Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"I know," she said softly. "Please, come and see what I have to show you." And she descended out of sight.

She's luring me down to kill me, he thought. And when the others wake, she'll tell them I ran raving into the Echoes. But that was not the truth. She's got my mother's corpse down there, hollow and dead with her mind passed down the generations, and she'll ask me to forgive it. But that also seemed unlikely.

The Baker's face appeared in the small doorway again, pale and sad in the poor light. "Come."

I'm dying anyway, Nophel thought, and he went.

The staircase was carved roughly into rock. It curved out of sight, and it was only the sound of the Baker's footsteps that drew him on. Where the staircase ended, the darkness opened up around him. The girl stood a few steps away, but her oil torch could not penetrate the gloom.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"An old Echo. Hidden." She aimed the torch to their left, and Nophel saw a crumbling gray facade. "It was diseased, so they cut it off from the rest of the city."

"And this is about me?" he asked, anger rising. Diseased… cut off… forgotten. Could it really be that simple? He'd heard of wealthy parents in Marcellan Canton giving their children away to workhouses or chop shops if they were deformed, or simple-minded, or did not live up to their expectations in some other way-eyes too close, hair too dark. Was his story really that pitiful?

"My name is Rose," the Baker said, "and I am your mother only by blood. In memory, I am less so. So I've brought you here, because this is the Baker's place. No one has ever been down here, not even Gorham, who perhaps… perhaps I once loved. And there's something here for you to see."

The girl Rose led him through a doorless opening and into a dark room, placing her torch on a table and indicating a chair. Nophel sat, closing his eyes as another faint came over him. Something wet rattled inside as he sniffed the nut again, and he pressed one hand across the wound on his bare chest. It was blazing hot.

There was some basic furniture in this room, and Rose opened a wooden cupboard. She took out some objects and replaced them again, then moved to another cupboard.

"Lost something?" he asked softly.

"I was born only recently." She found what she was looking for and placed it on the table before him. It was a stark wooden box, rough-edged, undecorated. The lid above the simple hook-and-eye catch was smooth, as if it had been opened and closed many, many times.

"What's this?"

"This is your mother's real memory of you." She turned to leave, and Nophel experienced a moment of complete, encompassing panic.

"Please don't go!" he said. "I've been alone all my life, and now I'm dying."

The girl nodded, sat down on a chair close to the door, and rested her chin on her chest.

Nophel turned to the box and opened it without hesitation. Though he was a stranger to his own childhood, he knew that these things related to him. There was a shriveled, wormlike object in a fold of tissue-his umbilical cord, perhaps. A lock of fine hair. A tiny knitted boot-just one-snagged and dusty but still smelling fresh. Fingernail clippings. A simple but effective charcoal sketch of a baby, unrelenting in its honesty-one eye closed and, even then, growths on his face around his mouth and nose. As he examined the sketch, the charcoal darkened and smudged, and he realized that he was crying. He sniffed and wiped his eye, then started to take out other things.

Everything had a worn look, as if it had been viewed countless times. And when he finally piled it all back into the box-proof of his childhood, testament to his creation and existence-he closed the lid and sat back in the chair.

"So?" he said softly.

"Your mother loved you. That's good enough, surely?"

"She gave me away."

The girl nodded, then looked at her hands as if truly seeing them for the first time. They were not the hands of a child. "It's the fate of every new Baker to lose everything," she said. "She was incapable of looking after you, because of the things she did. She was dangerous, as am I. And she did what she thought was best."

"She gave me to a workhouse," he said, but he could no longer summon the anger that had always driven him. It had given way to sorrow, a hollowness inside being slowly filled with his own leaking blood.

"She did what she thought was best," the girl said again. She stood and left, and Nophel followed her back across the long-buried Echo and up the staircase into her laboratories once again. He felt drowsy, and sniffing the strange nut helped only so much. His chest was heavy and hot. And by the time he reached the room where Gorham, Peer, and Alexia still slept, his confusion was settling. As Rufus had said, he had found a trace of love in his father. Perhaps, in some way, there was some in his mother as well.

He asked how he could help.

Nadielle appeared above him, smiling what he had always thought of as a wry smile but what was probably just knowing. She reached down and tried to shake him awake, and when she spoke it did not exactly match the words her lips were forming. You were always braver than you think, he wanted to hear her say, but what she really said made Gorham sit upright.

"We have to leave," Rose said, her face and voice changed. "I've done all I can, but everything is getting worse."

"How do you-" he began, but then he noticed the constant shaking. Dust hazed the room, books slid from shelves, and it was only because he'd been asleep on the soft bed that the vibration had not woken him. He looked down at Peer, where she held his left arm, and across at where Alexia had slept. The Unseen was no longer there.

"She's helping," Rose said.

"And Nophel?"

"He's just left. And, yes, he's helping too."

"On his own?"

"He has a while, perhaps."

A harder jolt, and Peer stirred, mumbling Malia's name.

"Is it all the way up yet?" Gorham asked. "Is it risen?"

"I don't know!" the girl said, and it was the first time he'd heard her raise her voice. A glimmer of panic flitted across her face, then she was in control again, calm and efficient. "I don't know, but we can't wait to find out. I think I have enough."

"Enough what?"

"I'll show you. I hope you got plenty of rest. There's lots to carry."

Gorham gently shook Peer awake. She sat up quickly and looked around, then her shoulders slumped when realization hit her. Her eyes flooded with the knowledge of what was happening and the memories of what they had been through.

"It's time to leave," he said. "Rose needs our help."

Peer nodded and stood without speaking. He told her about Nophel, and they left the room and went out into the womb-vat hall, where Rose and Alexia were standing beside the vat.

What the crap is going to come out of this one? Gorham wondered. But there were no messy processes this time, and the girl Baker climbed the wooden ladder to sit once again on the vat's lip.

Alexia nodded at them as they approached, smiling slightly at Peer. Gorham liked that they were friends. That might not help a lot against that bastard thing rising against them, but in reality it meant the world. Arrayed around Alexia's feet were piles of a thin, wrinkled material, with string ties strewn like dead worms. At a signal from Rose, Alexia picked up one sack and threw it up to the Baker.

Rose leaned over the top of the vat and swept her arm down and up again. The bag came up bulging, throwing vague shadows that seemed to flit away into the darkness. Gorham was sure he heard a whispering, and he frowned and tilted his head to hear it better.

"Catch," Rose said, tying and dropping the bag without even looking. Alexia was there. She caught the bag, tested the drawstring, and lowered it gently to the ground. It looked oddly weightless.