Echo City (63 page)

They stacked the filled bags away from the vat. There were twenty in all, and they writhed and flexed with their insectile contents.

“So that’s it?” Peer asked. “That’s the hope of Echo City?”

“If Nadielle was right about Rufus’s blood,” Gorham said.

“She was right,” Rose said, as she climbed back down the wooden ladder. “She made him, after all. She’d have known.”

“But it was still a guess!” Gorham said, frustrated by Rose’s pronouncements. “Nothing more.”

“Lots of what the Bakers do is derived from best guesses,” Rose replied, shrugging. “That’s the basis of experimentation. It’s all theory. We’re just good at putting it into practice.” She walked toward the main doors leading out into the Echoes, and when she turned and saw them standing there, she seemed surprised. “It’s time to leave.”

“Right now?” Peer asked.

“The Vex won’t wait for us,” Rose said. She looked like a corpse. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and the shattering idea hit Gorham that she was only temporary. Nadielle hadn’t had long, and she had chopped Rose to serve a purpose, nothing more.
Where will the
next
Baker originate?
he wondered. It was not something he wanted to dwell upon.

So they followed her from the womb-vat hall, each of them carrying several of the light, flexing bags. Gorham left last, and Rose was waiting for him outside the doors. She smiled softly and looked back into the rooms.

Leftover flies were rising from the vat in a swirling cloud, moving in beautiful synchronicity.

“We’ll never return,” Gorham said.
This is the first of many places I’ll be leaving forever
, he thought, and he was as scared and excited as a little boy on his first trip out of his canton.

“No,” Rose said. “But we’ll leave the doors open for anyone else who might.” She scratched at her arm, and he suddenly noticed the fresh blood speckled there. He grabbed her hand and twisted—the knife cuts were plain, on both underarms, and he had seen their like before.

“Nophel?” he asked.

“Yes. The city streets will be dangerous.”

Gorham understood. “And who better to guide our way than the keeper of the Scopes.”

Rose nodded, smiled, and seemed to be about to say something about the disfigured man. But Gorham guessed there was nothing left to be said.

They set off through the Echo, heading for the closest door that would take them to the surface. Their world shook around them, flinching away from the terrible roars and rumbles that echoed through the darkness.

And Gorham thought,
There’s no way we can win
.

   They looked at him strangely, almost as if they knew.
Perhaps they do
, he thought.
Perhaps they were there. There’s no telling how old they are
.

She’d called them the Pserans, and they were guiding him across the Echoes. He’d only recently come this way with Peer and Alexia, but he’d been spitting blood then, in terrible pain and hovering on the boundaries of consciousness. Now he felt stronger, buoyed by the Baker’s medicines, though he knew that he was dying. His senses were sharper and his purpose more defined, yet his breathing bubbled and he tasted blood when he coughed.

He’d be returning to Hanharan Heights a new man.

Nophel’s arms stung where Rose had pricked them, but the pains had been offset by the touch he had been granted of her mind. The depth of that place had shocked him, the shattering extent of her knowledge exposed to him in a flash faster than thought, and he’d been left reeling. But then Rose had held his face in her hands and looked him in the eye, and he had seen the pain that went with such knowledge.
She is never a child, never carefree, and can never truly love
. In that, he found a closer tie to his mother than he had ever believed possible.

The two Pserans moved quickly, checking frequently to make sure he was keeping pace. They seemed unafraid but sad, and he guessed it was because this was the last task they would perform for the Baker. They passed a small group of Garthans, but the subterranean dwellers pulled back at the sight of the Pserans. Other things large and small approached in the darkness, fleeing the sounds reverberating through the Echoes rather than stalking prey, and the Pserans were always there to ensure his safety. At last they watched him up into daylight, holding back in the shadows, and retreating without a sound when he turned to give them thanks.

Nophel, Scope keeper for the Marcellans, bastard son of the Baker and Dane Marcellan, rose from the shaking Echoes of the past into a chaotic present.

   Four people walked quickly through the Echo. Peer, feeling more fragile with every step they took, remained close to Gorham. Gorham, the leader of an organization whose worst fears were coming true, felt more lost than ever. Alexia, raised a Hanharan but whose beliefs had been taken advantage of, was now bitter and adrift. And Rose, who was mere days in this world but nonetheless possessed a mind almost as old as Echo City itself. They walked in silence because there was little left to be said. They walked with purpose. And, in all of them, doubt worried and bit, closing gentle fingers around their hearts and threatening to crush.

Peer had never been afraid of feeling insignificant. Even when she worked with the Watchers’ political arm, she’d believed that most of what she did was trivial. It had implications, she knew, but hers was not a name that would ever be remembered. Then, in Skulk, banished and in pain, she had existed day by day on her own. Penler had been there, and his guidance, help, and support had seen her through many lonely times. But she had been one of many sent to that ruined place.

Now she was afraid, and some of that stemmed from loss of control. She had spent days doing everything she could to help a city unaware of its impending doom, but whatever might happen was out of her hands. She walked toward the culmination not only of the last few days but of
everything
. The city had been here for longer than anyone knew, and it was all about to change.

The ground shook. The air vibrated with potential. Something roared. Rose gave nothing away, and in that Peer recognized their true danger.

All she wanted to do was sit with Gorham and talk about old times, because events were far outpacing the differences between them. Though she still felt the physical pains of his betrayal, he was the last solid rock she thought she could hold on to, a love from her past who was so much more now.
There was desire, but that was a gentle feeling compared to the depth of connection she felt to him. And it was in the intensity of his obvious guilt that she found her own capacity for forgiveness.

This has always been way beyond the two of us
, she thought, and that made them so much more important to each other.

“What are you thinking?” Gorham asked.

“That we’re close to the end,” she said.

“Or a new beginning.”

“You really believe that?” They were approaching the route up out of the Echo now, and Rose was walking faster.
This girl’s never even seen the daylight
, Peer realized.

“I
hope
that,” he said. “This is everything the Watchers have waited for.”

“Feared.”

“That too, but it’s been a practical fear. We’ve fought our concerns by trying to discover a way to move past them. The Marcellans, the Hanharans—they surround their fear with more fear, hoping to smother it. Those bastard priests think up more ways to make people feel crap about themselves, and we’re persecuted for realism.”

“All religions are real to someone.”

Gorham scoffed.

“Really,” she said. “You should have seen the Dragarians with Rufus.”

“Let’s see which one saves us from the Vex,” he said.

“I don’t
want
to see it,” Peer replied. Gorham had described his and Nadielle’s journey down, what had happened at the Falls, and how that had changed Nadielle. The Baker had not been able to truly convey what she had seen, but her fear had been enough. That and the guilt that bound generations of Bakers together.

Now Rose was feeling it too. That was why she fought against whatever weakness was trying to strike her down.

“Maybe we won’t have to,” he said. “By the end of today we’ll be away from the city.”

“And by tomorrow we might be dead.”

“It’s all just possibilities.” Gorham reached out to take her
hand. He squeezed, she squeezed back, and she saw the gratitude in his eyes.

“Isn’t that all the future can be?” she asked. Gorham did not reply, and as they climbed up through the ruins of the old farmhouse, she wondered what possibilities were about to be realized.

   At first she thought the Vex had risen and they were too late. Crescent was deserted, but to the east and south, smoke hung above the slopes and hillsides of Echo City. It drifted toward the west, blown by the familiar easterly breezes of late summer, and she could see a dozen flaming sources on the high slopes of Marcellan. She and Alexia had left fires behind, but now it looked as if the whole city was ablaze.

“Are we too late?” Alexia asked.

“No,” Rose said, but she was not looking at the fires. Her eyes were aimed at the pale-blue sky, streaked here and there with wisps of white cloud. The sun was above the city, barely obscured by the smoke this far out. To the northeast, the pale ghost of the moon hung low to the horizon, biding its time. Red sparrows flitted here and there just above the grass, plucking insects from the air. A family of rathawks rode the thermals high above. “It’s beautiful,” she said, and for the first time Peer heard something human in the girl’s voice.

“It’s burning,” Alexia said.

“Anarchy,” Gorham said. “From what you described, the Marcellans will be doing their best to halt the migration. At times like this, there are always those who’ll take the opportunity to …” He drifted off, shrugged.

“Settle scores?” Alexia asked.

“Maybe. Some just have chaos in their hearts.”

“Peer and I saw plenty on our way here,” Alexia said.

“Can we release them yet?” Peer asked. The bags strung over her shoulders were bulging and shifting more as the sunlight warmed them. The bloodflies were excited. Peer was revolted, and yet she knew that each insect contained the essence of Rufus’s chopped blood. He was as close to her now as he ever had been.

“No,” Rose said. “Closer to the people. When we reach Skulk.”

“That’s almost ten miles,” Alexia said.

“Then we should walk quickly,” Rose said. “And we’ll soon have help.” She looked at Hanharan Heights through the drifting smoke, and for a moment she closed her eyes.

The smell of smoke hung in the air, and the farther south they went, the worse it would become. Then there was Course Canton to negotiate, the Border Spites, the Levels … and all the while, the city would shake with terror at the thing rising beneath it.

“How long until this Vex arrives?” Peer asked. “Where will it rise? What will it do?”

Rose turned to her, then glanced at Gorham and Alexia to include them in her reply. “I’m no god,” she said. “There’s plenty I don’t know.”

“But you made it,” Gorham said, his voice cool with accusation.

“A Baker long before me—” Rose stopped when she saw Gorham’s growing anger. In that instant, Peer loved him a little more. “But, yes. She made it, and then she threw it away, because it was imperfect and dangerous. She just didn’t throw it far enough. Please, we need to hurry. We’ll know when it arrives, and we must reach Skulk before then.”

They started walking, Rose in the lead, the others strung out behind. It surprised none of them that a girl whose skin the sunlight had never touched knew exactly which direction to take.

   Nophel thought about becoming Unseen, but that would have been no help. Whether people saw him or not, the streets were chaotic, and he would be moving against the flow. So he took a deep breath from the nut clasped in his hand and forged ahead.

As he saw the chaos and destruction, the bodies in the streets and the burning buildings, the fear on people’s faces and the useless efforts by Scarlet Blades to temper the flow of fleeing humanity, his mind was on the contents of that old, worn box. They signified a pain in his mother’s heart that he
had never considered—he had always imagined her filled with hate and inhumanity, not sadness and loss. And they drove him on now, because he was doing this partly for her.

She’s a little girl with an old woman’s eyes
, he thought of Rose, and in some ways she was the living memory of the city. Constantly reborn, her knowledge handed down, she was the echo of Echo City in blood and flesh.

Bleeding, coughing, Nophel made his way uphill toward Hanharan Heights. He passed dead people and fallen buildings, but they were invisible to him. He felt the city’s doom constantly transmitted through his heels, and at one point, when a dreadful roar came from somewhere to the south, the ground shook so much that he believed this was the end. But the tremors settled, people picked themselves up, and Nophel started to climb again.

He cast his face upward in case the Scopes were watching for him. He would be with them soon. His breath bubbled and blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but after everything that had happened, he could not even consider failure. That would be the cruelest joke that Fate could ever play.

While much of the city fled, he climbed, and it was only as he reached the Marcellan wall that he went Unseen.

   The first half of their journey was easy and fast. They crossed the southern border of Crescent into Course, passing the waterfront areas by the Western Reservoir where thousands once spent their leisure time eating, drinking, and sailing; the area was all but abandoned. There were some who had stayed behind, ignoring the strange warnings they’d received or heard from someone else. Several taverns were full to bursting with drunks. The overflow sprawled on the streets outside, fighting, sleeping, some of them fucking under the sunlight as if this was the last day they’d ever see. Perhaps some of them truly believed that, Gorham thought, but it never took much for a drunk to drink like the world was about to end.