborhood. It had taken seven days of house-to-house combat before the last of them was captured or killed, and Dane had been at the forefront of the fighting, killing two men and a woman and being present at the impromptu execution of nine more. He had not enjoyed it, but it had been necessary. It had been required.
Now he had blood on his hands again—and his clothes and face, in his eyes and ears and mouth—and he fought with more fervor than he had felt in many years.
Those loyal Blades who had pledged allegiance to him also fought hard, and died hard. The force against them was staggering and inescapable, but behind them Dane knew the hope of the city was still fleeing, and he had to give them every moment he could.
And more than that, Nophel, his son. He had to save his son.
He sidestepped a sweeping blow from a Dragarian with blades for arms, ducked down, and buried his sword in the bastard’s groin.
“Fight, you bastards!” he shouted. “For every mother and son and daughter and every fucking nephew and niece you have, fight for them all!” None of these Blades knew the story or why they were fighting. But every time he cried out encouragement, they roared their approval and battled that much harder.
They know this is death, he thought, but they keep fighting. I’m fighting for Echo City, but they’re fighting for me. For me! He screamed and ran forward, reversing the direction of their retreat and engaging three Dragarians. These were regulars—unchopped but still trained for war—and they came at him with swords and knives, throwing stars and weighted wires that would take his head from his shoulders. He ducked and stabbed, kicked and bit, slashed and thrust. Something struck his shoulder and pain flared, but his scream was one of fury. Wetness splashed across his throat and chest, and he was unsure whether it was his. A sword jabbed at him and he fell back, straight onto another. It pierced his hip and he turned, kneeling, twisting the knife from the owner’s hand, smashing his head forward, and feeling cartilage crunch beneath his forehead. The man stepped back, holding his nose, eyes watering as he looked in comical surprise at the blood pooling in his hand. Dane jabbed, and his sword’s tip entered the man’s left eye, wide blade jamming in his skull.
I’m leaking, Dane thought, and he caught a glimmer sweeping through the air toward him. He fell forward and rolled, crying out as the knife in his hip snagged on a fallen Blade’s bloodied robe. The wire whistled by above him and he rolled onto his back, throwing a knife back at the wire wielder. It struck the woman’s chest and rebounded from her thick leather armor. She glared at Dane, hatred filling her alien eyes, and her shoulder pivoted as she brought the wire around one more time.
Dane held up his hand to protect his face—and lost four fingers. They tumbled onto his chest. The breasts I’ve stroked with those, he thought, the muffs I’ve felt, the slash I’ve smoked, the food I’ve eaten, and the severed fingers curled as if stroking soft scented flesh one last time.
A Blade stepped astride him, warding off the woman, dummying, stabbing her in the gut, and then smashing her face with a spiked fist.
Dane went to stand but could not. Something was wrong with his legs. He roared again, putting every ounce of strength into rising, but nothing happened, nothing moved, and when he sought the pain below his waist he found none. He grabbed the knife in his hip and tugged it free, feeling nothing. Its blade was sticky with his blood and, near the handle, dark with something else.
Dirty fighters, he thought. He had seen several Blades butchered as they lay motionless and helpless but had not let himself wonder why. But every moment he’d spent here had given Nophel a better chance to escape.
“Run,” he said to the Blade above him. “Retreat, stand again a hundred steps back, fight until you can’t fight anymore.”
“I’ll not leave—”
“Do as you’re fucking well told, soldier!”
She glanced down at him, then disappeared from view.
A Dragarian with haunting indigo eyes and four arms stepped into view above Dane Marcellan. It blinked eyes lizardlike and expressionless. Dane imagined raising his sword and popping those orbs, seeing if the bastard thing had expression then, but none of his limbs would move.
“Eat me,” he said, offering a final curse, and the thing’s impossibly wide mouth hinged open to display horrendous teeth.
Feeling and seeing the sky appear before her was the greatest breath of freedom Peer had ever experienced. The weight of the Echoes lifted away and she breat
hed easier, even though there was a stitch in her side and her lungs and legs ached. But she had to keep running. If she didn’t and the Dragarians caught her, Malia’s death would be in vain.
The moonlight was bright, unimpeded by clouds, and to the south, across this narrow finger of Crescent, rose the imposing mass of Marcellan Canton. Lines of lights snaked up its gentle hillsides where streetlamps had been lit, and window lights speckled the entire shadowy mound. At its pinnacle, the blazing illuminations around Hanharan Heights were there as usual, but there was a particular intensity to them tonight. It was as if every single light in that place was lit. The canton’s outer wall was silvered by moonlight, and this was Peer’s destination. For some reason, she felt that once she reached there, she would be safe.
We stole their god, she thought. Nowhere is safe. But she tried to shove that idea down as she ran. Grasses whipped around her legs, then she entered a vast field of whorn plants, tall as her shoulders and pungent with their burgeoning crop. Shoving the close-growing plants aside with outstretched hands, she ran as fast as she could, tripping over roots on occasion, her palms sliced from the plants’ fine leaves.
She was desperate to reach Rufus again. He’d looked confused and bewildered, but deep down there had still been some measure of control. Whether or not he knew how special he was to Echo City now—if what the Baker said was true, if she could use him to help them all—Peer still felt responsible for everything that had happened to him. Discovering who he was and where he had come from had been a shock, to her as well as to him. But she wanted to help him learn more.
She sensed that she was no longer alone. Risking a glance behind her, she saw nothing, but she knew that the Dragarians were out now, flooding up furiously into the moonlight. Dane Marcellan and the Blades would be dead, and she only hoped that the others had taken full advantage of the lead they had been given.
Stumbling into an area of flattened whorn, she almost came to a standstill, looking around for whatever had made the rough path. But then she saw that it headed south across the fields and knew who had come this way. It’ll be easy to follow, she thought, but surprise was no longer with them, and stealth could not save them. It all came down to speed.
Freedom from the oppressive belowground was good, but she had never felt so isolated. Peer ran as fast as she could, her breathing and footfalls the only sounds. She expected a poisoned arrow to strike her at any moment, plunging her into the same agonies that had taken Malia. She considered weaving to distract any potential killer’s aim, but that would only waste time. Fast, she thought, faster—just run!
The wall loomed before her, and the path of beaten whorn she’d been following faded out. On top of the wall two shadows waved to her, and she heard a voice calling. Though it confused her, right then it was the finest thing she had ever heard.
“Go left!” Alexia called. “There’s an open door.” Peer did as she said, rushing diagonally toward a dark shape at the base of the wall, a newfound burst of energy carrying her across the rough ground. And that was when she heard the first of their cries.
Pausing for a moment to look back, she saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thrashing shapes forging through the whorn like a wave of darkness about to wash against the canton wall. Above, other shapes drifted and flapped, low to the ground but faster than those on foot.
She rushed through the door and someone slammed it behind her, plunging them into darkness. Heavy metal bolts were thrown, then timber thumped against timber.
“Where’s Malia?” Alexia asked.
“Dead.”
“Oh. Come on, we don’t have much time.”
“I can’t see—”
“Grab my hand. I know the way.” Peer felt her hand grasped and she held on tight, following Alexia through a twisting corridor to the other side of the wall. They emerged into moonlight again just as there were shouts atop the wall, first of surprise and then alarm. Finally a scream of pain, and the sounds of combat rose again.
“Sleepy Blades getting a taste of the fight at last,” Alexia said.
“They didn’t see me coming in.”
“Like I said, sleepy. Come on, Nophel is taking us to something called a Bellower.”
“Good,” Peer said, and the thought of sitting back in that claustrophobic pod while the Bellowers blasted them south was wonderful.
“And Dane?” Alexia asked hesitantly.
“I left him and the Blades fighting,” Peer said. “I don’t think …”
Alexia nodded. “Good. He’s caused a lot of pain.”
“He saved our lives.”
Alexia shrugged, and they started to run again. Soon they reached the others, waiting in the shadow of a butcher shop’s canopy. The shop was closed, but the smell of fresh meat still hung heavy on the air. They had all manifested, and Rufus leaned against the wall, head bowed. He was breathing hard. He looked up as Peer approached, staring at her with haunted eyes. Peer felt a rush of relief, and she suddenly felt safer than she had any right to.
“Your friend won’t think himself Unseen,” the tall Unseen said.
“It’s not natural,” Rufus said. “It’s something of hers.” Peer could sense a relief in Rufus that she had returned, and she went quickly to his side, grabbing his hand and glad that he gripped back. “I don’t want it anymore,” he said. “Get it out of me.”
“Not sure we can,” Alexia said.
“Maybe Nadielle,” Peer said, and she felt Rufus flinch at the name. “Rufus, it wasn’t Nadielle, it was the Baker before her who sent you out.”
“They’re all the same.” He looked down at his feet, and Peer noticed Nophel staring intently at him, the deformed man’s good eye glittering with tears or avarice.
“What is it?” Peer asked.
Nophel shook his head.
“Really, we need to get the fuck out of here right now,” Alexia said. The sound of fighting at the wall had increased, and from several directions they could hear the familiar Scarlet Blades’ horns as the call went out. Hundreds would be rushing to join the fray, but Peer was quite certain they would not arrive in time. Already she could see vague shapes flying above the city, circling here and there as they searched the warren of streets, squares, and alleys for their quarry. One fell, twisting and screeching as it flapped at the several arrows piercing it, but she didn’t think the Blade archers would be so lucky again.
“They’ll find me,” Rufus said.
“Not if I can help it,” Nophel muttered. “Come on.” He led them along the street, dodging from shadow to shadow as they aimed for the route down to the nearest Bellower chamber. Peer knew that something had begun and that the Dragarians—emerging overtly from their canton for the first time in five centuries—would not cease in their quest until they found Rufus.
They followed the deformed man as he led them from street, to alley, and then down beneath the Marcellan levels. He knew where the tunnels were and where the oil torches would be kept. He knew which doors to open and which to ignore. As they emerged into the Bellower chamber and he immediately set about priming the chopped creature, she felt a distance growing about her, buffering her against what was happening. Self-defense, Penler’s voice said, and she grinned without humor. At any other time she would have been curious, asking Nophel about what he knew, but today such curiosity seemed redundant. At the city’s most dangerous time in history, now it was also at war.
What could be worse? she thought as they gathered around the first of the Bellower pods.
“I can’t leave,” Rufus said. “I belong back there.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Alexia shouted.
“Rufus?” Peer asked.
“My name is not Rufus,” he said. “It’s Dragar.”
There was silence for a while, and then Nophel chuckled. “Er … fine. Can someone help me with—”
“They told me. I remembered. They paid the old dead Baker to chop me. She used her own essence and that of Dragar, the Dragarians’ murd
ered prophet.”
“The Blades killed a terrorist five hundred years ago, not a prophet,” Alexia said.
“Then explain me,” Rufus said. “They provided the Baker with his essence, stored for centuries in their holiest of holy shrines. She chopped me. And then she used me for her own ends instead. Sent me away. Cast me into the desert. Her experiment.”
“So you’re saying that you’re …” Peer said, shaking her head, too confused to finish.
“Returned to the Dragarians from out of the Bonelands to lead them into Honored Darkness.”
“I’m going to hit him again,” Alexia said.
“The farther you take me, the more people they will kill to get me back,” Rufus said. “Or … you can let me go now.”
“We can’t!” Peer said. “You’re important, and the Baker needs you to—”
“She disposed of me once before. Why does she need me now?”
“Because you crossed the desert,” Peer said. “You’re immune to whatever’s out there. Maybe Dragar was too, whoever he was, and—”
“No,” Rufus said, “I’m much more than that.” He smiled softly at Peer, and then there was a knife at his throat.
* * *
“You’re no god,” Nophel said. “And you’re going to take me to see my mother.”
“Mother?” someone gasped, but Nophel did not know or care who.
Rufus simply stared at him, calm and smug, and in his green eyes Nophel saw some of what the Baker must feel. With such knowledge must come superiority. With talents beyond those of anyone else in the city—in their world—there must be power and responsibility.
The air in the Bellower chamber thrummed. Rufus smiled.
“You won’t cut my throat.”
“No?” Nophel said, leaning in closer, curving his other arm around the tall man’s back to pull tight.
“No,” Rufus said.