Tim Lebbon - Echo city

When he realized how thirsty he was and opened his eyes, the moths had gone. He looked up into the endless space above him, and he knew that somewhere up there they flew. They carried his words with them. He hoped people would listen.

When he left the moth room, he could see Rose's feet where she stood beyond the nearest vat. She was motionless, silent, and he watched for a while, waiting to see if she moved. She did not. He thought of walking around the vat to see if she was well but decided against it. What can she be making? he wondered. What can save all those people? Nadielle had mentioned rackflies, their spreading of germs, but she had kept her ideas close to her chest.

Rose had set him on his task, and her own was something he could have no part of. He'd watched enough monstrous things birthed from these vats, and he had no real wish to see what she was making next.

So he went to the next room, the one with deep holes in the walls where the sleekrats lived, and started whispering his message again.

After the sleekrats, the bats; and after the bats, the red-eared lizards. These creatures he had never used before, and he approached them with caution. They had a reputation for being vicious and cruel, their surprising intelligence balanced with a hatred and fear of humanity that kept them deep, or in places where few people lived. But he trusted Rose and trusted what Nadielle had initiated here. The lizards watched him with their stark yellow eyes as he whispered. Then they left, flitting through cracks in the walls to the Echoes outside and from there up into the world.

He worked until there were no more creatures left. His throat was sore and dry, and the message repeated itself in his head: an endless, doom-laden echo.

Just before the last of the lizards had left, a distant impact shook the small room, dust drifting from the ceiling and stone shards pattering down in one corner. He'd paused and held his breath, but no more noises came. Rose, he'd thought, because she was working outside on her vat.

Leaving the room, stretching and craving a drink, he saw her sitting on the vat's top lip.

"Did you hear it?" she asked. "Feel it?"

"Was that you?"

She shook her head, then looked down into the vat. An array of bottles and pouches sat on a board beside her, and she picked up one bottle and dripped several splashes of its contents inside. Gorham went to ask her more, but it already felt as if she'd never spoken to him. The Baker has a talent for being dismissive, he thought.

As he stood at the toilet at the back of her rooms, rebuttoning his fly, another thud transmitted up through his feet. In the pale-yellow water below him, ripples.

He went back out to see how else he could help.

It had been a long time since Dane Marcellan had fought. As a young man he'd spent some time as an anonymous soldier in the Scarlet Blades-a rite of passage required of every Marcellan who did not make the shift into the Hanharan priesthood-and he'd been involved in the short but brutal Seethe War in the south of Marcellan Canton. Drug dealers and pimps had come in from Mino Mont, united to try to assert their authority over a small neighborhood. It had taken seven days of house-to-house combat before the last of them was captured or killed, and Dane had been at the forefront of the fighting, killing two men and a woman and being present at the impromptu execution of nine more. He had not enjoyed it, but it had been necessary. It had been required.

Now he had blood on his hands again-and his clothes and face, in his eyes and ears and mouth-and he fought with more fervor than he had felt in many years.

Those loyal Blades who had pledged allegiance to him also fought hard, and died hard. The force against them was staggering and inescapable, but behind them Dane knew the hope of the city was still fleeing, and he had to give them every moment he could.

And more than that, Nophel, his son. He had to save his son.

He sidestepped a sweeping blow from a Dragarian with blades for arms, ducked down, and buried his sword in the bastard's groin.

"Fight, you bastards!" he shouted. "For every mother and son and daughter and every fucking nephew and niece you have, fight for them all!" None of these Blades knew the story or why they were fighting. But every time he cried out encouragement, they roared their approval and battled that much harder.

They know this is death, he thought, but they keep fighting. I'm fighting for Echo City, but they're fighting for me. For me! He screamed and ran forward, reversing the direction of their retreat and engaging three Dragarians. These were regulars-unchopped but still trained for war-and they came at him with swords and knives, throwing stars and weighted wires that would take his head from his shoulders. He ducked and stabbed, kicked and bit, slashed and thrust. Something struck his shoulder and pain flared, but his scream was one of fury. Wetness splashed across his throat and chest, and he was unsure whether it was his. A sword jabbed at him and he fell back, straight onto another. It pierced his hip and he turned, kneeling, twisting the knife from the owner's hand, smashing his head forward, and feeling cartilage crunch beneath his forehead. The man stepped back, holding his nose, eyes watering as he looked in comical surprise at the blood pooling in his hand. Dane jabbed, and his sword's tip entered the man's left eye, wide blade jamming in his skull.

I'm leaking, Dane thought, and he caught a glimmer sweeping through the air toward him. He fell forward and rolled, crying out as the knife in his hip snagged on a fallen Blade's bloodied robe. The wire whistled by above him and he rolled onto his back, throwing a knife back at the wire wielder. It struck the woman's chest and rebounded from her thick leather armor. She glared at Dane, hatred filling her alien eyes, and her shoulder pivoted as she brought the wire around one more time.

Dane held up his hand to protect his face-and lost four fingers. They tumbled onto his chest. The breasts I've stroked with those, he thought, the muffs I've felt, the slash I've smoked, the food I've eaten, and the severed fingers curled as if stroking soft scented flesh one last time.

A Blade stepped astride him, warding off the woman, dummying, stabbing her in the gut, and then smashing her face with a spiked fist.

Dane went to stand but could not. Something was wrong with his legs. He roared again, putting every ounce of strength into rising, but nothing happened, nothing moved, and when he sought the pain below his waist he found none. He grabbed the knife in his hip and tugged it free, feeling nothing. Its blade was sticky with his blood and, near the handle, dark with something else.

Dirty fighters, he thought. He had seen several Blades butchered as they lay motionless and helpless but had not let himself wonder why. But every moment he'd spent here had given Nophel a better chance to escape.

"Run," he said to the Blade above him. "Retreat, stand again a hundred steps back, fight until you can't fight anymore."

"I'll not leave-"

"Do as you're fucking well told, soldier!"

She glanced down at him, then disappeared from view.

A Dragarian with haunting indigo eyes and four arms stepped into view above Dane Marcellan. It blinked eyes lizardlike and expressionless. Dane imagined raising his sword and popping those orbs, seeing if the bastard thing had expression then, but none of his limbs would move.

"Eat me," he said, offering a final curse, and the thing's impossibly wide mouth hinged open to display horrendous teeth.

Feeling and seeing the sky appear before her was the greatest breath of freedom Peer had ever experienced. The weight of the Echoes lifted away and she breathed easier, even though there was a stitch in her side and her lungs and legs ached. But she had to keep running. If she didn't and the Dragarians caught her, Malia's death would be in vain.