Echo City (67 page)

“What have you just done to me?” he asked, though with curiosity rather than suspicion.

“Hopefully saved your life,” Peer said. “We have to go out into the desert, and—”

“And then we’ll die.”

“No,” Gorham said, but he did not sound convinced.

“We think not,” Peer said. “The Baker—”

“I thought the Baker was dead!”

“Oh, Penler,” Peer said, and there was so much to tell. She closed her eyes, and fatigue hit her then, the darkness behind her eyelids luring her down to sleep. “I have some stories for you, my friend. So many. And there’s plenty I think you’ll be able to help us explain. But first …” She opened her eyes again, and Penler was staring at her in a way he never had before.
I really broke his heart
, she thought.
I shouldn’t have brought Gorham with me
.

“First?” Penler asked.

“You’ve seen what’s happening,” Gorham said.

“I’ve seen something.”

“The doom of Echo City,” Gorham continued. “Rising
from the Chasm below the Falls.” He shook his head, and Peer knew that none of them could adequately express what they had witnessed and experienced.

“Where’s the visitor?” Penler asked.

“With the Dragarians,” she said, and Penler’s eyes opened wider.

“He came from the Bonelands,” he said softly.

“There’s going to be plenty of time to explain.” A rush of enthusiasm almost overwhelmed Peer. “But right now we have to leave and take as many people with us as we can.” She grabbed his hands and pulled him closer, then wrapped her own hands around his and put them to her chest. He felt her heartbeat, and she saw that familiar twinkle of humor and intelligence. She was glad it was still there. She’d feared her leaving might have extinguished it forever.

“And you think they’ll follow
me
into the desert,” he said.

“I
know
they will.”

“You think they’d follow me?” Gorham asked, eyebrows raised.

“No,” Penler said, and his smile seemed genuine. “Though they might line the walls to watch you die.”

“Nice,” Gorham muttered.

“Don’t mind him,” Peer laughed, “the old bastard has a way with words.”

“Words are all we have,” Penler said, and his smile turned sad as they all recognized the truth in that. “Is it really the end?”

“You saw what came up,” Peer said.

“I saw
something
. I don’t know what.”

“The Bakers are to blame. But the latest is also to thank.” She touched the swollen fly bite on his hand. “For this.”

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Out there somewhere,” Peer said, nodding into an uncertain distance.

“With an invisible person,” Gorham said. Penler glanced at him, smile unsure, and then turned back to Peer.

“And this all began because of Rufus?”

“In truth, it began generations ago. I’ll tell you everything.”

“When we’re away,” he said, and Peer nodded.

“We’ll need food and water,” she said.

Penler stared at his house, unmoving.

“I’ll go,” Gorham said, and he dashed inside. They waited in companionable silence, staying close as they watched people rushing southward. Gorham emerged moments later with a water sack and a bulging backpack.

“Ah, stoneshrooms,” Peer said.

Penler grinned and took Peer’s hand. They turned south and headed for the city wall a mile distant, and Peer felt tears threatening. Penler had turned his back on his home, his maps, his studies, his books and projects and writings, and all because of what she had told him. All because of her. She felt a warm, rich love emanating from him that she had never felt from Gorham, and she realized he was the father she had never known, holding her hand and leading her away from danger.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” he said.

“Liar.”

“No, really.” He raised an eyebrow, maintaining his seriousness. “I always knew you found me irresistible.”

Peer laughed out loud, and people around them stared at this madwoman amused by the end-times.

   Sheltering along the base of the city’s southern wall were several hundred Garthans. They shook in the heat of the summer day, shielding their eyes against the unbearable light, and people kept a good distance from them. They scratched at vivid red bites across their naked bodies. Peer hoped they would follow everyone else out into the desert but hated to think what effect the unrelenting sun would have on skin so used to darkness.

Gorham stared at them strangely, and Peer knew he would have a story to tell her later.

Penler led them to an open stone staircase, and they climbed to the top of the wall. It was wide here, arranged with seating that looked mostly inward, and she remembered sitting here many times with Penler, discussing, debating, and arguing. She felt an odd nostalgia for such good times.

The place where she’d first seen Rufus was a mile to the
east. She looked along the wall in that direction, and the mass of humanity stunned her. The wall was packed with people, and below them in the streets and roads that led along the wall’s base were many more.

“So
many
,” Penler said. “This used to be a nice quiet place.”

“They’re lost,” Gorham said. “They’re looking for someone to tell them what to do.”

“Aren’t we all?” Penler asked.

“No,” Gorham said. “Not everyone needs that.”

Peer raised her hands and smiled at both men. “Now’s not the time for a religious debate.”

“If not now, when?” Penler asked.

From the north came continuing sounds of destruction. A column of smoke and dust rose high above the city, thick and textured at its base, spreading and dispersing higher up where the desert breezes grabbed hold. It was rooted on the southwestern slopes of Marcellan Canton, but fires were apparent at many other sites across the city, from eastern Mino Mont to western Course. At the base of the cloud of dust and smoke—even from this distance—they could see movement.

“Later,” Peer said again. “There’ll be plenty of time later.”

“It’s good to hear your confidence.”

“Penler, there’s somewhere beyond the Bonelands,” she said. “He didn’t tell me much. He
wouldn’t
. But it’s there.” She frowned, looking over Penler’s shoulder.

“And?” he asked.

“And he said something there sees us, and he hopes it will welcome us.”

Penler was silent for a few beats, glancing back and forth between Peer and Gorham. At last he said, “And you’re the ones who cannot entertain gods,” and then Penler turned to the crowds.

He stood with the grace of someone half his age. Peer knew that he commanded respect in Skulk, but she was also aware that most of those around them now had come down from the city. Their clothing gave them away, as did their smooth skins and the fact that they carried belongings with them. People in Skulk owned little.

This was the moment when they all had to cast differences aside and listen.

“Echo City is doomed!” Penler shouted.

“No shit!” a voice said from the street below. A man was crying, children were laughing and playing, and a hundred voices mumbled unheard replies to Penler’s pronouncement.

“Look behind you and see what ignorance and blind faith will bring,” he roared. “Fear and death with no hope for something more! What are the Marcellans doing to counter whatever this sudden threat might be?”

“I saw Blades raping a woman in the street!” a man yelled, and voices surged again, expressing disgust or offering other stories.

“That’s because they’re afraid. Fear breeds desperation, and from desperation comes such violence. They’re afraid because the Marcellans offer them nothing else. They’ll follow Hanharan because they’re told to, not because they choose to listen to him in their hearts.”

Peer shifted uncomfortably, but she knew what Penler was doing and respected the roots of his own beliefs. There was no way he could get the crowd on his side by expressing non-belief, and even if that
could
help, she knew he never would. He was an honest man who would not deny his own philosophies. And that bullish honesty was why they would follow him.

“And what are you listening to, old man?” someone called.

“I’m listening to someone I call my friend,” he said. He pressed both hands to his chest and looked out over the crowd.

“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

“That’s Penler. You can trust him.”

“I don’t trust criminals!”

A roar rose, the crowd surged, fists flailed. Penler glanced down at Peer and she nodded at him, giving him whatever encouragement and support he needed.
Someone I call my friend
, he’d said, and she smiled at his shrewdness. He could never lie—one of his weaknesses, but also his greatest strength—but he could let the listeners interpret what he said in their own ways.

He held up his hands and the crowd calmed. He had them, she realized. They were willing to watch and listen while the city fell behind them, because this was the first time someone had really spoken to them. They’d all woken with whispers in their ears, but now they could see and hear the person offering them advice.

“I’m told there’s hope,” Penler said. “I’m told you came here at the behest of your own inner voices. And look around—I see no Marcellan costumes here, no Hanharan priest’s robes. That means we’re
all
special. That means we’ve
all
been given a way to escape. To escape
that.”
He pointed over their heads, over the top of Skulk’s tallest buildings at the monstrous column of smoke. As if at a signal from him, another tremor shook the ground, and moments later the sound rumbled in, shedding tiles from rooftops and knocking people to the ground.

“And we have to escape!” Penler cried. “There’s a way to defeat your fear. You have to trust in yourselves and trust in me.”

“But how do you know?” a woman shouted.

“I’ve always known,” he said. Then he stepped down from the parapet, crossed the wide head of the wall, and stood overlooking the desert with his back to the city.

Peer shivered. A chill went through her. The desert burned, dead and barren, and the thought of going out there terrified her. Gorham held her hand and pulled her forward. They shouldered past people until they were standing close behind Penler. And then Peer gasped as her friend started to descend a crumbling staircase leading down the wall’s outer face.

She panicked.
Is this enough? Did he say enough? Will they think him mad? Will they turn their backs, on him as he’s turned his own on Echo City?
She looked around the crowd and paused, seeing a face she recognized. It was a woman who’d picked stoneshrooms from the same rubble fields as Peer. The woman caught Peer’s eye … and smiled.

She believes
, Peer thought.

“Come on,” she said, pulling Gorham after her. They stood on the wall and looked down at the desert below.

Penler was already halfway down. The treads cantilevered
from the wall, rough and never used, and he was pressed back against the stonework to avoid their crumbling edges. But still he descended with confidence, never once pausing, never once looking back.

Hundreds of people leaned over the wall to witness his descent, and hundreds more stood farther back, waiting to see what would come of this.

Peer looked at the sands that had played no part in the city’s life other than to offer it a place of death. Gorham clasped her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek.

Peer went first.

   He had found a form of forgiveness and a diluting of his guilt in the woman he had betrayed, and he would not betray her again. Though every scrap of flesh and blood and bone told him to turn back, he did not hesitate for a moment. Peer was already on the baked sand and walking out after Penler, and Gorham followed, feeling the change in texture beneath his shoes and biting down a sudden urge to vomit.

She did not look back at him, and there was intense trust in that. Likewise, Gorham did not look back at the city wall, and he trusted that the people would follow.
It’ll take only a few
, he thought,
and then a few more. And then we’ll be committed to discovering whether those fly bites were worth the prick of pain they gave us all
.

The sand was hot and hard, shifting slightly beneath him as he walked. Gorham looked at the bite marks across his hands and arms, but they were not changing. The sun felt hotter out here. It was late afternoon now, and soon dusk would be falling, and they would be out in the desert without anywhere to sleep, little to drink, and the city behind them would call and—

There was a noise behind him, the likes of which he had never heard before. It started low and far away, like a dog howling in the night, but it rose and grew louder—a howl that turned into a scream—and louder, and every hair on his arms and neck stood up, his balls tingled, and his legs grew weak. He paused but still did not look back, because he had denied himself the city forever.

The cry went on, louder than anything he’d ever thought possible, a shattering exhalation of rage and hunger, fear and triumph, and he was certain he saw cracks opening in the ground all around him as the land itself shook in sympathy, or shivered in fear.

As the cry faded, voices rose behind him.
I won’t look back
, he thought,
I can’t look back, I’ll
never
look back
.

But he could look sideways.

Running across the sand toward him, fleeing the city at an angle, came Alexia. She was carrying Rose on her back, and the Baker waved. It seemed such an odd, innocent gesture that Gorham waved back, as if greeting a friend’s daughter rather than the most powerful person the city had ever known.

“They’re coming,” Rose called as they grew closer. “They’re following! Don’t stop, Gorham. Don’t stop walking for anything.”

“What
was
that?” he asked, though he knew the answer.

“The Vex is risen.” Rose looked more haunted than anyone he had ever seen. There was such knowledge in her eyes, but he wanted none of it. “We’re the lucky ones,” she said. “The lucky few.”

The few
, she called them, and Gorham walked on with Alexia beside him. The Unseen was sweating in her old Scarlet Blade clothes, and her hair was plastered to her head, but she wore an expression of grim determination.