Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"Who?" Gorham asked. "Nobody in power. After they took you, the Marcellans crushed the Watchers down. You already know what happened to Bren." He glanced at Malia. "The whole upper echelon of the Watchers' organization was wiped out, imprisoned, or-"

"Driven underground," Malia finished for him. "Some of them-the cowards-ran. Never seen them since."

"So here I am," Gorham said. "Leading the Watchers. Making decisions that might affect everyone."

"I won't pity you your position," Peer said quietly. "I can't."

"And I respect that. But I need you to understand why this has to remain secret. We can't risk anyone finding out about Rufus. If word of this gets to the Marcellans…" He shrugged.

"They know they can never destroy our beliefs and aims," Malia said, "and they suspect there are still Watchers in the city. They'd kill Rufus as a Pretender and proclaim a day of celebration the moment they laid hands on him."

"Aren't there people you can trust?" Peer asked. Something seemed so wrong here-a visitor who had crossed the Markoshi Desert, one of the most incredible things ever to happen to Echo City, and they could tell no one.

"With this? I trust Malia," Gorham said. "Devin. A few other Watchers." He looked around, stroking one cheek as if searching for someone else.

"The new Baker?" Peer asked.

Gorham did not answer.

"Her name's Nadielle," Malia said. "And we have to take Rufus to her now!"

No, Peer thought. But she knew they were right: Rufus might have come to the city as a lost, confused man, but circumstances she knew nothing about were turning him into a potential savior.

The three of them sat for a while, drinking their five-bean and relishing what was left of silence.

"We're taking you to see someone," Peer said. Rufus lifted his head, and he was still terrified. She saw the potential for further screams in his eyes, and he suddenly looked much older. I thought he was thirty, she thought. But now maybe sixty.

"Who?" he asked.

"Her name's Nadielle. I've never met her. She's… we call her a flesh artist. The Baker."

"Artist," he said softly.

"We think she might be able to help."

"Will she hurt me?" Rufus asked, and Peer felt her throat tighten, her eyes burn.

"No, she won't," she said. "But you must realize that my friends don't trust you yet. You killed Gerrett."

"But I thought he was-"

"I know, Rufus. I know." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "But I still haven't told anyone about the Border Spite."

"Why? I was… protecting us both."

Is he really so innocent? she thought. His eyes said so, and his voice, and the way he was almost cowered down before her, like a submissive hound. But she could not shake that poison gun from her mind, nor the way he'd swung into action so smoothly when he thought it necessary. As if he'd been prepared rather than aimless.

"I don't want them to see you as a killer," she said.

His face relaxed a little and he nodded.

Peer looked around the small cell where they were holding Rufus. They hadn't locked the door-the mechanism was rusted and jammed-and Malia told Peer they'd taken him there to recover. But Devin had been standing outside the cell ever since, a sword on his belt. He'd said nothing when she came to see the visitor, but Peer could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. I can hardly blame them for guarding him, she thought, and she remembered Gerrett and his easy laugh.

The cell wall was damp with moss, and in the corner the hole in the floor that had once been the latrine was filled with dead rats. A hundred years before, real murderers might have inhabited this cell. She wondered what these walls had absorbed-confessions, tears, shouts of rage. Now, perhaps, they were witness to the beginning of the end.

"When are we going?" Rufus asked.

"Soon," Peer said.

"Now," Gorham said as he entered the room. He glanced at Rufus, then fixed his attention on Peer. "There's no time to waste."

"Where is she?"

"She's in her laboratories. We'll take you."

"What are laboratories?" Rufus asked.

Gorham looked at him, and Peer could not tell whether Rufus's expression was expectation or fear. Probably a bit of both. "It's where she chops," Gorham said. "Where she makes things."

Malia came in behind him, crowding the small cell. "It'll be almost dark," she said. "Now's a good time."

"How far?" Peer asked.

"Just follow me." Gorham could not hold her gaze. He still doesn't trust why I came here, she thought, and she motioned to Rufus to follow them out, Malia bringing up the rear. A flush of anger hit Peer again, aching her head, driving her heart. The bastard had lied to her, had given her up to die! She shook her head to try to clear it, but that only seemed to confuse things more.

Maybe it wasn't that he mistrusted her. Maybe it was guilt. I forgive you, she thought, but she could not imagine saying it, could not mean it-not to this man who was so different from the one she thought she'd known. Perhaps given time. But if what the Watchers had been awaiting for generations really was coming true, time was something none of them had.

Sprote Felder went back down. He never spent more than a few days aboveground, because he found it claustrophobic and constricting, and the sky took his breath away. He discovered his greatest freedom belowground, where the undersides of later times formed the skies, and phantoms from the past whispered to him like the dregs of old dreams. Sometimes he understood what these whisperers were saying; other times their words formed exotic and unknown shapes, like vague mumblings of the mad. He had spent much of his life down in the Echoes, exploring and recording, and the histories of Crescent Canton especially were a source of constant pleasure and fascination. He was always cautious and alert, and occasionally he had been scared. But he had never been terrified-until now.

His father had once told him, To most people, history is a dead thing, but in reality it still exists-but is forgotten. Down in the underside of Echo City, he strove to remember.

His porters had fled. He hired them from the taverns and slash dens of Mino Mont's Southern Quarter-a place that many thought of as a stepping-stone to Skulk. Most people in the quarter were involved in crime in one way or another, be it as perpetrators or beneficiaries. It was a way of life there, with children introduced at a young age and given the only choice of their pitiful lives when they struck adulthood: which branch of crime to enter into. The possibilities were endless, the uptake huge, and few people escaped the circle of life that persisted in that place. The only reason the Marcellans allowed the quarter's existence was that it provided many things that they and their families and friends enjoyed. The city's best slash was refined in the quarter, in dens deep in Mino Mont's newer Echoes, where sunlight could not damage the stock. Some of the larger brothels ran schooling camps, where young girls were taught the ways of sex by an array of visiting dignitaries, Scarlet Blades, and Hanharan priests. And if a dirty deed needed performing that was below even the Marcellans' guard of Scarlet Blades, the quarter was the place to look. Countless taverns held countless shady corners, where killers beyond number drank and waited.

It had not always been that way. Seven hundred years before, Mino Mont had produced some of the finest musicians, artists, and writers that the city had ever known, and there was still no consensus on why the area had become so corrupt and violent. Some said it was creativity driven back to its basic, wild core. Others suggested that creativity and insanity went hand in hand, and the Mino Mont of today was certainly a product of some sort of madness. Whatever the reason, Sprote found that the people of the quarter produced the best porters. In almost twenty years of exploring the Echoes and employing hundreds of people from Mino Mont, he'd had only one turn on him. That man was way down in the Echoes, his eyes put out by his companions, and sometimes Sprote had nightmares that he was still alive.