Tim Lebbon - Echo city

– had watched from the flat roof of the empty dwelling they'd found close to a tumbled section of the south wall. She had called him down after a while, hugging him close when he came to her and bestowing affection that he was not used to. She'd been sad since that strange visitor, though there was still something about her that at times made her seem very far away. He'd walk into a room to see her staring at something he couldn't see, her fingers slowly stroking her chin, mouth working ever so slightly as if she was saying something much too quiet to hear. And after those times, she'd be quiet and distracted even when she did start talking to him again.

It was because of the thing that came to visit several days before. She'd been different ever since then. It was a man, though unlike any man he'd ever seen before-incredibly thin, long-limbed, with those indigo eyes that seemed to burn right through him. And when it reached for him, then lowered its head and started mumbling…

He shivers, and his mother hugs him tight.

"It's going to be fine," she says, kneeling and pulling him to her. He can feel her tears on his face, and he wonders why.

"I'm hungry," he says. "I'm thirsty."

"I know," she says, because she has not fed him or given him water for a whole day. "There'll be something soon, don't worry."

"When?"

"Soon."

"What are we doing here?" They were in Skulk Canton. He'd watched his mother speaking with people and breathing stuff in their faces, like she sometimes did. The people-he thought they were soldiers, but scruffy and dirty, not like most of the Scarlet Blades he saw around Course-slowed down, drooping to the ground while he and his mother passed. It was all part of the strangeness that began two days before, when she left for the day. Stay in, she said, making him promise. He did what he was told and spent the day wondering why the womb vats were all silent and empty.

Now here they are, and Rufus knows that something is about to change. There is an air of moving on about the way she speaks to him, touches him, looks at him. It is as if she's trying to remember every part of her boy.

"I'm sorry," his mother says, and when he asks what for, she only shakes her head and cries some more. He has never seen his mother crying before now. She is strong. It makes him cry too, and then he sees something out in the desert.

"There's…" he begins, because he has read all his mother's books about the Markoshi Desert, how everything is dead out there and nothing can live upon its sands.

"Yes," his mother says, and she has already seen it. Far out, a dark-gray smudge on the light gray of the starlit desert, a shape is moving toward them. "It left Course before we did, and now it's coming back to Skulk. As I instructed it." She sounds vaguely angry, as if she wishes her mysterious instructions had not been obeyed.

"What is it?"

"Something I had to make. Because I'm not sure what you are, but if you are what they say, then this needs to be done. And one day you'll return to me."

"What needs to be done?" he asks. "I'm scared."

"Don't be," she whispers. His mother looks around furtively, then pulls her hood up over her head. He doesn't like it when she does that; he can no longer see her beautiful green eyes. There were precious stones called emeralds, she once told him, buried deep in the ground that is now buried beneath the domes of Dragar's Canton. People used to go there many hundreds of years ago and dig them up.

Why? he asked.

Because they were beautiful.

So are your eyes, but people don't dig them up.

She nodded for a while, staring at him, until finally she said, It's all about having something for yourself.

"I have something for you," she says, producing a silvered metal flask from her pocket.

"One of your magic drinks?" he asks.

"It's not magic!" she says, almost spitting. Her sudden anger could have frightened him-but he knows she will never do anything to harm her son. She loves him. "It's only magic because people don't understand it, that's all, and people are scared of what they don't understand. They have to give it names to protect themselves from it." She holds him hard, staring into his eyes, and he thinks, She really wants me to listen. This is how she speaks when she has a lesson to teach. "People try, but they never get it right. I know how to do it, because of… knowledge passed down to me. If you'd known my mother, and hers, you'd understand. But this is not magic."

"Yes, Mother."

"If anything, it's a curse." She looks past him at the thing approaching across the desert. "A curse on me, and a curse on…"

"Mother?"

"You," she whispers. Then she uncorks the flask, holds the back of his head, and tips it to his lips. He drinks, because she wants him to and she'd never do anything to hurt him. And as he sits on the cold wet stone, watches the huge lumbering thing walking in from the desert, and sees his mother going out to greet it, something starts to happen.

First he forgets his name.

"Grab his hands!" Peer shouted, and when Gorham did so she felt that she was taking control. She held Rufus's head still, whispering and soothing, and when he opened his eyes at last he looked lost. There was nothing there-no knowledge of where or even who he was. Then he focused on Peer, and she felt the fear slowly draining from him.

"I forgot my name," he said.

"I called you Rufus."

"Rufus. That's not my name."

"I know," she said sadly. "Maybe the Baker can help you remember."

"The Baker… she's…" He squeezed his eyes closed again, but the thrashing and scratching did not return.

"What's wrong with him?" Gorham asked, speaking as if Rufus wasn't even there. Peer glared at him without answering.

"Someone's coming," Malia said. She was standing several steps away from them, staring into the darkness in the direction in which the Pseran had disappeared.

"Her?" Peer asked.

"I doubt it," Gorham said. "She rarely leaves her laboratories."

"How many times have you been down here?" Peer asked.

Gorham glanced at her and away again, off into the darkness. "A few," he said.

A shape emerged from the shadows-the naked Pseran walking smoothly toward them. She was both beautiful and monstrous, and Peer wondered what else she would see that day.

"The Baker will see you," she said, and Peer noticed that she was looking only at Rufus. There was a slight smile on her face but also a creasing of the brow, which could indicate confusion-or fear.

"Which way-" Peer began.

"Gorham knows." The Pseran drifted in closer to Rufus, circled him once, and then, without another word spoken or a glance at any of them, she disappeared into the Echo once again.

"Come on," Gorham said, and he led them from the track and across ancient fields.

Peer walked behind Rufus, trying to keep her eye on his back but finding herself distracted by what they were walking across. She had never been able to envision whole landscapes of dead fields and gentle hills cut off from the sun and sky like this. It seemed unnatural, and walking across ruts tooled into the ground generations ago made her sad.

"Here," Gorham said. He stood before a door cast into a steep hillside, the stark gray stumps of old trees stubbling the ground all around.

Rufus took a deep breath.

"Are you all right?" Peer asked.

"Yes," he said. "Hungry."

"Good," Gorham said, and his smile seemed genuine. "The Baker always has a feast to hand." He pushed the door open and entered, and Peer followed the others into a new world.

She had never imagined anything like this. She'd heard tales of the old Baker and her incredible warehouse laboratory and how the Scarlet Blades had destroyed it all twenty years ago. The Watchers had always held the Baker as one of their own, though even before her banishment, Peer had known the lie in that. The Baker was unique, last in a long line of freak geniuses among Echo City's scientists, experimenters, and charlatans. At least, most of Echo City believed she was the last.