Tim Lebbon - Echo city

Gorham and Malia stood to one side, their torches lowered and turned off. Peer wondered why. She went to them, trying not to make a noise, and Gorham looked up at her approach.

"He's mad," he whispered.

"What happened?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Malia asked. Even this stern, harsh woman spoke quietly. She was no stranger to grief.

"What did she tell you in there?" Gorham demanded. He grabbed Peer's arm, the potential violence almost surreal in the silent shadows. She owed him nothing.

"That Rufus has come home," she said. She pulled her arm from Gorham's grip, fisting her hand, ready to punch. And she could have punched him, happily. She could have swung her fist into his mouth and felt his teeth loosen beneath knuckles hardened by years of stoneshroom picking.

But Gorham sighed, looking back at the dead woman-the dead thing-as her sisters picked her up at last.

Nadielle stood back as the Pserans carried the body into the darkness.

"Which way did he go?" Peer asked.

"Does it matter?" Malia said. "He's gone, and even if we find him again, he'll be no help. How can he?"

"He holds this city's future in his hands," the Baker said, walking toward them.

"You think you can…?" Gorham trailed off.

"Maybe," the Baker whispered, looking past them all at places none of them could know. "It's been tried before, with rackflies, spreading a harmless germ. But that was long ago, and…" She blinked, snapping back to the present. "You have to bring him to me."

"We have to?" Malia asked, attitude spilling from her.

"Yes, Malia," Nadielle said.

"Can't you help-" Gorham began, but the Baker was already walking away.

"I have work to do," she said. "Find him. Bring him. Nice to meet you, Peer."

Peer almost laughed out loud. Nice to meet you. But she smelled blood, and the air was still thick with the violence perpetrated there.

He was ready to run, she thought. As soon as the moment came, he was ready to run. And as she, Gorham, and Malia began the lonely journey back up from the darkness and into the night, Peer knew that there was so much more to Rufus Kyuss.

He went back into Hanharan Heights as he always did: silently, discreetly, slipping through shadows and pools of light without disturbing either, and all the way Nophel tried convincing himself that it was his stealth that kept him unseen. He knew that was not the case-it was a nightmarish kind of knowing, like the certainty that when you woke up you would find yourself dead-but all the way up the urbanized hillsides of Marcellan Canton, through the well-guarded gates of the Heights, and into the warren of corridors and staircases that led to Dane Marcellan's rooms, he maintained the illusion.

Standing before Dane made it all real.

The fat man squinted as Nophel entered his huge bedroom. There were no nubile young women on his bed this time, but the table of slash in the corner still exuded its sweet fumes, and Dane was piled naked on his bed like a heap of bled swine meat. He sat up and turned his head this way and that, frowning. Then he nodded and waved in Nophel's general direction.

"Even knowing you're there, I see only shadow."

Nophel stood silently, wondering.

"Don't mess with me, Nophel." His tone was serious, and his eyes were no longer out of focus.

"Make me whole again," Nophel whispered.

Dane laughed. It shivered his rolls of fat and set him coughing, which shook his body even more. Nophel wondered how long it would take him to stop moving. He might have laughed, had he not felt so wretched.

"You are whole!" Dane said. "Touch yourself. Feel!"

Obeying Dane's words was almost a subconscious act-Nophel touched and felt. His skin was slick and cool with sweat. He held his hand in front of his face and barely saw it.

"I met the Unseen," he said.

Dane's laughter drifted away, and he was serious again. Shuffling to the edge of the bed, he slipped his feet into leather sandals and shrugged on a robe, tying the cord with a surprising dexterity. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

Nophel smiled and wondered whether Dane could sense it.

"Everyone who has ever tried the Blue Water," he said. "They exist-like me. And some are more invisible."

"More invisible?"

"They watch you, Dane," Nophel said, feeling a thrill of power and danger. This is a Marcellan, he thought, but Dane stood amazed before him. "They watch all of you. Perhaps they're too far gone for revenge, or maybe not. I couldn't tell."

"But they died. They went away and died, and you're the one it was always meant for. Your mother made that stuff!"

"I don't believe she knew the real power of it," Nophel said. He walked across the room and sat on the end of Dane's bed. The fat Marcellan took a step back, looking down at where the bedclothes were dipped beneath Nophel's weight.

"You really can't see me," Nophel said.

"It seems not."

"I can't… I don't want to be Unseen," he said. "There are the Scopes to consider, my duty to them, and-"

"Let me think," Dane said, and already the command was back in his voice. He turned his back on Nophel and walked to the slash table, picking up a flexible pipe with a bone tip and breathing in a huge draw of the drug's smoke. That's how you think? thought Nophel. But he knew that Dane had a good mind, and whether or not the drug improved that seemed unimportant now.

For a few moments Nophel looked down at himself and concentrated, and the shadow of his limbs and body slowly faded. He closed his eyes and focused, and when he looked again he could see the shine of metal buttons on his shirt. They seemed to wink at him. When he looked up, Dane was walking back and forth before the wide window. Beyond, Nophel could see only sky, but if he went closer he could look out over Marcellan Canton and the hazy Course beyond.

I should tell him everything, he thought. But news of the Baker felt like power.

"Do they scheme?" Dane asked at last.

Yes, Nophel wanted to say, because a frightened Dane would be easier to manipulate. But he suddenly saw real fear in this man, and he felt something he usually felt only in the presence of the Scopes: pity.

"I don't think so," he said. "Not against you or the city. But I think they do still maintain an interest."

"How?" Dane asked. He was looking out the window now, his back turned on the unseen man, and perhaps he was picturing Nophel as he remembered him from the last time they'd met: disfigured, scarred, unsettled.

"They caught the thing that came out of Dragar's Canton."

"Caught it?" He spun around and advanced on Nophel, and Nophel realized that Dane's fear was not for himself. It was deeper and richer and composed of things Nophel would likely never be privy to, however much he asked and however much he thought of himself as almost the Marcellan's equal. "Caught it how?"

"Crossbow," Nophel said. He stood and held his ground. Dane stopped a couple of steps away from him, nostrils flaring.

"What was it?" Dane asked. "I need to know. You must tell me now."

"A Dragarian. A flying thing."

"And it spoke?"

Here we are, Nophel thought. Here is when I play the only card I have.

"It spoke," Nophel said. "Before killing itself, it spoke."

Dane's eyes widened a little, then he sat down on the bed, hands resting on his knees. His head turned left and right, as if scanning the room for something invisible. The Unseen, Nophel thought, smiling. I've made him uncertain, at least.

"What did the Dragarian say?" Dane asked.

"Make me whole again."

Dane paused in his movements, staring at the floor between his feet. Even his massive frame stilled, as though that sway of flesh could rest in a held breath.

"You dare to bargain with me?" he said quietly.