Tim Lebbon - Echo city

But Nadielle's hands and mouth were insistent, and he soon found that he could.

"What was that?" he gasped. She leaned heavily against him, one leg still curved around his hip. Her breath was fast and shallow, and he thought he heard faint sobs. She'd pressed her face into his neck. He felt her teeth against his skin.

"It's been too long," she whispered at last. "I'm so alone, Gorham."

"No." He didn't like this Nadielle. Nadielle was strong and confident, not needy and sad. He was the sad one. He needed her, not the other way around.

"Yes! I spend my time making people that aren't people. I live down here, and sunlight-it's rare for me. You're my…" She trailed off, and Gorham held his breath, waiting for what she would say next. Though he did not like her this way, he was still hard inside her; Nadielle's confession kept him there.

"You're my sunlight," she said. "And everything's starting to feel so dark." She fell quiet then, and soon after she pulled away and rearranged her clothing, not meeting his eyes. Gorham remained standing against the wall, feeling warm from what had happened, what had been said.

Caytlin stared with her expressionless eyes, untouched.

I'm the needy one, Gorham thought again. He went to Nadielle, and she relaxed into his embrace with a sigh of relief. Neither spoke, and they stood that way for a while until the time was right to move on.

Just keep watch, Dane had said. That had been a message, as overt as any Marcellan could ever utter, even in the confines of his own rooms. He'd sent it with a stern look, and Nophel recognized the dreadful trust that had been placed in him. If he went to the authorities with the claim that one of the ruling Marcellan Council members was not a completely devout Hanharan, the resulting investigation would be long and damaging. It would be his word against Dane's-a deformed monster, who had attempted to betray his own mother, against a member of the greatest family the city had ever known. But once set in, the rot would be very difficult to expunge.

Nophel was starting to believe that he'd found a friend in Dane Marcellan. An ally. Even a fellow Watcher, though Nophel kept his beliefs to himself. And though a Watcher followed no gods, Nophel had always been a firm believer in Fate.

I have a sister, he thought. He paused again, leaning into the side of the circular stairwell and taking a deep breath. The news was almost too much. His mother-the bitch whore Baker who had abandoned him like a dog shunning a runt puppy-had chopped a child, and now that child had become the new Baker. He could barely conceive of such a thing, but Dane had assured him it was true. Time is short, he'd said, but once you have handed her the message, stay with her. She will spare the time to explain what happened to you, and why. The suspicion that Dane had not told him everything was rich, of course, because Dane was a politician. But Nophel could think of no reason why Dane should have lied about his having a sibling.

He pushed off and continued down the stairwell. He had far to go before he reached the first of Dane's contacts. The Marcellan had handed him a coded map, containing six places where Nophel might make contact with people who would be able to point him toward the Baker's rooms. And, after the map, came the vial containing the White Water.

"What is there between you and this new Baker?" Nophel had asked.

"A distant trust. An old understanding."

"Tell me."

"No, Nophel. I trust you as my messenger, but your mind is still corrupted with vengeful thoughts of your mother."

"But she's dead!"

"Yes, and I made the mistake of telling you that it wasn't your betrayal that led to that. Maybe you're angry. Unfulfilled. I need this message delivered, but I also need to trust that you won't harm her."

"Why would I harm my sister?"

Dane had stared toward him for a while, his eyes wavering slightly across the shadowy space that Nophel filled.

"Just go," the Marcellan had said. And he'd held out the sealed message tube for Nophel to take.

Descending from Hanharan Heights and making his way west, Nophel thought many times about breaking the tube and reading the message. But if the Marcellan had been in contact with this new Baker for so long, doubtless the message would be in a code or form known only to the two of them. Break the tube and he would shatter the trust Dane had placed in him.

He moved through the streets like a breeze or a whisper, turning heads here and there but never attracting real attention. He watched for more Unseen, but there were none. Perhaps they all congregated to the north.

North. What he had seen chilled Nophel like nothing ever before. The Dragarians streaming out of their canton, the way they had moved, and flown, and crawled… If it weren't for the Scopes, he would never have seen, and whatever fate was about to befall Echo City would have settled quietly upon him in his sleep.

Perhaps that would have been for the best. He'd always been plagued by the fact that he had no belief in anything but eventual doom. And he did not trust that a method to leave the city would ever be found, even if there were still those searching for one. Had he been the worshipping kind-had he a god-he would have prayed that the end did not arrive in his lifetime.

Why would I harm my sister? he'd asked. He wondered exactly what she was and what her relationship had been with their mother. She had taken on the dead bitch's mantle, after all. The new Baker.

Nophel slipped unchallenged through one of the western gates of Marcellan Canton's wall, then paused and looked out over Crescent Canton; though green and lush, it felt empty. And finding a hidden corner, he cracked the vial and drank the White Water, because he wanted to be a part of this world again.

"How do you find one person lost in the world?" Malia asked.

Peer shook her head and took another drink. They were sitting on the street in front of a small tavern, Devin, Bethy, and several other Watchers around them. She knew a couple of them from her time before her banishment, but she had forgotten their names. They glanced at her as if she were a ghost, and she shared their discomfort. She was nervous, uneasy, frustrated. The drink did nothing to temper her sprinting heartbeat. They should be moving and looking, not sitting and musing, but she understood Malia's strategy. They had to devise a plan; otherwise, they'd all be rushing around the city like wingless wisps.

"Do you still have anyone in Hanharan Heights?" Peer asked. One of the Watchers glared at her, and she wanted to say, I suffered too. Her arm and hip ached in sympathy with her memories.

"Not anymore," Malia said.

"What about the bat? You have ways of sending messages. There are doves and tailcoats. And can't you access the Web?" Peer's mother had used the Web several times for her tax collecting-a vast network of pipes and wires through which messages were screeched and passed along by the chopped. But they were inexpertly chopped-not products of the Baker-and the system was frequently flawed. A message could change with its retelling, mistakes made.

"The Scarlet Blades monitor it like rathawks," Devin said. He'd met them there earlier, arriving just before Bethy; neither of them brought news. Rufus might as well never have existed at all.

"Right," Malia said. "Even if we could access the Web, it's far too dangerous. We alert the Marcellans or Hanharans to Rufus's existence, and we might as well give him up for lost."

"Might as well anyway," a male Watcher muttered, and raised his ale.

"No!" Peer shouted. She stood and knocked his hand aside, mug and ale spilling across the table. He sat back in surprise, one hand slinking down to his thigh, but she was over the table before he could do anything more, her arm across his throat. "There's hope," she said quietly. Eyes were on her now, and not just the Watchers'. Several people had paused in the street, and a group sitting inside the tavern observed through the wide open doors. She'd drawn attention to them all, but right then she didn't give a crap.