Tim Lebbon - Echo city

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.

The few walked on, and soon, from behind them, Gorham heard the many beginning to follow. There were footsteps and voices, shouting and crying, and even a few bursts of laughter. And as the sun dipped toward the Markoshi Desert's western horizon, Echo City already felt very far away.

All through the night, they heard the sounds of destruction from behind them. Thunder rolled across the sands, and the city became a blazing pyre on the northern horizon. A breeze blew into their faces, drawn from the south by the conflagration, and at least that meant the stink of the burning city was kept at bay.