Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"They're also cowards," Peer said. "Little more than mercenaries. They'll have run at the sight of this many people. This must just be the line waiting to get in."

Skulk, she thought. How unprepared was it for this? It could never feed and water thousands of people. The Southern Reservoir was kept mostly drained so that those who lived in the ruined canton could be kept under constant threat of thirst, and stoneshrooms could not feed the whole city's population.

"How many do you suppose came?" she asked, raising her voice above the crowd's hubbub.

"Not enough." Gorham was looking back the way they had come, across the Learning Fields and past the imposing wall of Marcellan Canton. On the slopes above, a whole sector seemed to be blurring.

"What the crap is that?" Alexia said.

Peer squinted, rubbed her eyes in case they'd picked up dust, sniffed the air for smoke. But nothing improved her vision. And nothing changed what she saw.

A spread of buildings and streets almost a mile across sank from view, sending up great billowing clouds of dust, explosions of rock and bricks, and a horrendous roar that swept in across the Learning Fields like the cry of a dying god. The Echoes were swallowing the present and making it history.

"Oh, by all the gods!" Peer said, adding her voice to a thousand exhalations of shock and terror. "It's gone."

"Just sinking down," Gorham said, aghast. "All those buildings. How many people?"

Rose stood between them and held on to their arms, slumping down. The crowd was surging away from the park, as if the cataclysm that had befallen the city several miles distant could reach out and consume them all.

Perhaps it can, Peer thought, and, looking at Rose's face, she knew there was no perhaps to it. This was the beginning of the end.

"Vex?" she shouted above the crowd.

"Open the bags," Rose said. Though her voice was soft, Peer heard every word. "Release the bloodflies slowly. We'll make a path through the crowds. We have to reach Skulk's southern walls. We don't have very long."

Penler!

Gorham hugged Peer around the shoulders, and she relished his warmth. But when Peer closed her eyes to lose the dreadful sight, she was presented with another-Malia, spluttering in agony, dying beneath her sword.

And she knew that she could not leave anyone else behind.

Gorham went first, holding his initial opened bag up high before him. The flies spewed out and spread, thousands of them, hazing the air around him before darting off in all directions. Perhaps it was because they had been incarcerated for so long-or maybe because of something the Baker had done to them-but they spread and dispersed quickly. A few people cried out in surprise as they were bitten, but most pulled away from Gorham and the others at the sight of what they were doing, and a route opened along the street.

Peer came behind him, with Alexia and Rose bringing up the rear. This is when we find out, he thought, and the strangeness of their actions struck him. Releasing countless flies into the air might decide whether everyone he could see now lived or died. He wanted to explain, but they would never have believed.

He saw a woman swatting a fly on her arm, and he almost cursed her for a fool.

They moved quickly along the street, and when his first bag was empty, Gorham unslung another, pricked its corner with his knife, and hurried on.

"Save your last bags for Skulk," Rose said. The buildings around them were more dilapidated, obviously lived in but fallen into disrepair, and Gorham hoped that meant that they were approaching the Levels.

He had never been this far south. Skulk was another world, a part of Echo City that people knew existed but most tried to cast from their mind. Like Dragar's Canton, it was a section of the city cut off from the rest, though its purpose could not have been more different. He'd had many arguments with friends and fellow Watchers about the moralities of banishing people from the rest of Echo City, but he had always seen it as fairer than the alternative. A thousand years before, during the brutal reign of the first Marcellan family, criminals were banished to the Markoshi Desert, the city walls patrolled so that anyone trying to return would be captured and boiled alive in sleekrat oil. Banishment was surely preferable to that.

And there was still the Marcellan crucifixion wall for the worst offenders.

Then Peer had been tortured and sent to Skulk, and it had become more of an unknown land to him than ever before.

A fly landed on the back of his hand and bit. It was a sharp, brief pain, and when the fly fluttered away, he looked at the tiny wound it left behind.

"I've been bitten," he said above the excitable crowd's voice.

"Will I feel a change?"

"I don't know," Rose said, sounding weaker than before. He glanced at her, and she was marching on with a determined expression, her face, arms, and hands speckled with dozens of fly bites. She met his gaze and looked away again. She wanted neither pity nor any more questions.

"You okay?" he asked Peer, and she nodded, turning her arm so he could see several bites across her wrist.

"I'm itching all over," Alexia said.

"You should wash more."

"Fuck you, Watcher."

By the time they reached the Levels, they had each emptied all but one of their bags. People behind and around them yelped and swore as they were bitten, and Gorham was amazed no one had tried to stop them. Just another bit of strangeness in their lives today, he thought. And then he saw Skulk for the first time.

To their right stood a watchtower, several people in its upper levels waving everyone on. To their left was the blazing ruins of another tower. He could smell cooking meat, and he blinked the smarting smoke from his eyes.

"Quickly," Peer said, and she was the first of them out onto the Levels. This is her place, Gorham thought.

The going was slow. Many people were crossing, though plenty seemed to be holding back, the ingrained fear of Skulk causing them to hesitate. What must they think of the sudden idea to come here? He thought of asking someone, but he felt apart from everyone other than his companions. They had come here not as refugees but as saviors.

He untied the last bag of flies and hurried after Peer. She seemed keen to reach Skulk. Maybe she thought of it as coming home. I'll have to tell them soon, she thought. I'll release the flies and then go for Penler. Make sure there are a few left in the bag for him. She knew that he probably would not still be in his home, that he had likely moved on when she left, that what was happening today would have drawn him out, fascinated and afraid. But she also knew that she had to try.

"Peer, slow down!" Gorham called behind her, and she realized that she had broken into a run.

"I'm going for Penler," she said.

I left a man in Skulk, she'd told him.

"I know," he shouted, "but will you just wait?"

She paused and looked back at Gorham, Rose, and Alexia. They'd halted beside the hump of a burned-out building, and Gorham was leaning in close to Rose, listening to her soft voice. She seemed weaker than ever, but Peer still thought the new Baker had more strength left in her than most. Or was that wishful thinking? Right then it seemed to matter so much less. They'd done what Rose had asked of them, and now it was in Fate's hands.

Rufus had told them so little of what was out there, but perhaps detail did not really matter. What mattered was that there was something out there, beyond the murderous sands and lifeless dunes, and beyond the sun-scorched corpses of those who had tried before. Their world is called the Heartlands, Rufus had said, and their Heart and Mind sees through me. It knows Echo City now. I hope it will welcome you.

But that was vague and nothing that they could communicate to anyone in the midst of such chaos. Instead, the people would need someone to lead them out into the desert. Someone to lure them. The idea of being the first to go out there and keep walking, seeing whether this new, young, fading Baker's ideas had worked at all… that would take someone special.