Echo City (19 page)

Gorham sat on a low stone wall at the side of the road, ignoring Malia’s questioning glance.

“What is it?” Peer asked. Rufus sat on the ground against the wall, head rested back and eyes filled with moonlight.

“Not too far from here,” he said, frowning slightly at Malia.
Say nothing
, that frown said. Malia looked away, taking a pipe from her pocket and thumbing it full of tobacco.

“So why are we stopping?”

“Because this way down to the Baker is a secret,” he said. “It’s the Watchers’ way. Maybe she sees other people—with Nadielle, nothing would surprise me—but if she does, they’ll have their own route to her laboratories.”

Peer sat beside him on the wall. Not close enough for contact, but they could talk without having to raise their voices. On the ground beside her, Rufus had closed his eyes.

“I
am
a Watcher,” she said.

“Peer—”

“You want to blindfold me? In case I’m caught and tortured and—”

“Please!” he said, and his voice sounded more beseeching than he’d intended.

She offered a weak smile that the starlight barely illuminated.

“Not you,” he said. “Rufus. I don’t want him seeing where we’re going, and if you think about it for a minute you’ll understand. Don’t you understand?”

Peer looked at the tall man—he seemed to be dozing now, the rise and fall of his chest even and calm, even though he frowned deeply—and then rubbed her hands across her face. Gorham saw her wince as her right elbow bent, aggravating the air shards buried there.

“Of course,” she said. “None of us really knows …” She
rested a hand on Rufus’s shoulder. He mumbled something and leaned against her leg.

“Nadielle will know what to do,” Gorham said.
She has to
, he thought. And for a moment he almost told Peer about Nadielle and him, their confused and confusing relationship, but perhaps right then that would be a betrayal too far.
I left a man in Skulk
, she had told him, but he didn’t believe she was talking about a lover. For all he knew, she had waited for him and there had been no one since her torture and banishment. He hoped there had, but it was a selfish hope, seeking only to assuage his own guilt.

“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Peer said. Gorham could not make out how honest his old lover was being. Her eyes, silvered by pale starlight, betrayed nothing.

   He hears them talking, and then the feeling of the cold wall against his back is replaced by warm sheets, and blankets cover him against the cold coming off the womb vats in waves.

He sits up, stretching the sleep from his limbs and rubbing his eyes. Dawn peers in the row of high windows along the eastern face of the old warehouse. Dust motes dance in the sunlight, and several small birds flit back and forth between metal bracings high in the open roof space. Rufus stands from the bed—

(that’s not my name, this is not my home)

—and looks around for his mother. As far as he can remember, he has never woken before she has. Even in the night, when screaming nightmares rouse him or illness shivers him awake with fever and sweats, she is already sitting on the edge of his bed, offering comfort. He is used to always having her with him, and whenever she is not in sight, he grows nervous.

There are no memories older than a few months, and the absence is one of his greatest fears. It is also the fear his mother does least to calm.
There, there
, she says when he talks about his lost years,
it doesn’t matter, only the now matters
.

He dresses quickly and descends the ladder from the raised sleeping platform at one end of the warehouse. The stone floor below is cold, even though he wears thick-bottomed sandals,
and a light mist plays around his ankles. If he concentrates, he can feel the cold mist kissing his skin. His mother will never tell him what she is working on next. Sometimes, the things she makes scare him. And sometimes they scare her as well. Once he asked why she did what she did, on an evening when tiredness seemed ready to wither her to nothing and tears hung suspended in her eyes—held back, he knew, only by her love and concern for him.
Because it’s all I
can
do
, she had replied, and he had never heard her so low. The next day she’d been bright and cheery, as if the sun had reignited her optimism.

“Mother?” he calls. His voice echoes around the cavernous warehouse. It was once home to produce brought from Crescent on vast barges across the Western Reservoir, but when more people started crossing the border to select their own, the barges ceased sailing. Sometimes the room still stinks of rotten mepple and dart-root leaves. “Mother?”

There is no answer. He walks toward the vats, keeping close to the wall and sunlight because he never likes going too close. They’re strange. Sometimes they vibrate as if something is turning around inside too fast to see; other times they drip water and tick, expanding and contracting as the processes work away. And occasionally he hears
sounds
. The scraping of bony, sharp things across their inner surfaces. Bubbles breaking surface. Whispers.

There are four large vats and then eight smaller ones, and by the time he’s passed them all, Rufus is aching for a pee. This end of the warehouse is home to his mother’s workrooms, several smaller areas partitioned off from the main hall by timber walls barely higher than her head. In one there is a toilet and a huge iron bath, and he heads there now to relieve himself and wash sleep and dreams from his skin.

“He’s not yours yet,” his mother’s voice says. That’s all. The silence that follows is heavy, like a bubble ready to burst or a claw about to scrape up the inside of a vat. Rufus—

(what
is
my name, what does she call me other than son …?)

—freezes, breath held and one foot raised. He lowers it gently, glancing down to avoid stepping on anything—grit, paper, an insect—that might make the slightest sound. He
lets out his held breath, then opens his mouth to slowly draw in another.

And then the voice comes, and it sets his skin tingling.

“All for us,
Baker
. Our commission,
Baker.”
It’s a horrible voice, wet and guttural, and each word is formed by someone or something that does not usually speak the language. And though awkward and forced, its disdain for his mother is palpable.

“He’s not quite ready,” his mother says. She sounds weak. Rufus is not used to that.

He sees most of the people his mother works for, and though he does not really understand the forces of commerce when applied to his mother’s gifts and talents, he likes the fact that they have visitors. Smiling Hanharan priests with their soft hands and ready smiles, Scarlet Blade soldiers wearing smart uniforms and swords, businessmen from Marcellan Canton with strange ideas that his mother nods at, adapts, and re-creates; they all provide color and variety to the days, now that …

Now that she no longer takes him out.
It’s too dangerous
, she said recently, and that was after she’d been drinking wine and sinking lower and lower in her wide seat. Since then she’d forbidden him to ask why.

Rufus moves softly, slowly, heading for the door leading to a small storeroom. It is always left open because his mother says,
Stuff in there needs to air
. He touches the cool wood and waits for that deep, strange voice to come again before pushing it open. He cannot quite hear the words this time—the voice is lower and quieter, a burgeoning threat. In the room, he breathes easier and looks around.

None of these partitioned rooms has a ceiling. He looks at where the sloping ceiling of the great hall meets the outside wall at the far end of the storeroom. There are shadows there, and heavy spiderwebs. And, piled in the corner, wooden boxes that he can never recall seeing opened, moved, or touched.

The conversation continues, his mother’s voice steady but afraid, the stranger’s deep and difficult. Neither voice is raised, but Rufus has seen enough to know that there is nothing friendly here.
It’s too dangerous
, his mother said, and he
wonders whether, after this, staying inside will be too dangerous as well.

He climbs the boxes, taking his time. They creak and groan, but no one seems to hear. On the highest box, lying almost flat, he lifts his head slowly to peer over the top of the partition, and when he sees the thing talking to his mother, he draws in a sharp breath, ignoring the spider that is crawling across his forehead toward his left eye, not seeing his mother’s startled look as she spots him … seeing nothing but the thing turning its head and fixing him with its piercing indigo eyes, then lowering slowly to its knees and stretching out its spidery hands for him—

   “Rufus!” Peer was shaking him, slapping him softly around the face.

“What is it?” Malia asked.

“Nothing.” She shook some more and Rufus started awake, pushing away from the wall and wiping at his left eye, his right hand held out before him to ward off something none of them could see. “It’s fine,” she said softly, grasping his seeking hand and squeezing tight.

“What’s wrong with him?” Gorham demanded. “He was acting strange back in Course, and now this?”

“He’s confused,” Peer said. She resisted talking slowly, as to a child, because that would be petty. “He’s overwhelmed and afraid.”

“Well, try to calm him,” Gorham said. “If he’s worried now, when we go down to the Baker …” He trailed off, but the implication was clear.

“What’s down there?” she asked, looking up at Gorham.
He liked to stand that way
, she remembered,
while I took him in my mouth. Maybe it always
was
about dominance with him
.

Gorham squatted close to her, glancing up at the Watchers and nodding along the road.
Keep watch
, that look said. Peer had yet to ask him how many Watchers there were left, and whether they all ever met, and what exactly he was now leading.

“She’s careful,” he said, glancing back and forth between
Rufus and Peer. “She has to be. Not many people know about her, and as far as she’s aware, the Marcellans think her mother died and left nothing. They think they ended the ancient line of Bakers, and she likes it that way.”

“What happened to her work?” Rufus asked, and there was something more than curiosity in his voice.

“The old Baker? After she was killed, they destroyed everything. I can still remember the fire, though I was a teenager then. Didn’t know what any of it meant, only that the Scarlet Blades had caught and executed … I think they called her a ‘threat to the city.’ The fire burned for three days, and by the time it started dwindling, they’d set up food stalls and ale wagons for the curious.”

Rufus nodded, still holding Peer’s hand. His own was slick with sweat.

“Why?” Gorham asked.

“I’m interested,” Rufus said. “You’re taking me to see this important woman, whom the rest of the city knows little about. The rulers of your city killed her mother. I’m wondering …” He looked away, and Peer thought,
Just what
is
he wondering?

“The rulers of the city will kill
you
if they know about you,” Gorham said. “Reason enough?”

Rufus nodded, smiled, and touched his forehead—a curious gesture that none of them recognized. “Sorry,” he said.

“No need to apologize.” Gorham stood. “We’ll go down soon. Malia and I will go first. We know what to expect.”

“And what’s that?” Peer asked.

“Nadielle protects herself well. We’ll meet chopped people on the way down. Just warning you.”

Peer felt a thrill of fear and excitement, and Rufus nodded. He did not appear at all concerned.

When Gorham stood and chatted to Devin and Bethy, Peer leaned in to Rufus to help him up. “What did you dream?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A nightmare, I think. I don’t like nightmares.”

“Something from the desert?”

For a while he said nothing. They stood together against the wall, and he was still clasping her hand, like a frightened child hanging on to its mother.

“No,” he said at last. “The desert is still a blank to me.”

“Come on!” Gorham called. “A short walk this way, a short wait, and then say goodbye to the stars.”

“Nice way of putting it,” she mumbled, and, when she looked up, Gorham was looking at her as if he’d heard. Once, lying naked on the rooftop of her old family home in Mino Mont, the sweat of sex drying on their skin, they had each chosen and named a shape in the stars. She could remember neither shapes nor names—too much had happened since, her desire to forget too strong—but that sense of contentment and peace washed over her briefly now, surprising and powerful.

Then Gorham turned away, and she remembered what he had done. And even that memory felt as though he had abused her, not loved her, on that long-ago roof.

Markmay believed in that cruel mistress Fate, and he also believed that she could be read and predicted—translated from the meanderings of a beetle in a maze, the viscous drip of poison from a wisp’s leg bladder, the sway of hanging chimes in a breezeless place. He traced the veins in a rubber plant’s waxy leaves, then drew maps with the tracings, applying them to a book of shapes and shades handed down from his great-great-great-grandmother. By the time he reached the end of a mug of five-bean, he felt ready to read its message, discerning truths in the spatter of bean dregs. His mother had taught him how to do that, and he had many fond memories of sitting with her before a roaring fire, reading Fate’s path in cooling bean shells. Some called him fool, but he would merely pass them by and content himself with seeing their deaths in a slab of shattered ice.