Tim Lebbon: Echo city

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.

There were bodies in the streets. Not many, but enough to show that the relative silence was far from normal. A mother and daughter lay dead beneath a second-story window, and a sprinkling of mepple blooms had fallen across their bloodied clothing. Several Scarlet Blades had been killed and stripped outside a large, faceless building that had once stored produce from Crescent. The warehouse now stank of fruit turning to rot, and the dead Blades were adding to the smell. Each of them had a sword handle protruding from the mouth. Farther on, in a small square where a water fountain still gurgled cheerily, at least thirty people lay dead, with hands tied behind their backs and throats slit.