Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"I merely-"

"You dare to withhold something from me?"

"I can't be like this. I've seen what happens to them."

Dane stood quickly and reached out, his meaty fist closing perfectly around Nophel's throat. He squeezed, his face remaining calm and composed. He raised one eyebrow. "Don't take me for a fool!"

"I know you're no fool," Nophel croaked, and Dane released his hold, turning away. He wiped both hands on his robe as he strode back to the slash table.

"You have such a power now," Dane said, "but you're too weak to see it and too scared to use it. Look at you!" He turned again, long pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. Dragging on the smoke, his eyes widened and glittered as he dropped the pipe and raised his arms. "Look at you! You're Unseen, Nophel, even more than you were before! Your dead hog of a mother gave you nothing, but her talent has made you what you are now."

"And what is that?" Nophel demanded. He was proud at the edge in his voice, the challenge he could still muster in the face of this man's intimidating authority and power.

"Mine," Dane said, tails of slash smoke still curling up from the corners of his mouth. "That's what you are. Completely. Mine."

"No," Nophel said, but he knew it was true.

"I have the White Water," Dane said. "The antidote. If those fools you say you've seen had come crawling back instead of losing themselves in the city, maybe I would have given it. Maybe."

"Then let me-"

"After you tell me what the Dragarian said."

"You swear?"

"No, Nophel," Dane said. "I swear nothing." He drew on the pipe some more, a gentler draw this time, and then he sat on a giant floor cushion, his robe falling open and displaying the rolls of fat covering his genitals.

He thinks nothing of me, Nophel said. Such disregard. Such disdain.

"It said, Baker," Nophel said. "Then, He will go to her. And he was always ours."

Dane closed his eyes. Sighed. And when he stood again, purpose in his stance and expression, Nophel knew that his drink of the White Water was still not assured.

"You're looking for anything unusual," Dane said. "Anything strange."

"I see a lot of strange things," Nophel said.

"Stranger, then." Dane stood behind Nophel. The mountain of a man smelled of perfumes and sweat and was still panting from the effort of their ascent.

The pretense of their relationship had been shredded; Nophel was Dane's servant. And yet… as they watched the Scope's images presented on the viewing mirror, Nophel sensed that Dane still held him in some regard. Several times as they'd climbed staircases and opened and closed doors on the way to the viewing room, Nophel had almost asked the Marcellan something plain and cutting, a question he had believed he'd known the answer to for some time: Do you truly believe in the will of Hanharan? But such talk might elicit punishment. Still possessed by the effects of Blue Water he might be, but Nophel had no doubt that Dane could bring him down.

"We're looking north," Nophel said. "I'll try to find the place on the wall where I met the Unseen."

"What was his name?"

"Her name. It was Alexia."

"Ah."

"You knew her?" Nophel turned dials and cogs, pulled levers, and a hundred steps above them the Northern Scope was lengthening its skull, projecting its one massive eye farther out over the wall beneath its chest.

"A Scarlet Blade. She took the Blue Water…" He whistled softly, thinking. "Maybe three years ago, during the Watcher crackdown. She was a good soldier."

"She's bitter now."

Dane did not answer, but Nophel sensed no gloating, no anger. Perhaps the Marcellan was sorry.

"There," Nophel said. The screen was filled with an image of the northern wall around Hanharan Heights. He tweaked a wheeled button beneath his left hand and the image shifted left, pausing again at the seat where he had met Alexia.

"If they're all out there, there must be dozens," Dane mused.

"I saw only a few. But the Blue Water continues to work. The removal is… progressive and deeper as time goes by." He shivered, remembering those gray, empty streets. He never wanted to see them again.

Dane rested a hand on his shoulder. It surprised Nophel so much that he jumped, knocking a cog and jerking the Scope's view to the right. That might have hurt it, he thought, but then he felt Dane's breath close to his right ear, and the Marcellan whispered, "I've no wish to hurt you, Nophel. But you're far more useful to me as you are, for now." He stood and pulled his hand back, coughing lightly, perhaps even embarrassed at the contact. Nophel thought that it was the only time the man had ever touched him, other than when he grabbed his throat.

"I need to see the Council," Dane said.

"To tell them what the Dragarian said?"

"That would be the very last thing I'd tell them."

He's trying to say something, Nophel thought. Dane's tone of voice had changed, become quieter and lower, as if something heavy bore down on him every time he went to speak. Desperate to reveal something to me.

"You can trust me to watch," Nophel said. Dane was silent, unbreathing, unmoving. Nophel winced. And now the knife in my back for such presumption?

"Thank you," the Marcellan said, and he meant it. "Now look for me. The Baker is dead, but that Dragarian was out there for someone connected to her. Help me find him."

"Who is he?"

"That's not your concern."

"You'll destroy him like you did the Baker?"

"Destroy?" Dane laughed softly. "Nophel, I know the hate you still carry for her, and it might disturb you to know this, but we weren't guilty of your mother's death."

Nophel closed his eyes, trying to will away the sudden nausea. I gave her up to them. "But-" he croaked, then cleared his throat. "But I spied on her, gathered evidence of her heresy. Presented it to you. So who killed her?"

"The Dragarians," Dane said. He walked away, and Nophel tried to make sense of the revelation.

I'm more useful to him as I am, he thought. And as he heard Dane opening the door to leave, Nophel stood, tumbling his chair over backward.

Dane glanced back across the dimly lit room toward the man he could not see.

"I don't believe in Hanharan!" Nophel blurted. His heart was thumping so hard that blood thrummed in his ears, and he had to strain hard to hear Dane's reply.

"Just keep watch," the Marcellan said. And he closed the door on the blasphemy.

The Baker was waiting for them at the end of the rickety bridge. There was someone with her, and even from a distance Gorham could see that the shape was wrong. Human, yes, but changed. Chopped.

They'd been running, desperate to reach the exit up from this Echo before Rufus did. They knew that once he was out in the city, he'd either be lost forever or he'd reveal himself and the Scarlet Blades would capture him. After that, it would be a short walk to the crucifixion wall.

"Has she come to-" Peer began.

"There's no guessing with her," Gorham cut in. He felt his old lover glaring at the back of his head, but he walked on ahead.

"Have you found him?" Malia called.

"No," Nadielle said. "I sent the Pserans deeper to search."

"If they find him?" Peer asked.

"They'll take him back to my laboratory and keep him safe," Nadielle said. "They're grieving, but they're also mine."

"Is she yours too?" Gorham said. The five of them were standing in a rough circle now, and the small, misshapen form at Nadielle's side was blinking at Gorham with big, wet eyes. She was a woman, but beneath her simple clothing her chest was flat, and her body seemed almost formless. Her long hair hung bound with fine bone clips, her mouth was slightly open, and she looked back and forth between them all, never settling her gaze on one of them for more than a heartbeat. She could have been thirty years old or eighty.