Tim Lebbon - Echo city

The man tugs, his blood spatters onto the temple spire-red rosettes on the spread of familiar pale gray pigeon shit-and Hanharan's index finger snaps off in his hand.

This time, the crowd cannot even gasp. It holds its breath, and for a moment that congested scene is utterly silent. It terrifies Rufus, and he has the staggering idea that he is seeing a moment between moments, as if time itself has been stretched to the breaking point by this man's blasphemy and Rufus is the only one to exist in and through that moment. It's something else he will ask his mother about later, and when he does she will stare at him for a long, long time and then shake her head and whisper to herself that he has to go.

The man breaks the silence and moves time on. After climbing so far and dooming himself to perform such a useless protest, his trust in the strength of Hanharan is his downfall. Still clasping the stone forefinger in his fist, he tilts backward and falls.

Around Rufus, people turn away or cover their children's eyes. He and his mother watch. Learning never ends, she said to him once, and watching feeds knowledge.

Rufus notices that the Scarlet Blades have disappeared inside the temple. Too late, he thinks, and he takes confused delight in the fact that the man has denied them their kill.

The blasphemer strikes the steeply sloping spire on his back, then slides to its edge. Several tiles come with him as he falls, and he turns slowly so that he strikes the cobbled street on his front. The sound is heavy and wet, and Rufus hears snapping. People pull away, but he and his mother stand still. The man spasms.

Someone from the crowd-Rufus knows him as a baker from three streets over, a cheery man with bright white teeth and rosy cheeks-runs to the body, pulling a huge knife from his belt. He hacks off the dying man's arm and shifts it aside with his boot, careful not to touch the blood-soaked stone finger still clasped in the hand.

Why did he do that? Rufus asks.

Because he's a fool, his mother says. And later she will tell him about false gods and idolatry, all the while watching him with her sad, tragic eyes.

"Rufus?" Peer said. "Rufus?" She grabbed the tall man's arm as he leaned against her, pushing her back against the wall. He raised one hand and pointed up at the temple roof.

"Finger…" he whispered.

"Yeah, it's gone." She'd noticed the birthshard's fault years before, but no one could tell her how it happened. Entropy, Gorham had suggested, and, progress. Now she looked at Rufus's startled expression and wondered.

"What is it?" Malia asked. They'd only just emerged onto the street, and the last thing they wanted was to draw attention. They had to cross the border into Crescent at night, and they wanted to be in the Baker's labs by dawn. A holdup now would be a bad start.

"He's fine," Peer said. She grabbed Rufus's upper arm and squeezed hard, and his head snapped around.

He looked at her blankly for a moment, then said, "He fell."

"Fine, but we have to go." She moved off, still holding his arm, and Rufus followed. As they left the street, Peer glanced back up at the temple spire and the damaged birthshard; the moon cast a weak red glow across the tiles, like the smudge of old blood. He fell, Rufus said. She shook her head and decided to ask him about it later.

Few built-up districts of Echo City were completely quiet at night-if they did not sing to the tune of revelers, they groaned to the sound of streets and buildings settling into their foundations, as if enticed down by the past beneath them. But here was less bustle, because most of the businesses in shop areas were closed, and much of the manufacturing trade worked mainly during daylight hours. Nighttime walkers were also more relaxed, because generally they were out for enjoyment or leisure, eating and drinking at some of the hundreds of taverns and restaurants dotted around the city. Different areas specialized in disparate food and drink, and it was not uncommon for dusk to see a vast emigration of people from one canton to another.

But the night also brought dangers. Peer was Mino Mont born and bred, and she knew that the Southern Quarter of that canton was a no-go area after dark unless you wanted drugs, illegal drink, or had a mind to sell your sex. There were gangs that made the Rage gang back in Skulk look like an orchid-arranging class, and she'd heard many stories in her youth of youngsters who ventured there searching for adventure, never to be seen again. She'd asked her mother why the Marcellans allowed the quarter's continued existence, and her mother's reply had been pointed: Do you think they have any choice? For a young Peer, that idea-that the Marcellans were not as all-powerful as the image they liked to project-had been a revelation. She wasn't sure that her interest in the Watchers had begun at that point, but she had always credited her long-dead mother with planting in her mind the concept of doubt and the inclination to interrogate rather than accept blindly.

Gorham went first, chatting casually with Devin and Bethy, another Watcher. Behind them, Malia, Peer, and Rufus walked together. Malia had produced a bottle of wine and she passed it back and forth. Peer enjoyed the deep fruity taste. Rufus would lift it to his mouth, but she was certain he never drank; he just let the wine touch his lips, leaving a blush there afterward. Peer sensed the tension around them all but hoped that no one else would.

I'm going to see the Baker's daughter, she thought. Back before she was arrested, tortured, and banished, stories of the Baker had terrified her. The Baker had been hunted and killed by the Scarlet Blades when Peer was a teenager, but she was a legendary character throughout Echo City, and many of her chopped constructs could still be seen. There was the Scope that Peer and her mother had once seen, and the larger Scopes that watched from the top of Marcellan Canton. There were Funnelers that drew air into the tunnels and routes passing through the higher parts of Marcellan. And, as a child, Peer and her friends had delighted to rumors of a series of monstrous chopped that existed within the many water refineries dotted along the riverbank in Course and Mino Mont Cantons. They eventually came to learn that the refineries were driven by rather more mundane technologies, but the memory of that belief persisted, as did the sense it had imbued within her that anything was possible. Sometimes she dreamed of the dead Baker and her creations, and anything was a dangerous thing.

They stopped for food and drink at a street restaurant close to the Western Reservoir. Lights bobbed out on the water as lantern fish leaped for night flies, and farther to the west they saw electrical storms out in the desert, lightning scratching out from places no living person had ever seen. Such displays had always disturbed Peer, because it made her realize that there was a land out there. Blank, featureless desert was easy to look at, because it was dead and barren and motionless. But a landscape where lightning struck was one in which something happened. She tried imagining the place where the lightning bolts hit, what they touched, whether they fused sand into glass.

Rufus stared out across the water and said little. Gorham and Malia chatted with the other two Watchers, and Peer was left sitting alone, drinking imported Mino Mont ale and letting the taste flare a surprising nostalgia. Her mother had drunk this brew, and she'd given Peer her first glass when she was twelve. Lots of growing up to do yet, she'd said, but this is a good place to start. She died a year later.

Peer was suddenly cold, and she laid a hand on her lower abdomen. Once, she had sensed Gorham's seed taking life within her, but the next moon had proved her wrong. And now, watching him trying to affect casualness while his eyes and expression remained stone-serious, she wondered whether that would have changed anything at all.