Echo City (13 page)

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.

“Over here,” Malia said. Peer and her tall companion were edged toward the far wall, and there the Watchers set about tying them fast. At Gorham’s request, they sat Peer first, making her comfortable before securing her arms to the wall and her legs to the metal chair.

“I came to you because I trusted you,” she said.

“You still can.”

“Yes?” She was glaring at him now, and he wondered,
What the crap has she gone through these last three years?
He had no idea.

“You want me to start right away?” Malia asked. She was keen to begin. She’d already taken a folded leather pouch from her belt, and she was arranging its contents across an old mess table.

Something whispered in a dark corner of the massive space, and Devin and the others shifted nervously.

“Only phantoms,” Peer said. “Already seen several today.”

“No,” Gorham said. “Not yet. I want to talk to her first.” And he knelt before his old lover as if seeking her blessing and forgiveness.

But what he was about to tell her would surely damn him in her eyes forever.

   “We gave you up,” he said. “I was already higher in the Watchers’ echelons than you knew. The part you worked with, the political arm, had always been intended as dispensable. It was a useless gesture, trying to give our ideals a political voice. You know the Marcellans: They sometimes allow beliefs disparate from their own, but they’ll never grant them any sort of power. So your group was … expendable. A front. Ready to be given away to the Marcellans should they ever move on us. We hoped the time would never come.”

Peer was staring at him wide-eyed. She said nothing.

“We were nurturing you and the others. Preparing you. And the time
did
come, when they heard rumors that we’d started using the Baker again.”

“The Baker’s dead!” Peer gasped, and Malia laughed bitterly.

“This is the
new
Baker,” Gorham said. “She was killed twenty years ago, yes, but she chopped herself, knowing what was happening. It’s how generations of Bakers have continued their line. So now we deal with … well, her daughter. And her mother handed down all she knew.”

“So you betrayed me for your cause,” Peer said, smiling. There was nothing behind the smile—no humor, no life. It was a rictus grin, and Gorham had to turn away.

“They took you and the others in the political arm. We hoped that dismantling our public face would satisfy them, but they came further. Bad times, Peer. We lost so many. We never suspected the ruin would run so deep. There were betrayals that led to scores of deaths—the Marcellan Canton’s walls ran red for weeks afterward, and they announced a two-day feast to celebrate what they called the ‘defeat of heresy.’ But with you … we never knew—”

“Of
course
you knew what they’d do!” she shouted, but then she sighed and hung her head. “They tortured me, Gorham,” she said, head still dipped.

“Yes.”

“They made me hurt, demanded that I renounce my beliefs and accept theirs. And when I didn’t, they smashed me.”

“I know, Peer.”

“You know?”

He nodded. “The tortures were made public knowledge.”

“Do you care?”

How did he answer that? Of course he cared. “We need to make sure you haven’t come here meaning us harm.”

“And that’s your answer?”

“That, and I’m sorry.”

“Going to torture me now, Gorham?”

“No.” And because he could not face watching this, and because he hated himself for not being able to say everything
that needed saying until it was over, he turned away and left them all. Devin gave him a torch as he passed, and Gorham found a shadowy doorway and aimed for it.

“I came for you!” Peer shouted behind him. She sounded angry, but he still knew her well enough to hear the hurt.

Gorham could answer only silently and to himself.
When I’m sure that’s true, I’ll welcome you back
. The corridor closed around him and he slipped into a room, leaning heavily against a wall, sobbing.

From the large area he’d just left, he heard the hissing of Malia’s truthbugs.

   “My husband was one of those they crucified alive,” Malia said. “You remember Bren?”

“Yes, Malia. I’m sorry.”

Malia looked up from the table and stared at her, and Peer could see the sadness in her eyes. Anger tried to hide it, fury closed it in, but the sorrow was unmistakable.

“Thank you,” Malia said. “I apologize, Peer. This won’t hurt. But what Gorham said is right: We need to know. A lot has changed since you …”

“Since I was sacrificed?”

Malia sighed and came forward, several small bugs flitting across the palm of her hand.

Peer looked after Gorham, but he had not reappeared. Devin and the other two Watchers stood back, glancing around nervously as a whisper passed through the subterranean room once again. “I’ll tell you the truth,” she said.

Malia nodded, then held her hand flat in front of Peer’s face and blew.

Peer felt the bugs strike her skin. They stuck for a while, speckling her face, and then they started moving. Some went for her mouth, some her nose, and one wormed into the corner of her eye. She opened her mouth to scream but could not. The breath was frozen in her throat.

“No,” she heard Rufus say beside her, but she could not turn to comfort him.
He’d better be what I think he is
, she thought, and then something changed abruptly. The pain in her right arm grew distant, the ache in her hip faded, and the
coolness of the air misted away into a comfortable warmth. Everything felt fine, and she relaxed down into the chair, her body taking the weight of her tied arms.

“Why have you come here?” Malia asked.

“To see Gorham.”

“Why?”

“Because of Rufus.”

“Who’s Rufus?”

Peer glanced sideways at the bound man.

“Why do you think Gorham wants to see Rufus?”

“You don’t need your little bugs for me to …” She frowned, feeling them on her,
in
her, and a terrible shiver ran through her body.

“Why?” Malia prompted.

“Because he’s from beyond Echo City. I saw him walking in across the desert, and he doesn’t know this place.”

Malia’s eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, then closed again, as though swallowing whatever she was trying to say. “That can’t be …” she said at last.

Peer saw the others step forward, and all the attention moved onto Rufus. And then, below the terrible feeling of those bugs still shifting inside her, she realized the urgency of what Malia had to do next.

“Him,” Peer said, shaking and feeling a terrible sickness rising.

“Devin, give her the drink,” Malia said, and she returned to the table.

Devin came close to Peer and held a small goblet to her mouth, but he never took his eyes from Rufus. “Drink,” he said. “It’ll kill them. Is he really from the Bonelands?”

“I think so,” Peer said weakly. The fluid tasted of rotten mepple, but it settled the rising vomit somehow, and she leaned back, exhausted, in her chair.

Malia was whispering to one of the other Watchers, and the woman ran off toward where Gorham had vanished.

“This is it,” Peer said. “This is it, isn’t it?”

Malia threw her a strange glance but then moved toward Rufus, her hand held out and swarming with a new batch of truthbugs.

“This is what we’ve all been waiting for,” Peer said. “It’s why I had to come.” Rufus was looking at her, eyes wide and terrified, and she tried to offer him a reassuring smile, but it would not form. She was as fascinated as all of them in what he had to say, and she found herself wishing that Gorham was there to hear.

“There’s more that you don’t yet know,” Malia said to Peer. Then she blew the bugs into the tall man’s face.

And when she leaned forward to ask him her first question, he began to scream.

   On the rooftop of the tallest building on the highest hill in Echo City, a Baker’s child fed four Scopes and made sure their chains were secure. He liked these monsters, enjoyed the sickly wet sounds their mouths made when they opened, and breathed in the stink of them that even the stiff breeze up here could never completely carry away. He smoothed their thick, rough skin beneath their leathery covers. He scooped their shit and swept their piss to a far corner of the roof and into a chute that took it away. Sometimes he spoke to them, knowing that even if they heard they could never understand. His mother had made them well, while she had made him badly.

His name was Nophel, and he had named himself. She had never honored him with a name. He doubted she even gave him a glance before sending him to Bedmoil, the largest workhouse in Mino Mont. It had been the greatest moment of his life when he aided in her downfall twenty years before.

Nophel had taken his name from one of the six-legged gods of the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians. His Marcellan employers disliked that, and the Hanharan priests who occasionally visited him hated it. But these reactions interested him, and intellectually he knew that the name had become more than just a part of him. Nophel, so the temple’s teachings went, was the god of quiet things, and he had spent his life keeping to the shadows, whispering while others shouted and ensuring that he could go where he pleased. Old Dane Marcellan had taken to using Nophel for some of his more covert activities, and Nophel liked that well enough.
Even so, alone up here with the Scopes was the only time he would reveal his mutilation to the skies.

He fed the Western Scope, the last of the four, using a wide spoon to scoop the chickpig and mepple stew into its drooling mouth. It made small, satisfied grunting noises as it fed—the only one of the four that did—and he heard its stomach rumbling as it swallowed the food. A thick membrane slipped down and up across its massive eyeball, clearing dust and renewing its view. While it chewed its last mouthful, Nophel knelt to check its gears, mountings, and cogs. They were well greased. He pulled a lever, forcing the thing to shift its weight slightly. The complex support system moved and flexed, but he heard nothing. That was good. Next he ensured that the reading tube’s entry point to its body was not sore or infected. It entered at the back of the Scope’s neck, and Nophel hated the bristly pink junction of silk tube with rough skin, because it reminded him of his own deformed face in the mirror. There was no sign of inflammation and it was dry. That pleased him, because it meant he would not have to apply any soothing cream.

Soon the time would come to move the Scopes around the roof, changing their positions to avoid resting sores. But not yet. That was a task he disliked because it revealed their true genesis: humanity. Covered in leather shrouds, they were monsters to him. When he moved them, seeing them walk, holding their shriveled hands to guide them across the rooftop because their eyes could see only far away, not this close in—despite all that, they seemed almost as human as he did.

He walked one slow circuit of the roof and looked out and down over Echo City. In some directions he could just make out the pale hint of the Markoshi Desert on the horizon, but mostly it was only city he saw, the great sprawl of ages. Towers rose here and there, and the spires of temples. The arches of the failed skyride network—the metal rusting, some sections fallen into memory, as had the dozens of people killed on its first and last ride—pricked the sky to the west. But none of them was nearly as high as Hanharan Heights. It looked so timeless, yet in a thousand years this view would be completely different. The place where he now stood would have been subsumed beneath the steady march of progress, and
whoever stood upon Hanharan Heights’ summit might be five hundred steps higher.
And what of forever?
he thought. He often attempted to wonder that far ahead. The city could not rise endlessly, and though he did not fear it—Nophel feared little—eventual stagnation, then regression, was his prediction.