Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"I thought the Heart and Mind…" he began, and the ground at his feet began to stir.

"… is everywhere," the Tender says. The tall man steps back, moving gracefully as the gritty ground breaks open. A shape appears, nosing from the soil, lengthening, its mottled red appendage seeming to sniff this way and that before steadying in front of Rufus. It moves in close, then becomes utterly motionless.

Rufus can hardly breathe. He glances at the Tender, but the man's eyes are closed, hands clasped before his chest.

The thing darts forward and touches Rufus's forehead. It spreads. Though terrified, he cannot move, can barely even breathe, as the Heart and Mind touches him outside and in.

Eyes still squeezed shut, he feels the weight of a yellow Tender's robe slung around his shoulders.

Later, when he starts out into the desert from which no living thing has ever emerged, he knows that the tall Tender is watching. But as Rufus pulls the sled and leaves the Heartlands, he does not once look back.

Nophel sensed him coming before he saw him: Dane Marcellan, the man who had saved and doomed him, one of the city's dictators and also a Watcher. A man of complex contradictions, and now he was beneath the ground where no one ever came.

"Wait," Nophel said, and the others heard the urgency in his voice. How can I know he's here? How can I? "There's something…"

"What?" Alexia asked urgently.

He's close, Nophel thought. And he's not alone. However much he might trust the fat man, this felt wrong.

"We have to hide," he said.

"We have to go on!" the tall Unseen said. "We're through the soul-fire, but there's plenty of time for them to catch us yet."

"And why would the likes of us need to hide?" Alexia asked.

"You don't understand," Nophel said, and then lights danced in the Echo before them. Oh, no, he thought, partly because he had been right.

The Scarlet Blades streamed toward them, moving almost silently across the Echo, finding cover even when none seemed to exist. They were phantoms, their heavy red cloaks billowing around and behind them and deadening any small noise they did make.

"Move aside," Alexia said, and the band of Unseen left the rough trail they had been following south. She had relieved one of the men carrying Rufus. He'd awakened and struggled again, and Nophel had watched his every move, listened to his every word. There's plenty going on inside that head, Nophel thought. Can he harbor such bitterness as I do?

Following behind the Scarlet Blades came Dane Marcellan, with three soldiers surrounding him. The fat man was panting, but still he kept up with his soldiers, jogging comfortably in his finery. And something about him had changed. Perhaps it was seeing him in these strange surroundings instead of in the well-appointed Marcellan rooms back in Hanharan Heights. Or maybe it was because Nophel had spent more time out in the city than ever before, and his home and the Scopes seemed far away. But Dane looked different, lessened somehow, and Nophel smiled softly as his old master ran by.

And then stopped.

"Wait!" Dane said. His Blades obeyed. He looked around, shining his torch into the shadows, playing it across the Unseen without pause… and then holding it on Nophel, because Nophel had let himself be seen.

"Nophel!" he gasped.

"Dane."

The Scarlet Blades hovered uncertainly.

"Do you have him?" Dane asked, glancing left and right.

"Take them all," Alexia said quietly, and Nophel acted almost without thinking. He stood between Dane and Alexia, hands held up in both directions.

"We have him," Nophel said. "But the Dragarians are following, and if they catch us-"

"They won't," Dane said. "He's with your friends?" He nodded at the darkness where he could see nothing, knowing for sure that something was there.

"Yes," Nophel said. "Alexia, he's here to help!"

"Dane Marcellan," Alexia snarled, cursing the man who had doomed her and the other Unseen-and yet Nophel heard the hesitation in her voice.

"He's not like all the others," Nophel said, focusing on Rufus. And he'll give us more time, he thought. More time to talk with Rufus Kyuss. To discuss. And to decide which of us will kill the Baker bitch.

"Go fast," Dane said, waving his Blades forward. "Defensive line."

Alexia manifested, sighing and almost slumping to her knees. "Marcellan!" she growled, and Dane turned. A flash of recognition crossed his eyes. "There are two more behind us," she said. "Not Unseen. They'll not be expecting you."

"We'll watch for them." He glanced back and forth between Nophel and Alexia, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"We'll… move on," Alexia said, sensing the loaded air between the two men. She retreated into the shadows, fading again, and Nophel heard her and the others carrying Rufus between them.

"Why did you come?" Nophel asked.

Dane sighed, continuing to look for the retreating Unseen and the amazing man they took with them, but it was a distraction. Nophel saw the Marcellan's mind working, and he seemed to be at conflict with himself. Finally he lowered the torch and stepped forward, looking Nophel in the eye.

"To help you," he said.

"Why would you-"

"To help…" He seemed to struggle, chewing on words that might or might not come. "The Watchers," he said at last, but his voice was flat and unconvincing.

"And something more?" Nophel asked.

"I've always seen something in you I don't like," Dane said. "Bitterness. But whatever she did to you, she's dead now."

"It seems the Baker never dies," Nophel said.

"The workhouse was her idea!" Dane spurted, and Nophel had never seen him so out of control. "She couldn't keep you; you were a shock to her. And when you were born she tried to cure your affliction, but she failed. Weakened by childbirth, perhaps. You were too much responsibility for someone like her. And to begin with I agreed. If anyone were to discover I had a son…"

Son, he had said. Nophel's breath caught. Son.

"I've always wanted to tell you but never knew how," the Marcellan said.

"I'm your son," Nophel said. "You and the Baker…"

"She wasn't a good woman," Dane said. "Such unnatural gifts, and they gave her a need for acceptance. Companionship. But never love." Nophel had never seen Dane looking so sad.

"That's why you took me from the workhouse."

"When I could find reason, yes. We Marcellans needed someone to tend the Scopes, and I volunteered to find the perfect candidate."

"You took me because you cared."

"I took you because you're my son," Dane said, as open and honest as he had ever been.

"Did she know?"

Dane blinked a few times as if he'd never even considered that. "Maybe. But she didn't…" He glanced away from Nophel, embarrassed.

"Care?"

Dane looked ahead at the shadows where his Blades had disappeared. "I have to go," his father said, smoothing his uniform. Three Blades waited a dozen steps behind him, ready to protect him to their last breath.

"Why can't you come back with us?" Nophel asked.

"No," Dane said, shaking his head. "No. I can give you time. I can help you, because you have to leave. To survive. Don't be too harsh on the Baker. She's not like us." Dane reached out and touched Nophel's diseased face, so gently. And then he turned and started to run, and though Nophel called after him-once, loud, risking discovery in these darkening places-the Marcellan soon disappeared into the shadows.

Nophel turned and rushed after the Unseen, the place on his cheek where his father had touched burning, and as he tried to absorb the news, a flush of fury washed over him. His mother had abandoned him like a failed experiment, and eventually his father had rescued him and kept him in a tower, his shameful secret.

But the fury was a confused thing-hot and cold, rich and weak-and the tears, from both good eye and bad, took him by surprise.