Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"Friends to the Baker?" a voice said from the darkness, and Peer winced when she sensed something closing on them again. She pushed Rufus to the ground and fell over him, and moments later something rushed by overhead. Things lashed across the back of her neck and head, and she cried out.

"Yes!" Gorham said. "And someone she'll want to see." He was standing again, crouched low and aiming his torch about them. He glanced at Malia, Rufus, and Peer, trying a smile to indicate his control of the situation.

It did not work. Something drifted in from the shadows and plucked the torch from his hand. It doused the flame and shoved him to the ground. Then it sat astride Gorham's chest and whispered, "Wait!" At last, Peer could see the thing.

It had been a woman, but now it flew. The wings were thin and membranous, and many long tendrils drooped from her legs and lower body. A queasiness rose in Peer. This thing was unnatural, a bastardization of what should be, and however clever it might be, she found it disturbing. The Baker made the natural order of things her own personal playground. Yet through the fear and disgust came another thought, and Peer could not help smiling. Penler would love this.

"Tell Nadielle I've-"

"Wait," the flying thing whispered again. It looked at all of them, eyes resting the longest on Rufus. It hissed softly.

"But-"

"Wait."

"Best wait, I think, Gorham," Malia said. And they did, but the wait did not last for long. At a signal none of them heard, the thing lifted from Gorham's chest, disappearing into the darkness before Peer could blink.

"There's something else here," Peer said in a low voice. Never before had she sensed being watched as strongly as this. Watched, observed, analyzed-she felt eyes all over her, and whichever way she turned, the sensation grew.

"The Pserans," Malia said. "They'll guide us in now."

"Or kill us," Gorham said. He stood, brushing himself down.

"I don't see anything," Peer said.

"That's how I know they're there." Malia was turning a slow circle, and then she paused, pointing into the murk.

"There."

A pale shape emerged from the darkness-a naked woman with a wickedly sharp appendage protruding from her chest. Down each side, spines flexed and stretched.

"The Baker isn't expecting you," the Pseran said. Two more appeared, materializing as if from nowhere. Rufus did not reach for his weapon. Peer wondered why.

"We've some important news for Nadielle," Gorham said. "And someone she needs to see."

The first Pseran moved quickly, seeming to flow rather than walk as it approached Peer and Rufus. It brushed past Peer as though she was not there at all and halted within kissing distance of Rufus, eyeing him and sniffing with a delicate nose.

"Ahh," she whispered, nodding and stroking one long finger down Rufus's cheek. "Chopped."

"What?" Peer asked. "What did you say?" But the Pseran continued to ignore her. Instead, it moved past the group and ahead, indicating with one backward glance that they should follow.

"Come on," Gorham said. He sounded flustered for the first time, and Peer wondered how close they had all come to being killed.

"Chopped?" she asked Rufus. "You? Chopped?" Rufus only frowned, bemused.

Gorham was looking back at them as he walked. Peer caught his eye. He shrugged, looked at Rufus, and faced front again.

Chopped? she thought. Confused, scared, she followed, because that was the only way to go.

The Pseran guided them through this Echo of Crescent Canton, over an unstable bridge spanning a dried riverbed, and past a ruined village, where Peer caught sight of strange lights from the corner of her eye. All the while, the Pseran's two sisters-Gorham whispered of them, dropping back slightly so that the four visitors could walk and talk together-followed behind. They kept to the deep shadows, and Peer caught sight of neither, but she always knew that they were there. They watched her. But, more than that, they watched Rufus. She saw the tall man glancing about him many times, and he never once met her eyes.

They followed an old rutted track, and here the ceiling was low enough to be partially illuminated by their oil torches. Peer had been down in the Echoes before, though only a few times and always in built-up areas. Here, she could not help but be amazed at what she saw. Perhaps only two hundred steps above them were the crops that would help feed the uncountable inhabitants of Echo City, while down here the dead past was home to phantoms and dust. Some roots showed through and hung like dirt-caked spiderwebs-the deepest roots of the tallest trees. At irregular spacings were the unimaginable supports and struts laid ages ago, upon which the current Crescent Canton had grown and become the fertile area it was today. Here and there were hollows in the underside, and once Peer saw the red twinkle of blinking eyes staring back at her.

The Pseran halted at last. "Wait," she said, staring only at Rufus.

"Tell Nadielle-"

"I'll return to inform you whether she will welcome you in," the Pseran said.

"You'll…" Gorham shook his head, sighed, and nodded. "Tell her it's important."

"Isn't it always?" the Pseran said with a wry smile, and Gorham glanced back at Peer as the chopped woman drifted quickly into the darkness.

"So now we just wait?" Malia said.

"Yes." Gorham sat on a raised bank of dried soil, taking a drink from his water skin and splashing his face. He rubbed with his hand and wiped it dry with his sleeves, leaving a smear of dirt across one cheek.

"I'm tired," Rufus said. He sat in the center of the rutted road. "Why won't the Baker see us?"

"She will!" Gorham snapped.

"Are you sure she's really on our side?" Peer asked.

Malia laughed, without humor. "She's on her side."

"She has her own rules," Gorham said. "She works on her own time frame, and living down here… she's strange."

"Strange," Rufus said. Peer moved closer and sat beside him, noticing that he'd already closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. That Pseran called you chopped, she wanted to say. What does that mean? Where are you really from? But she said nothing, because now did not feel like the time.

Instead, she got up and went to sit next to Gorham. Malia had wandered off, still keeping within the circle of torchlight and kicking at the dusty ground. Peer thought she was a woman who would never look right sitting still.

"Still talking to me?" he asked.

"No." They sat in silence for a while, and when Peer breathed in she caught a whiff of Gorham's familiar smell. She had inhaled that scent so many times-lain with it, loved it-that she would know it anywhere. It gave her a deep pang of regret for what had passed, but the anger was still stronger. She tensed to stand, and the air shards scraped against her elbow.

"Peer," he began, but she could not let him continue. However much he had changed-become the leader of whatever was left of the Watchers, a true rebel as opposed to the safe protester he had been before-the parts of him she had loved would always stay the same. Their past was a wide foundation, and betrayal and separation had been built upon that. Right now she did not feel capable of finding her way back to the solid base of their relationship. And letting him talk about it would only confuse her more.

"I can't," she said. "There's too much happening here." She looked at Rufus where he seemed to sleep, thought of his piercing green eyes and that Pseran's single word: chopped.

"I need to tell you-" Gorham began.

And then Rufus was gagging, coughing, choking, scratching at his throat with long nails, and even though his eyes were squeezed shut, Peer was certain that all he wanted was to open them.

It's dark, and very cold, and a wind whips in from the desert, bringing only a stale, slightly burned smell. There was a lightning storm out there the previous evening when he and his mother had arrived, and Rufus (that's not my name, but that is me)