Ecko Burning (10 page)

The soldiery was screaming, livid.

Then: “Saravin!” Mael’s voice, as if from some huge distance. He tried to speak to his old friend, reassure him, but his hands were full of greasy greyness and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

It was too much, and the darkness came anyway.

In the vaulted stone hollow of a silent crypt stood a little man whose skin and garments were patterned in slants of coloured light.

Around him, the air was cold and still. If he so much as breathed out loud, he would set it in motion, echoes upon echoes - ripples of sound that would waver the walls with reaction.

But he had long since learned to breathe in silence.

This was Amos’s underbelly, her true darkness - tucked and secure beneath the great beast of the palace. It was the personal office of the Lord CityWarden Nivrotar, the location of her deniable meetings, the chamber where her real decisions were made. He would’ve bet his fucking eyeteeth that this was the last room many in Amos had seen - that there was some Traitor’s Gate out onto the river that was the flick of a James Bond switch from where he stood right now.

This was where the work got done - where the Lord Nivrotar kept her bollocks.

And hell, Ecko was kinda curious to see if Nivvy had bollocks or not - and where she was gonna hang them. The walls in here were all carved in friezes of one sort or another and they didn’t leave much in the way of peg-space.

Nivrotar herself watched him carefully - every bit as silent as he was. The Lord of Amos had no use for adornment, ceremony, legions of goons or crowns and jewels - she was unarmed, unarmoured, sitting thoughtfully before him on the edge of a stone step, one long white hand stroking a flawless white chin.

Watching him, just as he was watching her.

Nivrotar felt like cold, and power. She felt like a bared blade, a chill caress down his cheek. She made the colours of his skin flicker as she shifted.

She was also absolutely drop-dead motherfucking gorgeous.

Hell, in an another underbelly, far from here, somewhere deep under Camden Market, there were still flesh parlours that would take four hours and six hundred eurobucks to make some goth wannabe look like the Lord CityWarden Nivrotar.

“So, you have come to see me after all,” she said, her voice curious. She had been sitting with her back against some carven font-like thing; now, she leaned forward to hook him with a question like a monofilament barb. “Tell me, Ecko, what changed your mind?”

Keep sulking, Ecko.

“Nothing.” In the dust and the cold, his response was harsh, hacking jagged through the air. Unrepentant, he grinned. “Maybe I was... curious.” There were edges of echoes, mocking - they made his cynicism sound oddly empty as if the crypt itself was answering him back. He dared it, grinned wider. “So why the hell d’you care?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why the hell do you care,
my Lord.”

“Thanks, call me Ecko.” His cloak rippled with a mock-elegant gesture, an almost-unconscious imitation of the Bard. “Silent ‘G’.”

For a moment her eyes tracked the flickers of colour as they crept across his garments. Then she stood up, tall and slim, her hair gleaming with an oil-black sheen.

She said softly, “What happened in Roviarath?”

Huh?

It wasn’t the question he’d been expecting.

“We kicked the bad guy’s hairy butt. I brought you your message. You know this already.”

“Don’t be clever.” The cold seemed to coalesce on her skin, to glitter like frost, like the faint metallic veins that glimmered through the floor. He’d kicked his heatseeker, seeking the inevitable super-power, the ice-enchantments, the blade-up-the sleeve, the concealed goons behind the pillars -but found nothing. Her skin was cold but not impossibly so; she had no weapons, no support. She was unmagicked and apparently alone.

She spoke again, with a faint glitter of edge. “I asked you a question.”

He bared black teeth. “What, your spies on vacation?”

“Maybe I’m recruiting.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“Look
around you.” In her pale face, her eyes were dark as bruises, but a flash of passion led his gaze to frescoes glimpsed between pillars, champions battling monsters, each panel worn to a blur by years without number. She ran long fingers over the closest, the battle-scene that decorated the font-side behind her. “Do you know these legends?”

“How the hell would I -?”

“Nor does anyone else.”

The finality in her tone floored him; she was playing battle-chess with his head and he’d no fucking
clue
where she was going with this. It was unbalancing, deliberate, and it was pissing him off.

She said, “This mounted and noble warrior that spears this great beast, sheds its blood to feed the trees... Whatever the saga, it is long since forgotten.”

“Chrissakes, I came for weapons, not art. Willya quit playin’ silly fuckers and just show me this... knife - whatever the hell it is?”

Her smile flickered. Somehow, his impatience meant he’d lost a round. He bridled, pissed, then reminded himself that he didn’t fucking care anyway. He was only playing ’til he found the exit.

Made
the exit.

Tore a big goddamn hole in the side of reality.

Oh yeah, he’d come for weapons all right...

Nivrotar pushed her long shimmer of hair behind one perfect white ear.

“Fhaveon is falling, Ecko; Rhan is gone. The Merchant Master Phylos, controller of the Varchinde’s trade, now rules the city’s Lord. He’s taken the Council of Nine and his forces consolidate, even now. Do you know what this means?”

“You need an assassin?”

Her smile deepened for a moment, genuinely amused.

“A good theory - though sadly, something more insidious would just take his place. No, whatever else Phylos may be, he’s obvious. His moves are brutal and easy to anticipate.” She shrugged, twisted a strand of pure black hair round her finger in an oddly coquettish gesture, smiling still. “Ecko... as Phylos rises, so the Varchinde falters. We tumble towards the little death of winter, and the loss of the Great Fayre will critically damage our trade - will cause great harm, and widespread misery. The cycle cannot turn without its hub. My goods cannot travel inland without their redistribution point, their secure destination -and without my goods outgoing, their balance does not return here to me, and to my people. Do you understand our culture well enough to ken what this will do? There will be strife, and shortage, and I mislike that Phylos will turn these things to his advantage, and use them to spread his power beyond Fhaveon. Perchance, had he controlled Roviarath also, the outcome would have still been more fearsome - but the loss of the Fayre is terror enough for now.” Somewhere above her, there were glass panes in the ceiling and the light flickered as feet ran over them. “All of this, and there are these... rumours... of rot in the grass.” Distantly, there were shouts. “Tell me, do you believe CityWarden Larred Jade can rebuild the Great Fayre?”

Ecko shrugged.

“Why the hell you askin’ me this shit? I’m a sociologist now? An advisor? Ask Triq, ask Thea - they know how your trade-whosit works. I came here for one reason, and if you don’t have it, then I’m gone.” He turned his back on her, took a step across the stone.

“Where, Ecko?” She made no move, her tone was amused. “Where is it that you’re going?”

Where is it that you’re going?

The question picked him up, spun him, threw him down, pinned him to the shining floor as neatly as a nailgun through each palm.

Keep sulking, Ecko.

Nivrotar was watching him, intent and quiet, one white finger idly caressing dark lips. She still had that faint smile, as if she could see his thoughts, see the wheels turning.

He quelled a sudden and powerful urge to lash out, to goad some other reaction from her - hell, if he’d wanted to know where that Traitor’s Gate was, now looked like a re-aal fine time to ask...

He said, “D’you have this blade, or not?”

Studying him, she raised her voice and called. A small door opened in the crypt’s far side; she barked brief orders at a servitor and the figure withdrew, closing the door. Then she focused back on Ecko as if she’d rip him to gobbets.

With a flicker almost too fast to follow, there was a resin gleam of terhnwood in her hand.

You fucking touch me with that, you’ll be swimmin’ through that gate yourself...

But she offered it to him hilt-first.

He glanced, didn’t take it. He was still half-expecting her to manifest as some giant demon mcnasty, some squawking harpy, any fucking second... She stood tall and cold, her expression clouded with storm.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” The question was a slap. “Take the blade.”

“Or you’ll do what? Stick me with it?”

For a moment, he thought she’d move, she’d surge forwards and bury the thing in his throat. His adrenaline kicked, ready to hit back, to throw her down and deal with whatever grunts came through the side-door - but she held herself absolutely still as if her control was pure ice.

She said, “The grass tells me many things - I had heard, felt, a taint in its autumn but the message that you gave me...” She paused, then said again, “Take the blade.”

This time, he looked, his targeters crossing instinctually. As he realised what he was looking at, his telos spun for more detail, and his hand was moving - he was raising the thing to the light like it was fucking Excalibur or something, studying the ruin of resin and fibre.

Confused, he blinked back to normal focus and looked at the Lord.

She said softly, “What do you see?”

“Look, I dunno shit about your terhnwo-”

“Tell me!” It was a bark, cold as a slap.

His telos spun back, studying the intricate micro-patterns of the crafted resin, the stilled writhe of the fibres that gave the weapon rigidity and shape. “It’s gotta mark, like a maker’s mark.”

“All crafters have one - it’s used to tally movements and trade -”

“Yeah whatever, whole thing’s rotted as... holy shit.”

“What do you see?” Nivrotar’s question was a thrum, intense.

“It’s growing.” Ecko’s answer was a fragment of honest surprise. “I can fucking
see...
Shit, it’s fucking
growing!”
He could actually watch it. The fibre was budding, tiny but unmistakable. The movement was minute, he could only see it with his oculars, but surely... “Look, green stuff not my thing, didn’t even smoke it in college - but this shit’s all the fuck wrong.” He was fascinated, watching the tiniest of nano-movements, the minuscule thrust of new life - and yet something about it didn’t feel healthy, it felt like it was rubbing against the palm of his hand, somehow, as if the fibres on the inside were struggling to get
out...

He shuddered, and he wasn’t even sure why.

He wanted to ask her what the hell it was - but the question was a hooks, a lure, a step down that path he was still refusing to take.

Keep sulking.

Instead, he spun the blade in his hand, the movements inhumanly fast, then stood the thing on its point on the tip of his index finger.

“So. You got zombie plant life - not the zombies I was lookin’ for, but hey. What the hell does it prove?”

She reached out and took the blade from his finger.

“Ecko - blight in the grass will be fatal, to our life and our culture, our farmlands and our cities. Blight in the terhnwood will gut us like esphen, leave us gasping until we perish. If I cannot offer my crop, Amos will not only have no terhnwood, she will have no stone, no wood. And if I cannot trade with my farmlands, she will have no food - unless I choose to take it by force. And if the grass also perishes...”

Ecko’s ears were humming, tinnitus and adrenaline and rising horror.

Scouting through garbage to find out where the hell he went from here.

Because we did this!

“No, you can’t guilt-trip me like this, goddammit. There’s no fucking
way...”

But Nivrotar was still speaking. “My eyes and ears in Fhaveon tell me Phylos tightens the grip of the Cartel upon the people. I knew the city was stockpiling - now I know why. And if he can turn this blight, too, to work for him...”

“Chrissakes.” From nowhere, memories of Tarvi squirmed, and Pareus burning and dying.
He
died
believing in you.
“You’re not gonna yank my fuckin’ chain with this...”

The Lord ignored him. “Without Rhan, without Roderick, without the Great Fayre, and now without the very grass, the very terhnwood, the basic things that sustain us... Ecko, Phylos is up to something - just as Fhaveon controls most of the Varchinde’s terhnwood, so she also trains and distributes almost all of our military... She holds all the dice, Ecko, and she weights them in her favour.”

The humming in his ears rose. He could hear the Bard in her voice, see his stance in her movements, in the colours of her hair and skin.

No, you can’t make me care about this shit, you can’t make me...!

She took a step forwards, lowered herself gracefully to one knee and placed a long white hand on his cheek.

“Ecko,” she said. “You’re the only one left. Without you, the Powerflux falters and the world will die.”

He wanted to rage at her - so fucking what? - but he saw the plains seeping and rotting and raw, saw the wide grass dead and the soil barren, saw the cities stark and ruinous against the sky. He saw forces, marching and dying, heard voices lorn and lost.

The picture cut him like a hard blade, deep and into his heart.

He felt responsible. Guilty. Afraid.

He hurt.

Cared.

Then his savagery returned with a rush, reactionary and furious.
No, I don’t care, I don’t care! It’s a fucking desktop wallpaper, no more - you can’t make me care about a picture!

Daaance, Ecko...

He was caught, cornered, just as neatly as if he’d been tied up while the bad guy outlined his plans to blow up the world.