Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"Shit!" Gorham cursed as he dropped the hammer on his foot. He hopped several times, then retrieved the hammer and took some deep breaths.

Farther down, deep at the ancient root of the city, was the Chasm-bottomless, the place where the Falls and the city's dead found their end, and Something is rising!

"Weapons," he said, standing before the wall where all manner of martial equipment hung. He chose two small crossbows and several racks of bolts, a bag of poisoned dust globes, and some throwing knives. He carried his own short sword and gutting knife, neither of which he'd ever had to use, though he remembered drawing the sword one evening in a tavern three years before, just after Peer had gone and he drank each night to try to forget.

Something is rising!

"That's enough," he said. The room was darker than it had been, wasn't it? The atmosphere heavier? He glanced around and saw two doors he hadn't noticed before, one in each of the room's far corners, and without opening them he knew they led somewhere deeper, to rooms stacked with more things that Nadielle had stolen from somewhere in the city above. But right then he had no desire to discover those things.

"Nadielle?" He went back up into her room, looking at the unmade bed and remembering her chuckling against his neck, and from the vat chamber beyond he heard a sound unlike anything he had ever heard in his life. Perhaps babies being fed alive to rockzards would screech like this, or someone having their bones eaten from the inside, or people dipped into boiling oil-the terrible sound echoed and reverberated, gripping on to his mind with tenacious claws, though he would never want such a memory. He dropped the ropes and weapons and clapped his hands over his ears, screaming to try to drown the noise but succeeding only in adding to it.

Shoving through the door, the first thing he saw was the small woman still sitting on her chair, staring into the distance as if all were quiet. She blinked her heavy eyelids and licked her lips.

The sound was fading, and the room was filling with a haze that carried the rancid stench of innards. Gasping, swallowing hard to try to pop his ears, Gorham hurried to the side wall and looked along at the womb vats.

"Nadielle!"

"Here, Gorham," she replied, and he saw movement on top of the third vat. She raised one hand in a slow greeting, then waved at him. "You might want to stand back."

A hundred questions could find no release, because time would not allow them. There was no time; Gorham realized that now. He felt the urgency of the Baker's every action and movement, which had surely been translated to him much earlier but only now made itself known. Something was rising, and Rufus had arrived, and of course the two were connected.

The vat upon which the Baker sat began to change. Though Gorham had never dared touch one, he'd always assumed them to be cast from some metal-thick and heavy and strong. The rough wooden buttresses holding them upright supported that supposition. Now the vat began to flex and crack.

Nadielle looked down into the womb vat, and Gorham wondered what she saw.

He blinked, convinced at first that his eyes were blurring from the stinking mist in the air. But then the vat deformed, something inside pushing out, extending the shell, and finally bursting through in a spray of foul fluid. An arm first, longer than a normal human's arm and tipped with an array of spiked bone protuberances. Its skin was milky and translucent and streaked with globs of thick red matter. The second arm slipped through the gap and worked at widening it, slicing with those bony blades. And then that terrible screeching came again, bursting up from the vat in another pressurized spray. Nadielle held her hands in front of her eyes, but she did not change position. As the cry died away, she looked down, and in her eyes Gorham saw the love of a mother for her child.

He pressed back against the wall, and when he looked at the small woman sitting farther along the room, she was looking at him at last. Her wide eyes were still blank, her hair framing her long narrow face, and a streak of spurted fluid had plastered her dress to her hip. But she seemed not to notice.

"Don't be afraid," Nadielle said, her voice carrying over the wet sounds from the tearing vat.

"If you say so," Gorham muttered, and he watched one of the Baker's creations being birthed. The vat opened, thick rips in its side spreading and allowing the thing inside to emerge. Both of its arms were in the open now, grasping at the air as if trying to gain purchase. Its head followed, then its body, hips, and legs. It fell to the solid ground with a wet thump, screaming again as it tried to stand. Fluid spilled out around it. The air steamed and stank. The vat spewed a thick flow of afterbirth, spattering down around the emerged shape.

It was the size of a big man, its hair dark, long, and matted across its shoulders and back. When it lifted its head and mewled, Gorham saw its face for the first time. It was a very human face, he thought, with an expression of startled delight at being free. He saw the fully formed teeth in its mouth, some of them longer and sharper than normal, and he concentrated on its eyes, because the rest of its body was far from human. Very far. It looked at him and smiled, dribbling slightly, and Gorham looked away.

"Gorham, don't be afraid," Nadielle said again. She slid down the side of the vat and landed with a splash. The vat hung open and steaming, but already the gap the thing had emerged through seemed to be shrinking. The huge container was repairing itself, as walls lifted and wooden buttresses shoved upward.

When Gorham looked at the newborn again, it was already on its feet. It was using its bladed hands to scrape the wet stuff from its hairless skin. Its legs were long and thin, ending in feet that sprouted thick spines. There were also spines projecting an arm's length along its backbone, flexing and spiking at the air as they stretched. Even as he watched, Gorham saw its skin darkening and hardening. The sound its blades made as they slicked moisture from skin turned from a clean, soft hiss to a harder scraping. In contact with the air at last, it was developing armor before his eyes.

Nadielle stood before her newly chopped creation. It was more than a head taller than she was. Gorham watched, fascinated and appalled, as the thing knelt on bony knees and rested its head on Nadielle's shoulder. She stroked its hair and kissed its head, glancing over its shoulder at Gorham and waving him closer.

He shook his head, but she persisted. "Come here, Gorham," she said. "Meet my new child. It's strong and hard, and it knows how to fight and kill. But more than that, it knows how to protect. I want to teach it who to protect, so come here."

As he went, fear was slowly merging with wonder. He'd just witnessed something incredible. "You've chopped a warrior?"

"I've been working on him for some time. Will you name him?"

The thing was looking at Gorham now, its eyes wide and dark. Does it see me as a human? he wondered. Is there real intelligence in there?

"He thinks," Nadielle said, perhaps seeing the questions and doubt in his eyes, "but it's a different kind of intelligence. You'll not discuss the finest points of philosophy and religion with him, but he could take a dozen Scarlet Blades and wear their scalps for hats."

"And you want me to name it?"

"Unless it is a suitable name."

"No," Gorham said. He paused a few steps away, and Nadielle leaned in and started whispering in its ear, all the while looking at Gorham. The thing never took its eyes from him. Even when it blinked, it did so with one eye at a time, so that he was always in its view.

"He knows you now," she said. "He'll never turn against you, and his life is dedicated to your protection."