Echo city

As it left the city, the thing did not once look back. It walked with heavy steps, looked forward with rheumy eyes, and its misted breath soon dispersed in the air. It did not look back, because its purpose was ahead, and large though this thing was, its brain was small and simple, its reason for being very precise. It moved away from the world and out into the Bonelands, and it would never return.

Darkness concealed the start of its journey. It was aware of people in the buildings and ruins around it, but Skulk Canton was a place whose residents would keep to themselves. If they did not, its maker had instructed it to force their attention away. In its rudimentary mind, the idea of violence was little different from the process of placing one foot in front of the other, or breathing, or blinking its eyes to clear them of sand.

For a while as it started across the desert, the ground still bore signs of Echo City. Rubble from tumbled walls marred its path, and it had to step aside or climb over. One spread of land was scarred with the evidence of digging, the reason and results long since lost to time. And here and there it saw the remains of a body.

The moon's pale crescent lit its way. Beyond the moon, countless stars speckled the clear, cold night. The thing had no concept of what moon and stars were, because they bore no connection to its purpose. But it looked up at them with curiosity nonetheless. Its maker had granted it that, at least.

Soon it was away from the outer limits of the city. It walked as it had been instructed, avoiding places where the sands looked thin and loose and keeping to harder, easier surfaces. No plants existed out here, and no animals-nothing but sand and rock and the dry, heavy air it breathed. Sometimes a gentle breeze whispered a skein of sand across its path, and it held its breath as it passed through the brief, scouring cloud.

Its body was clothed in heavy leathers. It had watched its maker constructing this suit, stitching together the garments of many normal people to create something expansive enough to cover its huge torso. The suit was tied around its bulky thighs, upper arms, and neck, and the exposed surfaces of its arms and legs had been sprayed with a thick dark lotion to ward off the desert's inimical influence. Woven into the layers of leather were fluid sacs, in a network of narrow tubes that merged eventually beneath a thin, hollow bone straw protruding beneath its chin. It took frequent sips of water, and it was not long before the sips were tainted by the salty taste of its own perspiration.

Its shoes were tied leather folded many times, spiked with iron studs to give grip. It carried no weapons. It bore no pack. The prints it left behind were wide, long, and deep, and they would command awe were they noticed in the days following. But by then the thing would be dead, and it would never hear the myths of its passing.

As dawn set the eastern desert aflame, the thing marched on. It glanced to its left only once, experiencing a brief flare of wonder and awe. Somewhere deep down basked shadows of memories that were not its own, in which the view of such sunrises was interrupted by the silhouettes of spires and walls, towers and roofs. Such a natural, unhindered view as this was something all but unique, but the giant creature was not here to pontificate. It was here only to walk.

The desert stretched before it. To the south, a low range of hills buckled the horizon. They were perhaps a day's journey distant, though distance here was difficult to judge, and there were no maps of the Bonelands. It focused on the hills as it walked. By the time the sun had passed its zenith and begun its fall to the west, the hills seemed no closer, and it had to reassess its estimate of the time it would take to reach them. Beyond the hills, so every story said, there was only more poisoned desert. They were a meaningless marker at best. It might reach them… but probably not. Already it could feel the rot.

It paused to eat. Sitting on its huge haunches, the reduced weight of Echo City now many miles to the rear, it felt the rumbling, gnawing processes inside. There was a little pain, but it could compare the sensation only to the shimmering heat haze hanging above the desert far to the west-an insubstantial thing that would vanish as soon as it closed its eyes.

It closed its eyes, and the pain was warmth.

When it stood and started walking again, it looked down at its bare, sprayed legs. The skin was peeling, revealing a dark red rawness beneath. Its feet were blistered and swollen, and several of the tight leather straps had burst. It kicked off one of the folded leather shoes, and it flapped on the desert floor as tight folds unwrapped. And then the shoe was still, and there it would stay forever.

A while later the creature removed the other shoe, because wearing only one had been swinging it slowly around in a great arc across the sands. It corrected its direction of travel and set off once more.

It had passed several bodies on its walk, but just as the sun touched the western horizon it came across the first of the ruined transports. It was a rusted, rotten hulk, its wheels skeletons of metal wrapped in the brittle remains of parched wood. The creature walked close and touched one of the wheels, curiosity lighting a small flame in its limited mind. The wood came apart under its clumsy stroke, drifting to the ground in a cloud of dust and splinters. A gentle breeze that the creature had not even felt carried some of the wooden shards away, and they added themselves to the desert.

Before the ruined vehicle lay two great skeletons of the things that had pulled it this far. Pelts were draped across their bones in places, and within the stark confines of rib cages were the scattered remains of insides not yet burned to nothing by the relentless sun. Their horns were long and graceful, pitted now from the effects of the desert air.

Here and there it saw the mummified remains of human beings. They had been riding the wagon, and perhaps when their beasts succumbed to the desert's toxic influence, they had walked on until they all lay down together to die. The creature did not like to look at them. Though its maker had made it unique, somehow they reminded it of itself.

So it walked on and stared at that undulating horizon, and sometimes the texture of the ground beneath it changed. But it did not look down.

When dusk began to fall, it guessed that Echo City would now be out of sight behind it. But still it did not look back. The future lay before it-too far away to see, beyond its ability to feel-and as it considered what might come, the thing it carried inside seemed excited at the prospect.

It walked through the freezing night. Its motion kept it warm, but all the while it felt itself sickening. The desert's lethal, toxic influence was making itself felt upon the creature's flesh and bones, its blood and fluids, and though built strong it was now becoming weak. Darkness was its friend, though under the silvery sheen of moonlight it could still witness some of its flesh's demise. It was not worried, because it had not been made that way. But it did pause and stare up at the moon, and it realized that come dawn it would never see this sight again.

Sad, unsure what sadness was, it walked on.

When dawn broke on that second day, the creature realized just where the Markoshi Desert had gained its more common name.

The hills were still distant, and speckling the surface of the desert before them lay thousands of bones. There were skulls, some still bearing the leathery remnants of scalp and hair, and a few wearing the wrinkled skin of their hopeful, desperate owners. Beneath and around the skulls lay the skeletons. Older remains were all but buried by drifts, but more-recent escapees from Echo City lay atop the sand. Many of them were still clothed in the outfits they had believed would protect them from the desert's terrible actions, and beneath these, leathered skin was scarred with the rot. Most remains were whole, because not even carrion creatures could survive the Bonelands' poisons. Some had been scattered, however, and here and there the creature saw evidence of violence having been wrought. It knew that the only living things out here to perpetrate such acts would have been other people.

Their equipment lay around them where it had fallen. Bags, water skins, weapons, clothing, an occasional sled or wheeled vehicle, all had been heated by the relentless sun and cooled by the fearsome desert nights, and successive heatings and coolings had destroyed much. There was nothing here to aid the creature in its progress, and after a while it no longer paid heed to the strewn remnants of desperation and hope. It focused on the hills it would never reach, sucked water from the bone straw, and felt the thing inside it rolling and gnawing, making itself strong for the time to come.

It could feel itself weakening, but purpose drove it on. Flesh sloughed from its exposed limbs, and blood speckled the sand beneath it. Its large feet had spread since shedding the shoes, and had it looked back it would have seen the trail of bloody footprints. Sand worked its way into wounds, and the creature felt pain despite the way it had been made, and taught, and given life. It howled, but there was no one to hear.

Eventually it came to a stop among the bones and rocks and hot sands, sinking slowly onto its side and then its back, turning its head so that it could look across the desert at the low hills. They had drawn much closer, it thought, especially in the past few hours when it had been walking with the sun sinking to its right. It felt a sense of accomplishment and hoped its maker was pleased.

Its movements ceased, its eyes grew pale and dry, and its limited awareness of surroundings and purpose drifted away like dust on the breeze. Its only thought as things grew dark was that it had done its very best.

Hearing was the last to go, and the sound that accompanied it down into death was something tearing, and something wet.

The thing emerged from the giant corpse. It had been made with hooked claws and toes with which to rip, and it tore its way out through the weakened flesh. It had also been formed with a sharp ridge running down its forehead to the bridge of its nose, and it used this to saw and snap at the thick ribs that encircled its host's upper half. As it emerged, a bloody violent birth, it also ate and drank. The meat was warm and the blood thick, and strength coursed through its body.

Free of its confines, it remained there for a while as it grew accustomed to its surroundings. It had filled itself with its mother's flesh and blood, but already it could feel this desert's rot.

Its maker had warned it of this. Time was passing, the desert was exerting its poisonous influence, and it knew it had far to go.

Standing naked beneath the sinking sun, it looked to the sky and felt a sense of release that it could not accurately identify or understand. It had little to do with being away from the body now lying beneath and around it, because it thought of that only as meat. It had nothing to do with being able to stretch its arms and flex its clawed fingers at the glittering points of light. Looking back across the desert, marking the bloody prints stretching off into the dusk, it saw a smudge of light low on the horizon. Freedom, release… it thought it had something to do with leaving whatever that light represented.

Yet it knew that its destination lay in the opposite direction. It gathered folds of leather around its naked body, filled rough pockets with handfuls of meat from the thing that had birthed it, and started walking.

Daylight came, and night once more, and when it saw the sunrise for the second time it realized that there were no longer bones. The last set of remains it had passed had been wrapped in several layers of thick leather, a chain-mail body shell, and something that resembled the chitinous outer layers of a beetle. The mummified corpse had been lying with its right hand stretched out and finger pointing southward, as if indicating the place it wanted to be. Its mouth had been wide, and it had carried three obsidian teeth. On the corpse's skin, the creature had made out the dark smears of strange markings, and it wondered what that meant.

It had memories of something called Echo City, but they were very old, and they belonged somewhere else. It did not consider the strangeness of carrying such old memories when it had been born for only two days. It had a maker, and that maker's voice was the sole loud, clear thing in its fresh mind. Walk, that voice said, avoid dangers, look south, and travel as far as you can. It spoke in suggestions rather than words. The creature obeyed.

Though nothing lived in the desert, there were dangers. Around noon of that third day, it entered an area where great holes breathed dark fumes of gas and nightmare. Drawing in these fumes for the first time, the thing fell to its knees as its immature brain was racked with onslaughts of images dredged from some past it did not know. It saw faces and death, madness and war, and the release of an appalling disease that made it open its eyes again to look down upon its own body. It could not see its face to make out whether it resembled those in its nightmare, but its body was the same-and the abuse it suffered clothed it in the same sadness. Skin was weakening, flesh was rotting, and its insides churned as something sought release.

Farther, its maker's voice said, hardly audible through the nightmares. The creature stood and ran, ignoring the staggering pain that pummeled up from its legs as weakening bones crumbled. When they finally snapped, it crawled instead, hauling itself out of that region of holes and ventings, giving it the chance to breathe air that seemed clearer. Its mind settled, leaving it with the idea of its maker.

By dusk on that third day it could crawl no farther. Its fingers had worn away, and whatever ills the desert carried had turned its eyes to mush, its flesh to rotten stuff. It lay still as it birthed the thing it had been made to carry, and the maker had created it so that the pain was only slight.

As darkness came, it tried to imagine the maker saying, Good.

The smaller creature crawled from the remains of its mother. It had four legs and a hugely distended stomach, but the legs were long enough to lift it from contact with the sands and strong enough to carry it across the desert at startling speed.

It passed over a low range of hills, negotiating a dry ravine on the other side and continuing into the desert that lay beyond. Nothing lived here but it, though it did not find that strange. It carried vague and distant memories of life and plenty, but it did not suffer loneliness, because the maker was always there. It listened to the maker's songs, poems, and words of wisdom and humor, and though it could not respond, it knew that the maker was pleased. It ran fast and far, avoiding patches of lighter-colored sand, which would have sucked it down to unknown depths, and places where flames twisted across the landscape in defiance of the breeze.

At last night came, and in the deceptive shadows of dusk the thing tripped over a rock and broke one of its legs.

It lay quietly as death approached, feeling the desert's deadly influences now that it was down. It listened to the maker in memories, and even as its rounded stomach split and gushed forth innards, it did not feel the pain.

The thing that rose from the gore and steam walked on.

A day later, as noon scorched the sands and something slumped to the ground to die, the journey came to an end.

As the creature edged toward death, its legs fell apart and revealed the moist heart of itself. It growled as it obeyed what the maker had instructed it to do, defying the sun and the desert, the heat and the air, the dust and the winds. It felt its flesh withered and diseased, but it pushed harder as it birthed its son and willed itself to die, comforted that it was not the desert that had taken it in the end.

The child mewled as it squirmed in the sand. It poked strong fingers through the translucent film that enveloped it and blinked wet, intelligent eyes at the heat and sunlight that rushed in to bathe its soft skin. It tried to stand, but its legs were still shaky. It looked around, seeing only endless sand and sky.

And it imagined its maker growing sad, because there truly was nothing beyond the Bonelands.

Later, perhaps only hours before the child would have died, a shadow fell across it.

"This is not my home," Peer Nadawa whispered as she came awake. They were the words with which she had comforted herself on the afternoon she arrived in Skulk Canton, and now their recitation was a natural part of welcoming a new day. They had started as defiance but quickly became a mantra necessary for her survival. And they were never spoken lightly.

She opened her eyes to see what sort of day it would be. The ghourt lizard that lived in a crack between her bedroom wall and ceiling was scampering across the wall in a series of short sprints. It was gathering flies and spiders early today, and that meant it would likely rain before noon. Great. Another day spent harvesting stoneshrooms in the wet.

Peer watched the lizard for a while, preparing herself for the morning ritual of rising through the discomfort of old tortures. The lizard shifted so quickly that it seemed to slip from point to point without actually moving, and there were those who believed that ghourts really belonged in the Echoes below the city. Peer was not one of them. It was a foolish idea to believe that such simple creatures could become phantoms. And, besides, her parents had taught her stillness. Relaxed from sleep, she calmed her mind and watched each tiny movement of the lizard-its fluttering heartbeat, lifting toes, and the darting streak as it ran from one place to the next. She pitied the people who did not have the time to see such things, because she had long ago stopped pitying herself. She had all the time in the world.

She sighed and scratched an itch in her left armpit. The little lizard flitted back into its hole, startled at her sudden movement. Propping herself on her left elbow, she grimaced as she started to sit up.

They'd used air shards to penetrate her right arm to the bone. Sharper than any blade made of stone or metal, the shards could never be removed, and they were a constant reminder of her crime. They were set in her bone and cast in her flesh, and it took a while each morning to warm them until they became bearable. That's all they ever were-bearable. Some nights, and on the very worst of days, she could picture the torturer's grin as he slid them in and see the virtuous expression on the Hanharan priest's face as he stood beyond the torture table, praying for salvation for her errant soul. Of the two, it was always that fucking priest she wanted to kill.

Grimacing, Peer sat up and started to gently massage her right arm. The pain from her left hip was flaring now, past the numbness of sleep. They hadn't been so creative with that; the torturer had smashed it with a hammer when she refused to acknowledge Hanharan as the city's firstborn. It was only thanks to Penler's skill with medicines and the knife that she was able to walk at all.

She closed her eyes and went through the pain, as she had every morning for the past three years. Each morning was the same, and yet she had never grown to accept it. She fought against what they had done even though the evidence was here, in pain and broken bones. Penler had asked her many times why she still fought when there was no hope of return, and she had never been able to provide an answer. Truthfully, she did not know.

Gorham's face flashed unbidden across her mind. Perhaps he was haunting her, though for all she knew, he was dead.

Gradually the pain lessened and she sat there for a while, as always, looking around the small room in the house she had been lucky enough to find. It had two floors, and she always slept on the top one. There was a ledge beyond the window that led to other rooftops if she needed to escape, a system of alarms and traps built into the single staircase-that had been Penler's doing as well-and if she stretched and stood just right, she could see the desert from her window. Some nights, if she could not sleep, she spent a long time simply looking.

One of the downstairs rooms still contained several paintings of the family that had lived there before the salt plague a hundred years before. Peer had no idea what had happened to them other than they had died. Everyone in Skulk Canton had died, either from the plague or from the brutal purging that quickly followed, ordered by the Marcellans. But she liked keeping their images in the house. It had something to do with respect.

"Time to leave," she muttered. "Important places to go, powerful people to see. Stoneshrooms to pick." She often spoke to herself when there was no one else to listen. In Skulk there were many who would understand, and probably many more who would consider her mad. There were also those who viewed her as fair game; Echo City's criminals were a varied breed.

After washing in a bowl of cold water and eating a quick breakfast, she set about arming herself. A knife in her belt, three soft widowgas balls in her pocket, and the wide, short sword on view. She had never grown used to the sword, but Penler assured her that it would scare off any casual aggressors. Up to now, it had seemed to work.

He often chided her for living on her own. A woman on her own here in Skulk… he'd say, shaking his head, then pursing his lips because he knew exactly what she thought of such attitudes. Still, she knew that he had only her safety at heart. After berating him with a playful punch, she'd argue that most criminals here weren't really criminals at all. They execute the really bad ones, she would say. Some always slip through, he'd counter. And so their little play went on.

Today, she and Penler were meeting for lunch down by the city wall. He said that he had something to tell her. As always for Penler, the mystery was the thrill.

When the sun was up and birdsong filled the air, and Peer was feeling sharper and brighter than usual, she often considered Skulk Canton as evidence of the basic goodness in people.

Since the devastating plague, it had become the place to which criminals and undesirables were banished by the ruling Marcellans. Murderers, rapists, and pedophiles were still crucified on the vast walls of the central Marcellan Canton, but lesser criminals-pickpockets, violent drunks, and political dissidents-now had a new place to be sent. The vast underground prisons in the Echoes below the city had been closed, because the abandoned Skulk was far easier and less dangerous to police. It was a city unto itself, and the criminals were left to make it their own.

Over the past few decades, they had done just that. It could hardly be called thriving-they still relied on regular food deliveries from Crescent Canton, and a new canal had been built from the Southern Reservoir in Course Canton to ration their water-but the majority of people in Skulk lived a reasonable life, and most contributed to making their community a bearable place to live.

Naturally, there were those who viewed it as their own private playground. Thieves ran rampant in certain areas; gangs formed, fought, and dispersed; and there were a dozen men and women that Peer could name who considered themselves rulers of Skulk. But as with elsewhere in Echo City, these gangs and gang leaders ruled only those who were at their own level. Violence was frequent but usually confined to rival factions.

Those who kept to themselves were mostly left alone.

Upon her arrival, Peer had been convinced that she would be raped and killed within days. Terribly injured, traumatized from the tortures she had endured and the fact that she was no longer considered an inhabitant of Echo City, she had scampered into a building close to the razed area of ground that marked Skulk's northern boundary with the rest of the city, and there she had waited to die. She drifted in and out of consciousness. Time lost itself. Day and night seemed to juggle randomly with her senses. And one day after passing out, she woke up in Penler's rooms.

He told her that three men had brought her to him and then left. He did not even know their names.

Walking along the street toward the stoneshroom fields where she spent most of her mornings, Peer tried to deny the sense of contentment that threatened. She'd been feeling it for a while, as it sought to put down roots in a place that she had never believed she could call home. There was so much she missed-her friends, her small canal-side home in Mino Mont Canton, and Gorham most of all-that it felt wrong to be happy here. She had been banished from the world she knew, escaping execution only because the Marcellans knew it would be dangerous should she become a martyr. In Skulk she could fade away. She was a prisoner who was growing to like her prison, an exiled victim of an insidious dictatorship who was forgetting the fire and rage that had fueled her past. Often she would strive to reignite that fire, but it never felt the same. Just let it come, Penler would say to her, referring to the gentle contentment and not the righteous passion she had once felt. She hated him and loved him for that, the infuriating old man. He was trying to save her, and she was determined to convince herself that she did not want to be saved.

This is not my home, she thought again as she walked through the narrow streets, but this morning Skulk Canton felt just fine.

She passed through a small square and saw familiar figures setting up stalls for breakfast. She bought a lemon pancake and had her mug filled with rich five-bean, and she dallied for a while, enjoying the sights and smells of cooking, the sound of bartering, and the good-natured air of the place.

"You'll be late!" a big man called as he stirred soup in a huge pot.

"The 'shrooms will wait, Maff," she said. "What's cooking?"

He motioned her over, and Peer smiled as she negotiated her way through a throng of hungry people. Maff always enjoyed revealing the recipes to his top-secret brews.

"Tell no one," he whispered as she drew close, his breath smelling of beer and pipe smoke, his big hand closing around her long, tied hair. "I had a consignment of dart root delivered yesterday. I'm mixing it with rockzard legs, some sweet potatoes from Course, and my own special ingredient." He tapped the side of her nose and glanced around, as if they were discussing a coup against the Marcellans themselves.

Peer raised an eyebrow, waiting for the great revelation.

"Electric-eel hearts," he whispered into her ear. "Fresh. Still charged." She felt his bead-bedecked beard tickling her neck and pulled away, laughing softly. When she looked at him, Maff was nodding seriously, pearls of sweat standing out on his suntanned skin. He touched her nose again. "Tell no one."

"Your secret's safe with me, Maff."

"So…?" he asked, lifting a deep spoon of the soup toward a bowl.

Peer held up both hands. "I'd like to wake up in the morning."

Maff shrugged and continued stirring the soup, and even as she bade him farewell, he called over a short, ratlike man. He whispered in the man's ear, nodded down at the soup, and his secret was told again.

In her early days here, Peer would have wondered what crimes Maff had committed to deserve banishment. Such thoughts rarely crossed her mind anymore. She left the square and weaved her way through narrow streets, the buildings overhead seeming to lean in and almost touch. The sun shone, though she still thought it would likely rain that afternoon, and Skulk Canton was buzzing with life.

She passed a group of men and women lounging on the front steps of a large building. They wore knives and swords on show, and all bore identical scars on their left cheeks-the unmistakable arc of a rathawk's wing. They observed her with lazy eyes and full purple lips, displaying the signs of subtle slash addiction, and one of them called to her softly. Laughter followed. She ignored the call and walked on, maintaining the same pace. She didn't want them to think she was running because of them, but slowing could have been seen as a reaction to the voice. They were part of the Rage gang-slash dealers and sex vendors-and she had no wish to be involved with them in any way.

She soon reached the first of the stoneshroom fields. There were already dozens of people at work, scrambling across the spread of ruined buildings in their search for the prized fungi. Much of the wild plant growth had been cleared from the rubble, making the stoneshrooms easier to spot and giving them space in which to grow, and the ruins were stark and depressing in the morning sun. Some areas still bore the dark evidence of fire, even after so long, and to Peer the ruin seemed recent, not a hundred years old. She breathed in deeply, closed her eyes, smiled as she tried to drive down the dark thoughts that always haunted her, then went to work.

She knew most of the stoneshroom gatherers, and they were a friendly group to work with. They were all out for themselves-picking the 'shrooms was only the first part of the process, the next being their cleaning, preparation, and sale-but often, if a good spread was found, word would filter quietly to the several other harvesters in the vicinity. They were a prized plant because of their heavy meatiness, and they were one of the few foodstuffs harvested within Skulk Canton. If ever we claim independence, Penler had once quipped, we'll all turn into stoneshrooms.

Peer worked hard, delving down into the spaces between collapsed walls, shifting small blocks aside where she could, and spending long moments of stillness sniffing for the fungi. Some hunters sang, and the song was taken up by others, but Peer remained silent today. She was looking forward to seeing Penler for lunch, and she hoped to have several 'shrooms prepared for him by then.

As noon approached, storm clouds drifted in over the city to the north. Peer derived some small satisfaction from knowing that it rained on the rest of Echo City before it rained on Skulk Canton. She made the most of the final touch of sunlight, then set off for the city walls.

Penler was sitting on a wooden bench looking out over the Markoshi Desert. Peer saw something symbolic in that. The bench must have been placed atop the wall by Watchers long ago, because the Marcellans and their Hanharan religion looked only inward, and Penler knew her Watcher history.

"Penler," Peer said as she approached. The old man glanced up and smiled, wiping his lips. He nursed a bottle of Crescent wine in his lap, a good ruby red, and she smiled at his flagrant display of resourcefulness. Close though they had become, he had never told her how he still procured such produce from outside.

"Peer, my dear," he said, shuffling along the bench. "Been keeping it warm for you."

The first drops of rain spattered the stone paving around them as she sat down. Penler was wearing a heavy coat with a wide hood, and she pulled up her own hood. The sound of rain striking it made her feel isolated, even though she sat there with her friend.

"I brought some stoneshrooms," she said, taking the folded cloth from her pocket. "Not the best of the crop today, but I arrived at the fields late."

Penler nodded and ran his fingers across the proffered fungi. He moved his hand back and forth, then paused above one of the smaller, darker slices. He leaned in and sniffed, then grunted in satisfaction. He could always hone in on the best of everything.

"I have some fresh bread," he said as he chewed, "and the wine is good."

"They'll execute me for drinking it," Peer said, laughing and taking a swig from his bottle. He was right; it was excellent.

"Even the Marcellans themselves won't be drinking better wine today," Penler said, and beneath the humor lay the familiar seriousness. He'd been sent here many years before when he published a book exploring the Dragarians' beliefs. The prosecuting Hanharan priests had claimed it was not the publication that marked him as a heretic but his sympathy for the Dragarians and their dead prophet-murdered by the Marcellans' own Scarlet Blades, after all-that shone through his writing. Proud, stubborn, Penler had confirmed or denied nothing, and his future was set.

"Fuck the Marcellans," she said, "and get that bread out."

They ate in silence for a while, comfortable in each other's company without feeling the need to fill it with noise. Peer looked out over the flat, featureless desert, watching the line of rain progressing outward as the clouds drifted overhead. Sands darkened, and before long the rain front had moved too far for her to see.

"The weather knows no boundaries," she said, but Penler only laughed. "What?"

"You," he said. "Still watching."

"I was born a Watcher," she said. "It was in my heart, such belief. I can't bear ignorance. I can't understand people who don't think such a thing."

"You don't understand me?" he asked, a tricksy question. She glanced sidelong at him, and he was staring at her with raised eyebrows and a curious smile on his lips. For an old man, his mind was agile. That's why she liked his company so much.

"You're an explorer," she said. She'd told him that before, and it seemed to please him immensely. In Echo City-a place mostly known-true explorers had only their minds in which to travel. That, or down into the Echoes.

Penler smiled, but it did not quite touch his startling blue eyes.

"Penler?"

"My exploring days are long behind me," he said. "I'm getting old, and sometimes I wish I could…" He trailed off and looked at the stoneshroom in the palm of his hand.

"Wish you could what?"

But he shrugged and stared back out at the desert.

The rain fell around them, light but drenching, and soon they were huddled together, sharing warmth and closing in so they could hear each other speak. It was strange, sitting side by side talking, because their raised hoods meant that they could not see each other unless they turned. Peer spoke and, when Penler responded, it sounded like a disembodied voice. The Marcellans claimed that Hanharan spoke to them in their sleep. We're ruled by ghosts, Peer thought, but that could not make her angry. She believed in a larger world beyond the deadly desert-never seen, never known-and what was that if not a ghost of possibility?

"You said you have something to tell me," she said at last. She heard Penler sigh and take another drink of wine. The rain fell. The desert sands were dark and wet. She loved sitting here at the southern tip of Echo City with the whole world behind her.

"Whispers," he said at last. "Peer, you know I have… ways and means."

She turned to him, took the wine bottle, and lifted it in a casual salute. "Something about you, is how they say it. Dark arts. Bollocks, I say."

"Getting things is easy," he continued, "and the border is not solid. There's money, and people will do a lot for that, whatever their declared allegiances. But I've never dealt in money."

"No. You deal in information." Peer sipped at the wine. It was almost gone, and she wanted them to relish the final drop.

"Yes. Information. It comes, and it goes. Much of what comes is of no consequence or is likely false. Some of what I hear, I store." He tapped his head, gave her that lopsided grin once again. "And some of what I hear, on occasion… sometimes I try to forget."

"Now you're worrying me."

Penler pressed his lips together and turned away, and as he did so the rain caught his face and spilled like tears.

"What is it?" Peer asked, suddenly afraid.

"Murmurs from the Garthans," he said.

"The Garthans?" Peer had never even seen one. They lived way down below the city, in some of the earliest Echoes that were supposedly tens of thousands of years old. Some said they were pale and blind and so far removed from surface dwellers that they were another species. Others claimed that they were cannibals, fondly feasting on offerings of human meat presented by those eager for their strange subterranean drugs. The only certainty was that they were no friends of top dwellers.

"Rumors of something wrong," Penler said.

"You've heard such things before. You've told me, there are always stories from the Garthans."

"Yes, that's true. But this time they're afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I don't know. But the Garthans are never afraid of anything."

Peer waited. Penler felt the pressure of her stare and turned so that she could see his face, hidden within his coat's wide hood. She was concerned for him, because his voice had sounded… different.

"Why tell me?" she asked.

"Because you're a Watcher."

"And what does that make you?"

Penler smiled then, but once again it did not touch his eyes. Raindrops struck his face again as he tilted his head back to laugh, but his effort to lighten the heavy mood felt strangely false.

"I think that sometimes people need to build falsehoods for their own ends."

Peer bristled. For such an intelligent man, Penler often displayed an ignorance that she found shocking. She'd tried to see through it many times, but his opinion was a solid front, and whatever lay behind wallowed in shadows that perhaps even he could not breach. Once, perhaps… years ago. But now he was growing old. Maybe the fire had gone from him.

"That's what the Marcellans call any beliefs they don't agree with," she said coldly. "Falsehoods. They told me to deny my own false beliefs as they slid the air shards into my arm." She held her right biceps with her left hand, squeezing to feel a rush of warm pain. It always fueled her anger.

"Peer," Penler said, and his voice carried such wisdom and age. "I know very well what they did to you. And you know me better than that."

Do I? she thought. It had been only three years, though in truth it felt like more. In all that time, Penler had yet to betray his true beliefs, even to her. Sometimes she thought he was a secularist, sitting apart and observing while his friends expended time and effort on their own diverse philosophies. And other times, like now, she suspected that he might be a devout believer in something he craved to disbelieve. There were contradictions in Penler that scared her and an intelligence that she sometimes suspected would be the death of him. Even while he told her to be calm and accepting, he fought.

"So the Garthans are afraid," she said, "and the rain still falls where no one can walk." She stared out across the desert from atop the city wall. A hundred years ago this would have been a place for market stalls and street entertainers, but now the wall's wide top was simply another place to sit and wonder.

"I have to go," Penler said. "Will you eat with me this evening?"

"Are you cooking?" Peer asked.

"Of course."

"Hmm." She did not turn, even when she sensed him standing beside her. And she could not contain her smile. "Last time, you cooked that pie and I had the shits for a week."

"Bad pigeon," Penler said. He was already walking away. "I'll see you before dusk. You can stay, if you like."

"I will," Peer said. It was not wise to walk Skulk's streets after dark. She watched Penler leave, and as he reached the head of the stone staircase, he waved. She waved back. Through the heavy rain, she could not see his expression.

Chilled, she stood and walked to the parapet, chewing on the last of the stoneshroom as she went. She liked looking over the edge and down at the desert. Where she stood was civilization, order, comparative safety, and the whole world and history of Echo City. Down there, where the desert began, was the symbolic boundary of their world. People often walked the sands close to the city wall, of course. In places the wall had degraded and crumbled, and it was easy enough to work your way down to the desert, because where the wall was solid there were no doors or gates. There was no need. But those brave explorers never remained there for long; soon they were scampering back up the stone pile again, waving away the respectful cheers of their peers or the admiring glances of those they had set out to impress. The city drew them back.

The desert was death, and those who had ventured far out and returned had all died horribly. Some had time to reveal what they had seen-the Bonelands, the dead, those who had gone before them shriveling in the sun-but most died without saying anything, diseased flesh falling from their brittle bones and their insides turned to bloody paste, rotted by the desert's toxicity. Gorham had once told Peer that he'd seen two people die this way, and he would never forget the terror in their eyes.

The desert had always been this way, and such a terrible place attracted its myths and legends. There were the Dragarians, shut away and isolated in their canton for more than five hundred years now, who believed that their savior, Dragar, would emerge from the desert at the city's final hour to lead them into their mysterious Honored Darkness. There was the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians, who claimed that the desert was home to six-legged gods that watched over Echo City. But the Markoshi Desert-commonly known as the Bonelands-was the end of the world. And there were the Watchers, her people. They believed that there was something beyond and that their future lay in countering the desert's terrible effects.

She never grew bored of this. As the rain came down heavier, Peer leaned on the wall and watched.

At first, she thought it was a breeze blowing through the rain. The shadow shifted far out in the desert-a slightly more solid shape amid the unremitting downpour. She frowned and shielded her eyes, blinking away moisture. The day had grown dim, and the cold was making her hip ache.

The top of the wall remained deserted. Most people were sheltering from the rain or doing whatever it was they did to make their lives easier. Penler had probably reached the place he was happy enough to call home. Peer was alone… and the chill that hit her when she next saw the shifting shape made that loneliness even more intense.

There's something out there, she thought, and the idea was shocking. Nothing lived in the desert, because it was a place of death. She strained to see farther, leaning on the parapet in a vain attempt to take her closer. Curtains of rain blew from east to west, wiping the movement from view, but between gusts the shape was always there. Something out there, and it's coming this way.

She glanced frantically left and right. To her left, a tower protruded above the wall, but she knew that the staircase in there led only up, not down. She knew of a small breach to her right, maybe half a mile away, that had collapsed a hundred years before, during the purging of Skulk Canton. Many fires had been set back then, and it was said that a pile of thousands of bodies had been thrown from the wall and burned. The intensity of the flames had made the stonework brittle, bringing down a section of wall.

Peer ran. She paused every few heartbeats to glance out over the desert; the shape was definitely there, closing, resolving, and her heart started to pummel from more than exertion, because it looked like a person. The way it moved, the way it shifted behind the veils of rain, seeming to hunch over as if trying to protect its face from the unrelenting storm, gave it all the characteristics of a human being.

And then she saw something strange. The figure stopped, and perhaps it was the first time it had looked up in a long while, because it paused where it was and leaned back, looking at the great wall before it and the city beyond.

Even though it was impossible through the rain and over this distance, Peer felt that she met the person's eyes.

She ran on, finding it difficult to tear her gaze away, and tripped and went down. Right arm, she thought, left hip, and she fell awkwardly so that she jarred both. She cried out, then looked around to see if anyone had heard her. In the street below, a couple of people dashed from one building to another, but they seemed unaware of her presence, and she was happy to leave them to themselves. Biting her lip, standing, she concentrated on the cool rain instead of the heat of her old injuries.

When she looked again, the figure had started running.

It was a man in a yellow robe.

And past the hushing rain, past her thundering heartbeat, she heard his scream.

Peer reached the breach in the wall and worked her way down the precarious slope. The rain made the tumbled blocks slippery, but that shouting still reverberated in her ears, driving her. She stumbled once or twice, jarring her right arm again, but then she reached the bottom.

She paused on the final block, feet a handbreadth above the ground. The desert is death. This was drummed into everyone in Echo City, from birth to the moment they died, and though she was exiled for sedition and still in possession of her own inquiring mind, it was difficult to deny such teaching. She stared at her heavy boots, then past them at the sodden ground. It was muddy. Sand flowed in rivulets, shallow puddles were forming, and for the thousandth time she wondered where the death dwelled. In the sand? In the air she was breathing even now? Many had written and spoken of the Bonelands, but none had derived a definitive answer.

And then she heard a shout, and, looking to her left, she saw a man kneeling in the mud at the base of the city wall.

She stepped down onto the sand and ran. She slowed only when she neared him, then paused a dozen steps away. He looked up, his eyes wide and fearful, his face gaunt, and he seemed as terrified as she was.

Who? she wanted to ask, but she could not form words. His clothes were of a style she had never seen before, his robe a dirty yellow. Over one shoulder he carried a bag, and strange things protruded from it. The rain ran from his white hair and down across his face. And then he opened his mouth.

"Who…?" Peer managed, because she felt it was important to say something first.

"You're not her," the man said. Then he fell onto his face and, somewhere over the city, lightning thrashed.

Gorham stood at the border of two cantons and smelled the sweetness of freshwater. The rain had ceased, the storm passing to the south, and before him lay the Western Reservoir, three miles across and speckled with boats and canoes. He heard laughter from the beach, where a group of people were eating rock crabs cooked over a huge fire pit dug into the sands. One of them glanced his way. The young woman smiled, and Gorham tried to smile back, wishing only that he could abandon himself to such casual actions. But his life was far removed from this.

"Gorham. We need to go." Malia plucked at his sleeve and walked toward the border post, glancing back to make sure he was following. He smiled at her but did not receive a smile in return. Stern face, short severe hair, Malia was a widow who had never finished grieving, and though she was reliable in a fight, Gorham had never found her to be the most scintillating company.

"One more moment," he said, and leaned on the metal railing to look across the beach one last time. The picnickers were arranging themselves into three small teams now for a game of searchball, and the woman who had smiled at him skipped in the sand, hair floating, breasts moving heavily beneath her light shirt. Her joyous expression was absolute. She did not look his way again.

"For fuck's sake," Malia muttered.

Gorham turned and rested his back against the railing, looking east at the imposing hills of Marcellan Canton. Echo City's rulers' huge home district had been built upon so frequently that it was much higher than the rest of the city, its Echoes below-those old places, forgotten streets, emptied buildings, and past times-deeper and more complex than elsewhere. Each successive generation of Marcellans seemed to want to stamp their own mark on the city, and they did that by building and naming a series of structures after themselves. Why they could not simply rename older places, Gorham did not know. He supposed it was all to do with ego.

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.

"I hate this," Malia said. "It's the future we're looking to, isn't it?"

"And the Baker's going to help us get there," Gorham said. "So what better place to hide than the past?"

He lifted the trapdoor himself and started down the narrow wooden staircase. There were several metal torches fixed to the wall, and he took one and lit its wick with the flints supplied. He shook it and listened to the thick slosh of oil. It sounded full. As ever, Nadielle seemed prepared.

Malia descended behind him, picking up her own torch, and their journey down to the Baker's laboratory began. The wooden staircase ended in a short, narrow corridor, at the end of which was a metal door, bolted shut. Gorham twisted four bolts in a specific sequence and heard tumblers turning. He pulled, and the door squealed as it came away from the frame. A breath of air sighed out from beyond, carrying with it strange smells and the hint of faraway voices. They might have been phantoms or the whispered communication of the Baker's guards. Whichever, he and Malia would meet them soon.

Beyond the corridor was a slightly sloping cave. It had once been a field of grapevines, and some of the thicker stems were still visible protruding above the dust. Perhaps the old fields had been ruined by overuse or poisoned by some long-ago cataclysm. In places there were huge, thick columns supporting the roof, gnarled and knotted with the twisted metal and cemented stone used to build up from the land below. There were footprints here and there, and, with no breeze to shift dust, they could have been recent or ancient. Some of them were his own from previous visits. It disturbed Gorham that he could not tell which were which.

He and Malia walked across the underground plain, their torches setting shadows dancing in the distance.

With a hiss, the first of the Baker's chopped came in. It drifted low, trailing several long tendrils in the dust as though drawing energy from the ground. Gorham had seen this one before and thought it might once have been a woman, but now it was something else. Six arms, four thick legs, and two sets of light membranous wings made it unique, just as all of the Baker's creations were unique. It dribbled something from its wide mouth as it hovered, and its obsidian eyes flickered this way and that-perhaps blind, or maybe possessed of a sight Gorham did not understand.

"Gorham and Malia," Gorham said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, echoing into the dark distance.

The thing circled them, wings beating so fast that they were almost invisible. They were virtually silent, though their downdraft whisked up a cloud of fine dust that soon dimmed the effect of the torches. One set of arms reached forward-the hands were horribly human, fingernails blackened and sharp-and it came in quickly to touch their faces. Gorham was prepared, but he heard Malia gasp in shock behind him.

"It's fine," he said quietly. Her hand reached gently for his shoulder, seeking contact.

The thing flew away, and within heartbeats it was lost to view.

"I can never get used to this," Malia said.

"She's got a lot to guard against. A lot to be afraid of."

"With what she can do, I can't imagine her being afraid of anything."

"You'd be surprised." Gorham walked on, aiming for the far end of the field.

They passed through another door and started their descent through a maze of caverns and tunnels that confused him every time. They waited in the third cavern for what they knew would come, and the chopped man emerged from a crack in the wall within moments of their arrival. He was short and exceedingly thin, his head half the size of a normal man's, and his naked skin was constantly slick from some strange secretion. He moved with a disconcerting grace-almost dancing, like the troupes that performed on the streets of Mino Mont-and Gorham wondered how flexible his bones would be.

"My name's Gorham," he said. The small man glanced back, blinked softly, then continued on his way.

"I don't think he likes you, Gorham," Malia said.

"I doubt he even knows what we're saying."

The man led them from cavern to tunnel, cave to crevasse, and a while later they crossed a shifting rope bridge that spanned a dry canal. The bed was speckled with white shapes, and Gorham thought perhaps they were skeletons. He did not pause to make out whether they were human. He had never been this way before.

"How many routes are there to this damned place?" Malia said when she caught sight of the bones. Gorham did not answer, because he had been wondering the same thing.

They passed through an old village. Most of the buildings were in ruins, but there were a couple that still bore their roofs, almost fully tiled and with chimneys intact. Behind one of the glassless windows, in a building that might have been a temple to forgotten gods, shone a pale light. Gorham thought for a moment that torches had been lit to mark their way, but then he realized that was a foolish idea. This man had been sent to guide them in. And Nadielle would do nothing so obvious.

"Gorham," Malia whispered.

"I know." At the sound of their voices the light flared slightly, then blinked out. The phantom went to hide.

Beyond the ruined village they hit an ancient road, where wheel ruts cast thousands of years before were still visible. The man led them along the center of the road, and then without warning he turned right and ran into the dark.

"Wait!" Malia called. Her voice did not echo at all, as if the pressing darkness dampened it.

"Hey!" Gorham went to follow, but the man was already out of sight. Slipped away into a crack in the ground, he thought. He wondered how many of the Baker's chopped were watching them.

"So what the crap are we supposed to do now?" Malia said.

Gorham looked around, turning slowly and following the light from his torch. "Nothing," he said at last. "We're almost there."

"I've never come this way before."

"Nor I. Like I said, she's being very careful."

"Well, when she hears-"

"Hush."

Malia fell silent, and Gorham closed his eyes briefly. Yes, when she hears what we have to say. But right now he was trying not to look that far ahead. In the dark, in the coolness of forgotten times, he was simply looking forward to seeing Nadielle again.

"You must be hungry," a voice said. "Thirsty. This way. The Baker has a feast for you."

Gorham smiled, and five steps from them a chopped woman lit her torch. There were three of them in all, standing within striking distance of Gorham and Malia. Until that moment, none of them had been visible. They were naked, and their skin seemed to shift in and out of focus as the oil torches flickered. They each had a third arm protruding from between their breasts that ended in a wicked-looking serrated blade, and spines along their sides were raised and ready to spit. The Pseran triplets. Nadielle had told him about them-Three of my best, she had said, three of my most perfect-but this was the first time he had laid eyes on them. He knew now why the Baker was so proud. Beautiful, shapely, exquisite, intoxicating-and given cause, any one of them could kill him before he blinked.

"What in the name of Hanharan…?" Malia whispered.

"No," Gorham said, "nothing to do with him at all."

The Pserans started walking, keeping far enough apart to avoid presenting a combined target, and Gorham and Malia followed.

He had been to the Baker's laboratory many times before this visit. Each time it had seemed slightly different-dimensions altered, design subtly shifted, the space it occupied flexed or folded-though the one constant was that it was filled with equipment that meant nothing to him. He knew some of what Nadielle did but never how she did it. That had always been the way of the Bakers, and the mystery was part of her allure.

The final door closed behind them and the Pserans slipped away. As Gorham glanced around to see where they had gone, he heard a low chuckle, and when he turned forward again the Baker was there.

"Gorham," she said. She seemed amused. "You look hungry. You like my Pserans?"

Nadielle was the only woman who knew how to make him blush.

"And Malia. It's nice to see you again." She sounded so sincere.

"And you, Baker," Malia said. "Your Pserans said you have a feast for us."

"They don't lie," Nadielle said. "Not unless I tell them to." She was staring at Gorham, enjoying his embarrassment, and she was more beautiful than ever. Last time down here, as they were rolling on Nadielle's bed, her legs wrapped around his back to hold him deep within her, she'd whispered into his ear: They watch. He'd known who she meant, because she was so proud of her chopped. They were like her children. It had given him a strange thrill then, and now that sensation returned. He glanced around again, feeling their eyes on him still, realizing that was what they were made to do.

Nadielle laughed out loud and turned, leading them deep into her laboratory.

Her seven womb vats were all full, condensation bejeweling their surfaces and dripping in a steady stream to the stone floor. The vats were made from metal or heavy gray stone-Gorham had never been entirely sure which, and he dared not touch one-and they stood propped with thick wooden buttresses wedged against the floor, giving the impression of a temporary placement. There were drainage holes around the vats to take any spillages, and bubbles of strange gas popped thickly from several of them. I wonder what she's chopping now, Gorham thought. The awe he felt each time he visited her down here was rightly placed, because she could do something that no one else in Echo City was able to do. Many attempted to copy, and the results were the twin-twatted whore, soldiers with clubs instead of fists, men with cocks like a third leg… and, sometimes, monsters. But no one could match Nadielle's talent or finesse, passed down to her from Bakers long past. No one ever had.

They left the vat room and entered a place of chaos. There were tables and chairs, cupboards and shelving units, baskets slung in chains that could be raised and lowered from the ceiling when required, boxes strewn around the room's perimeter, books piled high or pressed open on the surfaces, and many fine glass containers bearing all kinds of matter-some fluid, some more solid, and some that looked like heavy gas. Other containers held material not so easily identifiable.

Nadielle weaved across the room and through a curtained doorway. Gorham followed, and the smells of Nadielle's living quarters inspired a rush of memories. He glanced at her bed-blankets awry, pillows propped up, books strewn across its surface-and wished that Malia had not come.

But their purpose here was serious, and Nadielle was aware of that. She guided them to her table and sat down.

"I know you've come for something important," she said. "It's not just another visit to read my mother's books or to pore over the maps and charts I have down here. Not even…" She nodded toward the stacked bookshelf where the three Old Texts were hidden away. Gorham had read them, and the power and intelligence evident in books purported to be more than four thousand years old still staggered him.

"No," he said, "not them. Although what we came to discuss might concern them more than ever before."

"You Watchers," Nadielle said, a smile pricking up the corners of her mouth.

"What do you mean by that?" Malia asked defensively.

"Always so serious. Always waiting for the end-"

"Not waiting for it," Gorham said. "Expecting it. The city might have been here for five thousand years, or fifty thousand, but nothing lasts forever. We watch for Echo City's inevitable end so we can be ready for it."

"Don't mock our purpose," Malia added coldly. "When the end comes, we'll have our way across the desert."

"Maybe you will," Nadielle said, nodding, and the smile was still there. "For now let's eat. You've been on the road for a while, and no good decisions are ever made on an empty stomach."

So the three of them ate. The food was cold but delightful. There were breads and cheeses, smoked meats, dried fruit, yogurts flavored with some of the finest spices, and a sake-fish whose pinkness and subtlety meant it must have come from the Northern Reservoir. Malia ate quickly beside him, eager to get to why they had come, but Nadielle savored each mouthful. Gorham wondered yet again how she managed to procure such good food. The bread had the taste and texture of the very best of the Marcellan bakers, and the cheese must have been matured for a long time. He could ask, but he knew that her answer would be misleading.

"How are you, Malia?" Nadielle asked. The question's meaning was obvious.

Malia shrugged, chewing a mouthful of mixed dried fruit.

Nadielle nodded slowly. "It heals, with time."

"You're twenty years old! If Bren and I'd had children, you could have been one of them." Malia trailed off, staring down at the tabletop but seeing something much farther away.

"My apologies," Nadielle said, but Gorham could see that she was not sorry at all. There was something about Nadielle that removed her from the world of Echo City. It wasn't even the fact that she chose to live belowground, with only the Echoes and her strange creations for company. Sometimes when he looked into her bright young eyes, there was such age there that it terrified him.

"It doesn't matter," Malia said, still staring down at the table.

They ate in silence for a while, Gorham trying to catch Nadielle's eye. But she looked down at her plate, cutting food very precisely, building meat on bread on cheese to gain the most of their blend of tastes. He watched her smooth hands and remembered them working at him with equal dexterity. Everyone who knew of her feared the Baker, and he wondered what his friends would think if they knew about their liaison.

When they had finished eating, Nadielle sat back in her chair and stretched her lithe body beneath the roomy clothes she always wore. Then she poured them each another glass of fine Crescent wine, raised her glass in silent toast, and waited for them to begin.

"We have people all over the city," Malia said. "Watchers, like us, and sometimes just people ready to earn a few shillings. They're instructed or paid to watch for certain things. Signs. Events out of the ordinary. Anything that might signify change. There are frequent false alarms, of course. Messages passed along that have already lost their meaning by the time they reach us. Lies, from people bored of waiting and wanting some money."

"But this is no false alarm," Gorham said.

Nadielle raised an amused eyebrow, but he saw a flash of something darker. Interest? Fear?

"What is no false alarm?"

Gorham glanced at Malia, and she nodded that he should continue. "It comes from three sources," he said. "First, Malia knows an explorer of the Echoes, Sprote Felder, and he has limited contact with the Garthans. He studies them, believes he has their trust, and he says there is concern among several of their deepest settlements. He wasn't specific, other than saying they were unsettled."

"Sprote is a mad old fool," Nadielle said, laughing.

Gorham blinked in surprise. She told me she never leaves this place. "He's a historian," he said. "His work on the Course Canton Echoes is well respected."

"Respected by some," Nadielle countered. "And I didn't say he was stupid, I said he was mad. He spends all his time down in the past."

"As do you," Malia said.

"You know nothing about me," Nadielle said after a pause, staring at Malia until she looked away. "So, the second source?"

"A priest from the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians," Gorham said.

Nadielle glanced back and forth between Gorham and Malia as if expecting a joke.

"They're harmless enough," Malia said. "And the Hanharans accept them."

"They allow them. It's different."

Malia shrugged.

"I trust him," Gorham said. "He's a good man, if misguided. And just because he thinks his beliefs are right, he doesn't insist that we are wrong."

"How magnanimous of him," Nadielle said.

"His elders are learned men and women. Intellectuals, not fanatics. Not mad. So I trust him, and he trusts them. And they say that something is coming."

Nadielle was silent for a while, blinking softly in the gentle glow of candlelight. She sipped her wine, picked at the remains of a loaf of bread, and hummed a tuneless melody.

"And the third source?" she said at last.

Gorham looked sidelong at Malia. They'd disputed whether or not to reveal their third source, not because of her privacy but because… well, because she was mad.

"Bellia Ton."

Nadielle laughed-a deep, throaty cough that did worrying things to Gorham's composure. She chuckled like that just after she came.

"The river reader?" the Baker asked. "You claim two sources that aren't mad but I say may be. And then you bring her into the tale? She's as mad as ten rockzards fucking a chickpig."

"Nicely put," Malia muttered.

Gorham held out his hands, palms up, and stood from the table. "Hear us," he said. "She's unreliable, but when she tells a story that meshes with others we've heard, we have to consider its veracity."

"And what story does the mad old hag tell you, Gorham?" Nadielle asked. Her eyes had grown icy, and he didn't like that. Neither did he understand it. He looked to Malia for support, but she was pouting as she picked the flesh from a slice of dried mepple.

"She holds court in a tavern in Mino Mont, right out by the city wall, close to where the River Tharin flows out into the desert."

"I know where she spouts her tales."

"One of our people was there."

"A Watcher?"

Gorham shook his head.

"A mercenary, then."

"Someone who sells us information," Malia said. "That doesn't mean it's false."

Nadielle was shaking her head, but Gorham went on, angry at her for dismissing something before she'd even heard it.

"She listens to the river, claims she can judge the health of the city by reading the waters that have flowed through it."

"The dead waters," Nadielle said. "Nothing lives in the river. It's as dead, and deadly, as the desert it comes from and goes to again."

"Maybe… but she heard sounds in the waters," Gorham said. "Noises from below, she said. Deeper than the Echoes, deeper than where any Garthans live, beneath Marcellan Canton where the Falls are, and-"

Nadielle stood quickly, her eyes growing wide and her glass tipping over. Wine flowed onto the bread platter and soaked in like spilled blood. "Do you know how she claims to read the river?" she asked, and Gorham thought he had never seen her so animated. "She dips her hands and feet in. She sits on the riverbank among the water refineries and touches the water. Sometimes she stays that way for half a day. So her madness isn't a weakness, really, but a strength. Do you know anyone else who could survive those poisoned waters for so long?"

"No," Gorham said.

"And have you any idea what that must do to her?"

"Why are you angry?" Malia asked.

Nadielle turned away, but not before Gorham saw that dark look in her eyes again. This time, he was certain it was fear.

"Because you're wasting my time," she said. "You've come here for what exactly?"

"To ask you to work faster," Gorham said. "The time might come soon when we have to attempt travel across the Bonelands."

The Baker laughed, and this time there was nothing orgasmic about it at all. This laughter was harsh, cruel, and tinged with a note of hysteria.

"You have no idea what I do here, so how can you ask something like that?"

Gorham glanced at Malia, who raised one eyebrow in an expression of defeat.

"We should go," Malia whispered, quiet enough so that Nadielle did not hear. "I've never liked this fucking place."

Gorham looked across the room at the large rumpled bed again, confused at why the Baker should act like this. Hadn't they secured her services for just such an occasion? Hadn't many people suffered because of this?

He closed his eyes, thought of Peer and that she would never be dead to him, even when one day she truly died.

"Nadielle, we're all sure that something is happening."

The Baker had reached the curtained doorway now, and she turned back to them, her face softening slightly. But there was still something very different about her. When they'd arrived, she seemed composed and perhaps amused at their discomfort; now there was a disturbing edge to her movements and voice. A sharp edge. "I'm busy, Gorham. I am working as fast as I can." And when she lifted the curtain aside, they both knew it was an invitation to leave.

Malia stood and walked to the door, glancing back at Gorham before stepping through. Does she know? Gorham thought, but right then it no longer seemed to matter. He was leaving again, and his heart thundered.

"Nadielle," he pleaded. She stood just beyond his reach.

"Gorham, now isn't the time," she said. She smiled sadly, and again he saw that strain behind her eyes, dulling them like the accumulated dust of generations on the finest oil painting.

He nodded, wished he could say more, wished he could touch her. And then the Pserans appeared from nowhere and stood around him, ready to guide him and Malia away from the Baker's laboratory.

"See you soon," he said, but Nadielle did not answer. He left without looking at her again, and Malia gripped his arm-a friendly touch that meant the world.

By the time evening arrived, Peer knew that she could no longer remain in Skulk Canton. She might have been banished there, excluded from the rest of Echo City in its entirety, guilty of sedition in the eyes of the ruling Marcellans and blasphemy according to their Hanharan priests, and certain to be caught and executed should she attempt to return-but this was just too important. She could not place her own safety ahead of what this man's arrival might mean. So she would sit with the stranger through the night, nursing him as best she could, and come morning she would tell Penler goodbye.

Since helping the stranger up into the city from the cursed desert, Peer had tried hard to make sense of anything he had to say. The storm had intensified, and as she'd guided him through the streets, she was grateful because it kept most people under cover. The rain and lightning had stopped soon after she closed her door on the weather and offered him her bed to rest.

For a moment this afternoon, she'd believed that the stranger was stirring. He'd sat up on her bed, staring at the window and lifting his hands as if to push them through the glass. But then he'd looked around slowly, his wide eyes relaxing slightly as he saw her, and he'd rested again. He had been asleep ever since.

The man muttered in his sleep. He spoke broken, heavily accented Echoian, and that troubled her, because if he was from beyond, then where was his alien language? She could decipher little of what he said-random words, mumblings, and sometimes cries-but still she tried, because it gave her something to concentrate on, something to occupy her mind…

This is the most amazing thing ever to happen to Echo City! she thought. She sat beside the bed, looking down at the frowning man, and in him she saw every hope the Watchers had ever expressed and every doubt that had ever been aimed at the Hanharans. He was special, and precious. If the Marcellans learned of his existence, they would execute him like every other Pretender they had caught-anyone who claimed an ability to travel the desert was treated the same way-and declare a day of feasting and celebration for the city. Peer closed her eyes, wondering whether any of those past Pretenders had been from the same place as this man.

And, if so, what had happened to those who helped?

"This is so much more than me," she whispered. The man stirred, turning his head as if looking for whoever had spoken, but his eyes remained closed. His breathing was ragged and dry, his dark skin burned by the sun and raised in countless minute pustules, his white hair clotted with sand. Those few times he had opened his eyes, she had seen how green they were. He was unlike anyone she had ever known.

She suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be eating with Penler that evening. For a moment she considered taking the stranger over there right away, but night in Skulk was dangerous. There were the gangs, and there were rockzards the size of humans living in the ruins, emerging only at night to feed. She could not risk him for anything. And, besides, she had never been the most reliable person. Penler would be annoyed at her absence but not worried.

Tomorrow she would make it up to him.

As the night drew on, and the man seemed to drift into a deeper, calmer sleep, Peer stood by her table, looking down at his shoulder bag. She touched it but did not recognize the material. Not silk, not canvas; it felt brittle but looked so strong. And those things she'd seen, protruding from the bag's open neck and still there now…

It felt so wrong, but she reached for the bag and loosened its string tie.

The man did not stir.

Guilt already weighing heavy, Peer opened the bag and emptied its contents across her table.

Later, staring at the man's belongings, terrified and excited in equal measures, she sensed that she was being watched.

She glanced at her bed and he was looking at her, blinking softly. He raised his left hand to his mouth to mimic taking a drink. She handed him a cup and he sipped at the water, then drank more greedily.

"Not too much," she said.

"More," he said, and his rough hand closed around hers to tip the cup farther. When he'd finished the water, he lay back onto the pillow, panting slightly and staring at the ceiling.

"You speak Echoian?"

"Echoian?"

"You do." She stood beside the bed, not quite knowing what to do. He forms his words strangely. They sound different but mean the same.

"I don't know," he said, but he did not elaborate.

"Where are you from?"

"Not here," he said, shaking his head. Desert dust fell from his hair, and Peer wondered whether she could die from that.

But he hadn't died. What did that mean?

"What's your name?"

"Name?"

"My name is Peer Nadawa."

"Peer." He looked at her, and his mouth lifted in a faint smile. "You're not her."

"Not who?" she asked. He turned away. "Your name?"

The man closed his eyes, the frown returning. "No name."

"Listen…" Peer began, then she sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, relieving the weight from her aching hip. The man's hand was close to her thigh. She lifted it gently to examine his sunburn and the grit of his incredible journey collected beneath his fingernails.

"You're not scared," the man whispered.

"I'm fucking terrified!" She realized that she was crying, surprised at the aching nostalgia she suddenly felt for simpler times. Like yesterday. "I'm terrified because you're going to change everything. I need to take you to see some people, and they'll be amazed, and some other people will hate that you're here. They might even try to…"

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why… all of it?"

Peer shook her head. She'd lit some candles earlier, and now one of them went out with a gentle hiss. The room grew fractionally darker, but she did not notice the difference.

"Because that's just the way we are," she said. She kept hold of his hand. His eyes closed and his breathing softened. Peer looked down at where their hands touched. He's from somewhere else, she thought. He's no wandering god, no straggler from Echo City gone out and come back again. If he was, he'd be growing sick by now, not getting better. She tried to let go of his hand, but he squeezed.

"My name…" he said, frowning again.

"Let me give you one," she said, and the man nodded against his pillow. "Well… my father was called Rufus."

"Rufus."

"And for a second name… there are people who believe that seventy-seven six-legged gods wander the desert."

"I saw no gods," he said, smiling.

"It's just a belief," she said, shrugging. "One of them is called Kyuss. He's supposed to be the god of new things. It's his job to make sure Echo City moves forward."

"Echo City?"

"That's where you are."

"Where is Echo City?"

"It's…" Peer did not know how to answer. No one had ever asked her that before, because the question made as much sense as Where is the air? "It's here," she said. "It's everywhere. It's the whole world."

"No," the man she had named Rufus Kyuss whispered, "there's more." And then he fell asleep and did not wake until morning.

Penler answered the door, bleary-eyed and with a knife in his hand.

"Peer? It's barely dawn. I was expecting you for dinner last night, and I-" He saw the shape standing behind Peer. "Who's this?"

"His name's Rufus." She ushered him through Penler's door, and the old man stood aside to let him enter. Penler glanced back and forth, confused, but Peer didn't give him time to object. By the time she was inside and closing the door behind her, throwing the bolts and checking through the peephole to make sure they had not attracted any attention, Rufus had disappeared into the house's shadows.

"Crap, Peer, what's going on?"

"Sorry about last night." She pushed past him and followed Rufus inside. He was in the large living area, standing in the center and turning a full, slow circle as he stared in wonder at the walls. Penler was a collector of maps, and he had some parchments that dated back many hundreds of years. One showed an area of Mino Mont that was now an Echo, built over seven hundred years before.

None of that would mean anything to Rufus. Yet Peer watched his amazement, and her heart skipped a beat.

"Who the crap is that?" Penler whispered behind her.

"He's a new arrival," Peer said.

"Oh," he said, raising his voice slightly. "Well, sorry. Welcome to Skulk."

"Skulk?" the man said, confused. "This is not Echo City?"

"No, no," Peer said, turning and placing her hands on Penler's shoulders. Exhausted though she was, and terrified, and in pain from the air shards in her arm, she could not contain the smile that warmed her face. "Penler, he's from outside. Out there!" She waved her hand in the general direction of the desert, frustrated because she could not properly voice what she had to say.

"Not Echo City," Rufus said.

The blood drained from Penler's face, and he swayed a little. Peer guided him to a chair, terrified that she'd sprung this on him too suddenly. He was an old man, and though he seemed fit, decades in Skulk had done him no good. She'd never forgive herself if "The Garthans," he whispered.

"What? No, no, Penler. They don't know about him. No one knows."

Penler looked past Peer at Rufus, who was now slowly pacing the perimeter of the large room, examining the maps.

"And no one can know," she said. She leaned down so that he had to look into her eyes. "Penler, this is what we've been waiting for all our lives!"

"We?" he said, still pale, shaking his head slightly. "Peer, it's a trick. It has to be. How can you be sure?"

"I saw him walking in across the Bonelands."

"When?"

"Yesterday, not long after you left me at the wall."

"No." He shook his head. "Impossible."

She was annoyed at Penler's reaction, and confused. He was the intellectual, the philosopher of Skulk, banished because of his great ideas. And yet here he was doubting instead of questioning, falling back on indoctrination instead of considering the fantastic possibilities that stared him in the face. He shook his head slowly, and she had never seen him looking so old.

"Penler, just listen to him, the way he builds his words, the way his voice twists around them-Echoian, but like none I've ever heard."

Penler was still shaking his head.

"Look in his bag! See what he carries, the strange things he's brought. Do you know what this means?"

"Do you?"

"Yes, of course! It changes everything, and-"

"Do you really believe this city can survive change?" he asked. "This city, built on the past?" And suddenly she knew what was wrong. He does believe, she thought, and that's why he's so afraid.

"Penler…"

A tear escaped his left eye and dribbled down his cheek. His face crumpled for a moment, then he seemed to gather himself again, wiping away the tear and standing up from his chair. Never once did he take his eyes off the man in his room.

"You believe," she said.

"I never had any doubt," he whispered, "but I never thought it would be in my lifetime."

"He can't stay in Skulk," Peer said.

"I know. But for now can I just…?"

Peer reached out and brought the old man to her in a hug. He held his breath before hugging her back, his gasp warm and stale against her neck. She had not held anyone this close for a long time.

"I was going to get some breakfast anyway," she said. "But can't you leave Skulk with me?"

"Not me," he said, shaking his head against hers. "Not now. I've been here too long, and too many people know me. I'd slow you down. But I can help."

Peer pulled away so that she could look at him again. His eyes were moist, but she pretended not to notice. "How?"

"Oh, you know me. I have something about me."

"There's no such thing as magic, Penler."

He looked at the man from the desert again, as if to dispute her words. "Tell that to the magician's audience," he said. "Now go. Breakfast. We need a feast." He pressed five shillings into her hand and then walked past her into the room.

Peer watched Penler and the visitor for a beat. He wants him to himself for a while, she thought, and she could hardly blame him. Such a great man would have so many questions.

Outside, Skulk's morning air seemed fresher than usual, cleansed by the previous night's rain. Or perhaps it was the smell of potential.

She bought breakfast from a street vendor-fried chickpig in fresh bread sandwiches, a large carafe of five-bean, and a selection of dried fruits-and on her return to Penler's house she passed a body in an alleyway. The woman was lying on her back, her dusty eyes staring at the dawn-smeared sky and her slit throat gnawed at by rats and rockzards in the night. She was naked, and carved across her chest and stomach was the serpent sigil of one of Skulk's most powerful, brutal gangs.

Peer averted her eyes and walked on. It shamed her, but there was no way she could get involved. The woman must have offered some slight against the gang, and they always left their murder victims where they were for three days and nights before sending their lowliest members to clear away whatever was left. They liked to send a message, and anyone interrupting that message was likely to end up the same way.

It's so easy, Peer thought, and she felt a moment of terror the likes of which rarely visited her. One wrong move, one sideways glance, being in the wrong place when a madman walks by… Death is so easy, and life so precious. I could die here today. What would happen to Rufus then?

Her whole world had changed, and there was plenty more to come. The future was suddenly a weight upon her shoulders, and she knew that she had to be strong. Life had never felt like such a precarious gift as at that moment. Peer hurried through the streets, one hand holding the bag containing breakfast, the other hanging close to her knife.

Penler was waiting for her in the hallway behind his front door. He ushered her in, took the food bag, and dropped it unceremoniously to the floor.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sensing the change in her.

"Nothing. Where's Rufus?"

Penler nodded back toward his main room. "He's like a child, Peer. Full of wonder, but he knows so little." He touched his long, wiry gray hair, twirling it around one finger. "The desert… it's burned something out of him, so many memories. Either that or he's lying."

This time she could see through his doubt. "What do you really think, Penler?"

"I think he's been through some bad times. And his words… strange. Echoian, but almost a different dialect. Almost as if he's relearning a language he hasn't used for some time."

"Did you look in his bag, like I said?"

The old man's face changed. The frown returned, but his eyes sparkled.

"I think I know what some of it is," he said, "but a couple of the things…"

"Did you ask him?"

"He's enjoying looking at my maps."

"Right," Peer said, inclining her head slowly. "And it's not that you want to figure them out for yourself?"

Penler laughed, and it was good to hear the old man sounding like himself again. "You know me so well, Peer."

Eager to see Rufus again, she picked up the breakfast bag and ushered Penler back along the hallway.

Rufus seemed pleased to see her. He pointed at one of the maps but said nothing, his incredulity evident in every crease of his face, every movement he made. She nodded and placed the bag on the large table, next to the contents of Rufus's shoulder bag. Penler stood close beside her, his arm touching hers. He pointed at a small round object, similar to a watch but marked differently.

"This finds direction," he said. "I don't know how, but it works."

"What do you mean?"

"Which way's north?"

Peer pointed without thinking. Most people in Skulk knew the direction of the world that had shunned them.

Penler pulled the small instrument close to them, opened the lid, tapped it, and a shard of metal floated inside, suspended in some viscous liquid. The arrowed end of the shard pointed north.

Peer turned the instrument around, and the arrow turned slowly to maintain the same direction.

"Clever," she said.

"Not clever. Scientific."

"All your city?" Rufus said, aghast. He was staring at a large current map of Echo City that took up most of one wall.

"Yes," Penler said.

"Here," Rufus whispered, moving closer to the area marked as Course Canton and pointing at the shadow of buildings. "Homes?"

"Some," the old man said. "Groups of homes, at least. The blocks in a grid you see spanning the river, they're water refineries. And the straight lines leading from them, they're the canals."

Rufus was watching Penler with his mouth agape, incomprehension clouding his eyes.

"It's a large city," Peer said. "Thirty miles across."

"Miles?"

Peer glanced at Penler.

"From here to Peer's home is less than half a mile," he said. "To walk from the south of the city, where you came in, to its northern edge would take two days and a night."

Rufus turned back to the map, spreading his hands across its surface, as if by touching it he could absorb every wondrous thing it displayed.

"What's that?" Peer muttered, pointing at a long, thin tube.

"I think it's a scope."

She stared hard at Penler, but he was not fooling with her. "A scope like…?"

Penler picked up the tube and handed it to her.

Peer had first seen one of the Scopes when she was four. Her mother had been a tax collector, and she'd taken her on a journey into Marcellan Canton to consult with government officials over some proposed changes to the way tithes were gathered. The Scope had been sitting on the wall surrounding Hanharan Heights, casting its alien gaze down toward Mino Mont. She had stood amazed. Its naked, almost human body had gleamed darkly like the shell of a beetle, its deformed head elongated into a thick tube that ended with the curve of its massive eye. An intricate system of supports had propped the Scope's head, shifting with it, turning on well-greased gears and cogs. Long hair was tied back from its head in tight metal bands. Its genitals hung like shriveled dried fruits, and its arms had withered to nothing. It was not the first chopped Peer had ever seen-there were many deformed in Mino Mont-but it was the first of the Baker's originals, and the most amazing.

Peer took the tube now and held it at arm's length. "Rufus," she said, "what's this?"

"Long glass," he said. He came around the table and took the instrument from her, pulling at one end until it was twice its original length. He pointed at a small lever that had sprung from the tube. "Gear, for unblurring."

Peer took it back, held the narrow end to her left eye, and looked across the room at a map.

"No," Rufus said, laughing softly. "For outside. It brings things-miles away-near."

"Not something we'd have much need of," she said softly, placing it on the table. "And this?"

Rufus picked up the small knife she had touched. He turned it and showed them the flint hidden in the handle, then he prized out a curved blade concealed in its back. "For…" He frowned, staring at the blade. "For…"

"It doesn't matter," Peer said, touching the back of his hand.

"Whatever you've forgotten will return," Penler said. "The heat of the desert, the sun, must have…" He shrugged, because in truth none of them knew what the desert could make of a living person, other than a dead one.

"We should go soon," Peer said.

"But this place," Rufus said, pointing around Penler's room with wide, excited eyes.

"Skulk is not safe," she said, thinking of the murdered woman. "Anything could happen here. Any foolish, pointless death, and you… you're precious."

"I am?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

Why? she thought. So much like a child, and yet he's not unlearned. Maybe he has forgotten much, or maybe the language is a barrier.

Or perhaps he's holding back.

"Because…" And Peer realized that, through all this, she had not yet told him what he meant to them. His amazement at this place had blinded him to the astonishment she and Penler showed in return. And the only way to proceed was with trust.

"Because no one can cross the Markoshi Desert," Penler said, "and anyone who tries will die."

"Where do you come from?" Peer asked. "Where is your home?"

"I can't remember," Rufus said. "Only… bones." He stared between them and along the hallway.

He has so much to remember, Peer thought. We have to give him the chance. She turned to Penler and he nodded.

"I need to prepare," he said.

Rufus sat on the table and stared at a map on the wall, but he seemed to see much farther.

After the heavy rains of the previous day, the blazing sunshine cast a rainbow over Echo City. They left Penler's home in mid-afternoon, walking slowly north in a meandering, hesitant fashion that they hoped would attract no attention. Rufus was wide-eyed at everything he saw, and his childlike awe encouraged Peer to view things in a different light. The street vendors were familiar, but she looked again at all their wares. Usually she ignored them. Now she caught their eyes, smiled, and more than once she was dragged into a conversation about certain species of stoneshrooms, the best spices in which to marinate a chickpig's hooves, or the styles of silk scarves being worn in Skulk this season. Rufus watched and listened, smiling delightedly, and usually it was Penler who took his arm and guided him gently away.

Peer realized that she was saying goodbye to Skulk Canton, and the sadness in her came as a shock. She'd been forced here by banishment, tortured and wronged by the Marcellans, and everything she had ever considered home had been stripped away. Left alone and naked of hope, she sometimes wondered how the crap she had made anything of a life for herself at all.

Penler, she thought, and she looked at the old man's back. Yes, Penler. If it wasn't for him, she would likely have died, and her arm and hip ached in memory of the care he had given her. "And now I'm leaving him behind," she whispered. An old woman selling mummified wisps-considered lucky charms by some, though Peer knew that their stings often remained-heard what she said and reached out to her with a thin yellow wisp.

"It's yours," the woman croaked, the beginnings of negotiation.

Peer shook her head and walked on, and behind her the woman called, "Don't take it and you'll lose him for sure."

Penler turned at that, one hand still on Rufus's arm, and Peer had never seen such an expression on the old man's face. He looked like a young boy determined not to cry-cheeks puffed out, eyes swollen. She turned away because she was starting to realize what it all meant.

They moved away from the market districts and into an area of Skulk known as Pool. It was a relatively low area, its buildings ancient and not built over for many centuries, but no one had lived here since the salt plague. It was a haunted place. Peer had always poured scorn on those who let phantoms steer their decisions, but the fact that no one banished to Skulk chose to live there spoke volumes. Penler had said it would be a good place from which to approach the border.

Pool was a warren of streets, squares, and courtyards. Many of them were scattered with detritus from the decaying buildings-rotten window shutters, the glint of colored glass, chimney pots and clay bricks crumbled by decades of frost and sun-and here and there they found the bones of dead things. Most of the bones were animal, the cause of their demise always hidden. Some were human.

"Bones," Rufus said, and the sight of a fleshless skull seemed to terrify him. Penler and Peer calmed him, guiding him past, and Peer saw the ragged hole smashed into the skull by whatever weapon had killed its owner.

Around the next corner, bathed in sunlight and the melodious sound of red-finch song, they saw their first phantom.

It was a young woman, so faint that Peer could see right through her. She wore the formal silk attire favored by Skulkians before the plague, and she was kneeling by the side of the path, looking down at the ground. She reached with translucent hands and touched something, then sat back again and considered what she had done. She repeated the action, straightened once more, and never once did she appear to see them. Most phantoms did not.

Rufus caught his breath and backed up a step, but Peer stood fast, holding on to his hips and feeling the shiver going through him. "Beautiful," he breathed. It was a strange reaction to seeing a ghost.

"She won't harm us," Penler said. Rufus seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the young woman and her continuing attempt to arrange something none of them could see. The ground beneath her fingers bore only dust, and her fingers left no trails. "There'll be more, but phantoms won't give us away."

They walked by the hollow girl, leaving her to her past. Rufus kept glancing back until they turned a corner and continued across a small square. Peer tried to reassure him with a smile, but he did not meet her eyes.

There were several more phantoms, some obvious, some little more than blurs on the air. Sometimes all three of them saw, and once it was only Peer who seemed able to make out a tall man sitting in a broken chair in the doorway of an ancient home. She thought he nodded at her, but his head rose and fell as he slept. How long ago? she wondered. He was even older than he looked.

I will see Gorham, she thought, the idea hitting her suddenly and hard. If he's not dead. If the Marcellans didn't hunt him down after taking me. The excitement was tempered by caution; she could not afford to hope for too much. But the idea of meeting her lost love again was thrilling, and she tried to ignore the three years that had separated them.

Three years, and an escape from Skulk yet to be made.

They left Pool and started climbing a steep hill toward the border with Course Canton. There were few people here, as proximity to the border served only to remind those living in Skulk that they resided in a prison. Those people they did encounter seemed little more than phantoms themselves, and they rushed to hide away. These were the outcasts from the outcasts, those who could not accept Skulk as a place to live and who hovered at the border, as if one day they might go back.

But no one sent to Skulk ever returned. It had been a long time since Peer had been here, and she'd forgotten just how heavily guarded the border was.

They called them the Levels. Once, before the plague, the dividing line between Skulk and Course Cantons had been difficult to distinguish. A street here, a square there, the banks of the Southern Reservoir, perhaps the edge of a park or the center line of a road. After the salt plague, there'd been a need to mark the border permanently. And so the razing had begun. In history books, the transcribers had gone to some effort to describe the methods used and the caution taken to prevent injury or worse to those innocents caught up in the chaos. In reality, the Marcellans had ordered the razing to be completed within two days. In such a short time, with so many fires set, ruin wagons dispatched, and buildings marked for destruction, the suffering of innocents was inevitable.

A fifteen-mile-long strip of land from southwest to southeast Echo City had been flattened of everything that stood or grew upon it. The Levels followed the old borders, up to a mile wide in some places, while here and there they were only a few hundred feet, one side still visible from the other. Following the razing and burning, almost two hundred watchtowers had been constructed along the northern edge of the Levels. For the next few years these were manned by Scarlet Blades, but as the public slowly forgot the plague and its consequences-or, if not forgot, at least put them to one side while they continued with their lives, content that the Marcellans had saved Echo City from its gravest, darkest hour-the Blades announced themselves as too important to spend their time on guard duties. A new branch of the Marcellans' army was therefore created. The Border Spites-brutal and barely trained-were employed from all levels of Echoian society, the only requirements being that they were strong, able to fight, and willing to kill if the need arose.

The need frequently did. Even since Peer had been in Skulk, she had heard of almost a hundred attempted escapes. They all ended the same way, and the rotting corpses were left across the Levels as warnings.

Facing the Levels, hidden in the shadow of a tall house, Peer could see three watchtowers. A gentle drift of smoke tailed from one of them as the Border Spites cooked their lunch. Between them and her were the sad, fire-blackened ruins.

"This is where we say goodbye," Penler said. He sighed heavily, staring anywhere but at Peer.

"You could still come," she said.

"No, I'll slow you."

She tapped her hip, aching a little after their long walk. "I'm not as fast as I was, you know."

"But I did a good job on that." He looked at her at last, and she saw tears in his eyes. Tears, and something else: regret.

And she wondered suddenly how she had been so fucking stupid all this time. Old man, she sometimes jokingly called him, but it was how she perceived him. Just what had he thought of those words coming from the woman he loved? She could never know. Even if Rufus had not come along, it was far too late, because they had become such good friends.

"I'll miss you," he said.

What do I say? She hugged him tight, confused, and angry at herself for being so selfish that she had never seen.

Penler held her. The three of them stood in silence, and Peer felt the pressure of that silence weighing on her. He's waiting for me to say something. But she did not know what to say. I'm sorry just wouldn't do, and time was passing.

"You need to give me an hour," he said, pulling away from her and staring back across the Levels.

"When will we know it's time to go?"

"You'll know." He'd strengthened now, looking forward, bringing himself back to what needed doing to get Peer and Rufus away. Out of his life forever.

"Penler…" she said.

He smiled softly. "You'll do fine."

"No, I don't mean… I wanted to say…" But she'd been blind all this time, and opening her eyes at the end would be pointless.

"Just remember me," Penler said.

"I will see you again," she replied.

His smile dropped, but only slightly. They both realized the likelihood of that.

Penler gave Rufus a one-armed hug before he went, then weaved his way back along the narrow street and disappeared into the blackened heart of a ruined temple. As well as letting go of Peer, he was saying goodbye to this remarkable visitor from the desert.

"Friends," Rufus said, looking after Penler.

"Yes, we are," Peer said. A sense of loss hit her in the gut, and she sat down heavily against the wall. They had a while to wait. And for her last hour in Skulk Canton, Peer reflected upon how self-obsessed she had been.

The previous day's rains had turned the Levels to muck. Peer could see the black pools from where they waited, and she knew that the crossing would not be easy. The Levels were not actually level at all; the destruction a century before had been rushed, and here and there some remains still stood. Walls were piled with debris, and the dark pits of exposed basements led down to older Echoes. She hoped that whatever Penler planned, he gave them long enough.

Each of the three watchtowers she could see was manned. The guards in one were still cooking, and distant laughter came her way. In the second tower there had been movement as several Border Spites changed watch, and from the third she'd seen a guard pissing over the side.

"You'd better be who we think you are," she said mildly.

Rufus still wore that lost expression.

"You remember nothing from out there?" she asked.

"Bones," he said. "Sand. Dead desert." He looked down at his hands, twisted in his lap.

"And nothing from before?"

Rufus shook his head. "Maybe… there is nothing."

"No," Peer said. "I don't believe that. I can't. Do you feel sick, weak? No, you're fine. You're good. You're getting better! So there's something about you…"

Rufus looked at her and glanced away again, perhaps not understanding. He stared across the Levels at the beginnings of Course Canton beyond. The buildings were low and stark, most of them abandoned this close to Skulk, but they still carried a heavy significance. Over there was freedom and choice. Over here was imprisonment and necessity. The Levels were where everything changed.

"You told me I'm not her. So who are you looking for?"

"I don't know," he said, perhaps too sharply. And the first explosion came from the east.

Rufus jumped, scrambling to his feet, but Peer crawled across the debris-strewn alley and held him down. He was breathing hard and fast, but she held his jaw with one hand and turned his face until he was looking right at her. His eyes are so green, she thought, and she shook her head, shushing him as the noise echoed across the Levels.

When Peer was six, there had been a series of anonymous attacks on Mino Mont's water refineries. The authorities at the time had blamed them on the Dragarians, though there had been no such instances before or since, and the attacks had soon ended. What she remembered most was not the panic that had spread quickly through Mino Mont for those few days one summer-fear that if the refineries were destroyed, then the Northern and Eastern Reservoirs would quickly dry up-but the sounds of those few explosions. She had never heard anything like them before or since-until now.

Crawling to the mouth of the alley, she looked east and saw several plumes of smoke about a mile away. They did not seem to be rooted to the ground but floated on the breeze.

Three more explosions came, bursting in the air like rapidly blooming roses, spewing sparks followed by thin limbs of smoke. The colors were bright and varied, and each explosion flowered and spread differently. She had seen skyfires before many times, during street parties to celebrate an important Marcellan's birthday or to mark the execution of another Pretender. But they were always a weak, sputtering affair. Never anything like this. These filled the sky.

"What?" Rufus said behind her. He'd crawled up close, and now he clung on to the leg of her trousers, shaking.

"Penler," Peer said. "Full of surprises."

She looked across the Levels at the three guard towers. Two of them were abuzz with activity as Border Spites climbed or slid down the rope ladders splayed around their legs. Atop the third tower-the farthest to the west-she could see three guards shielding their eyes as they watched the skyfires.

Go, she thought. Relieve your boredom. See what's happening.

"We'll give it a few moments," she said. "Then we go." Some of the guards started along the northern boundary of the Levels, the sun glinting from their weapons. This is madness, she thought, but she shoved that idea aside. Penler was doing this for her, and if he'd thought there was a chance of her being caught, he'd have suggested otherwise.

It was up to her to make sure his trust was not mislaid.

"Follow me," she said, turning to make sure Rufus understood. He nodded. "Stay close behind me. Stay low." She indicated what she meant with her hand. He nodded again. He understands more than he says, or can say. But that was another mystery to unravel later. One breath at a time, as her poor dead mother used to say. Peer took in a deep breath and left the cover of the buildings.

There were several heavy coughs to the east, and Peer saw smoke trails lifting objects high above the Levels. Upon exploding, they splashed a palette of colors across the sky, and the falling flames twisted around one another like dancing silk snakes. They were unlike any skyfires she had ever seen or heard of before. The sparks did not extinguish but kept spitting and dancing in the air, each one seemingly in concert with those around it. Shapes were formed and dispersed again, as if teasing-fighting rockzards, a diving rathawk plucking its prey from the air, wisps swooping toward and around one another without ever actually touching. For a second she stood amazed, before realizing that this display was not meant for her.

There was more movement way across the Levels, as guards streamed along the border.

Keeping low, Peer headed across, with Rufus following. She had been right about the rains-her boots quickly sank in thick mud. She felt it oozing over the boots' lips and touching her shins, her ankles, and she imagined it as the dust of history. So much was mixed up in this wet, rancid stew. The ruins of whole districts, the pulverized remains of neighborhoods where people had once lived, loved, and died on their own terms.

She heard Rufus behind her, his own boots sucking at the muck as he walked.

Of the three towers in sight, she aimed for the one in the middle. She'd seen the guards abandon that one, and though there were still Border Spites manning the tower to their left, she hoped they would be able to slip past unseen. Keep them firing, she thought, hoping that Penler had a long supply of whatever he was using. Hardly magic, but it was close enough.

They passed tumbled walls, where weeds had grown out of the dust and smothered a building's remains. Peer saw movement among the plants and kept her distance, in case they were biting or stinging things.

Penler's skyfires continued to dance. She stole occasional glances their way, awed and thankful. He's not like us, a woman had once told Peer about Penler, soon after she'd arrived in Skulk. They were drinking together in a tavern, watching the old man buying a fresh bottle of wine. He's got something about him. Peer had smiled at the time, not sure what the woman meant, and over the next couple of years she had mostly forgotten those words. But now the woman's voice rang back to her. It was how the most superstitious among them described someone who dipped into what were considered the darkest of arts.

Halfway across the Levels, she squatted behind a mound of weed-choked rubble, and Rufus did the same. He was following quietly and calmly, keeping low, and she wondered how terrified he must be.

"A rest," she said, rubbing her aching hip. Rufus nodded. She peered around the mound, and now that the other side of the Levels was close, she could scan it for movement. There was nothing. Gray buildings faced them, most of them low but a few consisting of several stories. The architecture here was sparse and functional, but the buildings all contained the familiar arched windows of old Course design. There could be anyone watching from behind those, Peer thought, but that way lay defeat. If she became overcautious, they'd never move again.

She was still quite certain that two of the towers were deserted, but she was no longer sure about the third. She'd seen no movement there for a while. It could be that the Border Spites had gone to witness the fantastical skyfires after all, or maybe they were hunkered down even now, scrutinizing the Levels for the movement one of them swore he'd just seen. If that was the case, they'd do their best not to be seen themselves.

Peer's heart raced, blood thumping in her ears. She'd heard stories about what the guards did to anyone caught trying to flee Skulk. She stretched her right arm, wincing as the air shards twisted against flesh, muscle, and bone. At least her hip was not too painful. Penler had been right; he'd done a good job with that.

"Follow me," she said, and without looking back she started again for the other side.

It did not take long but felt like forever. Three years before, Peer had been forced to watch as a Marcellan torturer shoved a selection of air shards through her arm, and the eyes she felt upon her now hurt almost as much. Whether they were real or imaginary she did not know, but that mattered little.

Panting, sweating, her heart racing at the certainty that they would be caught, she pressed up against the side of a building in Course Canton. Three years, she thought, but the stone beneath her skin felt no different.

The last of Penler's skyfires was fading as it floated slowly to the ground. Crimson sparks turned to a deep, rich blue, landing across the Levels and remaining lit for a while. Blue was Peer's favorite color. Penler knew that.

Her breathing slowing, Peer spent a moment looking back across at Skulk. She felt a curious sense of loss. Among the true criminals over there were wonderful people, whose imaginations and intellects had steered them to beliefs that resulted in banishment. She had been herself in Skulk. Now, back in Echo City, deception was to rule her life.

She nodded to Rufus, smiled, and led the way cautiously into a wide, empty street. And it was only as she began to believe they had escaped that they were caught.

The stupid thing was, she smelled the piss from thirty steps away. An hour earlier, she would have known what that meant and hidden. But her body could take only so much tension, and her sense of caution had given way to a sloppy belief in their good fortune.

We make it back, she thought, and the first thing I smell is chickpig piss. But it was not a chickpig pissing, and as the Border Spite stepped from a doorway farther along the street, still pulling up her trousers, Peer reached for her sword.

She had never killed or stabbed anyone in her life. The nearest she'd come to a fight had been with a drunken fat man, a year after arriving in Skulk, when he'd stumbled into her as she sat on the city wall. He'd drawn a sword and she'd pulled her knife, but he dropped his blade and started laughing before vomiting on her shoes. Leaving him in his own puke, trailing the stink behind her as she walked home, she'd wondered what the outcome would have been had he been not quite so drunk.

The Border Spite drew a short sword in her right hand, a triangular object in her left, and ran at them.

Peer unconsciously took a step back, nudging into Rufus. The sword handle felt cold and slippery in her grasp. "Hide!" she rasped.

The soldier brought the wooden object to her lips. Poison darts, Peer thought, but then a mournful whistling broke the loaded silence.

From behind her, a cough. She thought perhaps Rufus was gasping in fear, but then something struck the Border Spite's face. The Spite dropped her sword and wooden horn, took in a shuddery, loud breath, and started raking at her eyes. She went to her knees less than a dozen steps away, and Peer saw every degree of agony on the young woman's face. Her nails scratched ragged gashes across her eyelids and cheeks. Her mouth hung open, and pink foam bubbled from between her teeth. At last she fell forward, convulsing, hands now held just away from her face as if contact was too painful.

Peer turned. Rufus stood with his eyes and mouth open in shock, his arm held before him, and something in his hand. It was black and bulky, and a curl of smoke rose from its open end.

"Rufus, what did you…?" She looked at the weapon and had no idea what she saw.

The shock slowly fading from his face, Rufus lowered his hand, never taking his eyes from the fallen Spite. She was still now, her chest motionless. Deep-red blood had replaced the foam issuing from her mouth.

He pulled something on the object and a small lid hinged up, revealing a huddle of egglike objects inside. "Wrath-spider," he said.

Shaking, Peer started to walk, passing the dead guard and trying not to look at the mess her face had become. But she could not help glancing down. Did her fingernails really do all that? she thought. Probably not. Beneath the stench of blood was something like burning.

She heard Rufus following her. When she'd first seen him coming across the desert, she was shocked, excited, and filled with a sense of hope. Now she was afraid.

They left the body behind and hurried into Course Canton. After passing through a small park where yellow wisps flitted through trees surrounding a lake, they saw a group of normal people. No swords were on show; no panic or surprise crossed their faces. One young woman smiled at Peer, and Peer found it easier than she'd suspected to find a smile to return. I'm free, she thought, but immediately following that came the idea that had been forming since bidding farewell to Penler.

Free, yes, but now her life had become a lie. And with Rufus walking beside her, she began to suspect that made two of them.

Since hearing the sounds from below, Bellia Ton had spent more time than ever reading the river. The Tharin was wide here, just a mile from where it passed out beneath the city wall and back into the desert from whence it came. It was as dead when it left the city as when it arrived, but water carried knowledge, picking up a little of the ground it passed through. Most people could not understand this, and many did not believe. That suited Bellia well. Dead the river might be, but she was its disciple.

She knew the river and its banks well, and now she was down on a rock that jutted into the waterway, bare feet dangling into the flow. It parted around her ankles, churning a soft white against her old skin.

Bellia took one more look around. There were no residential buildings here, the area given over mostly to the tall water-refinery towers and their attendant structures, pools, culverts, and canals. The tower closest to her was also the newest, rebuilt after the attacks thirty years before, and like a youngster among older friends, it puffed steam and churned its parts with more gusto than the others. Its base was invisible to Bellia, hidden by a fold in the land, but she had walked past it many times before. The mountains of rotting extract stank. After all this time, still no one knew exactly what it was they filtered from the water. The mountain grew, just as the city rose, and in the Echoes there were hardened piles of that extract, still as mysterious as history.

She breathed in deeply and smelled the river: stale and dead, light and fleeting. It took the Tharin a day to flow through the city, and the waters that made it this far smelled and looked even more alien than where they'd entered.

And that was why Bellia chose this place to read.

She took in a deep, calming breath and closed her eyes. Imagining the water scouring away the flesh from her ankles and feet, then abrading the bones themselves, she became one with the river, the stumps of her lower legs barely touching the water. Her blood flowed with the Tharin, still linked to her through memory. She read its course into the city, along the steepening valley formed by the built-up land surrounding it. She frowned through the darkness where the river passed underground into the Echoes beneath Marcellan Canton, pulling away from the sense of endless space that existed where it split and poured some of itself down the Falls. That place was always so dark…

She gasped and fell back, striking her head on the rock. Trying to lift her feet from the river, she found them held fast, the water pulling them down like wet sand.

"Something new!" she screeched, because she had felt a part of the city that should not be there. "Something wrong!" There was more to know, but she wanted to learn no more. That brief insight had been so cold, and through everything she had ever read of the city, its dark histories, its inhabitants, and the things that dwelled among them, she had never been so afraid.

Bellia managed to haul her feet from the river at last and scrambled up the bank, gathering her long skirts to her knees so that she could run. Craving the oblivion she would find in the End Wall Tavern, she sprinted through the deserted water districts of Mino Mont.

And all the while, an awful truth shouted something she had no desire to hear.

The thing that was coming is almost here.

Peer was exhausted. The sun had yet to touch the western desert, but she could go no farther, and she craved food. They had crossed several canals already, and when they reached the river valley she called a halt to their progress. No one who had seen them had called for the Scarlet Blades, and within sight of Marcellan Canton's walls she risked believing that they had got away.

Two miles to the east, the great dead River Tharin roared through Marcellan's wall and entered the city's Echoes. In her time with the Watchers, Peer had been down among the Echoes several times, though not too deep. It had always been a disturbing experience for her, leaving the world she knew and traveling through areas-streets, buildings, parks, and landscapes-where the city's past had played out. These Echoes were all but silent now, though history still hung heavy in their darkness. Once, in Mino Mont, she had descended with a woman who had known her mother, and the woman showed her a house where Peer's ancestors had once lived. They had been engravers, recording history on marble tablets for rich families, but that ruin had been empty of all but dust and dark things.

She knew others who had gone deeper. Some could not sleep for days after returning to daylight; a few wanted only to go back down.

"We'll stop here to eat," she said to Rufus. "Hungry?"

"Yes," he said, rubbing his stomach. He was looking around wide-eyed, and Peer was afraid that in itself would attract attention. But it was hardly surprising. The river valley was an amazing place-as newer layers of the city had been built upon older structures, the valley had both deepened and widened, its sides sloping back from the waterway. Looking down at the valley sides should have been like viewing the city's histories laid out in strata, but weathering and the actions of humankind had landscaped the slopes into something different. Here and there, evidence of architecture still remained, but mostly the steep slopes were either smothered with razorplant or oxomanlia, or had become refuse slicks where the city vented its waste.

This was especially prevalent beneath and around several bridges that spanned the Tharin's man-made valley. Most of the bridges were quite old-although there were rumors, no one knew for sure how the leg piles had been sunk through the poisonous river-and they had been built up along with the surrounding urbanized landscape, their own older Echoes on full view and deserted but for the occasional disoriented phantom. They were well maintained, and for some reason they had become centers of commerce and entertainment, wide enough to house all manner of shops and eating places. Each bridge had its own marshal, whose job it was to ensure the bridge's safety and success, and each marshal had his or her own gang of aides. The crossings were small towns in themselves, and in the past there had been skirmishes between rival bridges.

The one thing never permitted was bridge tolls. The Marcellan rulers insisted that the people of Echo City must be free to cross the River Tharin at any point and at any time, thereby defying the dead river with their own busy lives.

Peer had been to Six Step Bridge many times before, and she knew it to be a lively, cheerful place. Every second building was a tavern or restaurant, and its commerce was built around wine, ale, and good food. No one knew where its name came from, and few bothered to descend its structure to try to find out. The past is below us, the popular saying went, a statement of attitude as well as geography. The bridge was a place where people could remain anonymous, and Peer looked forward to a few moments of calm.

She also wanted to talk with Rufus. Since crossing the Levels and killing the Border Spite, he had not once asked where she was taking him or who they were going to see. His amazement at this place was obvious, but he was also an intelligent man-she could see that in his eyes, sense it in his bearing. He might be a visitor to Echo City, but she was certain he would never let himself be led blind.

They started across the bridge, the Tharin a pale snaking shadow far below, and Peer realized just how much she had missed the city. There were areas like this in Skulk, yes-places where people gathered to drink and party or to sip and discuss all the bad things in the world. But she realized now that, in Skulk, there had always been an undercurrent of exclusion. They had been partying in spite of no longer being part of the city. They had talked of the bad things, knowing that countless fellow Echoians thought of them as the bad things. They'd had something taken away from them-true criminals or offenders of the mind alike-and that fact was ever-present in that old place of disease and death.

Peer found a free table outside a bar called Hestige's. Sitting there exposed, starting to relax, the memory of the dying Border Spite shoved to one side-or at least smothered beneath the sights and sounds presented to her on Six Step Bridge-she ordered a bottle of cheap wine, and she and Rufus sat drinking it in sight of Marcellan Canton's distant wall.

Traders traded, drinkers drank, and people walked back and forth across the bridge. It had an air of bustle that no number of sedentary drinkers and eaters could dampen, and a whole selection of street performers added to the buzz. A woman juggled baby rockzards, her hands and forearms a network of scars old and new. A man seemed to be walking on stilts, until Peer saw that he'd been inexpertly chopped. His long legs were bony and bleeding, his desperate smile verging on madness. Three children performed an ever-shifting play, a huge old woman following them and providing sound effects and prompts if they forgot their lines. They told of marriage and celebration among the ruling Marcellans, and ribald jokes and dangerous insinuations surprised the audience as they were muttered by the innocent-looking girls. Jokers told their amusing stories, painters strolled from table to table offering to capture moments in perpetuity, charm sellers preyed on maudlin drunks, and food stalls fought covert battles of smell and sense.

Peer lifted a glass and toasted Penler, and Rufus sat silently beside her, waiting for what would come.

"So who are you really?" she asked, and Rufus refilled her glass.

"Rufus Kyuss," he said.

"That's what I named you, but you have a name I don't know. A life I don't know."

Rufus nodded, looking around the busy street. "Will you help me find it?"

"I'll try," she said. "And if you tell me who you're looking for, I'll help you find her as well."

"I'm… not sure."

"But I'm not her!" Peer said, perhaps too loudly. After their flight from Skulk, this wine was quickly going to her head. She laughed over her embarrassment, then drank some more. "Don't worry," she said. "There's someone who'll help us both."

"Who?"

"An old friend." Peer thought again of Gorham, and the air shards in her arm drove pain through her bones, reminding her again who she was.

As soon as he saw her, he left the street, pushing through a hustle of drinking men and women and entering a small waterfood eatery. The smell of boiling fish and the crack of shells being ruptured grated-he hated fish-but he swallowed hard and went to the window to make sure. He had to lean over a small table, nudging a woman's arm as she brought a shrimp stick to her mouth. She mumbled, her companion bristled, and the man apologized. They quieted quickly. Perhaps they saw the knife in his belt and the scars on his face.

He wiped condensation from the window and looked across the bridge at Hestige's. He must have been wrong, it could never be her… but there she sat, sipping from a large glass, speaking to the weird white-haired man seated beside her.

He gasped, clouding the window again with his breath, then stood back from the table, staring at the wall.

"Are you…?" the woman diner asked.

He looked down at her and the remains of her meal. His stomach rolled. "This is going to be interesting," he said. Then he turned and made his way back through the eatery.

People moved aside for him. He had that effect, but usually he did not notice. Today was different. In the kitchens, the sour reek of fish more intense than ever, he nodded at the two chefs and then kicked open the chute door.

Most buildings clinging to the edges of Six Step Bridge had a chute, through which all manner of garbage and waste was ejected, falling into the river or spattering the bridge's exposed Echoes below. Food, broken furniture, construction waste, ruined clothing-once ejected from the chutes, it was forgotten and cast aside. He had once seen a living man thrown into the river, and sometimes at night he remembered the weight of that man's left leg in his hand heartbeats before he fell.

Dead though the river was, in many ways it cleansed the city.

He edged through the chute, looking at the dark line of the Tharin way below. Then he started climbing down, from strut to support to crossbeam, until he hung wedged between two vertical timbers. Above him, he could hear the impact of countless feet and hooves on the bridge's surface. Around him, the dusty, abandoned structures of yesteryear.

Then he heard the squeals.

He took a small bag of powder from his pocket and spread some along a moldy timber beam. He also extracted a roll of paper and a charcoal, and while he waited, he wrote.

It never took long. He sensed the rats closing on him, hidden away for now but tempted by the bone powder. He'd once tasted the stuff himself-extracted and crushed from the skeletons of dead Garthans, so he was told-and he'd been sick for a week. Others often chided him about his sensitive stomach, and he berated them, claiming Marcellan blood. Bitterness and humor made good companions.

He watched from the corner of his eye as a rat the size of his forearm started licking up the powder. He waited a moment until its eyes started turning with the food frenzy, then he clasped the creature and tied the rolled note to its leathery tail. He splashed the fur on its back with rose stoneshroom extract-very rare, and visible only to certain creatures-whispered a few words into the creature's ear, then let it go.

It disappeared, jumping, running, and dropping its way north through the bridge's most recent Echoes, and his work was done. He climbed back up to watch the woman again, pleased to be among people once more.

The rat moved quickly, familiar with this underside and driven by the compulsion only recently planted within it. Leaving the bridge behind, it stayed with the drains and sewers. Other rats saw it and cowered away, because there was something about it that smelled of death. It passed different creatures down there in the dark, and most of them also moved aside, though some sniffed after it, curious at the message it might carry.

It did not go too deep. It never went too deep-especially now.

It came to a place where the sewers vented, and here it left cover and ventured out into the open. It moved in slow, hesitant sprints, looking around for danger but forgetting where the worst threat actually dwelled.

The rathawk had a nest in the high walls of Marcellan Canton. It had nested in the same place for thirty years, mating with the same female, and together they had raised nineteen chicks that had survived to adulthood. It flew, ate, and slept, but implanted deep within its mind was some other compulsion that was fed only at the rarest of times. One of those times was today. Riding a thermal high above the walls, it spotted a glint in the shadows far below. Without thinking, simply following a set of instructions implanted when it was very young, the rathawk folded its wings and plummeted. For a few beats, it was the fastest thing in Echo City, other than thought. At the last moment it spread its wings to brake its descent, extended its claws, and the rat died so quickly that it uttered no sound.

Usually the rathawk would take such bounty back to its nest. It would rip off the head, tear out the poisonous innards, and throw them away for ghourt lizards to snap up from the wall's surface. The remaining dark meat would feed its chicks for another day. Sometimes it would even take some of the meat for itself. But today it clasped the rodent in its claws and did not rip.

The rathawk circled high and then flew north. When it saw and smelled the water far below, it rested its wings and circled down, singing a unique song as it went. By the time it reached the rooftop, there was a man standing there. The rathawk, usually afraid of people, alighted on the man's outstretched arm.

The man took the dead rat from the bird's claws. He placed the corpse gently on the parapet, noting the blood-speckled note tied to its tail, and picked up a chunk of swine meat for the rathawk. The bird took it with a gentle respect it probably did not understand, then lifted away. Within moments it was a speck in the sky, and when he blinked the man lost sight of it altogether.

"Now what's this?" he said, a little annoyed. A naked woman lay on his bed in the room below, and his mouth was still wet from her. But the rathawk call had shrunk his enthusiasm, and he had a feeling that he'd remain unspent for the rest of this day. A message sent in such a risky manner could mean only one thing: important news.

The question was, good or bad?

He snipped off the message roll with the tip of his knife and nudged the dead rat from the parapet. He unrolled the paper. His eyes widened.

"Oh," said the man. He rushed down the stone steps, and though the woman was still lying with her legs splayed, his mind was already far away. He waved off her objections, shrugged on trousers and a jacket, slipped on his boots, and left the room.

Out in the street, he looked around nervously as he hurried along. This felt like something that could bring only danger and upset with it. Danger for all the Watchers. And upset for Gorham. He never had got over that fucking woman.

Alert for any indication that he was being followed, he waited in a spice garden for a while, hunkered down among a profusion of bushes and vines, low plants and trees, breathing in deeply and trying to pass the time by identifying each spice. When he was certain he was alone, he slipped through the garden and emerged on the banks of a canal, startling a pair of mating ducks into flight. The female pecked at the male. I know how you feel, he thought, watching the drake take flight.

Farther along the canal, a woman lived in a boat. He knocked on one of the small round windows and her face quickly appeared, almost as if she'd been awaiting his arrival. She opened a hatch in the roof and climbed lithely out, sitting above him with a small crossbow in her right hand. He'd seen it before-crafted from the finest of metals, and it was whispered that it came from one of the older Marcellan Echoes, though no one had ever hazarded a guess as to how she came to own it.

"Malia," the man said. "I have a message passed down the route." She raised one eyebrow. He'd never felt comfortable around this one, even when her husband was still alive.

"Well?" she prompted.

"Peer Nadawa," he said. "She's back."

Malia's expression did not change. Her eyes glimmered as she shifted slightly. Her pale fingers grew pink again as they loosened around the handle of the crossbow. Then she slid from the barge's roof and landed a step in front of him, and wafting from her he could smell the intoxicating aroma of pure, unrefined slash.

"Forget this, Devin," she said.

He nodded, turned, and walked away, hoping that the angry naked woman would still be in his room when he returned.

Peer could have sat there forever, but she knew it was time to go. Gorham would know what to do. Even after she'd been caught and banished, the old network might have remained operative. Either way, she was certain that he'd still have contact with the Watchers.

Besides, she was desperate to see him, and every pause was another moment when they were not together. There were thoughts that had reared their heads but that she would not entertain: He's dead; he's moved and changed his name; he's given me up for lost and is with another woman. Though she had long ago given up hope of ever seeing him again, she had never stopped loving him. He'll be just the same, she thought. Yet a flicker of nervousness had seeded in her chest, and she could do nothing to extinguish it.

She and Rufus stood, and she left a couple of shillings for the wine. She glanced around for anyone who might be watching them. There was a group of women sitting in front of the next building along, all of them sucking on flexible pipes leading from a central smoke pot. Two of them were looking Rufus up and down, and one of the two had a hungry look in her eyes. Rut-slash smokers, out looking for men. Other than that, Peer and Rufus seemed to go unnoticed.

"Where now?" Rufus said.

"My friend used to live a couple of miles from here. If that's not changed, we'll see him soon."

Rufus started to follow her again, and Peer saw a flash of drug-fueled jealousy in one of the smoking women's eyes.

"Rufus," she said, "walk with me, not behind me." He smiled softly, but his eyes never stayed on her for long. They were drinking in the surroundings, flitting here and there and back again, and she envied him seeing all this for the first time. For her, returning here from Skulk, Six Step Bridge had a vital freshness to it. She could barely imagine what Rufus was thinking and feeling.

She wished he could tell her. Soon, she thought. Gorham will know what to do and how to get him to the Watchers. Rufus is what they've been watching for forever. Proof of something beyond.

As they left the bridge and started across a large park, the bustle faded away. There were still many people around them, but they were sitting or lying in the grass, eating or reading, staring or loving. The sound of a hooting heron came from the lake on the park's far side, and wind whispered through the numerous barch trees, setting their thin, heavy branches swaying.

In a grove of low trees halfway across the park, as Peer felt more relaxed than she had since escaping Skulk, a man stepped into their path.

Peer froze. Rufus's left hand reached out and grasped her arm.

The man glanced around quickly before moving forward, right hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

There's something… Peer thought, then saw a blur of movement from her right. Rufus dropped to his knees, letting go of her arm and bringing his strange spider-poison weapon up from his side.

More people appeared around them, emerging from behind trees and bushes, and Peer knew them. Watchers. "Rufus!" she shouted, leaning sideways to try to knock him off balance. It almost worked. She heard the gentle cough of his weapon as he fell, and the man before them looked down at the left knee of his trousers.

Peer staggered to the right but kept to her feet.

The others closed in quickly, knives drawn, and if Peer had said something different, perhaps the man would have lived. But her thought then was for Rufus. "Rufus, they're friends!" she said. And as the visitor from beyond Echo City lowered his weapon, she saw the man bending, reaching to his knee, touching the wet sticky patch there and raising it toward his face.

"No!" she shouted, but it was already too late. Maybe all it took was the smallest contact with skin.

He moaned a little, frowned, then started to shake. He stared down at his hand as if it was something he had never seen before. Then he began to scream.

"Gerrett!" one of the others shouted, pushing him so that he fell. "Quiet!" But Gerrett-and Peer remembered him now, a Watcher with whom Gorham had spoken a few times, a man whose children fished in the Western Reservoir and whose wife made the most amazing salted fish rack-was beyond listening. His screams were loud and high, and he was shaking his hand so frantically that it slapped hard against the ground, the crack of breaking bones almost hidden beneath his cries.

A woman clapped her hand across his mouth.

"Don't touch," Rufus said. "Poison."

The woman glanced from him to Peer and back again, then moved away.

Gerrett's screams died down suddenly, as though his throat had been clapped shut. The convulsions started then, and the bloody foam from his mouth, and the darkening of his eyes as something in there burst.

A man and woman beat Rufus to the ground. He let them.

When they came for Peer, they were not so rough, but the gag they forced into her mouth stank of chickpig and tasted of shit, and the blind they tied around her eyes was so tight it made her head ache.

"Gerrett…" one of them said.

"No time."

As Peer was led away, she could still hear the impact of thrashing limbs on the ground.

"They killed Gerrett."

"What?"

"Gerrett died. The one with her, he shot him with something. Some poison."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Gorham walked faster. They'd taken Peer and her companion to a boathouse on the shore of the reservoir-a place with a hidden basement where they'd sheltered people before. But his initial enthusiasm about seeing Peer had been shattered. He had so many secrets to tell her, so many apologies to make-and now it seemed she had the same.

"Has anyone told his family yet?"

"Of course not," Malia said. "I only just found out myself."

"Keep it that way for now."

They hurried along the well-trodden path around the reservoir. It was seven miles all the way around, and it involved crossing the border with Crescent twice, but many people used it to exercise or walk away the excesses of every eighth-day feast. That was the reason why the boathouse was such a good hiding place: It was so close to activity. A row of vacation homes lined the road to their left, owned mostly by rich people from Marcellan Canton and used irregularly. But behind them were smaller buildings, retreats from the busier areas of Course and Crescent, and these were occupied for at least half of the time. Hiding people beneath the Marcellans' noses pleased Gorham immensely.

They slowed as they approached the boathouse, and Malia went ahead, disappearing through the door into shadow. Gorham looked out over the lake, trying to appear calm even though his heart was thumping hard. Peer is back, he thought. The idea seemed so surreal and alien to him, because he'd spent the best part of three years attempting to forget. Whatever confident face he presented to his fellow Watchers and the other people around him, deep inside Peer had always been a shameful scar.

I've got so much to apologize for.

Malia stepped from the boathouse. "Don't stand there with your head up your ass. Come on!" But even her brusque signal that the coast was clear could not raise a smile from him today.

Peer was back, sweet innocent Peer. And he wondered what secrets she had brought.

He went inside and followed Malia into the basement. The first person Gorham saw was the cowering man, tears streaking his bruised face and hands raised to protect himself. He had striking white hair and looked weak and thin, but looks could be deceptive. The three Watchers he'd sent with Gerrett to bring in Peer were there, and the air was loaded.

"Peer?" he asked.

"Here." She was on the other side of the basement, strapped against a wall.

His heart broke for her. She looked just as he remembered-her dark hair longer, perhaps, her face a little thinner and harsher-and right now her expression was one of misery. She looked at him with a naive hope, and something else.

"Peer," he said awkwardly, "it's so good to see you again." He crossed to her and knelt, glancing at her bonds. They were tied well. Her left wrist had bled a little from where the rope had tightened and twisted in, but the dribble of blood was already drying. He scanned her face for any hint of abuse and saw none. Good. The Watchers were determined but not brutal. Not unless the occasion called for it.

"Gorham, what's happening here?" Her voice was soft and uncertain.

"I came to ask the same thing. Your friend killed Gerrett."

"That was an accident. He stepped out in front of us and-"

"You remember Gerrett," Malia said. "We haven't told his family yet. His youngest developed heart canker a year ago. The shock might just kill her."

Peer closed her eyes, and Gorham saw true sorrow there. Careful, he thought. She's from Skulk.

"So who's your friend?"

"Gorham, he's the only reason I managed to get out. I thought you might still have contact with the Watchers, even after everything, and I was bringing him to you so that-"

"Assassination," Malia breathed, the word like a revelation. "Those fucking Marcellans are hiring from Skulk now, are they? Can't do their own job because it would be too dirty?"

"Assassination?" Peer said, looking from Malia to Gorham.

"Of course," Gorham said. "You don't know."

"Know what?"

"We should get away from here," Malia said urgently. "Deal with him, take her somewhere safer for interrogation."

"Gorham," Peer persisted, "know what?"

Gorham looked at his old lover, whom he'd let go. He reached out and touched her face. She did not flinch, but neither did she lean into the caress.

"That I'm leading the Watchers now," he said.

Peer's eyes grew wide, and Gorham sighed deeply as he stood and turned away.

"Bring them both," he said. "We'll go down into Jail Ten. Then we can find out why they came."

"Gorham, I don't-" Peer's voice was high, confused.

"Quiet!" Malia shouted, then she grinned. "That'll be my job for the day."

Gorham was shaking, confused, emotions in turmoil. He forced himself to walk away, because he could not afford weakness. Not now. He knew how Malia found out things. And he hoped that, when the time came, Peer would tell the truth.

Twice in as many days. Gorham hated coming down into the Echoes.

Jail Ten was in the first Echo below Course Canton. It had been abandoned almost a hundred years before, soon after the salt plague and subsequent purge had turned Skulk Canton into a wasteland. The jail's prisoners had been moved to Skulk in stages, all three thousand of them, and legend had it that the brutal jailmaster had remained behind in Jail Ten, never to be seen again. The story went that he still considered it his duty to incarcerate anyone who wandered into the underground complex, whether by accident or on purpose. Gorham and his fellow Watchers had sensed phantoms down there, and some even claimed to have seen them, but no one had seen the jailmaster.

It served them well to perpetuate the myth.

They carried oil torches similar to those the Baker used in her own underground retreat. There were no chopped down here to guide them, however, and Malia and the other Watchers navigated by memory alone. They had been using the jail for little more than a year, and they went there only when it was absolutely essential.

Gorham was feeling unsettled, uncertain, yet he could not let that show. The Watchers had almost been destroyed three years before, the crackdown by the Marcellan bullies and their Hanharan priests reaching deep into the heart of the organization and all but tearing it out. The memories of those times were still vivid and depressing, and he tried not to dwell on them too often. But seeing Peer walking ahead of him brought it all back. Her wrists were tied before her, and he wondered how painful her right arm would be. She limped slightly, and he wanted to ask about her hip. But he could not, of course. If he voiced his thoughts, guilt would break him down, and it was his job now to be strong.

We should be in each other's arms, he thought. Normal lovers separated for so long would have swept each other away. But they were not normal people and never had been. And these were not normal times.

They reached one of the few entrances to Jail Ten that was still functioning. Malia signaled a halt, and she and another Watcher, Devin, edged toward the heavy steel door. It was propped open by a bundle of rags. Malia whispered some words that hissed around that subterranean space, and beyond the jail door something moved away. The darkness in there was suddenly not quite so deep, and Malia nodded that the coast was clear.

The Baker had given them that. She said it was chopped from a razorplant and given a rudimentary mind, and for three nights after learning that, Gorham had not been able to sleep, terrified at what such a mind might think.

Peer stood fast, the tall man she called Rufus beside her. Gorham heard her breath coming harsh and scared, and the man seemed to be shedding a tear.

"This way, killer!" Malia said to the man, but Gorham stepped forward.

"Let me," he said. He stood before Peer and looked her in the eye, closer than he had yet been. He inhaled her breath, and it sent a thrill of nostalgia and recognition through him-a warmth that had been missing for so long. "We're not bringing you down here to hurt you," he said.

"Really."

"Things are changing, and the Marcellans think we're finished. We can't let them know otherwise."

"Why?"

"Because there's much to do. I'll tell you all of it soon, Peer, I promise."

"So we're down here for your own protection?"

Gorham almost smiled. There, the strong-minded Peer still lives. But she did not look strong right then, and he remembered the terrible truth he had yet to reveal. There was no way he couldn't, but he dreaded every word.

"And yours," he said. "You and your friend."

"He's more than you think," Peer said.

"Tell me inside."

"Bastard."

Does she know? he wondered. But, no, she could not, because there was no way she'd be able to keep such knowledge to herself.

"I never forgot you," he said.

"Nice way of showing it." Her voice broke on the last word. He went to say something else, but Peer shoved past him.

They made their way down through corridors lined with doors, all of them closed. There could have been anything in those small dark rooms, but the doors had been locked shut for decades, and whatever dwelled inside remained alone. Their echoing footsteps disappeared into the warren of rooms and corridors. The stench of stagnant water and old secrets hung heavy in the still air. It was a place never meant to be empty, and being so filled it with stark potential.

As they neared the center of the jail, Devin ran ahead and went about lighting scores of torches lining the walls. The huge room revealed what had once been an exercise area, three stories high and open to the sky until this part of Course was developed overhead. That was perhaps two centuries ago, according to Gorham's advisers' best guess. They trusted that this place was all but forgotten.

"Over here," Malia said. Peer and her tall companion were edged toward the far wall, and there the Watchers set about tying them fast. At Gorham's request, they sat Peer first, making her comfortable before securing her arms to the wall and her legs to the metal chair.

"I came to you because I trusted you," she said.

"You still can."

"Yes?" She was glaring at him now, and he wondered, What the crap has she gone through these last three years? He had no idea.

"You want me to start right away?" Malia asked. She was keen to begin. She'd already taken a folded leather pouch from her belt, and she was arranging its contents across an old mess table.

Something whispered in a dark corner of the massive space, and Devin and the others shifted nervously.

"Only phantoms," Peer said. "Already seen several today."

"No," Gorham said. "Not yet. I want to talk to her first." And he knelt before his old lover as if seeking her blessing and forgiveness.

But what he was about to tell her would surely damn him in her eyes forever.

"We gave you up," he said. "I was already higher in the Watchers' echelons than you knew. The part you worked with, the political arm, had always been intended as dispensable. It was a useless gesture, trying to give our ideals a political voice. You know the Marcellans: They sometimes allow beliefs disparate from their own, but they'll never grant them any sort of power. So your group was… expendable. A front. Ready to be given away to the Marcellans should they ever move on us. We hoped the time would never come."

Peer was staring at him wide-eyed. She said nothing.

"We were nurturing you and the others. Preparing you. And the time did come, when they heard rumors that we'd started using the Baker again."

"The Baker's dead!" Peer gasped, and Malia laughed bitterly.

"This is the new Baker," Gorham said. "She was killed twenty years ago, yes, but she chopped herself, knowing what was happening. It's how generations of Bakers have continued their line. So now we deal with… well, her daughter. And her mother handed down all she knew."

"So you betrayed me for your cause," Peer said, smiling. There was nothing behind the smile-no humor, no life. It was a rictus grin, and Gorham had to turn away.

"They took you and the others in the political arm. We hoped that dismantling our public face would satisfy them, but they came further. Bad times, Peer. We lost so many. We never suspected the ruin would run so deep. There were betrayals that led to scores of deaths-the Marcellan Canton's walls ran red for weeks afterward, and they announced a two-day feast to celebrate what they called the 'defeat of heresy.' But with you… we never knew-"

"Of course you knew what they'd do!" she shouted, but then she sighed and hung her head. "They tortured me, Gorham," she said, head still dipped.

"Yes."

"They made me hurt, demanded that I renounce my beliefs and accept theirs. And when I didn't, they smashed me."

"I know, Peer."

"You know?"

He nodded. "The tortures were made public knowledge."

"Do you care?"

How did he answer that? Of course he cared. "We need to make sure you haven't come here meaning us harm."

"And that's your answer?"

"That, and I'm sorry."

"Going to torture me now, Gorham?"

"No." And because he could not face watching this, and because he hated himself for not being able to say everything that needed saying until it was over, he turned away and left them all. Devin gave him a torch as he passed, and Gorham found a shadowy doorway and aimed for it.

"I came for you!" Peer shouted behind him. She sounded angry, but he still knew her well enough to hear the hurt.

Gorham could answer only silently and to himself. When I'm sure that's true, I'll welcome you back. The corridor closed around him and he slipped into a room, leaning heavily against a wall, sobbing.

From the large area he'd just left, he heard the hissing of Malia's truthbugs.

"My husband was one of those they crucified alive," Malia said. "You remember Bren?"

"Yes, Malia. I'm sorry."

Malia looked up from the table and stared at her, and Peer could see the sadness in her eyes. Anger tried to hide it, fury closed it in, but the sorrow was unmistakable.

"Thank you," Malia said. "I apologize, Peer. This won't hurt. But what Gorham said is right: We need to know. A lot has changed since you…"

"Since I was sacrificed?"

Malia sighed and came forward, several small bugs flitting across the palm of her hand.

Peer looked after Gorham, but he had not reappeared. Devin and the other two Watchers stood back, glancing around nervously as a whisper passed through the subterranean room once again. "I'll tell you the truth," she said.

Malia nodded, then held her hand flat in front of Peer's face and blew.

Peer felt the bugs strike her skin. They stuck for a while, speckling her face, and then they started moving. Some went for her mouth, some her nose, and one wormed into the corner of her eye. She opened her mouth to scream but could not. The breath was frozen in her throat.

"No," she heard Rufus say beside her, but she could not turn to comfort him. He'd better be what I think he is, she thought, and then something changed abruptly. The pain in her right arm grew distant, the ache in her hip faded, and the coolness of the air misted away into a comfortable warmth. Everything felt fine, and she relaxed down into the chair, her body taking the weight of her tied arms.

"Why have you come here?" Malia asked.

"To see Gorham."

"Why?"

"Because of Rufus."

"Who's Rufus?"

Peer glanced sideways at the bound man.

"Why do you think Gorham wants to see Rufus?"

"You don't need your little bugs for me to…" She frowned, feeling them on her, in her, and a terrible shiver ran through her body.

"Why?" Malia prompted.

"Because he's from beyond Echo City. I saw him walking in across the desert, and he doesn't know this place."

Malia's eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, then closed again, as though swallowing whatever she was trying to say. "That can't be…" she said at last.

Peer saw the others step forward, and all the attention moved onto Rufus. And then, below the terrible feeling of those bugs still shifting inside her, she realized the urgency of what Malia had to do next.

"Him," Peer said, shaking and feeling a terrible sickness rising.

"Devin, give her the drink," Malia said, and she returned to the table.

Devin came close to Peer and held a small goblet to her mouth, but he never took his eyes from Rufus. "Drink," he said. "It'll kill them. Is he really from the Bonelands?"

"I think so," Peer said weakly. The fluid tasted of rotten mepple, but it settled the rising vomit somehow, and she leaned back, exhausted, in her chair.

Malia was whispering to one of the other Watchers, and the woman ran off toward where Gorham had vanished.

"This is it," Peer said. "This is it, isn't it?"

Malia threw her a strange glance but then moved toward Rufus, her hand held out and swarming with a new batch of truthbugs.

"This is what we've all been waiting for," Peer said. "It's why I had to come." Rufus was looking at her, eyes wide and terrified, and she tried to offer him a reassuring smile, but it would not form. She was as fascinated as all of them in what he had to say, and she found herself wishing that Gorham was there to hear.

"There's more that you don't yet know," Malia said to Peer. Then she blew the bugs into the tall man's face.

And when she leaned forward to ask him her first question, he began to scream.

On the rooftop of the tallest building on the highest hill in Echo City, a Baker's child fed four Scopes and made sure their chains were secure. He liked these monsters, enjoyed the sickly wet sounds their mouths made when they opened, and breathed in the stink of them that even the stiff breeze up here could never completely carry away. He smoothed their thick, rough skin beneath their leathery covers. He scooped their shit and swept their piss to a far corner of the roof and into a chute that took it away. Sometimes he spoke to them, knowing that even if they heard they could never understand. His mother had made them well, while she had made him badly.

His name was Nophel, and he had named himself. She had never honored him with a name. He doubted she even gave him a glance before sending him to Bedmoil, the largest workhouse in Mino Mont. It had been the greatest moment of his life when he aided in her downfall twenty years before.

Nophel had taken his name from one of the six-legged gods of the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians. His Marcellan employers disliked that, and the Hanharan priests who occasionally visited him hated it. But these reactions interested him, and intellectually he knew that the name had become more than just a part of him. Nophel, so the temple's teachings went, was the god of quiet things, and he had spent his life keeping to the shadows, whispering while others shouted and ensuring that he could go where he pleased. Old Dane Marcellan had taken to using Nophel for some of his more covert activities, and Nophel liked that well enough. Even so, alone up here with the Scopes was the only time he would reveal his mutilation to the skies.

He fed the Western Scope, the last of the four, using a wide spoon to scoop the chickpig and mepple stew into its drooling mouth. It made small, satisfied grunting noises as it fed-the only one of the four that did-and he heard its stomach rumbling as it swallowed the food. A thick membrane slipped down and up across its massive eyeball, clearing dust and renewing its view. While it chewed its last mouthful, Nophel knelt to check its gears, mountings, and cogs. They were well greased. He pulled a lever, forcing the thing to shift its weight slightly. The complex support system moved and flexed, but he heard nothing. That was good. Next he ensured that the reading tube's entry point to its body was not sore or infected. It entered at the back of the Scope's neck, and Nophel hated the bristly pink junction of silk tube with rough skin, because it reminded him of his own deformed face in the mirror. There was no sign of inflammation and it was dry. That pleased him, because it meant he would not have to apply any soothing cream.

Soon the time would come to move the Scopes around the roof, changing their positions to avoid resting sores. But not yet. That was a task he disliked because it revealed their true genesis: humanity. Covered in leather shrouds, they were monsters to him. When he moved them, seeing them walk, holding their shriveled hands to guide them across the rooftop because their eyes could see only far away, not this close in-despite all that, they seemed almost as human as he did.

He walked one slow circuit of the roof and looked out and down over Echo City. In some directions he could just make out the pale hint of the Markoshi Desert on the horizon, but mostly it was only city he saw, the great sprawl of ages. Towers rose here and there, and the spires of temples. The arches of the failed skyride network-the metal rusting, some sections fallen into memory, as had the dozens of people killed on its first and last ride-pricked the sky to the west. But none of them was nearly as high as Hanharan Heights. It looked so timeless, yet in a thousand years this view would be completely different. The place where he now stood would have been subsumed beneath the steady march of progress, and whoever stood upon Hanharan Heights' summit might be five hundred steps higher. And what of forever? he thought. He often attempted to wonder that far ahead. The city could not rise endlessly, and though he did not fear it-Nophel feared little-eventual stagnation, then regression, was his prediction.

He stood longest next to the Northern Scope. It was the quietest of the four, the stillest, and there had been times when he thought it dead. But if he leaned over the roof parapet and looked at its eye, he could see the moisture there and the concentration as it looked past the spread of Crescent's farmland at Dragar's Canton.

Though ten miles distant, the pale curves of Dragar's six silent domes were clearly visible. Nophel appreciated a mystery, but this one troubled him.

"So let's see what's to be seen," he said, and the breeze stole his words away.

He always bade the Scopes farewell, though they never answered back. Deep down, the root of their humanity must still exist; the Baker bitch had seen to that. And he liked to think that, even if they did not hear or answer, they sensed that he cared for them.

He descended the winding staircase that led to the viewing room, fifty steps below the exposed roof. Halfway down, he tied his robe tight and lifted his hood, just in case one of the Marcellans or, gods help him, a Hanharan priest had found reason to pay him a visit. But the room was silent, other than the steady rumble of brewing five-bean and the crackle of the fire he'd set in the hearth. Warming already, mouth watering in anticipation of the brew, he glanced at the huge viewing mirror set in the center of the room. The four wide reading tubes hung down from a hole in the ceiling, and behind the viewing mirror stood the complex apparatus used to select tubes. The western tube was connected right now, and Nophel saw the glint of sun on the Tharin's surface. It made the river appear almost alive.

Nophel poured a large mug of five-bean and sat before the viewing mirror. As always prior to seeing what they could see, he needed to see himself. He pulled a lever and the western tube disconnected with a soft hiss, the living image on the mirror fading and then flickering to nothing.

Nophel lowered his hood and smiled at his image. The single pale eye, his other eye a blood-red ruin. The dark skin split and bubbled with fungal growths; they would need pricking and bathing again later. His teeth were good, bright and even, and that made his smile the most monstrous aspect of all.

"Nophel, king of all the city," he muttered, laughing as he reconnected the western tube. Echo City's last king had been quartered and sent to the far corners fifteen hundred years before, and Nophel's utterance was an amusement only to himself.

For the next hour he controlled the Western Scope with a series of levers and dials. Rising within the reading tubes were the thin pipes that carried Nophel's hydraulic commands, and from his seat he could spur the Scope to turn its head left and right, up and down, and to extend its neck, thereby turning the great lens of its eye and bringing distant things in close. He imagined the chopped creature grunting as he turned dials and pulled or pushed levers, and perhaps it still had the taste of chickpig in its mouth as it obeyed promptings it did not understand. The Marcellans viewed the Scopes as little more than machines; Nophel alone acknowledged their spark of life.

From the expansive farmland of Crescent Canton to the water refineries of Course, he focused in and out, enjoying the sense of flying across the city. Smoke rose from tall chimneys close to the western wall, steam drifted southward from the refineries, canals flowed, streets bustled, rathawks drifted and swooped. He could see straight along the river from here, and he tweaked a lever, commanding the Scope to close along the Tharin as far as it could. The image on the viewing mirror grew, quickly passing the city walls and reaching far out into the haze of the desert. The image paused, Nophel nudged the lever impatiently, and the Scope stretched farther. The view was now simply a mass of hazy air and pale desert landscape, but he sat staring at it for some time. The Marcellans said there was nothing beyond the city, yet here he was. He reveled in this slight rebellion, realizing that it was foolish yet enjoying it nonetheless. If the Marcellans knew where he looked, he would be in trouble-yet nothing like that worried him. He sometimes believed that Dane Marcellan-the one who had taken it upon himself to look after Nophel-was even a little scared of him. One day that fear might serve him well, but for now he simply toyed with it.

Nophel worked for the Marcellans, but he lived for himself.

The image began to waver as the Scope grew tired, and he stroked the dial that gave it permission to draw back into itself. As it did so, its sight passed across the area to the north of Course where the Baker had practiced her monstrous arts until two decades before. Nophel smiled grimly and went about switching Scopes.

A hiss of escaping gas, the soft click of well-oiled gears, and he pumped the footrest that boosted pressure in the hydraulic systems. Draining his five-bean and going to pour more, Nophel felt the familiar thrill at what he would see next. Dragar's Canton was always motionless, quiet, enigmatic, yet he could watch its stillness for hours. They're down there, he would think, or maybe not, and both stark possibilities held him enraptured. The streets were full of rumors, of course, but there had been no verified sighting of a Dragarian for almost forty years.

When he returned to the viewing mirror and turned a dial, he dropped his mug of five-bean. He barely sensed the pain as the liquid scalded his foot.

Then he lifted his hood, closed his robe, and rushed from the room, heading down.

There were several Scarlet Blades in the corridor outside the Marcellans' rooms. They were lounging in wide leather seats, playing lob dice and laughing as one unfortunate lost more and more shillings. They glanced up at Nophel's approach, and the laughter chilled.

"I need to see Dane Marcellan," he said.

"Dane's busy," one of the tall female soldiers replied. Someone chuckled.

"Then I'll fucking un-busy him!" Nophel roared. One Blade stood and drew his knife; another took a step back. Nophel shook, his surprise at how he'd raged at them smothered by the fear and excitement that had taken hold.

"Fine," the woman said. "I'll pick you a nice spot on the wall." She kicked at the door handle behind her and shoved the door open with her boot. They all knew that Nophel would never hang on the wall. If and when the time came, he'd disappear quickly and quietly, and his body would float down into the Chasm with so many others.

I scare them, he thought, and he glared at the soldiers as he passed by. A couple of them glowered back, but their eyes flickered away before his did. The others did not watch him through the door at all.

He entered the long, wide corridor that ran the length of the Marcellans' living quarters, hurrying quickly past displays of rare artwork, sculptures, and religious artifacts from thousands of years of Hanharan dominance. As always, he spared a quick glance for the glass-enclosed finger bone-the priests and their more-devout followers believed fervently that it was the index finger from Hanharan's left hand-then paused outside Dane's door.

A moment of doubt gripped him. Is it really Dane I need to tell? But of all the Marcellans, Dane was the closest to a friend he had. And there really was no one else.

Heart thumping from exertion, eye wide as though it could retain the dread image of what he had seen, he thumped once on the door and then entered.

Dane was standing naked at a table in the far corner of the room, cooking slash and inhaling the fumes through a series of wet pipes. The flesh of his ample thighs and buttocks quivered as he breathed in, and Nophel heard the sighs of gentle pleasure. In the center of the room, reclining on the vast round bed, two naked women idly stroked each other. One of them glanced up, apparently unconcerned at being disturbed. And then she saw Nophel.

"Oh!" she gasped. She stared at his face, still shadowed by the hood, her brazen nakedness a sign of her sick fascination. I'm not a person to her, Nophel thought, and he felt the familiar flush of shame that he had spent his entire life trying to push down.

Dane turned around, taking a moment to focus. "Nophel," he said.

"We must talk," Nophel said.

Dane pulled the pipe to his lips again and pursed them around its end-a delicate action for such a fat man. His rounded stomach hung so low that his genitals were almost hidden from view.

"Poor man," the other naked woman said. She had slipped from the bed and stood, unashamed, scratching idly at her stomach with one hand while she looked at him.

"Leave us if you will, ladies," Dane said.

"But, Dane," the first woman began, "we were just getting-"

"It's important," Nophel said. He was looking at the women as he spoke, and he took several steps forward, knowing that the burning oil lamps would cast more light onto his face from this angle.

The standing woman stepped back, crossing both hands over her sex.

"Tomorrow," Dane said. He turned his back on the women and breathed in more slash, waving Nophel over.

The women left without dressing, exiting through a door hidden in an expanse of books lining one wall. Nophel had never been in there, though he knew it led to a series of stairs and corridors-Dane's own private route down into the vastness of Hanharan Heights. He felt a pang of jealousy that Dane would let two whores use this way yet not let him, but he shoved it aside. This was not about favors, or even trust. Both men wanted what was best for the city, and though their outlooks might differ, they came together about the bigger picture.

"It's been a while," Dane said. He turned and smiled. "You're sure I can't interest you in…?" He nodded at the door through which the women had vanished. "Rebec really is very good. She does things with her lips and a mouthful of dart root that'll have you calling to Hanharan's divine cock for mercy."

Nophel shook his head. Dane's blasphemy never surprised him. "They pity me," he said.

"You interest them. They'd explore you."

"A gateway opened in Dragar's Canton."

For a moment Dane's smile remained as he blinked away the effects of slash, absorbing what Nophel had said. Then his face dropped and he became the politician Nophel knew so well.

"A gateway?"

"Or a door. Something. It was quick." Nophel breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of cooked slash, wine, and sex. He indulged in none of them, and the odors stirred little within him.

Dane waddled to the bed and lifted his gown, swinging it around his shoulders with a surprising deftness. Fat he might be, and cursed with many vices, but Nophel had long suspected that Dane was stronger and fitter than he looked. Perhaps deception came naturally to such a man, or maybe he had simply taken advantage of circumstance.

"You're certain of what you saw?" he asked.

Nophel nodded.

"The Northern Scope, it's fit and well? Healthy?"

"There was no fault. It wasn't a blur in the mirror or an inconsistency in the Scope's vision. Quick, granted, but I'm sure. Part of a dome slid open. Something came out. The dome closed again." He shut his eyes for a beat, remembering what he'd seen to ensure it tallied with his description. Something came out-that was the part that still confused him.

"What came out?"

"I don't know."

"Hmm." Dane regarded him for a moment, then came closer and touched his shoulder. "Sit with me." He walked around the bed to an area of floor seats, the table in the center bearing several opened wine bottles and a scatter of glasses and goblets. There was also the remains of a meal. "You're well?" he asked.

"I'm as fine as I can be," Nophel said.

"Then we have a problem that needs investigating."

"You'll take it to the Council?"

"Of course." Dane eased himself into a seat, the upholstery expanding and stretching to take his weight. Nophel sat opposite, uncomfortable as ever in such plush surroundings. He preferred his own rooms lower down in the vast sprawl of buildings that made up Hanharan Heights-book-lined, simple, with the smell of the past hanging in the air from old manuscripts and older maps. Nophel had once met Sprote Felder, the renowned explorer of the Echoes, and the two had talked for hours about things most Echoians would never even know. Nophel respected that man-perhaps envied him too-but he was as much an explorer as Felder. The only difference was, he explored history through his mind. And the history he sought was all to do with the Bakers-those damned women who had cursed him so.

"And what will they do?" he asked.

"They'll want to talk to you. To ask exactly what you saw." Dane sighed and poured himself a large glass of ruby wine. "Then they'll debate the veracity of your account, argue once again over your control of the Scopes. Express their continuing mistrust at your heritage."

"I gave them the Baker."

"Some don't see it that way, Nophel. You know that well enough." He sipped at the wine, nodded, then clunked the glass down on the table. "They'll argue and agree, then dispute and call for more meetings, and it'll take them three days to get to where I've arrived in two heartbeats."

"Where you've arrived…"

"Knowing that we can take no chances." Dane shook his head, the metal bonds in his tightly tied hair tinkling together. "Dragar's is given its privacy, and most have forgotten it's even there. It's a blank spot on the city, Nophel, but you know as well as I that we keep a good watch. That's partly what they're for." He nodded vaguely at the ceiling. "And also part of the reason why you and I are such good friends."

"Maybe it happens a lot," Nophel said. "Maybe they're always slipping in and out, and it's just that I happened to see it today."

"Do you believe that?"

Nophel thought about what he'd seen, trying to make it clear in his mind. "No," he said softly.

"No. That's why you need to go and investigate."

"Me?" He was shocked, but pleased as well. Nophel knew he was a monster to most, but he had never denied the presence of his own ego. It was something to do with fitting in.

"You're quiet," Dane said. "You can move well. People…" He shrugged. "You know."

"People avoid me."

"Yes. So while I take this to the Council and let them bicker like old women, go and look for me, Nophel. Find out what came out and what it means. And bring it to me."

Nophel nodded, running his fingers around the rim of an empty wineglass. When he looked, a fine line of lip paint slashed across his finger, and he thought of where else those lips had been. He felt no longings and never had.

"I'll need something from you," he said. "Something to help me."

Dane raised his hands in a whatever-you-want gesture.

"I need to be more than quiet and unseen. More than unnoticed. I need to be invisible."

"Blue Water?" Dane gasped.

Nophel nodded again.

"But… there's very little left. Only drops. And nobody has ever survived it." Dane stood and paced around the table. His robe knocked over his wineglass and it spilled, dripping onto the pale carpet. That stain will always be there, Nophel thought, long after I'm gone. "You know we tried it on some of the Blades, Nophel, and…"

"They died."

"They disappeared. Everyone who took it-just gone."

"Everyone who took it wasn't the Baker's blood son."

Dane stared at him, and for the first time ever, Nophel saw fear in that fat politician's eyes. He called us friends, he thought, and we have been for a long time. But sometime in the future, he'll become so afraid of where I came from that…

"Have it," Dane said, nodding slowly. "I'll take you down myself."

… that he'll have to kill me. When that time came, Nophel would need to be ready.

Dane led him through the hidden bookcase door. It seemed that today was filled with privileges.

Peer could not help watching Gorham as he prepared drinks for them. The way he moved, his smallest mannerisms, the subtle twitch in his left eye when he was concentrating, all belonged to the man she had once known. Yet here he was now, that same man-leader of the Watchers and a stranger to her all over again.

And he had given her up. Their loving and caring for each other, their tentative plans for a future, all had been discarded when the need of the Watchers grew too great. He'd sacrificed her to the brutality of the Marcellans and their religious pogrom. She thought of that grinning torturer, sweating and slavering as he drove the air shards into her arm, knowing that they could never be withdrawn. Her screams had barely covered his grunts, or the chanting of that bastard Hanharan priest. You're supposed to love everyone! she'd pleaded between long sessions of torture, but he had been only too keen to put her right.

Hanharan loves everyone, he had replied. All he asks is that you love him back.

I love him! Peer had screamed. I love him; I love Hanharan. And then she'd seen that priest's self-righteous, sad smile and noticed that he was actually rather beautiful.

I think we both know you don't mean that deep in your heart, the priest had whispered. And then the grinning man, and the air shards, and later the hammer when she realized she could never mean that, could never really love the myth of Hanharan. And neither could she pretend.

"I left a man in Skulk," she said. Gorham paused in his movement-only briefly, but it was there. "He's been there for a long time. He wrote about the Dragarians and how they were wronged long ago by the city and its rulers. He expressed pity for them, and the Marcellans banished him. A good man." She wondered what Penler was doing now and wished she could be with him. They would talk and argue, debate and agree, and sometimes they'd discuss only the quality of the evening's wine or what the weather might do tomorrow. But with Penler, it was always deeper. Those vines draw such goodness from deep down where no one goes, he might say, or, Imagine the things that weather saw before it reached the city, and the things it will see beyond.

"I'm sorry, Peer."

"It doesn't matter. Only Rufus matters."

"So he comes out of the desert without a name, and you name him yourself. He speaks Echoian, though not fluently."

"He is fluent," Peer insisted, "but it's a child's fluency. Haven't you noticed? He speaks Echoian like a child."

"A murderous child." He brought her a drink and, despite everything, she felt her whole body relax slightly when she smelled the five-bean.

"That was an accident," she said, remembering the Border Spite Rufus had killed after they crossed the Levels. She had not yet told Gorham about that and wasn't sure she would. Perhaps the time to tell had passed. And maybe she didn't trust him.

"But it shows he's dangerous. If he really does come from elsewhere-"

"How the crap can you still doubt it? You saw how he reacted to Malia's truthbugs. He screamed and gibbered, as if whatever he saw was just too terrible." She shivered at the memory, wondering how many others had been subjected to their intrusion. "Has anyone else you've used those things on ever acted that way?"

"No. The bugs usually cause calm, not fear."

"His clothing? The things he carries?"

"There are people in Echo City who might have made all that."

"Really?" She drank some more, looking at Gorham through the steam and trying to read his face. I should hate him, she thought.

"You must hate me," he said. Peer laughed softly. "What?" he asked.

"Gorham," she said, and they both heard the echo of old affections in how she spoke his name. We should be asking about each other, filling in those missing three years, but we're dropped into the importance of the here and now.

Malia entered, her stern face different. She was frightened and amazed, excited and nervous. At least one Watcher now believed in Rufus.

"He's asleep," she said. "I gave him some vinegared stoneshroom to help him rest."

"Thank you," Peer said. Malia nodded and offered the beginnings of a smile.

"So now we need to talk," Gorham said.

"Is this it?" Malia closed the door behind her, pouring a mug of five-bean for herself. The room was an old administration office for the jail, sparse and bleak, but the Watchers had dragged some comfortable furniture down here over time. It felt damp and had soaked up the atmosphere of the place, but it was somewhere to rest.

"I'm not sure we can-" Gorham began, glancing at Peer.

"Hanharan's cock, Gorham! After what she went through because of us, and what she's put herself through for Rufus? Honor her with your trust, at least."

Peer glanced at Gorham, and he lowered his eyes, abashed. He swilled the five-bean in his mug and seemed to study the dregs, like some old seer trying to read the future.

"There's something happening," he said, still not looking up from the mug. "Noises heard deep down. The Garthans are worried."

"How can you know that?" Peer asked cautiously, thinking of Penler's haunted words: The Garthans are never afraid of anything.

"You've heard of Sprote Felder. He's… a friend of ours."

"A Watcher?"

"He doesn't call himself that."

"What sort of noises have them worried?" Peer asked. This is what I heard from Penler… these same rumors…

"Something unknown."

"And one of the Custodian priests," Malia said. "We've talked to him as well. He and his people believe something is coming."

"Maybe they mean Rufus Kyuss," Peer quipped, but there was little humor in her voice, and neither of her companions smiled.

"God of new things," Gorham said. "Maybe he's here to welcome in the future."

"You can't be-"

"Of course I'm not serious!" he said, standing and turning his back on Peer.

"Others in the city are nervous as well," Malia said. "Bellia Ton?"

"I don't know her," Peer said.

"River reader. Her, others, all sensing something. And now you come to us with Rufus, and…"

"And the Watchers may not have to watch for much longer," Gorham said. "We've never known exactly what it might entail, and we still don't-but the end-times we've long expected for Echo City might be here at last."

Peer shook her head, confused at what was being said.

"This is it," Malia said. Peer had never heard fear in the woman's voice before, but it was there now. "This is what the Watchers have been waiting for forever. Even before you came, we were starting to suspect."

"How does Rufus figure in this?" Peer asked.

"He changes everything!" Malia said.

Peer looked from Malia to Gorham, and he continued staring into his mug. But his eyes were alight. Her heart thumped, and she felt a queasy excitement.

"Your friend from afar might just be our salvation," Gorham said. "And I can't believe his appearance is a coincidence. If Echo City ends, we have to leave to survive. And if he truly came from across the Bonelands…" He looked up at Peer at last. "We have to get him to the Baker."

"Yeah," Malia said.

"But we should tell someone, shouldn't we?" Peer asked. "There must be people we should tell?"

"Who?" Gorham asked. "Nobody in power. After they took you, the Marcellans crushed the Watchers down. You already know what happened to Bren." He glanced at Malia. "The whole upper echelon of the Watchers' organization was wiped out, imprisoned, or-"

"Driven underground," Malia finished for him. "Some of them-the cowards-ran. Never seen them since."

"So here I am," Gorham said. "Leading the Watchers. Making decisions that might affect everyone."

"I won't pity you your position," Peer said quietly. "I can't."

"And I respect that. But I need you to understand why this has to remain secret. We can't risk anyone finding out about Rufus. If word of this gets to the Marcellans…" He shrugged.

"They know they can never destroy our beliefs and aims," Malia said, "and they suspect there are still Watchers in the city. They'd kill Rufus as a Pretender and proclaim a day of celebration the moment they laid hands on him."

"Aren't there people you can trust?" Peer asked. Something seemed so wrong here-a visitor who had crossed the Markoshi Desert, one of the most incredible things ever to happen to Echo City, and they could tell no one.

"With this? I trust Malia," Gorham said. "Devin. A few other Watchers." He looked around, stroking one cheek as if searching for someone else.

"The new Baker?" Peer asked.

Gorham did not answer.

"Her name's Nadielle," Malia said. "And we have to take Rufus to her now!"

No, Peer thought. But she knew they were right: Rufus might have come to the city as a lost, confused man, but circumstances she knew nothing about were turning him into a potential savior.

The three of them sat for a while, drinking their five-bean and relishing what was left of silence.

"We're taking you to see someone," Peer said. Rufus lifted his head, and he was still terrified. She saw the potential for further screams in his eyes, and he suddenly looked much older. I thought he was thirty, she thought. But now maybe sixty.

"Who?" he asked.

"Her name's Nadielle. I've never met her. She's… we call her a flesh artist. The Baker."

"Artist," he said softly.

"We think she might be able to help."

"Will she hurt me?" Rufus asked, and Peer felt her throat tighten, her eyes burn.

"No, she won't," she said. "But you must realize that my friends don't trust you yet. You killed Gerrett."

"But I thought he was-"

"I know, Rufus. I know." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "But I still haven't told anyone about the Border Spite."

"Why? I was… protecting us both."