Tim Lebbon - Echo city

But he heard Malia's impatience, so he nodded and started walking.

The lakefront was bustling. A waterfood restaurant was doing brisk business, the smell of cooking emanating from its open doors and windows and enticing people in. Gorham felt a rumble of hunger. Several taverns had opened their front shutters so that patrons could spill onto the street, and some raucous songs were already under way. The songs changed as Gorham and Malia passed each successive tavern, past tunes fading, newer ones increasing in volume, and it seemed they were fighting for dominance. Later there might be real fighting, but for now the revelers seemed good-natured.

If only they knew, Gorham thought, glancing across the road at a group of men and women seated outside a brothel. They were drinking cheap Mino Mont wine from huge clay carafes, and the air around them was hazed with slash smoke from the long pipes snaking down the side of the building. People took turns on the pipes, their eyes blank and soft with the effects of the burning drug. One of the women was chopped, her three legs spread to reveal two barely covered muffs. Twice the income. He saw the blankness in her eyes, which had nothing to do with slash and everything to do with amateur chopping. She was so not there that she did not even appear sad.

Malia had reached the border checkpoint, and she glanced back as she handed over her papers. The two Scarlet Blade border guards seemed tired and bored, and they opened and closed her lifecard without even looking at it. The taller of the two waved her on, and Gorham handed his card to the other soldier. The soldier yawned, looked at the card, glanced at Gorham.

"What's your business in Crescent?" he asked.

"We're sourcing a new supplier for plums," he said. "Our old one let us down."

The soldier nodded, scratching stubble that a Scarlet Blade should never wear. "Can't beat a good plum. Have fun."

Gorham nodded and passed through the border. Have fun. If they knew where he was going and whom he was going to see, they'd have pinned him down and slit his throat, then called reinforcements to interrogate everyone in sight. The people on the beach would be washing sand from their wounds for days. The drinkers would be thrown in jail until they were sober enough to be interrogated, and the whores and patrons would be exposed to their families, shame being a useful tool in gaining the truth. Only the three-legged whore would be left alone. Badly chopped people like her saw little and thought even less.

In Crescent Canton, the landscape changed abruptly. The buildings lining the road became more intermittent-homes and farm buildings now, rather than taverns and shops-and though they could still hear the revelry across the border behind them, Crescent was so obviously a different place. The reservoir marked part of the border, and the landscape beyond was a network of irrigation channels and pumping stations, with several great tusked swine pushing in circles at each pump to keep it working. A short fat man with bright red hair was waddling from one pump to the next, feeding the swine and singing songs of encouragement to keep them moving. He raised a lazy hand in greeting, and Gorham waved back.

"He'll remember us now," Malia said.

"Malia, thousands of people pass through the border every day. He probably waves to all of them."

"Still. Can't hurt to be cautious."

"There's caution and there's paranoia."

"Gorham, everyone is out to get us." Malia smiled, but it was a cool expression. He couldn't remember ever hearing her laugh.

There were many people on the road winding through the fields. Those coming from the opposite direction guided tusked swine pulling carts laden with fruits, vegetables, and plants with their root bundles bound with silk. Some hauled trolleys loaded with well-packed wine bottles, a few of these employing armed guards who eyed anyone approaching too close. Certain Crescent wines were worth more per bottle than the average Course inhabitant made in a week, and Gorham knew that most of it was destined for Marcellan Canton. Others walked alone, but their faces often displayed the contentment of a deal well done. Crescent Canton was the heart, lungs, and pantry of Echo City, the most fertile ground and the lowest part of the city, and the air here felt different. Gorham loved coming here, even when fruit and vegetables and other foods were the last things on his mind.

They walked for four miles. The landscape was given entirely to crops: fruit bushes, grapevines, vegetable fields, tobacco trees, and, here and there, the towering spires of mepple orchards, the red fruits as large as a person and jealously guarded against bird attack by vicious wisps. Farms dotted the gently rolling hills-some small, others spread over a wide area. Occasionally there were larger settlements where the farm workers lived, and the most expansive of these were raised slightly above the surrounding area. Below them lay their Echoes-old homes and streets and temples-but for as long as anyone could remember, Crescent had been farmland. Most of its subterranean Echoes consisted of long-dead fields, dried canals, and deserted farm buildings. On those rare occasions when its phantoms came to the surface, they haunted crops, not people.

"Almost there," Malia said. She'd hardly spoken for the entire walk, and though Gorham was used to this, it still irritated him. She was so focused on their purpose that she rarely let anything else in. He remembered her husband, Bren, well and could still picture the shocking sight of his body crucified high on the walls of Marcellan Canton. That had been almost three years ago. He'd long since rotted and fallen, but in Malia's mind his death was still on display.

If she'd had her way, they would have started a revolution long before now.

They stopped at the entrance to an old farm complex, sitting on the low stone wall. It seemed quiet. Gorham could just see a couple of figures on the road a way back, maybe a mile distant, and several miles beyond that was the imposing mass of Marcellan.

Malia was looking up, but the sky was clear of all but clouds.

"Time to go down," she said. It sounded as if she almost relished the idea of their descent. For Gorham, saying goodbye to the daylight was like ceasing breathing.

They walked along the overgrown lane to the farm. The main house was a ruin, its roof tumbled in a fire many years before, and the outbuildings had fallen into disrepair. It was said the place was haunted by more than phantoms, and though it was the Baker who propagated those stories, Gorham knew that he should believe every one of them.

After all, she had many more things at her disposal than ghosts.

Inside one of the farm's ruined barns, beneath a pile of fallen tools that had apparently rusted together into a single tangled heap, was one of the entrances to the Echo where the Baker maintained her laboratory. There were many ways in, Gorham knew, and perhaps fewer ways out, but this was the only one he and the Watchers had been told about, and he was quite certain it was theirs alone. As far as he was aware, the Baker-her name was Nadielle, but she had breathed that to him only on their third meeting-had not yet lied to him. The time might come, he knew, when events would start to prove more difficult, but he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone. Almost as much as he had trusted Peer.

He closed his eyes and thought briefly of his old love. When these moments came, he tried to imagine her as dead as Malia's husband-rotted away, gone. And he mourned.

"What is it?" Malia asked.

"Nothing. Here, help me." They grabbed a handle or blade each, and as they lifted, the tumbled tools rose in one solid mass. Beneath, when they kicked away the scattered straw, dust, and powdered chickpig shit, lay the trapdoor that led down into Crescent's Echoes.