Tim Lebbon: Echo city

Peer took the tube now and held it at arm's length. "Rufus," she said, "what's this?"

"Long glass," he said. He came around the table and took the instrument from her, pulling at one end until it was twice its original length. He pointed at a small lever that had sprung from the tube. "Gear, for unblurring."

Peer took it back, held the narrow end to her left eye, and looked across the room at a map.

"No," Rufus said, laughing softly. "For outside. It brings things-miles away-near."

"Not something we'd have much need of," she said softly, placing it on the table. "And this?"

Rufus picked up the small knife she had touched. He turned it and showed them the flint hidden in the handle, then he prized out a curved blade concealed in its back. "For…" He frowned, staring at the blade. "For…"

"It doesn't matter," Peer said, touching the back of his hand.

"Whatever you've forgotten will return," Penler said. "The heat of the desert, the sun, must have…" He shrugged, because in truth none of them knew what the desert could make of a living person, other than a dead one.

"We should go soon," Peer said.

"But this place," Rufus said, pointing around Penler's room with wide, excited eyes.

"Skulk is not safe," she said, thinking of the murdered woman. "Anything could happen here. Any foolish, pointless death, and you… you're precious."

"I am?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

Why? she thought. So much like a child, and yet he's not unlearned. Maybe he has forgotten much, or maybe the language is a barrier.

Or perhaps he's holding back.

"Because…" And Peer realized that, through all this, she had not yet told him what he meant to them. His amazement at this place had blinded him to the astonishment she and Penler showed in return. And the only way to proceed was with trust.

"Because no one can cross the Markoshi Desert," Penler said, "and anyone who tries will die."

"Where do you come from?" Peer asked. "Where is your home?"

"I can't remember," Rufus said. "Only… bones." He stared between them and along the hallway.

He has so much to remember, Peer thought. We have to give him the chance. She turned to Penler and he nodded.

"I need to prepare," he said.

Rufus sat on the table and stared at a map on the wall, but he seemed to see much farther.

After the heavy rains of the previous day, the blazing sunshine cast a rainbow over Echo City. They left Penler's home in mid-afternoon, walking slowly north in a meandering, hesitant fashion that they hoped would attract no attention. Rufus was wide-eyed at everything he saw, and his childlike awe encouraged Peer to view things in a different light. The street vendors were familiar, but she looked again at all their wares. Usually she ignored them. Now she caught their eyes, smiled, and more than once she was dragged into a conversation about certain species of stoneshrooms, the best spices in which to marinate a chickpig's hooves, or the styles of silk scarves being worn in Skulk this season. Rufus watched and listened, smiling delightedly, and usually it was Penler who took his arm and guided him gently away.

Peer realized that she was saying goodbye to Skulk Canton, and the sadness in her came as a shock. She'd been forced here by banishment, tortured and wronged by the Marcellans, and everything she had ever considered home had been stripped away. Left alone and naked of hope, she sometimes wondered how the crap she had made anything of a life for herself at all.

Penler, she thought, and she looked at the old man's back. Yes, Penler. If it wasn't for him, she would likely have died, and her arm and hip ached in memory of the care he had given her. "And now I'm leaving him behind," she whispered. An old woman selling mummified wisps-considered lucky charms by some, though Peer knew that their stings often remained-heard what she said and reached out to her with a thin yellow wisp.

"It's yours," the woman croaked, the beginnings of negotiation.

Peer shook her head and walked on, and behind her the woman called, "Don't take it and you'll lose him for sure."

Penler turned at that, one hand still on Rufus's arm, and Peer had never seen such an expression on the old man's face. He looked like a young boy determined not to cry-cheeks puffed out, eyes swollen. She turned away because she was starting to realize what it all meant.

They moved away from the market districts and into an area of Skulk known as Pool. It was a relatively low area, its buildings ancient and not built over for many centuries, but no one had lived here since the salt plague. It was a haunted place. Peer had always poured scorn on those who let phantoms steer their decisions, but the fact that no one banished to Skulk chose to live there spoke volumes. Penler had said it would be a good place from which to approach the border.

Pool was a warren of streets, squares, and courtyards. Many of them were scattered with detritus from the decaying buildings-rotten window shutters, the glint of colored glass, chimney pots and clay bricks crumbled by decades of frost and sun-and here and there they found the bones of dead things. Most of the bones were animal, the cause of their demise always hidden. Some were human.

"Bones," Rufus said, and the sight of a fleshless skull seemed to terrify him. Penler and Peer calmed him, guiding him past, and Peer saw the ragged hole smashed into the skull by whatever weapon had killed its owner.

Around the next corner, bathed in sunlight and the melodious sound of red-finch song, they saw their first phantom.

It was a young woman, so faint that Peer could see right through her. She wore the formal silk attire favored by Skulkians before the plague, and she was kneeling by the side of the path, looking down at the ground. She reached with translucent hands and touched something, then sat back again and considered what she had done. She repeated the action, straightened once more, and never once did she appear to see them. Most phantoms did not.

Rufus caught his breath and backed up a step, but Peer stood fast, holding on to his hips and feeling the shiver going through him. "Beautiful," he breathed. It was a strange reaction to seeing a ghost.

"She won't harm us," Penler said. Rufus seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the young woman and her continuing attempt to arrange something none of them could see. The ground beneath her fingers bore only dust, and her fingers left no trails. "There'll be more, but phantoms won't give us away."

They walked by the hollow girl, leaving her to her past. Rufus kept glancing back until they turned a corner and continued across a small square. Peer tried to reassure him with a smile, but he did not meet her eyes.

There were several more phantoms, some obvious, some little more than blurs on the air. Sometimes all three of them saw, and once it was only Peer who seemed able to make out a tall man sitting in a broken chair in the doorway of an ancient home. She thought he nodded at her, but his head rose and fell as he slept. How long ago? she wondered. He was even older than he looked.

I will see Gorham, she thought, the idea hitting her suddenly and hard. If he's not dead. If the Marcellans didn't hunt him down after taking me. The excitement was tempered by caution; she could not afford to hope for too much. But the idea of meeting her lost love again was thrilling, and she tried to ignore the three years that had separated them.

Three years, and an escape from Skulk yet to be made.

They left Pool and started climbing a steep hill toward the border with Course Canton. There were few people here, as proximity to the border served only to remind those living in Skulk that they resided in a prison. Those people they did encounter seemed little more than phantoms themselves, and they rushed to hide away. These were the outcasts from the outcasts, those who could not accept Skulk as a place to live and who hovered at the border, as if one day they might go back.