Echo City (28 page)

Nophel stood and looked north, but he could see nothing out of place.
It must be far away
. And as he ran for the steps down to the viewing room, he thought,
And far away in that direction is Dragar’s Canton
.

He almost stumbled several times hurrying down the winding staircase, and once back in the viewing room he paused for only a moment to make sure he was alone. It was as silent as he liked it. Panting, unsettled by the Scopes’ activities up on the highest rooftop in Echo City, Nophel ran to the viewing mirror and slumped in the seat before it—and he saw.

He saw what the Western Scope saw, with its head turned and body straining at supports, looking to the north at what its cousin the Northern Scope must have seen already.

One of the huge domes of Dragar’s Canton filled the polished screen, but he had never seen it like this before. It resembled a nest in one of the ant farms of Crescent Canton, seen from a few steps away so that the industrious insects were shifting, hurrying specks.

“Something coming alive,” Nophel whispered, unsure why he had chosen those words yet chilled by them.

He reached for the extension dial, tweaked the focus lever, then turned the oiled, worn scan wheel that sent a series of hydraulic signals up into that rooftop creature. Gasping against the inclination to hold his breath, Nophel stared wide-eyed as the image grew in the viewing mirror. The dome’s roof closed in, the curve vanishing as the Western Scope focused on one part, and then Nophel knew for sure.

Across the dome, openings had appeared. Some of the creatures that emerged had wings, just like the thing he had questioned, and they took to the air. Others crawled down across the gray dome, soon disappearing from view. Hatches slid aside to reveal impenetrable darkness, and some closed again after only one or two darting shapes had emerged. Others remained open far longer.

As Nophel gasped in another breath, he shifted the source
for the viewing mirror onto the Northern Scope. It took a few beats for the swap to take place, and during that time the screen was painfully blank.
Must tell Dane Marcellan
, he thought, tapping his fingers against the instrument panel without actually touching any dials, levers, or buttons. Something momentous was occurring out there, and much as he saw himself as the keeper of the Scopes, he knew that this was so much more than him.

The Northern Scope saw the same view. He focused and panned, moved in and out, but however hard he tried to follow one particular shape when it emerged, it was soon lost from sight. It was like trying to track a single snowflake in a blizzard. He closed his eyes, cold, and then hurried from the viewing chambers.

All the way down to Dane Marcellan’s rooms, he dwelled upon what he had seen and how he might reveal it. He passed several Scarlet Blades in the twisting corridors and hallways, a couple of them alerted only by the breeze of his billowing cloak. When he reached Dane’s rooms, he burst through the door.

Dane stood quickly from an expansive desk in the corner, hand reaching for a knife as he scanned the empty room. Even as his panic subsided a little—perhaps he saw a shadow of Nophel’s movement, perhaps he only assumed—Nophel spoke.

“The Dragarians are invading,” he said.

Dane sank back into his seat, sighing heavily. He rubbed his face and then stared, blinking slowly as thoughts tumbled.

“Dane?” Nophel said, but the Marcellan did not even seem to register the improper use of his informal name.

“I hear you,” the Marcellan said. “I hear you too well.”

“Dozens of them. Hundreds! I tried to track them, but—”

“Nophel, I will grant you the White Water antidote, but on one condition.” Dane shoved his chair back and stood. His brief moment of shock was over.

“What condition?”

“There is something you must do for me.”

“If it’s to do with the Council—”

“Nothing to do with them, Nophel. They’ll know of this, of course, but the message I want you to carry is to someone very far removed from them. Someone else entirely.”

“Then who?” And when it came, the answer, though perhaps expected, was shattering.

“The Baker,” Dane said. “The
new
Baker. Your sister.”

   “Tell me about the Baker,” Peer said.

“What do you want to know?”

“All of it.”

“Really?” Malia paused, causing Peer to stop and look at the Watcher.

Peer smiled softly. “Her and Gorham,” she said.

Dawn had broken across the mountain of spires, rooftops, and walls in the east to find them crossing the border between Crescent and Course once again. They chatted and laughed, trying to exude the image of strolling friends out to watch sunrise beside the Western Reservoir, but Peer was all too aware of the bulges of weapons beneath Malia’s loose coat.

After what she had seen, she felt a long way from safe.

“Gorham is scared of her,” Malia said.

“It’s hardly surprising.”

Malia took a pouch of tobacco from her pocket and shoved a good pinch into her mouth. She offered some, but Peer shook her head.

“He wasn’t to start with,” Malia said, picking leaf shreds from her lips. “First time he went down there after … after you’d gone, I was with him. He was broken. Talked about you in the past as if you were dead already, but I always saw the truth of it.”

Peer wondered whether the harsh Watcher woman would mention her crucified husband. In a way she hoped so, because it would prevent Peer from feeling too selfish for asking about this.
Tell me about my old lover and this new woman
, she was saying, as if that was the only important thing.

“What
was
the truth?” Peer asked.

“Back then he could hardly live with himself. He helped me when things turned really bad after your capture, when the purge came. He was a real friend, and I sucked up all the
help he gave, giving nothing back. He was grieving too. He spent a long time trying to convince himself that you were dead, yet all the time he held a spark of you inside.”

“I’m not sure I believe that,” Peer said, and Malia’s strong fingers bit into her arm, surprising her.

“You asked me to tell you about him and Nadielle,” she said. “That can only start by talking about him and you. So give me the courtesy of assuming I know what I’m saying.”

Peer nodded but did not reply.

“Giving you up was the hardest thing he ever had to do. By then he was already working his way up what was left of the Watcher inner circles. He knew what your capture would do: protect the Baker, for a time. And he knew that her involvement with the Watchers was utterly imperative to provide us with what we’ve always sought.”

“A way to escape Echo City when the city’s end-time arrives.”

“Yes.”

“And she hasn’t found it yet.”

“The Baker’s line is long,” Malia said after a short pause. “You know that. Strange people. Their presence ebbs and flows through the city’s history, from criminal to hero. This Nadielle and her mother before her—they were the first to offer such crucial help to the Watchers.” She swished her hand through roadside grasses as they walked, releasing a cloud of feathered seeds to the air. “She’s important.”

“So betraying me helped Gorham save the Baker.” Saying it so starkly made her feel sick inside. Had it been intentional? Had a history already existed between the two of them?

“Don’t think about that too hard,” Malia said. “He did what was best for all of us, but even that only delayed the inevitable.”

“No,” Peer said. “It saved the Baker. I suppose I’m a hero.” The bitterness in her voice was so sudden and intense that Malia laughed out loud. Peer felt a flush of anger … and then she, too, laughed. It was the only way to hold back the rage.

I shouldn’t continue down this path
, she thought.
It’s not my place to pry
. But now this
was
her place again. She’d come home, and however dangerous it was, and however
temporary her homecoming might turn out to be, there was part of her history missing. Knowing what had happened after she was taken, tortured, and banished might go some way to filling in those blanks.

“And after I left?”

“The purge,” Malia said, and in her voice Peer heard a sense of relief. Perhaps this was something she needed to talk about to keep her memories, and her fury, fresh. “The Scarlet Blades were sent out by the Marcellans—and their Hanharan-fucking priests—to stamp out the Watchers’ organization once and for all. They’d already destroyed our political side, with you and the others being killed or …”

“Tortured,” Peer said lightly.

“Yes, that. So they went after the rest of the organization. Announced it as a banned group, dangerous to the well-being of the city. Bad times. They swept through Course, killing and arresting as they went. Some of us escaped, some hid, a few fought. But fighting wasn’t the thing back then, and it likely never will be. We’re the sensible minority in a city of unreason.”

“How did you escape?”

“Bren and I went down into the Echoes around the water refineries. We thought we’d be safe, because it’s endless down there. And he hoped that after long enough we’d be forgotten and could return topside and live again. But there were Blades waiting down there. Maybe it was luck on their part, or more likely they’d already tortured favored hiding places out of Watchers they’d caught. They took Bren, but I slipped away—”

“From Scarlet Blades?” Peer winced instantly, ashamed at the doubt her voice betrayed. But Malia saw Peer’s regret and looked down at her feet as they passed from unsurfaced paths onto a road of condensed gravel.

“Bren fought them,” she said. “Gave me a moment to flee and hide. Just enough time, the edge I needed, and I ran and ran. I heard him shouting from behind me, a long time after I’d started. Heard them following, like rats scampering through the Echoes. And something …” She trailed off.

“Something?”

“Something saved me.”

They stopped walking and Malia sat on a low wall beside the road. “There’s a safe house not far from here,” she said. “Devin and Bethy will hopefully be there. We need to start spreading the word about Rufus.”

“Yes,” Peer said, “but what saved you?”

“Phantoms.”

Peer frowned. Shook her head. “They’re echoes of Echoes.”

“Some say they’re unsettled wraiths of people killed by Blades in the distant past and that they hate them still.” Malia shrugged. “But something covered me down there, smothered me from view, kept me still. I saw three Blades pass within stabbing distance of me, and if I’d been able to move I’d have gone for them. Might’ve taken two of the bastards with me, at least. But it kept me from moving.”

Peer looked across a field of blooming fruit trees at the reservoir and let the brief silence grow.

“They sacrificed Bren on the wall,” Malia said at last.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Peer saw the glitter of tears in Malia’s eyes. An uncharitable thought came—
So she
does
feel
—and Peer glanced away in shame.

“As far as I know, the thing with Gorham and Nadielle was all her,” the Watcher woman said, wiping angrily at her eyes. “And I suppose he was feeling … vulnerable. Don’t know what she sees in him, frankly.”

Peer glanced at her, frowning, but then she saw Malia’s expression soften somewhat, the creases around her eyes and mouth defined in the morning sun as she almost smiled.

“Yeah,” Peer said. “Lousy in bed too.”

Malia chuckled. Peer laughed. And then Malia stood quickly as something flitted overhead, flying low and fast toward a spread of buildings to the south.

“What is it?” Peer asked.

“Messenger bat. We use them, but only in emergencies. Too easy to trace. Come on.”

Malia led them toward the safe house, and Peer hoped it would remain safe for a little while longer.

*   *   *

It took a while to reach the house, buried as it was far up one of the sloping streets leading toward the walls of Marcellan Canton. Malia jogged steadily, but soon Peer found herself out of breath and sweating, her old hip wound aching. All those long days harvesting stoneshrooms must have detracted from the fitness she’d once enjoyed.

The streets were busy already with people on their way to and from their places of work, and Peer and Malia attracted more than a few curious glances.
We should slow down
, Peer wanted to say, but something had Malia unsettled. So Peer stayed quiet, concentrating on the pounding heels of the woman ahead of her, and hoped that chance favored her this morning. Hers was not an especially recognizable face, but since breaking out of Skulk she was more than aware that a death sentence hung over her.

“Not far,” Malia said over her shoulder, and Peer knew that the Watcher must have heard her panting.

They reached a small, sloping square where a group of musicians had set up their instruments on a leveled timber area. The musicians stood and sat with their backs to the Marcellan wall, their gentle strains serenading people rushing here, there, or somewhere else. Few stopped to watch, but the musicians seemed unconcerned. Peer had seen their like many times before, and from her time with the Watchers she knew more about them than did most Echo City inhabitants. Their music was designed to lull, written by songsmiths embedded deep within Order of Hanharan circles.
Listen to enough of that crap
, she remembered Malia’s husband, Bren, saying across a table of empty wine bottles and spilled ale,
and you’ll be paying homage to Hanharan’s asshole by morning
. They’d laughed at the blasphemy and glared at any tavern patrons daring to throw a disapproving glance their way.

Past the square, along a tree-lined avenue of three-story buildings, and then Malia paused at a doorway and glanced back at Peer.

“Still with me?” she asked, smiling. Her breathing displayed hardly any sign of exertion, and Peer’s respect for this Watcher woman grew some more.

Malia knocked at the door. A small viewing panel slid open and she exchanged words with someone inside. As bolts and chains were withdrawn beyond the door, she turned back to Peer, face grim.