Tim Lebbon - Echo city

He trailed handfuls of dust across the floor from a bag hanging on the wall, creating spirals, straight lines, and other patterns with distinct edges. A pile of dust here, a carefully scooped bowl there, and if he dripped sweat he removed the affected area. There must be nothing here that would mislead his reading. Nothing to skew results.

Before he announced the doom of Echo City, he had to be certain.

Several people sitting outside a tavern saw the panicked man burst from the doorway and dart out into the street. His eyes were wide, his hair standing on end, and his hands were clawing at the air as if to grab some down or to haul himself up into the sky.

"It's coming!" he shouted, and his voice was torn with terror.

"There's that reader, Markmay," one of the drinkers said. "I've heard he's mad."

"Coming! Rushing! Rising!"

"Well, he certainly looks-"

A combined gasp went up from the crowd of drinkers as the mad Markmay rushed headlong across the street, straight into the path of a runaway dray. Weighed down with thirty full barrels of fine Marcellan ale, the wagon was hauled by four tusked swine. One of them had died in its harness, and the other three were running in a blind panic, shit and blood streaking from the suspended dead beast as their hooves trampled it.

They ran Markmay down. Even as the dray's front left wheel rolled across his neck, he was still shouting, "Rising. It's-"

Such is Fate. The cruelest mistress. I can't be like this forever, Nophel thought. It's like living among phantoms. But, of course, here he was the phantom. And he had seen what had become of Alexia and the other Unseen.

Where do you live? he'd asked her as she led him out through the gaming room and back onto the streets.

Here. There. She'd seemed confused.

Where do you sleep? Eat?

Some of us… we don't need food. We're removed from the world.

You told me you weren't ghosts, he'd said.

She'd frowned at that, averted her eyes, but not before he saw her fear and doubt.

So he followed her as she weaved through the streets, avoiding people with an expertise that looked effortless but, Nophel discovered, was hard-won. Several times he breezed too close to someone, his arm brushing theirs or his hair stroking the exposed skin of their neck. These people would glance around, startled, and at least twice he was convinced that they saw him, their pupils dilating as they focused, their brows creasing as they tried to make sense of things. Then their eyes grew hazy and their frowns deepened as they turned and hurried away. Once, he walked right into an old woman carrying a basket of fresh silk snake eggs, knocking her to the ground. She cried out as the eggs spilled and broke, spewing their bright yellow innards across the pavement. Alexia glanced back and only smiled, and as Nophel rushed away, he saw the startled old woman's gaze focusing on the footprint he'd left in the yolks.

He caught up with Alexia and grabbed her arm. "How far?"

"Almost there," she said. She pulled her arm away and walked on. He raised his hand to his nose, smelling only himself. It's more than just the Blue Water, he thought. That started it, but she's moved on from there, disappeared some more.

Alexia marched from a street, through a narrow alleyway stinking of something dead, and into a courtyard enclosed on four sides by tall, windowed walls. None of these windows was open, and Nophel had a feeling that few people ever looked down into this place. She walked toward the far corner, skirting around a dry fountain erupting with purple knotweed, and opened a low wooden door set into the moss-covered wall. It creaked on rusted hinges, and Nophel caught a whiff of something stale and wet.

"We're going down," she said.

"The Echoes?"

"Not that far. Just down. These buildings are a warren, and the Unseen have the time and inclination to explore. We found this place after we caught…" She trailed off.

"Caught what?"

She stared over Nophel's shoulder and into the distance, and for an instant she seemed to fade from his view.

"Alexia!" He reached out to grab her, his hand slipping from her arm. Then she grew more visible again, smiling uncertainly.

"Yes?" she said.

"You were going to show me." He felt a cold chill at what he had seen, what she had become. Are there deeper levels? he thought. Do they fade, and fade again, until they're little more than memories wandering these streets?

"Yes," she said, nodding slowly. "Oh, yes." She turned and entered the dark doorway, and immediately Nophel saw her dropping out of sight.

The steps were steep and slick, turning tightly around their central column, treads worn by use. He counted twenty before the first sounds reached him-the clank of metal, and the sniffle of something sobbing.

"It's awake," Alexia said.

The descent ended, the stairway opening into a small low-ceilinged room. One wall was lined with empty wine racks, the wood rotten and slumped toward the ground. In a corner lay a pile of roughly folded canvas that could have hidden anything. In the center of the room, a creature was fixed to the floor with a series of heavy chains.

It growled at their approach. It looked almost human.

It sees us, Nophel thought, but the idea did not surprise him. What did surprise him was what he saw on the creature's back.

"It has wings," he said.

"We tied them folded shut."

"But… it's a Dragarian. With wings."

"Surprised me too," Alexia said softly.

Nophel had heard so much about the Dragarians, but he had never thought he'd see one. They were apart from the world, the six giant domes enclosing their canton simply part of the landscape now for most Echoians. When they'd withdrawn five hundred years before, they were human. Now…

The thing before him was humanoid, though it was thinner than most people, and its piercing indigo eyes were disconcerting. Its broader facial features, body shape, all but the wings marked it out as a human being. Nophel thought it wore leather clothing before realizing the wings folded around its torso gave that impression.

"How did you catch it?" Nophel asked.

"It didn't see us," she said. "Now it does. It learned of us when we brought it down, and the Blue Water has a different effect on its mind. It doesn't forget."

"Brought it down?"

Alexia pointed, and then Nophel saw the dark slick beneath the Dragarian's chest.

"Crossbow?" he asked. She nodded.

The thing stared at Nophel, its eyes blazing in the weak oil lamplight as if focused upon him.

"It's concentrating," Alexia said. "Bringing you into being."

I need to talk with this, he thought. I need to find out why it came out, where it was going, and what it was looking for. He looked at the Unseen, in her faded and stained Scarlet Blade uniform, and wondered at her allegiances. She'd faded into invisibility, and some of those she waited with seemed to have gone further. He had heard many stories about the phantoms inhabiting the Echoes and how they could not be relied on to know anything but the exposure of moments from the past. Could he really trust such a thing?

"Why did you catch it?" he asked.

"Sport," the Dragarian said. Its voice was a growl, like flesh across grit. It ended with a grunt of pain, and for the first time Nophel considered it as a living thing.

"You didn't tell me it speaks Echoian," Nophel muttered.

Alexia chuckled darkly. "Sometimes we can't get it to stop."

"They shot me down for sport," the Dragarian said. "And because it's in the nature of humanity to destroy what it does not know."

"And what do you know?" Nophel asked.

The Dragarian averted its eyes, wincing slightly as it shifted position. Chains clanked, its wings flexed against their bonds. "More than you, ghost."