Echo city

Her mother told her it was called a drop ship. People paid to be strapped into a metal-reinforced wooden cart, which was then hauled to the summit by means of an intricate system of pulleys, ropes, and chains. The pulling was carried out by three tusked swine, and even that process was made into an entertainment, with clowns leaping from one creature's back to another and conducting a fake swordfight with silk snakes as they went. Once the cart was at the top, the clowns paused and began a countdown. Ten… nine… eight… When they reached one, a clown threw a lever in the hauling wheel's hub, and the cart fell to the ground.

The noise was tremendous. Ropes whipped around wooden spools, sending smoke hissing out of the ride. The people inside screamed. And as it reached the bottom, a high, whining shriek was emitted from the complex braking system. The riders emerged laughing and pale, shaking and whooping, and Peer had insisted that she have a turn. Her mother refused at first but soon relented. She'd been wearing a smile that day, and Peer was the center of her life.

The feeling Peer had in the pod as it was gushed from the mouth of the Bellower was similar-at least to begin with. Then it grew a hundred times more terrifying.

She closed her eyes and held her breath, but it went on too long and she had to breathe. She heard screaming and wondered if it was her own. Her body was both hot and cold, skin scorched or frozen in a hundred places, and she had never felt so sick without actually being able to vomit. The screams were swallowed as the terrible grinding, screeching sound from outside increased, shuddering through the pod with impacts that came so often it was difficult to discern one from the next.

Peer opened her mouth to shout, but something flooded in. She gagged. Drowning, she thought, choking, dying. But she did not vomit, and she did not die. The pod slowed, the noise lessened, and it took her a long while to realize they had come to a halt.

When she opened her eyes, Nophel was leaning over her, wiping a thick gelatinous substance from her eyes.

"Just scoop it away," he said, sounding as terrified as she felt. "It's exuded to buffer the body. There. That wasn't so bad."

"I'm going to kill you." Malia spoke from out of Peer's view. "Soon as I can feel my hands again, I'm going to kill you."

Peer sat up slowly, dizzy, closing her eyes until she found balance. When she opened them again, she saw another underground chamber lit by several oil lamps, another curtain lining an entire wall, and Nophel dragging coiled tubes across the floor. Malia turned in her seat.

"I think I shit myself."

"Don't worry," Nophel said, and he seemed cheerier the more terrified Peer and Malia became. "Two more like that and we'll be there."

Gorham was beginning to understand Nadielle's terror. It was a fear born partly from knowledge and partly from the factors she still did not understand. But mostly it was composed of guilt.

He'd told her that she was not to blame. The mistakes of an ancestor born thousands of years before could hardly be laid at Nadielle's door. But then she tried to explain some of the background of the Bakers-information that, he was sure, was rarely imparted-and his own doubts had started to grow. All Bakers carried the successes and failures, and the triumphs and tragedies, of their predecessors. And though they were perceived as different people, in some ways their minds were one and the same. Imagine being born with such knowledge, he thought. What could that do to a person? But Nadielle, he was coming to realize, was more than a person. She was the culmination of her line. And everything she did, all her rights and wrongs, would also be passed on.

Such responsibility. Such weight.

Now he was following Nadielle again, up through the Echoes in a desperate rush to reach the present, see the sky, and make their way back to her laboratories. She was unsure whether there was anything that could be done, but she had to try. She had to.

All the time she'd told him her story, she never raised her voice above a whisper. He thought maybe the Lost Man's desperation had held a mirror up to her own.

"You've seen my mother's old books, Gorham, and many of them were handed down from generation to generation, hundreds or even thousands of years old. But you haven't seen all of them. Only I've seen them all, because I'm the Baker right now. I keep them hidden away. I add to them sometimes, when I improve the chopping processes or… something else. But some of the things my ancestors achieved put me in their shadows. They were explorers in arcane arts I can barely conceive of. I'm a nothing at the end of a long line of wonders. The Pserans are my greatest triumph, but I'm not sure they'll even merit an entry in the Bakers' diaries.

"I've always been aware of the Vex. It was legend thousands of years ago, something from the oldest times of the Bakers written in the oldest Baker diary. I've never questioned whether it was true. It was so old, it didn't seem to matter. The Vex was a creature created by the first Baker. Chopped, though I'm sure back then the processes were vastly different. The first Baker wrote about the Vex only briefly. I read the account just once, and that's all that was needed. I never forgot:

"The Vex was bad, and it would grow worse, so I threw it into the Falls.

"It was left to succeeding Bakers to write down what they knew. Some of it must have been word of mouth, though most of it is inherited memory. Gorham, I can't tell you, can't explain, how I know most of the things I know. It was in my head from the beginning. It's passed down, but not in the way your name is passed from your parents to you or the color of your hair. This is knowledge, as certain as the color of my hair or the build of my bones. And buried in that mass of handed-down knowledge, I see why that first Baker should have written so much more.

"The Vex was one of the first attempts at chopping-a new process, untested, the Baker ignorant of its power. She was attempting to create something that would watch over the city, be its heart and mind, its health and conscience, and take care of things, because the city back then was young and still in turmoil. But for reasons that are long lost to time, it went wrong. The Vex killed many people. It rampaged. In the vast scope of its slaughter, it wiped out so many potential family lines. Echo City would be a very different place if the first Baker had been more careful.

"So, yes, the Vex was bad. And it would have grown worse had she not thrown it into the Falls. It's been down there in the Chasm for tens of thousands of years. Feeding on the city's dead, perhaps. Absorbing the city's history of death, disease, and murder. Brooding, maybe, and from the glimpse I caught… it's been growing. And now it's climbing back up."

"Climbing?" he'd asked.

"Swimming up the Falls from the Chasm. And I saw… It has…" The tears had come then, surprising him. When he'd hugged her, she accepted his comforting, and he had wondered ever since just who she really was.

"I'm a monster," she'd said, gasping into his neck, the same way she had when they'd made love and she'd called him her sunlight.

"No."

"Yes. I was chopped, not born. No love made me, Gorham. Only a need to survive. The same need that makes every Baker-a determination for our line to continue. Whatever accident of nature made the first Baker is resounding through the ages."

"What did make her?"

"That's knowledge that was never handed down. Why would a monster recall the key to its existence?" she asked bitterly. "Someone could use it against us."

"You're just like me," he'd said.

"No. My predecessor knew she would die, and she needed to go on. Carry all our knowledge forward. In here!" She'd slapped her own head.

I'm a monster, she had said, taking on the blame for the Vex. And thinking of the Pserans and Neph, Gorham's uncertainty about this woman grew even more.

Now, the two of them close together as they climbed through the buried histories of Echo City, she was becoming more of a stranger to him than ever before. She was the Baker, not Nadielle. In her mind, memories of old. In her heart, knowledge handed down through the ages. Behind and below them, rising from the unimaginable Chasm with the bones of millennia of the city's dead in its gut, came the Baker family's greatest mistake.

Nadielle was changing so much, and her fear was Gorham's terror.

Up through the Echoes, and Gorham felt eyes upon them all the way. Sometimes he thought he saw movement in old buildings and ruined streets, but when he looked, lights would blink out and darkness would stalk there once again. Other times he saw nothing but sensed things following them, slinking through shadows only just touched by Nadielle's oil torchlight, sniffing after them like hungry hounds. The feeling would go and then return, but he never mentioned it to Nadielle. She was very far away, and he was afraid to disturb her haunting thoughts.

And he wondered what would happen should her torch's fuel reservoir dry up.

Whatever observed and followed did nothing to interfere with their journey, and an unknown time after fleeing the thunderous Falls, Gorham thought that he recognized the Echo around them. Nadielle paused several times-from tiredness, he thought at first, but then he saw the alertness on her face-and all at once she seemed to relax.

"The laboratory is safe," she said. "Not far now."

"I recognize this place. These old fields."

"We'll approach from a different direction, but, yes. My rooms are guarded, Gorham."

"Guarded by what?"

But she was frowning again, distant, and Gorham wondered just how much of herself the Baker had left down at the Falls.

The land rose slightly, old farmland given over to the chaotic remains of wild forest, and soon Nadielle paused at a dip in the ground. There was a round metal hatch cast into the gulley's wall. She glanced back at Gorham, smiling uncertainly, then touched a succession of bolts and dials. A hiss, and then the hatch clicked open. She and Gorham entered, pausing to pluck two torches from the wall.

We're back, Gorham thought, and relief flushed through him. He climbed in after Nadielle and breathed in the familiar, mysterious scents of the Baker's laboratories. He held her arm and tried pulling her to him. She resisted.

"Nadielle?"

"Not now," she said, voice strained. "Don't you see that it's all changed? That I'm someone else?"

"No," he said, but he could not keep the lie from his voice. For a while, Peer's distant presence had been pulling him forward and upward, not Nadielle's.

"I've never had much of a cause," she said. "I've no memories of being a child. I don't even know how old I was when I was chopped. My first recollection is of things carrying me through the Echoes-and I knew what the Echoes were, even then. What child deserves memories like that? When they know everything? Ever since, I've been trying to find my sense of wonder. Sometimes the work I do is… just because I'm the Baker. There's never been much of a reason. But now I have to do what I can." She was distracted, uncertain, and could not meet his eye. "It's all that's left."

"And I'm here to help," he said.

Nadielle froze for a moment, then slowly lifted her head until she was looking right at him. He had never seen such soul in her eyes. "Thank you," she said. She turned from him and walked along the dusty corridor. "I hope you can."

He followed her. As they came to the end of the short corridor and she started to open another metal door, she muttered a brief warning over her shoulder, which did nothing to prepare him for what was inside. "They won't hurt you." Then she opened the door.

Her laboratory was alight with flaring oil lamps. It was also alive with stalking, crawling things-multi-bladed, many-fanged, their bodies muscular and trim, heads thin, eyes dark and large to make the most of the light. They hunkered down when Nadielle and Gorham first entered, then rushed to her like eager pets welcoming their master home.

They won't hurt me, they won't hurt me, Gorham repeated in his mind, because he had never seen anything like this. Neph was similar, but it was humanoid, its origins obvious. These things were part insect, part lizard, as large as a man but so obviously inhuman that he found them less disturbing to look at than Neph. But, unlike with Neph, Gorham could not read them at all.

Some hissed, a few clicked toward him on gleaming claws. Nadielle spoke words in a language he had never heard, and they held back, but he sensed a constant readiness in them to leap at him. He touched his sword's handle and almost laughed at how ineffectual it felt.

"Let's eat and drink," Nadielle said. "And you'll be wanting to rest."

"And you?" he asked, thinking of her bed, her warmth.

"No time for me," she said.

"Then let me help?"

"You?" she asked. When she turned around, it was as if she did not know him at all.

"Me. I'm not just an inconvenience, Nadielle. I went down with you to help, and I'm here to help now."

"I'm not sure what-"

"Don't cast me aside!" he shouted. The huge vat room echoed with the scrape of claw on stone, and shadows tensed.

"Gorham, this is beyond you. You don't know what I am."

"Yet you've tried to make me understand. How many others have you tried telling?"

Nadielle sighed, nodded, and they walked across the vat room together.

None of the womb vats was ruptured, but several still seemed to be working. The creatures-he'd seen maybe twelve, though there might be that many again concealed-patrolled the chamber, and he felt their attention focused upon him. She's their mother, he thought, and that realization led him to consider the convolutions of her strange, unnatural family history.

The more he knew, his fascination with her only increased. But the love he'd once claimed for her now felt different. Lessened. In the face of the Baker, such an idea felt almost childlike.

Speaking again in that strange language, Nadielle entered her rooms at the end of the vat chamber, and Gorham followed. The sense of familiarity enveloped him, and he sighed in relief when he closed the door behind him.

"It's good to be home," Nadielle said, surprising him.

"I was thinking the same."

She looked at him quizzically, smiling. "You still…?" she started, but words seemed to have left her.

"Trust you?" he finished.

Nadielle shrugged.

"Of course," Gorham said softly. He went to her, desperately hoping that she would not pull away again, but she turned and headed for the door beyond her bed. The last time she'd entered that room had been with Peer and Rufus, and Gorham had felt a stab of jealousy-he'd been in her bed but not her most secret room. Now she beckoned him after her, and he supposed that was some form of intimacy, at least.

He could smell her rich body odor, stale breath, and the fear and trials of their time in the Echoes. He wanted to ask her how long they had been down there, but he was afraid her answer might frighten him more. Peer and Malia had not returned with Rufus-or, if they had, those chopped monsters had kept them away. For all they knew Rufus might be dead, caught by the Marcellans and nailed up on their cursed wall as an offering to their twisted, stubborn beliefs. Peer and Malia might have been caught, and the pale stonework of that ancient edifice could be soaked with their blood also. It had seen too much sacrifice for too few reasons.

He was tired, afraid of everything he had discovered and everything that was to come, and as he passed through that door behind Nadielle, emotion took him. He tried to stifle a sob, but it burst out. His chest felt heavy, his eyes wet. He coughed, surprised, trying to disguise what had happened with a further coughing fit.

Nadielle did not turn around. But she knows, he thought, and that was the moment he realized she was beyond him forever.

The room was small and dusty, its corners soft with cobwebs. A table was pushed against a wall, one large book and a pile of loose sheets splayed across its surface. On the floor was another book, the cover ripped from its spine like a bird's broken wing.

"The thing my mother made to send Rufus into the Bonelands," Nadielle said, indicating the papers on the table, but she was not interested in this room. She went to the far corner and used her knife to scratch at the wall. She soon found what she was looking for and scraped the blade across the jambs and head of a door shape set into the wall.

"This," she said, "is my real library." She tugged at the door. It groaned, not eager to open, and Gorham went to help. The door ground across grit and its hinges squealed, and Gorham caught a breath of old books, hidden things, and something else. He'd never believed that eternal darkness could have a smell, but his time in the Echoes had told him otherwise.

"I'll bring them out," Nadielle said. "You go into my rooms and clear the table. Just sweep everything onto the floor; this is all that matters now."

"I'll come in and help," he said, but she looked back at him, close enough to kiss but so far away.

"Only me," she said. "This is Baker stuff."

Gorham left the small room and found breathing much easier in her bedroom. He'd never before felt claustrophobic; perhaps it was another way the Echoes had changed him forever.

He pushed everything from the table as she'd instructed, enjoying the brashness of it, liking the sound of crockery smashing when it hit the floor and the haze of dust thrown up by protesting books and sheafs of unsorted papers. He caught sight of some of what was written on the papers and recognized her writing. Numbers and formulae, sketches of things he had never seen, notes in some sort of personal code, and he realized once again just how far removed from the normal world she was. Perhaps genius was enough to do that to someone.

"Cleared a space?" She emerged carrying several large old books and twitching her nose as if trying to hold back a sneeze. "Take them, will you?" As Gorham lifted the books from her arms, the sneeze came, and she held both hands to her nose.

The door crashed open against the wall, and a black creature streaked in with bladed arms raised.

"No!" Nadielle shouted, and the creature settled like a cowed dog. It shuffled from the room without turning its back to her, and its long, waving tail caught the door and gently closed it.

"Remind me not to make you laugh," Gorham said, heart thundering. "Or cough. Or fart."

She chuckled, and it was a good sound.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked.

She instructed Gorham to spread the books flat on the table. They were bound in old, cracked leather, but they did not look damaged or fragile. To Gorham they appeared timeless.

"Well, I don't know about you," she said, "but I could eat a spitted swine and drink a vineyard."

So they sat together, eating cheese, dried meats, and stale bread, drinking good wine like water, and Gorham felt tiredness closing over him. Fear grew distant, held back behind veils of drunkenness. Nadielle drank at his pace, but she became more morose as time went on, talking less and spending more time paging through the books.

"I need to start," she said at last. "Need to look, understand. Find something."

"A way to kill it," Gorham said, nodding. Nadielle stared at him, her face a blank.

"Perhaps a way to slow it down," she said. She stared past him into a dusty corner, and beyond. "I think that's all we can hope for."

Gorham closed his eyes to blink, saw images of teeth and swimming things, and then exhaustion took him away for a long while.

When he awoke, Nadielle was slumped over the table. Her head rested on one of the old open books, hair hiding her face. One arm was slung across the table, the other hanging down beside her, and in that hand she clasped a pen. She breathed deeply and steadily, and her sleep seemed to be peaceful.

Gorham stood and stretched. He needed to urinate, his head thumped from the wine he'd drunk, and there was no way of telling how much time had passed. How can she live down here in the dark? he thought. He craved sunlight and vowed that, when she awoke, he would try to take her up, just for a while.

Then he remembered what she was doing and why, and he paused and closed his eyes to listen and feel. He could hear no sounds from below and feel no vibration. The Vex must still be climbing the Falls.

Nadielle stirred and sat up quickly, splaying her fingers over the page she had been writing on and glaring at Gorham.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Bad dreams."

"How long have-"

"I don't know. I drifted off, and… I can't sleep. There's too much to do. Too much! I've started, but we don't have any time at all. None!"

"Calm down; I'll help."

"Then go and help. Outside. Three vats need watering."

"Vats?"

"I was busy while you slept." She leafed through the book, her face made ugly by a deep frown. She muttered to herself, "I was looking for the seed, the root, the fucking root of it all."

"Nadielle?"

She looked up as if surprised he was still there. "Water. That's all. There's a pipe coiled beneath each vat." And she returned to her book and notes, effectively dismissing him.

When he opened the door, one of the blade creatures was standing there. It scuttled aside slowly, watching him with several sets of alien black eyes. He counted ten blades at least, stabbing things-spikes, thorns-and a sickly gleam to its dark skin that might have been poison. And teeth.

Another Baker creation with teeth.

The thing let him pass and he moved out into the vat room, enjoying the feel of the wide illuminated space. Three of the vats were dripping with condensation and issuing a hazy steam from their unseen upper surfaces. He heard faint scratching and something smoother, like thick fur stroking against the insides. Remembering what he had seen when Neph was birthed, he looked at these womb vats now with different eyes. They appeared solid, but they could flex and shift to the Baker's desires.

Shadows moved around the hall, most of them sharp.

He approached the first working womb vat, found the pipe curled at its base like a sleeping snake, slung it over his shoulder, and began to climb the wooden ladder strapped to the side. Something thumped against the vat's insides-a strangely intimate sound that transmitted through the ladder as a stroke across his palms. The air was becoming damp as he breathed in the haze of steam and mist, and it left a familiarly arousing taste on his tongue. It grew warmer, and though he did his best not to touch the vat's walls, he could feel the heat exuding from them.

He stood on the third rung from the ladder's top. Before him lay the surface of the vat's innards. It seemed innocuous and unremarkable-an undisturbed fluid whose level was an arm's reach below the vat's lip. It was dark, heavy, and slick, and small bubbles rose and popped with thick, slow explosions. Whatever gas formed the bubbles was noxious, but the smell quickly dispersed to the air.

Gorham aimed the pipe's nozzle and turned it on. The water barely caused a ripple where it hit, as if something deep below the surface was drawing it down. He aimed it elsewhere, trying to cause splashes but seeing little disturbance.

"What the crap are you doing here, Nadielle?" he muttered.

He repeated the procedure for the other two active vats, where the water had the same effect. When he'd finished descending the third ladder, several bladed creatures were waiting for him. They were relaxed, close to the ground with their blades averted, and he felt no threat from them. But one of them licked its thin lips, another seemed to be staring at the pipe, and when Gorham raised it they instantly became animated.

He opened the nozzle and they drank the water down.

"Making friends?" Nadielle asked. She'd appeared silently behind him, and something about her had changed. The watering had calmed him a little, giving him time to think, and he'd hoped that the Baker would be more composed when he next saw her. Her work was in progress, after all. And being home must surely make her feel safe.

But when he turned to Nadielle, he was shocked. It was as if days, not mere moments, had passed since he'd seen her last; she looked older, more tired, and her skin had taken on a pale gray hue he had never noticed before. Her eyes flittered left and right. She had always been strong, superior in her position of greater knowledge-though he wasn't sure whether he'd placed her on a pedestal or if she'd climbed there herself-but now she looked like a lost soul.

"Nadielle…"

"It's all too much," she said. "Gorham, I can't do it on my own. Some of it, but not all. I need your help." She frowned and started talking almost to herself again. "There's so much to do. We'll need the seed, and then the ingredients, the formulae, and then…" She paused and glanced up at Gorham.

Did she really forgot I'm here? he thought. Or did she forget where she is?

"I'm here to help you, Nadielle. What do you need? I've watered the vats, and I'll do whatever else you want. They'll come back with Rufus soon, and-"

"Too late to wait for that," she said. She looked around at her vats, her chamber, her sharp creations. "Come with me."

He followed her to her rooms, closing the door behind him, and she went straight to her table. Books and papers were strewn across its surface, and at the mess's center lay one of the big books she'd brought in from that deeper room. Torn paper bookmarks protruded from it, and he caught sight of a smear of words and numbers where it lay open. It looked as if someone had passed their hand across wet ink, smudging the information across both pages.

"I can't do both," she said. "I can't fight the Vex and plan how to use Rufus, look at him, find out about him. It's too much for one person. My mother, perhaps… her mother… but not me, Gorham. I don't have it in me. Not with this happening. Not with the Vex."

"So what do you need from me?" he asked, sitting down across the table from her.

"Your seed," Nadielle said.

Gorham caught his breath. Her eyes glittered in her pale face. He smelled those vats, saw the strange surface sucking water down, heard and felt the gentle impacts against their sides as he climbed the ladder. And he knew what she wanted to do.

"How can another me help us?"

"It can't. But another me can."

"I don't understand," he said, but in truth he did. He simply did not want to acknowledge what she was thinking.

"I need to go back down now," she said. "I'm the Baker, and I might be able to slow it. There are ways and means." She waved generally toward the vat hall. "And maybe I can even reason with it." She ran her hand across the books again. "But I also need to be here, and to take advantage of the time I make by slowing the Vex to think of Rufus, and how we might escape."

He nodded slowly, her intentions dawning. I've already lost one woman I love, he thought, but the selfishness of that hit him hard, and he felt himself blush.

Nadielle must have thought the flush was because of something else.

"It'll be okay," she said, smiling wanly. "I've done it before. Don't you remember?"

He did remember. Before there had been passion and lust, heavy breathing from both of them, a need and a desire, and her stroking of his cock had been a preamble, a tender massage ensuring his hardness before she rode him or he rode her, and sometimes she'd kept going because she could feel how primed he was, how ready and desperate for the release.

This time it was joyless and harsh. Nadielle did not smile but worked at him hard and fast, keen not to waste any time. In her other hand she held the glass beaker, ready to catch his seed. He closed his eyes and tried to remember more-loving times, but he could not. It was so impersonal and cold that he did not even want to make a noise when he came, and he found it easy to spend himself with little more than a sigh.

She smiled at him when it was over-a sad smile that said so much-but they were both way beyond platitudes. She stood and went for the door, and Gorham stumbled behind her, buttoning his trousers.

"Gorham," she said, standing with her back to the door, "you can't watch me doing this."

"But I'm helping you." He looked at the beaker, clasped in both of her hands as if to keep it warm.

"You are," she agreed. "But no Baker has ever revealed her own special secrets. I'll not be the first." She opened the door, whispered something that sounded more like a hiss, and several bladed shadows manifested behind her.

"Please don't try to follow me," she said. "I'll tell you when it's done." And she closed the door on his bafflement and hurt.

He wandered the room for a while, looking at her papers and books and making sense of none of it. He sat on her bed. And when he heard a long, strident hiss-a vat being initiated, he guessed, or something more arcane that he could never even guess at-he lay back down and closed his eyes.

This time sleep would not come, so he lived his nightmares awake.

They help him. Give him water-sweet, pure, fresher than any he has ever tasted-but not too much. Fruit he cannot identify. A thick, rich vegetable soup that tastes of the ground and all the wonders within. He's settled on a gently swinging hammock strung between two tall, lush trees that are taller than any he's seen before, their tops scratching the sky and almost gathering clouds. The hammock is woven from soft rope. It's gentle on his sunburned skin. He's naked, and the woman who found him has tended his burns with a gentle, sour-smelling ointment that moisturizes his skin and eases the pain. There are blisters, and his skin is shedding from his shoulders and back, but he can feel his body fixing itself. All around him the rich green grass is crisscrossed with shale paths, and low buildings hug the landscape in the shadows of tall trees.

A group of children are playing away from the trees, throwing a ball to one another in a large marked pitch. Sometimes they shout and cheer as one of them scores, other times they argue good-naturedly, and he has spent some time trying to work out the rules of their game. The fact that he is no nearer to understanding than he was when he started watching does not upset him. This is a new place, a different place, and he's glad.

Some of the children glance at him now and then, and as the sun dips toward the valley's ridgeline, a few come to look. They stare for a while-long-haired and brown-skinned and glowing with health, their eyes filled with wonder and innocence. He sees intelligence in their expressions and the evidence of hard work on their hands. Perhaps soon they will let him play with them.

The woman comes and helps him from the hammock, wrapping him in a blanket and guiding him toward one of the buildings. He becomes aware of many other people watching him, observing with a frank curiosity that does not make him uncomfortable.

They don't know where I'm from, he thinks. I showed her the desert and she was shocked. They must think nothing can live out there. Perhaps they think they're all there is.

The building is like others he has seen in the settlement, made from baked mud bricks, strong and dependable. The windows are glazed with extravagant colored glass, the doors hung with strange sigils, and inside there are several rooms, all leading out from the central area. Here there is a roaring fire, and several people are seated on intricately carved wooden chairs. There's a peace about them, a calmness that puts him at ease.

They speak to him in that strange language, and the woman responds for him. Some of them blink in surprise. A couple look at him with suspicion.

Something strikes his arm, a harsh burning pain. He cries out and looks, but there's nothing to be seen here in this memory, only the woman's kindly hand holding him still.

He swam in darkness as his Dragarian captors drugged him quiet once again, and then he was somewhere else.

Rufus is drawing images from memory, using charcoal on fine white paper. He has been in the village for some time. He has quickly become a part of the settlement, welcomed in by people whose level of trust is great and suspicion low. There are still some who have difficulty believing where he has come from, because, to the Heartlanders, the desert is endless and inimical to life. But they do not hold that disbelief against him. His presence has encouraged a large degree of debate and discussion, and as he slowly learns their language he is beginning to take part in those discussions. It's amazing that he is there, they keep telling him, but they are a people to whom an amazing thing is a gift, not a terror.

They pay homage to the Heart and Mind and tell him that it keeps the Heartlands safe and peaceful. When he asks if he can see it, they go quiet, and this is when he feels most like an alien. Perhaps one day, his savior says, but there is uncertainty in her voice.

His sketches are becoming more elaborate. In the small room in her home where the woman has let him live-he learned early on that her own son and husband were killed several years before by a herd of marauding beasts, whose name he does understand-he is surrounded by his artwork. The early attempts were vague and unsure, smudged by faulty memory. The piece he is working on now is far more clear. It is a city on a flat horizon. Close by are bleached white bones half buried in the sand. There is nothing alive and nothing indicating life other than the city-a place of hills and walls, towers and buildings climbing the heights, all reaching for the sky. There's a haze in the sky above and around the city, and hints of a river to the west. The more times he draws this same image, the more detail he adds and the larger the city looks. When he blinks, he thinks the city could be the whole world.

The people study his artwork but do not interfere.

He draws a shape in the desert between the strewn bones and the city. And in this new language he is learning, he calls it himself.

There's a pain in his leg and he winces, scratching the charcoal stick across the paper, grasping his thigh. There's no blood, no sign of injury, no smudge on the paper.

He swam in darkness again, his captors' drug in his blood, the pain of its gentle injection into his leg fading as this new memory cuts in.

Older now, fit and healthy and a full part of the settlement in the valley, he takes a walk with the woman who found him and who has become his guardian. She has been promising this walk for some time. He has been asking more and more, and as adulthood approaches, his need to see, know, and understand has grown. It is a long walk, past neighboring villages in other valleys, across a wide plain where different-looking people live in stilted buildings, tending walking plants that provide balms and medicines for everyone in this land. He has seen these people before on trading trips, and he stops for a while to converse with them. Their language is as alien to him now as his guardian's was when he first arrived out of the desert. Some of them try, however, and they call him Man from Sand. He is, it seems, something of a legend.

The walk opens his eyes to how vast the Heartlands are. From the top of one hill they can see the next, and the next, rising toward an uncertain horizon, and he understands that this place is much larger than the vague place he came from. Perhaps he could walk another ten days before reaching its far edge, where the desert would enclose it with its fiery landscape. He hopes they do not have to go that far. Man from Sand he may be, but he would happily never set eyes on the desert again.

"Why is everyone so fascinated with me?" he asks his guardian as they continue on their journey.

"Because you came out of the desert, and there is nothing beyond."

"There's the city," he said. "Sometimes I still dream of it."

A troubled look crosses her eyes. Even with age settling in her skin, she is as beautiful now as when she found him.

"Those dreams are nightmares," she says. "And those drawings…"

"No one believes them," he says, because no one ever has. Sometimes even he thinks of them as only a dream-a city built entirely in his mind, a hundred times larger than their largest village, which will fade over time. But sometimes he can almost taste the dampness of its stone, smell the market streets, and see the towering spires rising toward its center, hear the excited chatter of its many inhabitants echoed between buildings and down alleys. He can see the woman who might have been his mother back then, tutoring him in a language that stays with him now; he can accept the vastness of the place, the imposing concentration of buildings that are so close they seem to be constructed on top of one another. He can see the city and himself in it, and there is a sense of loss that he cannot comprehend, even in dreams.

"Only because they cannot be true," she says.

"My skin is paler than anyone's, even in the sun. And that language I can speak-"

"Is not one you should!" she snaps. A thousand times she has told him this, refusing his attempts to explore the language with her. He has been referred to physicians and mythmakers, and all of them have reached the same conclusion: that he was infected by a desert sprite, one of the cruel phantoms that stalk the sands close to the Heartlands, and it has jumbled his mind. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he even believes this himself. These physicians and mythmakers have done their best to cure him of the affliction, but still the words come to him, and with the words are images, and those images carry the weight of memory.

He's confused, and his guardian says that this journey will help cure his confusion.

They walk for several more days, passing many small settlements and accepting the hospitality of their inhabitants. It's an exploration of food and drink as well, because everything here is affected by landscape. Wines taste different from valley to valley, and fruits and vegetables pick up diverse tangs from the soils. The land is rich and lush, and Rufus's strange memories of the city are sour and tainted in comparison.

At the pinnacle of one hill, he looks to the east and sees a stain on the landscape. It is miles distant-such distances that he is still becoming used to-but even from here its scope is huge. It is many shades of gray, smothering the landscape in that direction, filling valleys, crushing hills. The sky above it is similar in color, as if leached of blue vitality by what lies beneath. He can see the shattered remains of giant towers reaching to the sky with skeletal fingers. Around their feet lie other tumbled ruins, and all his senses seem affected by the sight. He imagines the smell of ash and age, tastes grit on the clear air, and hears mournful whispers of faraway breezes. Around this unknown place, the hillsides are green and the trees proud and tall. Lushness surrounds the ruin.

He is shocked silent for a while. This is not his city, though its scale is staggering, yet it is the first time he has been aware of its existence-no one has mentioned it, and it appears nowhere in the Heartlanders' lives, songs, stories, or history.

"Where is that?" he asks, voice barely rising above the breeze. He imagines the breeze coming in from that ruined place and talking to him, but he does not know its language.

"Somewhere nobody can go," she says.

"You never told me," he says. "It's never been mentioned. All those drawings, my dreams, my visions of the place I came-"

"Because it is nothing like your drawings!" she snaps. "That is…" She waves one hand, eyes averted. "It's a skeleton of old times. There's only disease there, and death."

"Have you ever been?"

"Why would I?" she asks, and there's an innocence about her. "Why would anyone? The land around it is left unfarmed and wild, so that its badness can be locked in. And even from this far away, it's death. Look what we have here!" She indicates the beautiful countryside around them. "Why would anyone want to go there?" And they carry on walking without once looking back.

That place disturbs him for some time. A cancer in the Heartlands, a blank spot in the landscape's lush presence-and also in the consciousness of those living there-its solidity is a terrifying thing. He can understand the Heartlanders subconsciously steering clear of somewhere like that, but their denial is a conscious decision.

That's not my city, he thinks, and though it is often on his mind, he never speaks of it again.

Days later, sitting beside a campfire watching children from a small village putting on a dance show for them, he feels another pain, this one in the back of his hand. He cries out and raises his hand, but that confuses him, because it never actually happened -and there was darkness once more, and the distant whisper of Dragarians in wonder, and more memory.

"This is it," she says. "Last time I came here I was not much older than you." There are travelers and traders in the Heartlands, and he has spent enjoyable days back in the village mingling with them. But there are also those who choose not to travel, and his guardian is such a person. Her life is full and rich, she is contented, and other than her pilgrimage to the Heart and Mind-the single journey that everyone must take at some time-she has hardly ever been far beyond her own valley.

This valley is very different. From a hilltop, he looks down and is amazed. On the floor of the valley is a giant structure-except when he looks closer, he sees irregularities and anomalies that indicate that it's something natural, not man-made. It is dome-shaped, its surface a deep red with darker, almost black striations webbing out from the center. Steam or gas is emitting from openings around its edge, and it is these rising and dispersing clouds that bring into context just how large the thing is. They drift slowly, their movement minute compared to the red dome, and because he's concentrating on one such steam column, he does not see the eyes.

"It sees you," she whispers. "It always recognizes a new visitor."

"It's amazing," he says, because even though she has told him about the Heart and Mind, nothing could prepare him for this.

It is the heart of our land, she'd said, bearing the weight of the Heartland's health and well-being. And it is the mind of the land, our conscience. It keeps us well and safe. It is a physical thing, something we can see and touch. Dig deep enough and you will touch it, because its breadth and influence underpin the ground itself.

It's your god, he'd said in wonder, because he could think of no other word to describe it. She had seemed amused, perhaps confused, but she had not confirmed or denied his observation.

Where does it come from? he'd asked another time.

There is history, she'd replied, and he'd seen the concentration on her face as she tried to answer his question while keeping back knowledge that must yet be forbidden to him. And deep in history there is before and after… and the Heart and Mind was created at the point when before became after. One of the Heartlanders' saviors was called the Artist, and he created the Heart and Mind to ensure our survival. He was the only Artist. But his influence lives on.

Artist?

A sculptor of natural things. She'd shaken her head then, left him to his thoughts, and he'd wondered how and when she had told him too much.

"Don't you feel it?" she asks now. "Don't you sense its interest? It knows me, and I can feel that too, but you…" Then she trails off and gasps, going to her knees and grabbing his arm to prevent herself from tumbling over.

"What do you…?" he begins, and then he, too, gasps, because he can feel it, and he sees it as well. There are dozens of openings across the dome's gentle concave surface, each of them housing something that glitters and blinks.

Eyes. They're looking at him. He feels their interest, their consideration, their shattering intellect. He's being analyzed and assessed, and they are seeing much further than his skin. He feels something deep inside, rooting gently in places he does not know or understand, opening doors in his mind he has never seen, feeling their way to consider what these hidden places might contain. And he shouts, not through shock or a sense of invasion, because both of those are gentle things… but from the sense that he can never look into these rooms himself. They're buried away so deep that to uncover them could well make him mad.

"The Heart and Mind is knowing you," she says. "Now you're part of its world and part of ours."

"When do we go down?" he asks.

She stands uncertainly, still holding on to his arm to support herself, and he can feel the cool slickness of her sweaty hands.

"We don't," she says. "Only the Tenders ever approach closer than this."

He scans the slopes of the shallow valley, but there are no signs of any other living things.

"They hide unless they're needed," she says. "They're its servants." The stress she put on that word leads him to wonder whether she really means slaves.

She gasps and staggers again, short nails scraping the skin across his wrist and hand as she tries to hang on. "Ohhh…" she says, not really a word at all.

He goes to his knees as well.

The Heart and Mind surges with a rush of surprise at what it has found inside him. Several columns of steam vent, the landscape viewed through them stained red. The valley is no longer still and peaceful. There's no difference in the sounds and smells of that place, but the air is now loaded with a potential previously absent.

From several points across the slopes, yellow-clad men and women appear, hurrying toward the valley floor, stumbling as if awakened from a long slumber. None of them looks up toward the ridges; they only have eyes for the Heart and Mind.

But his guardian is staring at him. He has never seen an expression like that before, and she will never look at him the same way again.

They sat on the wall until dawn, and Peer was already starting to suspect that Nophel was mad. He had brought them here in those sickening Bellower transports, twisting their stomachs, crushing their insides, bruising their limbs, and promising that his Unseen friends could get them into Dragar's Canton. And while it was true that she had seen him fade away, she thought perhaps that was a madness rather than a gift.

He talked to himself as the sun rose across the Northern Reservoir to their right, and what he said never made any sense.

Malia was seated beside Peer on the bench, asleep. Her head tilted forward, chin resting on her chest, and every now and then she snored gently, startling herself into a new position. Since the journey through the Bellower tubes, she had been quiet and withdrawn, not the hard, forthright woman Peer had grown to know in a few short days. Tiredness was some of it, but there was also a quiet shock about the Watcher woman now. She had been shown things about the city that she had never suspected.

The rising sun splashed from the reservoir and smeared across Dragar's Canton's domes. They were perfectly engineered, and looked almost impossible rising beyond the northern finger of Crescent. There was little detail to them that enabled her to judge their size, but the things around them gave scale: flocks of red sparrows fleeting here and there, almost lost against the structures; trees sprouting around their bases where rainwater runoff made the ground particularly fertile; and the dry canal marking the canton's southern perimeter, little more than a vague line from here yet reputedly filled with all manner of traps and stinging things. The Dragarian domes were the most astonishing things in Echo City, and yet, lifeless and still, they were all but ignored.

"When the sun rises fully, we'll need to get away from here," Peer said. "If we're seen loitering, there'll be questions."

"I'm doing my best."

"You're just sitting there! You have been all night."

"I'm trying to find my way back to them," Nophel said, leaning in close. Peer was sure she caught a whiff of rot from the man's distorted face, and she saw several smears of dried fluids from where some of his boils had burst. She had to keep reminding herself that he had saved their lives.

"Look harder," Peer said. "The Blades will have our descriptions by now, and when one of their own is killed…" She let the sentence trail off, because it did not need finishing. They won't take us into custody.

Nophel sat up straighter. "Hit me," he said.

"What?"

"Strike me. I don't yet have control over this, but last time it manifested was in self-defense."

"I really don't think-"

Nophel gasped, turned away from Peer, and then she saw his shoulders slump as he relaxed. His head nodded forward, and for a moment she thought he'd fallen asleep or worse. She glanced back at Malia-still asleep. She almost laughed.

"And neither do I," Nophel said. "But, Alexia, we need your help."

"Nophel?" Peer asked. She stood and backed away, scanning around the disfigured man to see who or what he might be talking with. There was no one there. Nophel glanced at her.

"No, she's safe."

"Who are you-"

"She's a Watcher," he continued, nodding at the sleeping Malia.

"Malia!" Peer said. She glanced back and forth along the wide head of the Marcellan Canton wall, at the benches and walls and small towers that marked the stairwells leading down. No one was there with them, but that would change soon. If Nophel was planning something, now would be the time. "Malia!"

Malia snapped awake and stood, drawing her short sword with a comforting hiss of metal on leather.

"Don't be scared," Nophel said. "She's here." He pointed beyond the end of the stone bench, to a place where the paved stone surface seemed shadowed with moisture. "And she recognizes you, Peer. She says to say sorry. Your torture is a weight on her mind."

"My torture?"

"She…" Nophel paused, head to one side. "Three years ago. She was the guide for the Blades who took you."

"What's happening?" Malia asked.

"We have to follow," Nophel said.

"I can't even see her," Peer said.

"But I can." He stood and smiled into space, reaching out one hand and clasping the air. "Really, you can trust them," he said quietly. "Somewhere private, and I'll tell you what we need."

"I can't even hear her," Malia said. She was still wielding the sword, but there was no threat in the air.

"Could we, in time?" Peer asked. Nophel nodded, evidently pleased that she'd acknowledged what was happening.

"I think so," he said. "I hope so."

"So we follow you?"

"Yes."

"We don't have much time," Peer said. "If you want to take advantage of the lead the Bellowers gave us, tell your Unseen friend to hurry."

"She hears you well enough."

She hears and sees us; we hear and see nothing, Peer thought. It was not a good place for trust to begin. But the sun was rising, time was passing, and she felt urgency plucking at her heart. Perhaps the time for caution was over.

Peer nodded. "We should go."

"I was watching you for a while. There's something strange about you. Those other two were like every other person we see and covet, their flesh glowing with substance. But you… A friend came and told me you were back, and I thought you'd come to join us. Thought you'd given in. But, instead, you've done something different. The Blue Water's effect is about you-I can smell it, taste it, and I haven't smelled or tasted anything in a while-but you're not Unseen. They follow you following me, and they can't hear a word of this, can they? They really can't."

"Not now they can't," Nophel said. "But maybe I can change that."

"How? Why?"

He thought about that as they followed Alexia's slight gray form around the central staircase column. They were almost back down to the street, and he could hear Peer's and Malia's nervous footsteps behind him.

"What's she saying?" Malia asked, but Nophel shook his head without turning around. He had the advantage here.

"Because I need the Unseen to help us," Nophel said. Alexia laughed a little, a gentle coughing sound that was barely audible. He guessed she did not laugh very much.

"The man beneath the domes," she said.

"What do you-"

"Somewhere private," Alexia said, and she spoke no more. She led them across a narrow street and into a bustling square, where traders and food vendors were jostling for space. She barged through without a care, and anytime she shoved into someone, it was Nophel they laid eyes on when they turned around. He was familiar with the expressions he saw-brief anger, turning into fearful disgust. No one would punch him even if they wanted to, for fear of dirtying their hands.

She's doing this on purpose, Nophel thought, angry at Alexia's behavior. But he supposed she had reason to feel jealous. He was flesh and blood again, after all.

They entered a building with one tumbled wall and a fire-blackened facade. Alexia had no need to be secretive, but Nophel signaled for the others to halt, making sure they were not observed. Alexia called something tauntingly from inside the open door, but Nophel could not quite hear her words.

The coast clear, the three of them entered the ruined building. It had been a large home once, but fire had gutted the insides, leaving only scorched walls standing. Timber floors were burned away to expose the sunken basement beneath, and, looking up, Nophel could see dawn sky through the remains of the roof. But he could make out no other Unseen, and for that at least he was glad. She had brought them somewhere deserted to talk, not a place where he would be surrounded by fading, sad remnants. He had no desire to be reminded of what he might become.

But I'm different, he thought. Even she noticed that. He looked down at his hand and willed invisibility, but all he conjured was Alexia's nervous question.

"Lost the talent, Nophel?"

"Not all the time," he said, and thought, Has she ever seen anyone like me?

Alexia was looking at Malia with undisguised dislike, and at Peer with uncertainty.

"Why should I trust them?"

"Why shouldn't you?"

Alexia regarded him for a few moments but did not reply.

"You mentioned the man beneath the domes?" Nophel said.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have."

"Peer," Nophel said, "could you describe Rufus?"

"Where is she?" Peer asked, and Nophel pointed. "Touch her face," Peer said. Nophel did so.

Peer came forward and narrowed her eyes. "I see… shadow."

"Now that you know she's there, you see more than most," Nophel said, and Alexia reached out quickly to touch Peer's face.

Peer pulled back, startled, and pressed her hand flat across her mouth.

"Rufus is tall," Malia said. "White hair. The greenest eyes I've ever seen. Wears strange clothes-light and strong but not leather. And if they haven't taken it from him, he carries a shoulder bag with unusual things inside."

Alexia was frowning at the description, and Nophel knew that she recognized it. So without any prompting from Peer and Malia-and without pausing to consider whether it was a good or bad idea-he told the Unseen who Rufus was and where he came from.

A loaded silence gripped them all. Nophel expected Malia to berate him, but she did not. He thought Alexia might laugh dismissively, but she simply stared at him.

It was Peer who broke the silence. "So you see why we have to get him back."

"And I should help why?" Alexia asked.

Nophel told the others what she had said, but already the answer was with him, obvious in his flesh and blood.

"There's a cure when you thought there wasn't," he said. "When he gave it to me, Dane Marcellan called it White Water."

Alexia did not act surprised, nor did she ask why a Marcellan would cure Nophel and not anyone else, but anger burned bright in her eyes. "Now that you've told us, the Unseen will look for it themselves."

"And knowing that, Dane will keep it where you can never find it."

"You think he'll listen to you?" Alexia asked, and Nophel knew just how far removed she was. It did not concern him that he was using her-there was very little guilt, even knowing that the chance of procuring the White Water for them was almost nil. But the fact that she actually believed there was a chance was a mark of her utter desperation. Accepting help from such a woman would be a great risk. He looked back at Peer and Malia, saw that they knew what he had offered, and then nodded.

"Yes. He listens to me. Help us, and I'll help you all."

"All," Alexia said softly. "There aren't many of us left. Only those like me, who hang on. Who still see themselves as part of this city."

"And that's how you know about Rufus?" he asked, probing for more information now that she did not seem so defensive.

But perhaps Alexia was not as damaged by her curse as he thought. She smiled at him-and at the others, as if they could see-then played her final card. "Your blood," she said. "Whatever was given to you is in your blood."

"Go on," Nophel said softly.

"A trade," Alexia said. "Think about this: You know what we are and where we can go, because you were one of us for a time. We have days to fill. The city hides fewer secrets from us than from most other people, but the enigma that has intrigued me and those close to me for so long is apart from the city-Dragar's Canton. We know the best routes in, the best out, the ones they guard and those they don't. And when they use guards, we know how best to distract them. We know some of the domes' insides, though they're not easy to know. The Dragarians suspect, but they're a superstitious people, and they consider us as phantoms of phantoms. So we'll lead you in and help you find your man, and we'll help you bring him out. But first you must offer some of your blood."

"They want my blood," Nophel whispered.

Malia advanced on him, drawing her short knife.

"No!" Peer said.

"Only a little," Nophel said, holding out his arm. "Only a little."

The Unseen watched hungrily as Malia's blade opened a vein. Then she cupped her hands and let the blood collect.

Malia left the room, but Peer had to watch. She wanted to understand. She had seen some of what the Baker could do-the Bellowers and Scopes, belonging to generations of Bakers past; the new Baker's Pserans and chopped fighters-but none of it compared with this. If she had not been educated enough to know that there was no such thing, she would have called this magic.

Blood dribbled from Nophel's nicked arm, but instead of splashing to the floor, it collected in midair, a small patch at first, and then a spreading, shifting pool. A few drops passed through and hit the burned floor. Most did not.

How will they do it? she wondered. Drink? Or will they have to…

Her question was answered for her. The Unseen began to appear. Contact with Nophel's blood seemed to be enough. Barely a shadow at first, her hands manifested from nowhere-faint images that quickly grew more solid as they extended into arms, body, head. Alexia's amazed face appeared out of nowhere, and she looked up at Peer in fear.

"I see you," Peer said, and Alexia dropped the blood pooled in her hand. She stepped back, bloody hands held up to ward off an attack that was not coming. She's been invisible for too long, Peer thought, and it's driven her mad.

But Nophel calmed her, stepping in close, and the Unseen shook where she was backed against the soot-covered wall.

"How… how do you…?" Alexia asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Last time I faded was when-"

The Unseen looked at her hands, frowning, and in moments she started to fade again. Then she snapped back to reality, and this time when she looked up at Peer, all the fear was gone. In its place, power. She smiled, but Peer could not smile back.

"You can control it?" Nophel whispered.

"Malia!" Peer called. "You can come in now." As the Watcher entered, she caught sight of the phantom in the corner, Alexia's smile just fading away to nothing.

"That is wrong," Malia said.

"Yet it works. You'll help us?" Peer asked.

"Yes." Alexia's voice came in from a distance, fading away more finally than an echo.

Nophel was wrapping a strip of cloth around his arm, stemming the flow of blood. He looked pale, nodding into the darkness as he listened to words that were little more than faint whispers to Peer.

"She's going to get more help," Nophel said, distracted. "She says it'll take three of them to get three of us in."

"But you're one of them," Malia said.

"She doesn't see it that way." He tried tying the cloth but it slipped off, and Peer went to help. She tied the ends across the small wound, noticing him wince as she pulled tight, and she wondered how much pain he'd gone through every day of his life. His facial growths were raw, one of them seeping a pinkish fluid.

"How does she control it?" Peer asked.

"I don't know." He stared into the corner where Alexia stood unseen. "Will you help me?" he asked. Peer heard no response, but Nophel smiled uncertainly.

"When are we going?" Malia asked.

"As soon as she returns with the others." Nophel stared at the bloodied cloth, nodding his thanks to Peer.

"That's some powerful blood," she said quietly.

"Yes."

"You knew?"

"I had no idea." He turned away and sat against a wall, head back, eyes closed. "She's gone."

Peer paced the room, passing close to Malia every time but saying nothing. The Watcher woman was checking her weapons. A tension hung in the air, but none of them could break it.

Almost magic, Peer thought again. What else could there be in Echo City that none of them had ever seen or heard of?

Later, Alexia's appearance in the doorway surprised them all. She was almost strutting, reveling in visibility, and she stood in the center of the room.

Nophel sighed, stood, and untied the cloth from around his arm.

"We'll go straight after this," the woman said. She looked at Peer and Malia, eyeing them up and down, dismissive and superior. "I wonder if his blood won't act the other way?"

"I'd rather stay seen, thank you," Malia said, her voice poison.

"Me too," said Peer. "I don't think I could…"

"Slinking through the shadows," Malia said. "Like beasts."

Alexia raised an eyebrow. "And you're asking for my help?"

"No," Peer said. "He is." She nodded at Nophel, the man who had brought them salvation, and Alexia's expression softened.

"I have an idea," she said, bringing out a small ball of twine. "I'll talk you through the plan while we're tying this."

Nophel broke the dried blood over his wound. Fresh blood flowed. Two other Unseen faded in, amazed. The room felt smaller. And Alexia started to explain how they would infiltrate Dragar's Canton.

As they left the ruined house, Peer could feel their sense of salvation. It was as palpable as the smell of roasting from a nearby market. The three Unseen exuded it, each of them visible for now so that they could experience the simple joy of being noticed. Alexia was connected to Nophel by a wound length of string-Peer had not understood the sense in that, but he'd seemed happy-and she was walking with a short, thin man who had yet to speak. His eyes were open with a child's awe, and she wondered how he had been seeing the world before now. His Scarlet Blade uniform was faded and dirty, he stank, but his enthusiasm was infectious, and as they followed the wall's route across the north of Marcellan Canton, Peer allowed herself to believe that they might be able to achieve this.

You follow us, Alexia had said. When we get close to Dragar's, we'll travel Unseen; the string will connect us, and we'll be far enough ahead to spot any trouble before it happens. We know the routes in and out, and each of us has been there several times. Keep the string taut. If you feel it go slack, that means we've stopped and there's trouble.

What's inside? Peer had asked.

Alexia had shaken her head softly. Best just to see.

They soon entered another building, and the three Unseen laughed and chatted like old friends.

Alexia smiled at Peer and the others and said, "We have a lot to thank you for."

"And you know how to show that thanks," Malia said. She was tied to a tall man, his face still beaming from being noticed. In the streets, a group of children had pointed and laughed at his unruly mop of ginger hair, and he'd ruffled it up to make them giggle more. Even the children's guardian had seemed unconcerned, so open and innocent was the tall man's delight.

"The basement of this place has an entrance to a tunnel," Alexia said. "We've used it before, and we keep a stockpile of oil torches inside. We'll be going down into the dark, then beneath the border through the first Echo."

"More darkness," Peer said. "More caves and torches. And the sun's only just come up."

"Hopefully it won't take long," Alexia said.

"They guard these places?" Malia asked.

"Most of them, yes. But there are cracks and crevices and old paths that even the Dragarians don't know." She smiled at Malia's obvious doubt. "Trust me. This will be our last time Unseen, and now we want to live as much as anyone."

The three Unseen faded from view, their faces masks of concentration, and the short man connected to Peer looked wretched as he slipped away. It won't be long, she wanted to say, but he had yet to speak a word to her. Communicating now, just as he was vanishing, seemed wrong.

Nophel watched them fade, and for an instant he shimmered in and out of focus. He caught Peer watching him and smiled.

"You can…?" she asked, and Nophel nodded.

"Alexia told me," he said. "She's been Unseen for so long, her sense of self has distanced. If I view myself as others see me, not how I see myself…" He flickered in and out of focus again, and the power before her scared Peer more than ever.

Unseen once again, they went down. Nophel and Alexia left first, and Nophel kept himself visible so that Peer and Malia could follow him. Peer and the thin man were next, and behind her she heard the gentle footsteps of the tall ginger man as he led Malia.

Through an extensive basement, into tunnels, and then caverns, Peer and the others followed people they could not see into a place they could not imagine. Dragar's Canton had been hidden away from the rest of Echo City for more than five hundred years, and though there were written accounts about what it had been like before the concealment-a normal place, with buildings similar to those throughout the city, ruled by priests of the generally benevolent Dragarian religion-no one knew for sure what had become of it since. There had been conjecture for a while, and sometimes there still was, but it had become a silent part of the city, forgotten by most because it was as distant and unknown as the Markoshi Desert. An enigma on their doorstep, Penler had called it once, and he should know. His book about the Dragarians had resulted in his banishment, but even he knew little. It was a book of legends and myths, considered insidious because so few knew even them, he'd told Peer once over a bottle of wine. The most amazing place in the city, and nobody thinks about it. It's just the six domes, that's all. They're regarded as sculptures now. Even kids don't dare one another to go out there and stand close to them anymore, because it's boring. Nothing can happen. Nothing ever does. At least, not that we see. Pushed by Peer, tongue loosened by more wine, he'd smiled and leaned back, staring at the cracked ceiling of his adopted home in Skulk. The Dragarians can't be fools, he'd said. They'll want to know what the rest of the city is doing. They might be closed off from us, but we're no mystery to them.

And we're going there now, Peer thought. Penler would be jealous. He should be here with me. And she swore to herself that given even the slightest opportunity, she would see her old friend again to tell him everything she knew.

Down in the first Echo of Crescent's northern extremes, they found themselves crossing a dead landscape eerily similar to that which surrounded the Baker's rooms. It was strange being led by the Unseen, the string Peer held wound around her hand connected to nothing. The far end faded slowly. She shone her torch ahead and it illuminated nothing, swallowed by shadow where the short man must be. Nophel had told them that the Blue Water acted on the mind of the observer, and she wondered what that meant if the Unseen did not even deflect light. The word magic crossed her mind again, but she was a pragmatist, and the term held connotations she could never entertain.

It was a wide-open Echo, apparently flat, and they followed a trail north that must have been well used in times gone by. The track marks were deep, and here and there they were flooded with dark, thick water. Peer was certain she saw ripples in the puddles, but no one else seemed to notice.

They walked quickly, covering several miles to the canton's border without incident. She glanced back at Malia several times, but they exchanged nothing more than a gentle, nervous smile. Perhaps talking through someone was too much for both of them.

Eventually Nophel paused, head tilted to one side, and then said, "We have to extinguish the torches from here."

"It'll be black as the Chasm!" Malia said.

"The Unseen will lead the way."

Peer doused her torch and watched its pilot light fade slowly away. Malia grumbled but did the same, and moments later it was utterly dark. Eyes open or closed, Peer could see nothing, and she felt the gentle tug on her string. Here we go, she thought, realizing just how much they were trusting Nophel and, in turn, the Unseen. None of them seemed to have any love for the city. Rufus was possible salvation, but to them he might be simply another dispossessed, another wanderer of dark places whom they cared about as little as they seemed to care about anyone.

They could slit her throat at any moment, or steal her torch and cut her loose. But worrying could not help her now.

She followed and discovered that, with sight taken from her, her ears became more sensitive. Whereas before she had not been able to hear the short man's footsteps, now she could just hear the subtle, gritty whisper of his feet crossing the ground. He seemed aware of this, because the string slackened, and she found herself following only the confident steps of that invisible man.

Then things began to change. Their breathing became more audible, and the sense of distance around them was replaced by a feeling of intense solidity. When Peer turned her head slowly from side to side, her hearing changed, though standing still she was not sure she could hear anything. She reached out and touched rock, and a sharp tug on her string urged her forward. Still walking, two more quick tugs sent her a definite message: Keep to yourself. Wherever they were, the Unseen must be afraid.

Trying to regulate her breathing, Peer concentrated on following her guide. They kept the string quite taut again, which meant that he'd gone on ahead of her, and at the beginning she found it difficult to step forward with any confidence. She could walk into a wall, or a hole, or a Dragarian waiting to slice and kill. But if that happened, they were all discovered. Besides, there was little she could do to change the situation. If she lit her torch, she would give them all away. She was down here for Rufus, and for everyone else. For the first time in a while, she wondered where Gorham was and what he was doing, and she hoped that he was safe.

She would never have believed that blindness would inspire timelessness, but when Nophel's torch flared alight ahead of her and he signaled that they could do the same, she had no idea how much time had passed. She had little opportunity to find out. The curtain before them took her breath away, and any other thoughts fled her mind.

At first she thought it was fire, but of course she would have seen it long before now. Stretching up into the darkness above them, beyond the reach of her torch, the curtain was a shimmering, moving thing, rustling in an absent breeze. It could have been water, but she heard no splashing or pouring. It could have been metal, but surely it would have clanged and creaked where it bent and moved so much?

"What the fuck is that?" Malia said softly.

"We're beneath the canal," Nophel said. "When the Dragarians dug that, they were working down here also. Alexia says…" He drifted off, listening to a voice Peer could not hear. "She says they worked deep down through the Echoes, cutting even their history off from our own. Different barriers in each Echo. This is one of the hardest to get through, but also the quickest."

"But what is it?" Peer asked, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. There was something unnatural about the way this curtain moved before them, almost as if…

"Looks like it's alive," Malia said.

Alexia appeared before them, fading into existence and frowning in concentration or pain. Maybe it does hurt, Peer thought, and she surprised herself by hoping that it did.

"Not alive like anything we'd understand," the Unseen said. She sighed, rubbed at her face, then turned toward the barrier. "It's soul-fire. That's what we call it, anyway. I'm not sure it has any other name, don't even know whether the Dragarians have named it. Probably not. They just made it and placed it here."

"What does it do?" Peer asked, already filled with dread.

"Doesn't matter," Malia said. "We just need to get through."

"It steals your soul if you touch it," Alexia said, smiling. "But it doesn't kill you. Leaves you walking. There are several Unseen, on this side or the other, existing without a soul because of that… thing."

"How can that be?" Peer said quietly, almost to herself. It was a dreadful idea, fantastic, and something she had never heard of before.

"We know the way through," Alexia said. "All you have to do is follow."

"And you found the route how?" Malia asked.

"Trial and error."

"And the wandering soulless are your errors?"

"No, they're their own. Do you want to find this Rufus or not?"

"Of course," Nophel said. "We're working together, and there has to be trust." Peer nodded at him, but his single good eye could not convey any such emotion. It moved from sad to pained and back again, and she had rarely seen any other expression. She wondered what it must be like holding all that inside.

"Keep the strings short and taut," Alexia said, as she frowned and faded again. She closed her eyes as she went, and Peer wondered whether she was praying.

It struck her that she knew none of the Unseen's religious allegiances. Originally Scarlet Blades, they would have been raised Hanharan, steeped in that religion from a very early age and sermonized regularly once they were initiated into the Blades. And even three years ago, Alexia had worked against the Watchers, leading to Peer's imprisonment and torture. But since their transformation, surely much would have changed.

Now was not the time to ask. Indeed, if there had ever been a time, it was long past.

They approached the soul-fire. Peer concentrated, watching the tight string before her, turning left when it veered that way and then heading straight into the shimmering curtain. It stank of a baby's skin and a rash-plague sufferer's final breath. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, and The faces scream and rage, their pain illimitable, the shrieks beyond any contemplation of sanity, and they surge around her like walls of stone flowing as fluid, always threatening to crush her, squeeze the air from her lungs, suck the blood from her veins, and she opens her mouth to scream but can taste only the soul-fire, rancid things, and fine grapes.

Why didn't you tell us? she thought, and then they were through. She went to her knees and heard Nophel's groan ahead of her, but her string quickly pulled taut.

"You could have warned us," she said, but if the Unseen responded, she did not hear. He tugged at the string and she stood, glancing back at Malia's pale face behind her.

"Well, that was nice," Malia gasped. Behind her, the soul-fire made no sound as it fell and burned.

They moved on, their Unseen guides not pausing. The ground headed upward, steepening sharply. They followed the slope, then at some unknown signal turned left, approaching a wall of rock that loomed from the darkness like the edge of the world.

Nophel glanced back over his shoulder and whispered, "Sometimes guards, sometimes not. She'll go ahead to see." His string relaxed and the end hit the ground, and Peer saw his head move slightly as he watched Alexia's progress.

She returned quickly, manifesting again as she walked and sighing when she stopped, resting her hands on her knees for a moment.

"Sick?" Peer asked.

"Been running," she said, but she was not out of breath. "It's quiet. But beyond the wall, some of their things keep watch. You have your swords?"

"What things?" Malia asked.

"Like hounds, except slower. Blind. Don't let them bite you." Alexia looked at where the other two Unseen would be standing. She gave a quick hand signal, then started to fade again.

"What was that?" Peer asked. "Alexia?" But the Unseen was already moving away, then she disappeared completely, the end of Nophel's string grasped in her hand. "Nophel?" Peer asked.

"Just telling them to keep watch," he said. "As must we all."

The gap in the stone wall was obvious only when they drew very close and she saw the end of Nophel's string pass inside. He followed, and then Peer was in as well, walls brushing both arms as the path narrowed even further. She held the torch in the same hand as her string and tried to reach her sword, but the little man pulled her on, and she could not turn enough between those sheer walls to draw her weapon.

From ahead, she heard a quiet, strangled shout. Nophel's torch danced about, then extinguished altogether.

"Here!" he shouted. "Peer!"

She ran, shoving the Unseen man aside and bursting from the short tunnel. Nophel was on the ground with a black creature standing over him, its jaws wide as it lowered its head toward his throat. As Peer was reaching for her sword, it screamed, darting its jaw to the right at the wound that had suddenly opened in its flank. Alexia withdrew her sword and buried it in the creature's shoulder. Nophel slid aside as the creature dropped dead.

"You all right?" Peer asked, and he nodded sharply.

"Watch for yourself," he said, standing. She did, shining the torch around as the end of her string led her forward again. She smiled uncertainly, hoping that if he was looking, the short man would see it as an apology.

Several shadowy shapes stalked them. Malia's small crossbow sang, a thud and a whine signifying a hit. Two more creatures came at Nophel and Peer. She gripped her sword hard and then stepped aside. The first thing snapped at where she'd been standing, and she swept the blade down across the back of its neck. It stuck fast in the thing's flesh, driving it to the ground. It died without a whimper.

Malia's crossbow whispered again, and then the things were dead.

"That wasn't too hard," Malia said.

"Alexia says there are usually Dragarians controlling them," Nophel said. "This is the first time she's heard of them being loose down here."

They moved on, heading upward through carved tunnels and encountering no more obstacles. Several times Alexia called a halt while she explored ahead, but the Unseen never found anything to concern them. At one point she and Nophel had a whispered conversation, which he relayed back to Peer and Malia.

"She's never known it so quiet down here. We're taking one of the main routes in from the Echoes. Usually the Unseen go in other directions, passing through guarded caverns or traps. But there are no traps set, and she's seen no guards."

"Which means what?" Peer asked.

"It means they don't care anymore," Malia said. Peer closed her eyes as a shiver went through her, and when she looked again, Nophel was listening to Alexia's unheard words once more.

"We're almost there," he said. "A few hundred steps and we'll be able to see inside the first dome."

"And what's in there?" Peer asked, but Alexia apparently did not respond. Nophel headed off with his string taut before him. Peer and Malia followed, and for the first time Peer smelled something that could be described as fresh air. It carried the mouthwatering hint of baking bread, and she realized just how hungry she was. Dragarian food, she thought. Might not agree. But they had been removed from the world for only five hundred years.

How different could they be?

Alexia brought them up into the bed of a dried canal, hiding them where it passed into an area of raised ground piled against the inside of the dome. Here they could sit and watch with impunity, taking time to observe, to see, to understand.

And to wonder.

In enclosing their land, the Dragarians had made themselves aware of the air. Much of the ground that Peer could see seemed to have been abandoned-tall buildings had tumbled, and lower structures were fallen into disrepair. Windows were smashed and doors broken from hinges. The Dragarians had started building up and out, and from where they squatted she could see no large expanses of open space inside the dome. Elaborate bridges spanned between buildings that seemed to hang in midair. Rope ladders rose and fell. Networks of cables were strung at apparently random angles and places, and directly above where they hid she could see dozens of cables fixed into the inner surface of the dome structure. The wall curved inward above them, and it was encrusted with hundreds of small structures, many of them interlinked by walkways and bridges. Windows stared out upon the space, and lights flickered in some.

It was not dark inside. Great swaths of the dome were left clear of fixtures, and sunlight somehow shone through. Peer had no idea how. There had never been talk of the domes having differing materials in their structures-no glass sections, no area that appeared to slide open and closed as the sun rose and set-and yet here it was, warm fresh sunlight streaming inside and bathing the interior. It even found its way down to the ground, courtesy of the mirrored finish to many of the hanging structures.

Mechanical things slid across that massive space on fine wires, clouds of smoke hanging behind them and dispersing slowly to the air. Peer could hear the gently clasping wheels that must drag them along the cables and the rattle of cogs and springs.

On the way in, she'd had time to wonder what she would see. A continuation of what was outside, perhaps, an echo of Echo City yet on its own level. And there were some who believed that this society must have gone to ruin, that after the construction of these incredible domes, the Dragarians' isolation would have caused strife, war, and regression. These people expected the domes to be inhabited by the animallike descendants of Dragar's believers, and the ruins themselves would be a wild hunting ground.

Surely no one could have anticipated this.

"Where are they all?" Malia whispered, and Peer gasped. She'd been so amazed by the scenery that she had not yet noticed it was uninhabited.

"I don't know," Nophel said. "Alexia, will you…?" She was already fading in again, her mouth open in surprise. The other two Unseen followed suit. They leaned against the canal bank with the others, looking pale and exhausted but most of all amazed.

"I've never seen it deserted," Alexia said. "It's always… alive."

"I don't like it," the thin man said, and to Peer he sounded like a frightened child.

"So if they've all gone," Malia said, "how the fuck are we going to find Rufus?"

Peer closed her eyes, breathing deeply and yet unable to drive down the burgeoning fear. "It's obvious," she said. "Don't you see?"

"No," Malia said angrily.

"You know who they think Rufus is. They think he's Dragar. We find where all the Dragarians have gone, and there we'll find him."

"Oh," Alexia said.

Malia snorted. "Right. That'll be easy."

"Easy or not, we have to do it," Peer said. "If we can't, we might as well decide now: die in here, or die outside."

Gorham watched Nadielle work. Having a plan in mind and an end in sight seemed to have settled her a little, and she moved about the vat room with a sense of purpose.

Gorham sometimes followed Nadielle and sometimes explored on his own. Those many-bladed things remained motionless in shadowy corners. He avoided them but felt no threat from them anymore. She'd told him they would not hurt him. It was amazing how quickly he could get used to something like that.

And perhaps over time he had become too used to the Baker. Because, watching her work, he realized once again just how incredible she was.

On occasion he fetched food from her rooms-chopped fruit and salads and dried meats-and they would eat and sit on some of the boxes and benches set around the perimeter of the vat room. If she spoke, it was to comment on the meat's taste, the fruit's ripeness. She said nothing about what she was doing, and he guessed it was because she was uncomfortable being observed.

But this is the last time, he thought. Soon she'll go, and I'll never see her again.

She climbed a ladder beside the womb vat she was working on most diligently. Others were steaming and hissing, popping and scraping, and she tended them quickly and efficiently. But this particular vat-she put her body and soul into tending it. Gorham's seed had gone in there, and something of Nadielle as well. He dreaded the times she asked him to climb and water, because he did not wish to see.

Soon, she had told him several times already. She was thin and pale, her face seemingly shrunken, and he wondered whether, by giving life to the thing in that vat, she was dying a little in the process.

When Nadielle descended the ladder and hurried through the door into her rooms, he dashed after her. At first he could not see her and he began to panic. Is there another way out? Has she gone without even saying But then there was movement in the corner of the room, and she emerged from the shadows carrying another book.

"I can't trust myself," she said. "My memory is… haunted."

"Haunted by what?"

"What I've seen." She dropped the book onto the table, and it fell open in a cloud of dust. "What I have to face."

Gorham coughed, wiping dust from his eyes. The dust of her ancestors, he thought.

"When will you go?" he asked softly.

"Soon." She did not even glance at him. The pages of the book were too important to her, and he left her to them, closing the door to the toilet room and leaning against the door as he pissed in the pot. His piss stank; he needed a drink. We're trying so hard to look after everyone else, we've forgotten to look after ourselves.

He wondered where Peer was right then and hoped that she was safe. Since last seeing her, he had been down to the deepest Echo of the city, seen things that few living people had ever seen, and discovered a monster that might mean the end of everything they knew. But if he saw her right then, his first inclination would not be to tell her these things. It would be to hold her.

Nadielle had never just let him hold her. There always had to be something else.

Outside again, Nadielle was leaning over the book, scanning its pages. She did not look up when he approached.

"I'm not sure I can let you do this," he said.

Now Nadielle looked up, expressionless. "You'd try to stop me?"

Gorham did not reply. Though there was no threat to her voice, she'd sounded so cold.

"No choice," she said. "It's happening now, and I can't turn it back." She returned to her book, and Gorham slapped his hand onto the table. The anger was sudden and unexpected, and it shocked him as much as it did her.

"Then include me, at least!" he shouted. "I'm wandering these rooms like a lost puppy, and you're working as if I'm not even here. As if I was never here."

"Are you serious?" she asked, smiling in surprise.

Gorham already felt cowed and embarrassed. He looked away.

"This is so much more than us," she whispered.

"Was there ever 'us'?"

For a moment so brief he wasn't sure he saw it at all, Nadielle's eyes softened and her lips trembled. Then she was hard again, flipping a page in the book and running her finger along the lines as she read.

"You told me I was your sunlight."

"It's dark!" she shouted. "Darker than ever. Get off your own ass and wake up!" She ran both hands through her hair, then turned the book on the table so that it faced him, spilling loose sheets and another book to the floor. "Here. You want me to include you? I need the chemicals listed on the top half of this page, in those exact amounts. Bottles and measuring jars are in my cupboards. All labeled." She leaned in close and he smelled her breath, knowing that she was already becoming a memory. "Don't spill a drop. Don't make mistakes. Don't mess it up, Gorham."

She left the room and he glanced down at the book, her family history written in a hand the Baker could call her own. Closing his eyes, breathing deeply, he wondered whether the next Baker could be so cold.

It took Gorham a while to collect the powders, fluids, and carefully weighed tablets. Carrying them all on a wooden tray, he went out into the vat room and spotted Nadielle tending the special vat once more. She sat on its rim, both feet on the ladder's highest rung, and she seemed to be whispering. She glanced at him, then pricked at her hand with a small knife. She squeezed several drops of her blood into the vat and then sheathed the knife, climbing down the ladder mindless of the blood smearing its wooden rungs.

"You should bind that," he said.

"I'll be needing it again. Thank you." She took the tray from him and placed it on the ground, mixing and stirring, careful not to spill or waste.

"How long will it be?" he asked.

"No time," she said. "I'll be leaving soon."

"So this new Baker…" he began, but it was too confusing.

Nadielle stood and took his hands. The move surprised him, but there was no affection or warmth to her touch. Just because she thinks she needs to, he thought.

"What I'm about to ask you is a true responsibility," she said. "Not like leading some underground political group or trying to take on the guilt for bad decisions you might have made. A real responsibility. My mother chopped me before she died and birthed me herself, and virtually every new Baker is welcomed into the world by the old Baker that chopped her. That's part of our duty and part of the way we cope with how and what we are. But I'm handing this duty to you. Because I must, and I trust you, and trust that you want the best for Echo City."

"I do," he said. "I always have."

"And this is for the best, believe me. I know what I'm doing." She glanced aside at one of the bladed things sitting against the wall. "Here, at least."

"And down there?" Gorham asked.

"Down there, I'll do whatever I can."

"To right a wrong."

"Bakers never make mistakes, Gorham. They simply explore too far." She smiled softly, let go of his hands, and grabbed the glass mixing pot by her feet. Climbing the ladder, she nursed the pot carefully against her chest, then emptied it into the vat as soon as she reached the top. She dropped the glass pot and bit at the cut on her hand, squeezing out more blood.

"Is it happening now?" Gorham asked, because he felt a sudden change in the chamber's air. The bladed things had gone from relaxed to alert and expectant, and it was as if their blades were held at attention, a potential of violence almost unbearable in its intensity. Some formed a wide circle around the womb vat, several more stayed back, going to the doors that led to the Echo outside. Guarding. Though guarding against someone coming in or something going out, Gorham was not sure.

"New weapons," Nadielle said. "My daughter will take a while longer." She was staring lovingly into the vat, her face softer than he had seen for some time. Not vulnerable, as she had been down in the Echoes when she demanded his intimacy, but strangely content, even with everything she had done and what she was about to face. Right then she was beautiful, and Gorham mourned for the woman she might have been.

Three other vats began to bulge. Some unseen, unheard message must have been relayed to them, and they started to spout steam and gas, sides cracking, fluids gushing from the ruptures.

"Nadielle," Gorham said.

"You'll want to stand back," she said. She waited a moment longer atop the ladder, looking down into that one special vat before descending.

Gorham had witnessed Neph's birth, and through the fascinated disgust he had felt privileged. But watching these new things born from Nadielle's womb vats inspired only horror.

How she could have grown them so quickly, he had no clue. The talents handed down through the Baker's generations were so arcane and mysterious that they'd be called magic by most, though he knew that she vehemently repudiated any such descriptions. Magic's for the frightened and the indoctrinated, she'd told him once, and for those without the imagination to see how amazing things can really be. They'd been naked on her bed at the time, and recalling the conversation now, he recognized it as another moment when he had not really been there for her. She'd used his presence to talk to herself.

Perhaps the speed with which these things had been chopped went some way to explaining the terrible screams as they were birthed. They came to the world in agony, three of them emerging from vats with the help of their many-bladed and spiked limbs, forcing their way out as if inside was torture, only to discover that outside was worse. They thrashed and rolled in the thick fluids that spilled around them. Gorham backed away, closer to the Baker's rooms but unable to hide himself away entirely. He was shocked and afraid in equal measures but still certain that Nadielle would allow no harm to come to him.

Unless she's rushed it. Unless, in her desperation, she's made a mistake.

But then she was walking among her new creations, and now Gorham could see just how large they were. He'd subconsciously been comparing them to the dozen bladed guards that slinked around the vat hall, but these things were at least five times the size of those, and there was nothing even vaguely humanoid about them at all. They were flesh, blood, and metal, monstrous mergings of soft and hard. Their blades glittered with sharpness, their spikes were slick with afterbirth, hands were heavy with studs, and what might have been their heads-he wasn't sure, but he thought each creature had at least three-bore vicious white horns as protection around their mouths and eyes. In those mouths were silvery teeth that already had shredded their lips and tongues, the blood adding to the terrible mix smeared across the floor. And in those eyes was nothing he could recognize.

Nadielle spoke, and a bladed guard darted toward each of the newborns. The giant creatures lashed out, piercing the smaller chopped, picking them up with blades or fists, depositing them in mouths that opened up where Gorham had not noticed them before. The sound of chomping was appalling-crunching, crushing, splitting, bursting, and brief cries as three lives were snuffed out.

When the newborns had finished chewing, they were somewhat calmed, and Nadielle repeated those words. Three more guards walked in, a little slower than the first. They suffered the same fate.

She turned from her new creations and walked toward Gorham, unconcerned, turning her back on monsters that would give him nightmares forever. Just before she reached him, her eyes went wide, her mouth opened, and she collapsed to the floor.

As he rushed to her side, he saw her right eye suddenly flush red with blood. And the new monsters began to howl.

Neph had been sitting for so long, listening to the sounds increasing in volume and frequency, that it could no longer feel its legs. When the time came, it lit its torch and shone it at the wall of water. At the place where the water fell beyond view, a shadow appeared. Neph had seen many shadows already, the dead from a city it would never know. But they were always falling.

This shadow rose.

Neph stood, legs burning as blood circulation returned. It took one step back, and the wounds on its arm began to bleed.

The shadow manifested into a mass of corpses, some quite fresh, others rotting. Chunks of their flesh had been torn away by the powerful flow, leaving only their bones behind. The impact of the falling water was brutalizing, and many of the corpses had flowed into one another, limbs punched through guts and bones embracing another's insides. Punching through the bodies were heavy, thick spines…

Neph flexed its own spines, startled at the familiarity.

The shadow rose higher, pushing against the water. Huge flailing shapes swung into view, thrashing at the water and seeming to grab on to it, hauling the mass of bodies higher, higher…

Neph squatted in a fighting pose.

Beneath the piled bodies, a massive eye opened, regarding Neph without emotion. Water poured around and across it but washed away none of this thing's menace. The thrashing things-arms with massive spade-shaped hands that hauled it upward against the shattering liquid weight-moved faster, lifting the shadow higher above the edge of the chasm.

The water roared, and the rising thing added its own voice.

When Neph found its legs and ran at the abomination, it did not even see the whipping thing that took out its right eye.

Neph fell, legs still pounding into the rock because it did not understand. Something felt wrong with its head. A thick tentacle hovered above it, and Neph lashed out with its right arm. But the arm would not obey its orders, and the tentacle thrashed down, crushing, breaking, spilling Neph across the rock and leaving its few lonely memories to be washed away forever.

"It's risen," she whispered. "It's here."

Gorham knelt, Nadielle's head resting in his lap, and he stroked her cheek. Her eye was bloodshot and blind, but she seemed unconcerned. The other eye stared off past the chopped creations, large and small, that had gathered around them. In the shadows past them, Gorham thought he saw the two remaining Pserans watching quietly, and he almost called to them. But other than Gorham, the Baker was the closest to human here, and even she was far from that.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"The Vex has reached the Echoes, clothed in the city's dead." She struggled into a sitting position, shrugging off Gorham's helping hands. "Tens of thousands since it fell, hundreds of thousands. It fed on them, and it grew so large that they litter its skin. Perhaps they can no longer fall past it. Perhaps it filled the Chasm." The Pserans came, shoving past the splayed blades and limbs of the chopped monsters as though they were tree branches blocking their way. They helped Nadielle stand. She swayed, then gently pushed their hands aside, staring down at the floor. She seemed physically lessened, but there was a strength about her that Gorham had never seen before. Previously she had been superior yet flawed, someone whose confidence went only so deep, he had always felt. He'd tried to touch her, but her front had held firm. Those insecurities had remained buried. Now she was the Baker, completely in control and self-assured, confident in what needed doing and how much she could do herself. When she looked up again, she had changed, in the blood of her dead eye and the power in the other.

"I must leave," she said, and she started for the end of the vat room. She passed the special vat without a glance, walking taller the farther she went, and Gorham ran after her.

"Nadielle! You can't just leave. You have to tell me-"

"There's no time. She's your responsibility." She paused and stood face-to-face with Gorham, almost close enough to kiss. "Water the vat regularly. Pay her attention; be here for her. I've put accelerant into the mix, so she won't be long. Maybe even today." She glanced past him at the vat, then turned quickly away.

"But what about us?" he asked, hating the pleading tone to his voice. He could not let her leave without another word.

"Goodbye, Gorham," the Baker said without even turning around. She left the laboratory, with the Pserans following behind. One of them looked back at him, cold and hard, and in that stare was unveiled threat. The smaller bladed things followed, and those three larger monsters disappeared behind the rows of vats, heading for the wider curtained route he knew existed to the outside. In moments he was alone in the Baker's rooms, left in charge of equipment, words, and deed that he could never hope to understand.

Three years earlier he had sat at a table in a friend's home, knowing that Peer was being taken by the Scarlet Blades. The purge had not yet begun in full, and he and several others were preparing to melt away as Watchers, allowing the Marcellans to think they had shattered the outlawed organization. But for a while he had nursed a bottle of wine, staring into a candle's flame and wishing he could be so consumed. The guilt was a hard thing that weighed him down. There had been a time when he had said goodbye to Peer, knowing that he would never see her again, and he'd done so without giving anything away. A monstrous deception, a brutal betrayal, and yet he'd believed it was all for the best. Every day since then, he'd wished that goodbye had been sweeter.

He wished the same now. But Nadielle had left his life as surely as if the door she'd passed through was a barrier between the living and the dead. She would not survive. And though cold in passing, she had left him with the greatest responsibility.

Soon the new Baker would be born. He would be here to care for her. In the space of a day he had gone from lover to father, and his insides ached as if an age had been impressed upon him.

He wandered the rooms for a time, watching the vat, watering, exploring. There was much about the laboratory that Nadielle had always refused to discuss, but looking on his own seemed an empty affair. He found small rooms he did not understand and corridors that seemingly led nowhere. He always returned to her living rooms, to lie in her bed and try to remember their good times. But already there was a bitterness, and strive though he did to shrug it off, he could not avoid feeling that he had been used.

And he could also not help thinking that he deserved it.

The rooms were silent but for the noises made by the vat. Sometimes he sang, but he could not find a tune to fit. He tried fighting songs from Mino Mont's gangs, but the martial aspects did not seem to fit the shape of these rooms, their echoes sounding all wrong. He tried some love songs that his estranged sister used to write when she was young, but she had grown into a woman whose belief in love was vague, and his own experiences made the lyrics seem naive. So he whistled instead-aimless tunes that matched the path of his wandering around the rooms. Sometimes shadows drew him, sometimes areas lit by the oil lamps. He wondered why the oil never ran out. He wondered why there was always food in the cold store when he wanted it, and where the dried and smoked meats came from, and how he could be sure that the water collected in several sacs lining the wall in one small room could be fresh. It was all Nadielle's mystery. And more and more his attention was taken by the special vat from whence the new Baker would emerge. He spent more time sitting on its rim, watering when the levels fell and watching the thick fluid suck in the stream without a splash. Sometimes he reached out a hand to touch the surface but never quite got there. Fear, and respect for the Baker's talents, kept him away. He had seen but a tenth of them, and the loss he felt at her leaving was amplified so much more.

There were no timepieces in the Baker's rooms, and in truth his concept of time had been shattered. He could not tell whether he had been belowground for days or weeks. His perception of day and night was gone, replaced with a need for food, sleep, and toilet, and that was how he tried to regulate his time waiting for the birthing. But there was no time for routine to form. It seemed an age since Nadielle had left, but in reality he guessed it was no more than half a day before the sounds from the vat began to change.

She told me nothing, he thought in a panic. He climbed the ladder fixed to the vat's side, and the liquid's surface was in turmoil. I don't know what to do, or what this means, or whether I should be watching or running away. Soon the vat began to shake and flex and the ladder's uprights cracked, sending several rungs spinning to the floor. He climbed carefully down and retreated from the vat, looking at the remains of the others, which had not repaired themselves after birthing those huge chopped warriors.

Helpless, terrified, he could only watch as Nadielle became the old Baker, and her descendant was born into a time of chaos.

The birth was not as violent as the others he had witnessed. The vat bulged and split, and the pale shape inside reached through with delicate hands, grabbing the vat's outside and pulling itself through. It gasped in a first lungful of air and vomited purple solids. As the rupture spewed the vat's innards, the shape fell and went with the flow, striking the floor softly and sliding a little until it came to a stop.

Gorham approached wide-eyed and amazed, because this was something of his. I made that, he thought, the idea ridiculous yet insistent.

Nadielle had told him nothing about what the new Baker would be like, how old, how possessed of knowledge, instinct, or fear. As he approached, he saw the body of a child approaching her teens. And when she squirmed around to look at him, he saw that she had his eyes.

Peer and Malia waited in a small abandoned building close to where the dome met the ground. They did not like it, but Nophel and Alexia convinced them it would be the safest option. After all, they weren't invisible and had refused any suggestion that they sample Nophel's blood, insisting that they remain part of the world they were determined to help.

Nophel left the building with the three Unseen, and he was one of them more than ever before. Alexia had taught him the concentration required to control the White Water-it had given them more power than the Blue Water ever could, because fading away to nothing was no power at all. Now they could be seen or, with a little concentration, choose to be Unseen again. With that choice came salvation. Alexia and the others were ebullient, and Nophel enjoyed watching them rush invisibly across the base of this first Dragarian dome. They were like trapped animals set free, or confined prisoners given the run of the city. He only hoped they would fulfill their promise and help. Rufus was another of the Baker's victims and Nophel's only way to reach her.

The dome was all but silent. It was incredible-a whole city built to fill that massive space and yet resounding only with distant thumping. Nophel could not tell what caused this noise, but there was a regularity to it that suggested it was mechanical rather than man-made. It was like a massive heartbeat.

They made their way across the first dome without seeing any Dragarians. There were obvious signs of recent habitation-lights were burning in some homes, and the smell of food hung as a heavy background to the dome's atmosphere-but they saw not one living thing. No Dragarians, but no animals either. If there were birds within these walls, they roosted now. If there were hounds or rats, they hid. The silence was haunting and intimidating, and Nophel was pleased when they passed out of that dome and through a huge, rose-encrusted arch leading into the second.

They had emerged on the rim of a vast, gently sloping bowl, in which everything in sight was lush with plant growth-fields of green and yellow, clumped trees with heavy canopies, large areas of shrubs bearing all manner of berries and fruit. The roof was similar to areas they had seen in the first dome, letting in blazing sunlight and yet from outside apparently made from solid stone. The engineering marvels were astonishing, and Nophel found a sense of true wonder dissipating his bitterness and drive for revenge.

"This could feed the whole of Echo City," Alexia said.

"Maybe, maybe not," Nophel said, "but it's more fertile than Crescent. Do you see the color of those trees? The lushness?" He shook his head, marveling at what the Dragarians had achieved in such secrecy. There were some outside who believed they had all died out, but the opposite was true. They were flourishing.

Then the first Dragarians came into view.

For a moment, Nophel was terrified. The Baker had made Blue Water to work on the minds and perceptions of Echo City inhabitants, but there was no way of telling whether the Dragarians would be similarly affected and fooled. Alexia said they had caught that flying Dragarian through stealth, but maybe it had been injured when it landed, or disoriented…

Or perhaps it had wanted to be caught.

He stood with his breath held, face itching in the sunlight, and realized that if they were not invisible to those approaching, they would soon be dead. Because the natives of this place were no longer people.

They were all humanoid, in the same way the flying thing had been. They retained their human basis, with torso, limbs, and head in roughly the correct locations. But they were altered in ways that made them amazing and terrifying to behold. Some walked on hands and feet, their necks curved upward to allow them to see ahead. Others flew, drifting above on wide membranous wings. A few crawled. And here and there some Dragarians slithered, their arms withered to useless dangling limbs, legs almost melded together, stomach and hips strengthened by musculature whose only purpose was to drag them forward across the ground.

"They're monsters!" the tall Unseen said, but Nophel could see the truth.

"No," he said, "they're chopped. No race could adapt like this in just five hundred years."

"Why would they want to be able to fly?" Alexia asked. "In this dome, perhaps. But in the one behind us, there's hardly any space. They've filled it."

"And why slither like a serpent?" the skinny man asked. "Strange."

The Dragarians passed within thirty paces of them. They headed down the gentle slope toward the grasslands below, mostly walking and talking together in a strange language. They seemed relaxed, not alert. And excited.

"Chopping of a different kind, perhaps," Nophel said. "Their own methods, their own aims. They've been isolated for so long, who knows what that can do to a race?" He shrugged. "We're not here to find out. We want the visitor, that's all."

Alexia nudged him and said, "Something tells me if we follow them, we'll find him."

Nophel nodded, then stepped ahead so that the Unseen were behind him. He wished he was on his own. This place was somewhere new, and these ignorants did not seem to realize that. Former Blades all of them, trained killers who'd turned bitterness into a disease instead of a driving force; he would happily have done without them if possible. But he admitted with regret that was not possible. Their task was huge, and, even Unseen, he had no idea how they would smuggle Rufus out of this place.

How do you possibly steal a god?

"So let's follow for a while," he said.

The grass felt good around his legs, cool and long and strong, and the ground below was soft but not muddy. A gentle breeze blew through the dome, carrying the scents of blooms familiar and unknown. The group of Dragarians was about one hundred strong, and they seemed to be moving with purpose across the bowl of this dome. Urgency pressed on Nophel, but he also enjoyed the walk. There was a sense of wildness to these manufactured fields.

The Dragarians passed a large lake at the dome's center and started up the far slope, heading for a distant arch that must lead into a third dome. The Unseen followed, and Nophel remained alert. There was no sign that they had been sensed at all, but in such a strange place…

Anything was possible. It was a rich, powerful feeling, which he was doing his best to shed. He hated it. Long had he denied the part of him-the part inherited from his mother-that saw wonder in the smallest of things. It made him believe he had her in his mind, and he could not live like that. It gave the impression that he had her sense of the wonderful, and so he had spent much of his life searching only for the mundane. The Scopes were amazing creations, but to him they were monsters, and he used their mutated lenses to spy on the rawest denizens of the city-the criminals, whores, slash sellers, and thieves, the lowest dirt in the crawling gutters of filth that he knew existed out there. For Nophel there was no wonder in Echo City, and when any sense of awe did creep in, from whatever quarter, he would close his eyes and not look again.

Now he could not close his eyes. His quarry might be close, so he viewed this place with the eyes of someone else-a new Nophel, given invisibility and thus the chance of a new life. He admitted the marvels here, and it was liberating.

He wondered if his mother had known.

They followed the Dragarians through to the next dome. This was almost entirely filled with a huge reservoir; several canals led off in various directions, and a network of refining rigs was set at regular spacings across the surface. The sound of water falling echoed through the dome, and Nophel could see pure water tumbling from the refineries' highest points. Birds swooped through the air, and flocks of ducks had made the lake their own. There were also many boats; close to the shore, down the small slope from where they'd emerged, a handful of craft were moored to a jetty. Smoke rose from several chimneys on the boats, and the scent of cooking fish was mouthwatering.

The Dragarians they had followed in were spreading out along the shore, joining hundreds of others already there. Many sat on the short grass covering the lakefront; others rushed through the crowds to hug people they had seen, gushing greetings and gesticulating wildly.

"I'm guessing that's our man," Alexia said, pointing toward the lake, and at first Nophel could not see. He scanned the crowd, glancing out at the moored boats and then back again. He followed a fat man, his webbed hands closed around a glass bowl containing something steaming. The man left the jetty and walked up the slight slope, and when he knelt before a seated shape, Nophel saw him.

Rufus Kyuss. He sat in a simple wooden seat, surrounded by a group of what must have been guards. They, too, sat, but were alert. They looked anywhere but at Rufus. And they wore long cloaks, beneath which glinted sharp things.

Nophel smiled, pleased to witness imperfection. It seemed that the Dragarians had made a successful contained society, but still there was a need for security.

"That has to be him," he said, and then Alexia fell on him, shoving him to the ground and flipping him onto his back.

"Nophel!"

"What?" She was fading from view! "Alexia, what are you-"

"Nophel, concentrate. You're showing yourself!"

Shocked, he closed his eyes and focused, slowing his breathing and imagining his flesh fading, his shadow brightening. Alexia's grip on his arms lessened and she stood away from him, and when he sat up, the others were looking at him. Though still ecstatic at what he had given them, now they appeared gray and wan.

"I…" But he didn't know what had happened. He glanced down the slope and saw no one looking their way.

"You'll have to stay here," Alexia said. "Keep low."

"What do you mean?"

"While we go to get him, of course."

Nophel stood, still shaken. "But we need a plan."

"No time," she said. "What, you want to go and hide somewhere, plan and scheme, and when we get back find he's gone?"

He looked at Rufus Kyuss, the visitor from beyond Echo City, survivor of the Bonelands, another creation of his mother's that she had simply let go. From this distance, it was difficult to make out the man's expression, but he seemed to be accepting the offerings presented to him-eating the food, drinking the wine. He did not appear to acknowledge those who prostrated themselves at his feet.

"He seems in no danger," he said softly.

"But those Watchers told us how urgent everything is," Alexia replied. "There's no time to waste."

"Maybe," Nophel said.

"Maybe? Are you…?" She shook her head, snorting. "It's just as likely that they'll string him up and feed him his own balls as keep serving him. This could all be part of some sacrificial ceremony."

"You Blades should know," Nophel said coldly.

Alexia pressed her gray lips together. None of the Unseen looked like living people, and Nophel had to glance away.

"Stay here," Alexia said. "Keep watch for us. You have a good field of view. If there's any trouble, shout as loud as you can. They won't hear, but we will."

"Hopefully," the tall man said. "If he doesn't fade in again. Shouldn't one of us stay with him?"

"No," Nophel and Alexia said at the same time.

"I'm fine," he said. "I must have been… drifting. I'll concentrate." I haven't come this far to lose out now. I have to meet him, talk with him. I have to know what he knows, and make sure he knows what I do.

"You're sure?" Alexia said, and her voice was more friendly this time.

Nophel nodded. She smiled. And then the three Unseen started down the hillside.

It was strange watching Alexia and the other two pass unnoticed into the ranks of the Dragarians. When he'd followed Alexia through the streets of Marcellan Canton, she had moved with grace and ease, nudging or startling people only intentionally. Now that stealth had to come to the fore. The Dragarians were worshipping their returned god, and any suspicion that something untoward was happening could result in chaos.

Maybe that would help us, he thought, and for a moment he considered manifesting. Who would they bow down to then? But Alexia and the two men had already weaved their way through the Dragarian soldiers to stand before Rufus's wooden chair, and Nophel had an idea. He hoped that Alexia would be thinking along the same lines: use their fears against them. But the fact that none of them could communicate with Rufus without manifesting before the Dragarians and giving themselves away-therein lay the problem.

For a few moments the Unseen stood there as if confused. They swapped a few words, looked around, and then Alexia pulled a knife. She stepped forward and pressed it tight beneath Rufus's jaw.

He tensed in his seat, lifting himself upright from where he'd been slouched, eyes going wide and hands lifting toward his throat. The two Unseen men grabbed an arm each and held it down. And while they could not speak to him, Nophel knew for certain that Rufus understood the message.

The Dragarians had not noticed. But when the man they regarded as a god rose into the air before them, his wooden chair fading away to nothing, they started to shout. Some stood and backed away, tripping, sprawling, turning to run when they could. Others bowed down and pressed their faces into the grass. And several simply watched, their faces blank. The fearful, the devout, and the doubting. The last, Nophel knew, were the ones who might present problems.

The men used a shoulder each to carry Rufus through the crowd. Alexia kept a short sword pressed against his back, the point penetrating his clothing. To the Dragarians, he floated. They followed his progress, but no one pursued him.

Not yet.

Good, Nophel thought. That might give us a chance. But behind them lay two domes to cross and then the journey back through the Echo to the outside. And once the Dragarians realized where their god was heading, they would do everything they could to hold him back.

And maybe he won't want to leave. Nophel had not considered that. Probably none of them had. But once he managed to speak to Rufus-talk about their mother-he was sure the Bonelands man would be on his side.

They did not stop when they reached Nophel, and he followed on behind, glancing back at the chattering Dragarians.

"Move faster," he said. "This won't last long." And he was right. The observers who had only watched as their god levitated before them were leaving the crowd now, following slowly in their path. One of them had fine wings tucked around his arms and hips, another wore scaled skin, a third scurried through the grass, head raised and tongue flickering like a lizard's. These were the doubters, unafraid and questioning, and they would be the most dangerous. The devout would be too amazed.

"Run," Nophel said. "That's all we can do. Fighting won't be an option."

"We need to speak to him," Alexia said. She was still pressing her knife to Rufus's back, but running like that was awkward, and as soon as she lost contact he might start to struggle.

"Not yet," Nophel said. "We have to get completely lost first."

"I can't leave," Rufus said into thin air, but none of them could reply.

They ran silently for a while, breathing hard, and Rufus did not struggle. He sat motionless on the men's shoulders, looking straight ahead, neither helping nor hindering them in their flight.

Nophel kept to the rear, knife drawn. If it came to combat he would be lost, he knew that. And he was here for himself. If things went so wrong, he would flee alone, and perhaps later he would still be able to find the Baker on his own.

As they approached the huge arch leading into the cultivated dome, Alexia said, "By all the gods, how stupid we've been!"

"What?" Nophel asked. They were being followed by at least twenty Dragarians, and at present they were keeping a respectful distance, easily maintaining pace with the Unseen. If the time came when they decided to close in-even attack-there would be no easy escape.

"Your blood," Alexia said. "Or even ours. The White Water in yours made us able to return to the world. But we all have Blue Water in our blood, and-"

"Yes!" Nophel said, cursing himself for not thinking of that. "And because he won't even see it-"

"-it'll be easy to make him drink it," Alexia finished for him.

"But we have to get him out of sight first, somewhere we can stop and do it."

"I have an idea," she said. "Here, take my knife, keep watch, and do it as soon as you can."

Why me again? Nophel thought, scratching at the wound on his arm. But Alexia's Scarlet Blade training was already taking over. She threw him the knife as she ran past him toward the following Dragarians, and the two men carrying Rufus hardly broke pace. Nophel closed his eyes and plucked at the wound with the knife, and it did not take much to start the blood flowing again.

They passed beneath the arch and entered the huge green dome. Smells changed from the tang of water to the perfumes of plants and blooms, and the short grasses around their feet changed to a long, rough crop.

"Keep running," Nophel said, and he paused and turned around.

Alexia stood just downhill from the arch, silhouetted against sunlight reflecting from the wide lake, and something about her outline was changing. There was a shimmer to her, as though she vibrated against reality. And then the Dragarians rushing up the slope stopped and stared.

Alexia ran at them with her short sword drawn. She was screaming-a murderous wail that set Nophel's skin tingling-swirling the sword around her head, and uttering promises of pain in those unintelligible words.

Some of the Dragarians turned and fled this vision they had witnessed emerging from nowhere. One of them took to the air. It was a clumsy take-off, and his left wing caught on an item of clothing, pitching him heavily to the left. He emitted a cry not unlike one uttered by a rathawk and drifted low across the ground, the slope saving him from an ignominious landing. Another fell on all fours and loped back down toward the lake.

Three more picked up their pace and charged straight for Alexia.

"Not much time!" Nophel hissed. The two Unseen lowered Rufus to the ground, and while one of them grasped his arms to his sides, the other held his lower jaw and forced his mouth open. Rufus struggled, looking around wide-eyed and seeing nothing but green and the dome's roof. He must be petrified, Nophel thought, but there was no time for pity. He paused for a moment, taking a good look at this other abandoned child for the first time, this person chopped and cast out by the bitch Baker. Then he squeezed blood from his wound into the man's mouth.

Rufus could not see the blood, but he surely tasted it, gagging and coughing. The tall man forced his mouth closed and he swallowed reflexively, blinking hard as his eyes started to water. Then, somewhere in his fluid vision, he started to see the Unseen.

"We're here to help you," Nophel said, hoping the man could hear him already.

Nophel heard the clash of metal on metal and spun around. Alexia was fighting two Dragarians, while a third held back. They were soldiers, evidently, their muscled arms heavy and long, and the swords they carried were twice the length of the woman's. But though she had been Unseen for some time, she still retained her Scarlet Blade training. Fighting was what she had been bred for since childhood.

The first Dragarian went down, clasping a vicious cut across his chest, blooding spewing between his fingers. The second faltered, and Alexia drove in with her sword. Its tip pierced his shoulder and she twisted, eliciting a cry of agony and terror from the man's many-toothed mouth.

Alexia backed away from the wounded men and faced the third soldier-a woman with four arms and a blade in each. She looked vicious, but her lower two arms seemed weaker than the others, and there were wet, open sores where they joined her body. Badly chopped, Nophel thought. Not as good as my mother.

Alexia darted at her, and the woman turned and fled.

As she ran toward them, Alexia phased back to Unseen. She staggered a little as she came, blinking rapidly as if fighting off a faint. It hurts her, Nophel thought. Maybe she was too far gone.

"Let's go," she said as she reached them.

"Are you well?" Nophel asked.

"Fine, but we need to go."

Rufus Kyuss was staring at them now, the tall Unseen's long arms still wrapped around him. Though still visible, the differences in Nophel's blood-the White Water and the Blue Water-had worked on the Dragarians' god. He now had the potential to be Unseen, should they instruct him in its use, as well as the ability to see them in whichever state they existed. "Who…?" he asked.

"Friends of Peer," Nophel said.

"Is she still with that Baker?" Rufus seethed, his hatred obvious, and Nophel felt his insides glow. He could not hold back a smile.

"Come with us," he said. "We've got plenty to talk about."

"I don't need rescuing," Rufus said. "They need me here."

"But this isn't all about you," Alexia said. "Come, or there'll be no Echo City left to take you to."

Rufus stood up straight and shook his head. "I belong here," I said. "Whoever you are, I can't leave with you. Rufus is not my name. My name-"

"Fuck this," Alexia said, and she struck Rufus across the back of the head. He fell, moaning, and rolled, and she hit him twice more before he grew still.

The two men picked up Rufus between them. Then they ran, crashing through the foliage, ducking beneath trees' low canopies, aiming for the other side of the dome and taking the most direct path they could. That Baker, Rufus had said. What did he know? Everything? Nophel kept looking at the mysterious man slung between the Unseen, and again he thought, He looks nothing like me.

They were halfway across the green dome, heading for the archway leading to the first dome, when a loud wailing noise filled the air. They paused beside a small pond, brushing flies and bees away from their faces.

"What the crap is that?" Alexia asked.

"Alarm," Nophel said. "There are similar ones set up on Hanharan Heights. It's a call to arms."

"War," Alexia said.

"Unless we get out of here quickly, yes."

"He could stop it," the tall Unseen said, nodding at the man they'd dropped to the ground. "Leave him here… let them find him-"

"No," Nophel said. "He's too important." To me, he almost said, but he bit his tongue. Too important to me.

"And we're not?" Alexia said.

Nophel smiled. His face was not used to the expression, and several of his sores split.

Sweating, exhausted, they ran again, hunted by a people who had found and lost their savior almost in the same breath. Nophel knew that if they were caught, there could be no mercy.

And Rufus Kyuss, unconscious, remained an enigma.

Echo City awoke that morning to a glorious day. There was hardly a cloud in the slate-blue sky, and the sun climbed from out of the Bonelands in the east with the promise of warmth and comfort for those who sought it. The sunlight illuminated the urban sprawl of Mino Mont, sending the slum gangs back into their shadows and splashing against the stark wall of Marcellan Canton. At the pinnacle of Hanharan Heights, the Eastern Scope stared wanly across the city, directly into the sunlight. Its enlarged eye did not water or smart from the brightness, and it did not lower the faceted lid that usually protected it from such glare. There was a small crater in the bottom curve of its eye, and the sun failed to scare away the ghourt lizard that picked at the organ's jelly.

In Course and Crescent, Marcellan's huge shadow was thrown as far as the city limits, its elongated spires and towers slowly crawling back across the city as the sun rose, like the retreating fingers of some vast phantom. In Crescent, blooms turned their heads to the sun and prepared to watch it cross the sky once again, while in Course Canton, the squares, courtyards, and parks bustled with early-morning traders, food purveyors, and people on their way to work or school. The smell of cooking soon drifted on the air, wafting away the sewer scents of nighttime and the metallic fumes from the smaller industrialized areas.

On the tall walls of Marcellan Canton, Scarlet Blades drifted to and fro in preparation for the changing of their guard. It would be achieved in shifts, so that there was never a time when the canton was not protected. Some of them were drunk, and not only those leaving their shift. There had not been a war for a long time. Soldiers grew bored.

At the end of one street in Course, a body was dragged into the shadows by three pairs of hands, its jewelry already stolen, its flesh and bones destined for the swine pits.

In the southern quarter of Mino Mont, nine corpses lay strewn across the steps of an old Hanharan temple, victims of a gang feud that had lasted for three generations. Such deaths were commonplace and barely merited a second glance from passersby. The feud was also expected, and expectation was one of the reasons it still existed. One gang would party all day in celebration, and tomorrow they would be the ones spilling blood and then seeking new recruits from the youngsters of that canton.

In Skulk, people drifted westward toward the stoneshroom fields. Others closed their doors for the day, preferring to sleep when the sun was up so that they could not look north and see the city that reminded them of lost times.

In Marcellan Canton, a group of old people passed laws that would mean nothing.

In Crescent, a farmer sowed crops that would never be harvested.

It was, all in all, a normal dawning to what seemed a normal day in Echo City.

But there were also those in the city who awoke to a painful truth-that things had changed, were still changing, and might never be the same again.

In Shute Fields, in the southwest corner of Course, shapes rose from places where the sunlight never touched. They were sleek, pale, and gray, and they raised their hands to protect their faces from the painful glare. Most remained in the shadows, hiding away from the sun behind walls, shivering in the growing heat of the day because they were so scared. Up was somewhere most of them had never been, but they could never go back down. Several were murdered by terrified people who thought they were monsters. Some fought back and killed their attackers, eating the fresh meat because it reminded them of home. Hunts proceeded, with the Garthans running through unfamiliar streets and existing for the first time in a place that was not an Echo. Though they were fewer than their pursuers, and disoriented, their custom of eating their victims meant that fear was on their side.

At the southern extremes of Mino Mont, where the canton narrowed down with the Marcellan wall on one side and the city wall, with the Bonelands beyond, on the other, the Bloodwork Gang was bettered for the first time in years. One of their main slash distribution centers had existed beneath an old abandoned workhouse for more than a year, storing enough of the drug to feed most of Mino Mont's addicts and a few of the more powerful devotees in Marcellan Canton. It was well hidden, its entrances and exits spread among neighboring buildings, and the Bloodworks had striven to keep it safe. Most knew not to interfere with them, and a thousand corpses could attest to this.

Protected and guarded against intrusion from above, the gang met doom from below. Fleeting pale shapes swarmed through the warehouse's rooms, spilling containers and setting fires. Perhaps it was surprise at finding the product that they made stored in such quantities. Or maybe it was panic. No one would ever know.

After the initial shock, the Bloodwork members guarding the den fought back, but it was a short, brutal combat. The Garthans had no need of weapons; they hunted through stealth, stillness, and then fury. They killed anyone who stood in their way, chewing on human hearts as they charged onward. And the gang member who chose to hide-and who, later that day, would brag that he'd fought off a dozen attackers but instead had pissed himself as he watched his friends gutted and eaten-swore that these strange humans were terrified. They screeched as they attacked, but not in rage. It was fear that had driven them up, terror that gave them speed and strength. They rose into the streets and remained in shadows.

The Garthans emerged in many other places around the city. Sometimes there were large groups of them, but more often there were only a handful, and in places just one or two. In their terrified climb up through the city's Echoes and into its present, some had died, and many had lost track of their family and friends. The survivors did not care. All that mattered was escaping the thing rising from the deep.

Close to where the River Tharin vented into the desert, Bellia Ton had slept with her feet dangling in that dead river's flow. Her nightmares were monstrous, and as she woke to the sunlight burning her eyelids, the memory of them was rich. She could no longer discern whether what she heard, saw, and smelled were products of the fears already implanted in her or given to her afresh by the river. Bodies flowed past. Some of them were Garthans, and others had scarlet cloaks billowing around them like blood slicks. She tried to hear their voices, but there was one sound drowning out everything she needed to know: an insistent, throbbing impact on her soul. She heard and smelled it, felt and tasted it, and it was rising from somewhere deep-though not as deep as before.

She rolled from the river and her legs beneath the knees were white, skin and flesh soft as soaked mud. When she tried to stand, her legs gave way. There was no longer any feeling in them at all. She screamed instead, crying out all the things she thought she knew, but the only people to hear were the dead floating by. She always chose the deserted areas around the refineries to read the river. And hers were not the only screams sounding across Echo City that morning.

Readers across the city cried out, or ran, and some of them died where they worked, hearts riven with shock. Whatever the source of their knowledge-water, air, tea leaves, mepple flesh, stoneshroom visions, or rockzard-liver trails-their warnings were the same: Something is rising. They heard the sounds from below and spread word of them through the streets. Their warning dispersed, and no one who heard them could deny the sense of panic overlying the city. It started in the darkness and continued into the day, and sunlight brought no calming touch.

In Marcellan, a fat man approached the city wall, hoping that he still held power in his given name. Behind him trailed a small army of faithful soldiers, a score of Scarlet Blades whom he had been nurturing for years so that, when the time came, they would put the name Dane ahead of Marcellan. He tried to exude confidence and authority, yet he picked up the sense pervading the city that morning, and it was a wilder place. The wall guards stepped in front of the gate, and the fear in their eyes when they saw him gave him hope.

Where the Garthans rose-quietly and secretively in places, yet also interacting with the citizens in violent, startled ways that they never had before-word quickly spread of cannibalistic invasion from below. Many residents panicked and fled their homes, carrying their children and weapons and nothing else, and soon the streets were awash with people. The population spread out from those areas touched by the Garthans like ripples fleeing a stone's impact.

Scarlet Blades tried to contain the panic, and sometimes they succeeded. But here and there fights broke out and blood was spilled, not always the blood of civilians.

The Marcellan Council debated the news they were hearing from across the city. Hanharan priests advised the government, and their advice concerning the Echoes was always the same-Hanharan lives down there, and he exhales only goodness. They blamed the Garthans, and official word went out that an invasion was under way. Across the city, Garthan and Scarlet Blade blood mingled in short, brutal combats.

In the many places where news was vague and panic had not yet reached, and where people sat quietly eating breakfast or watching the sunrise, perhaps holding hands with their loved ones or smiling softly as their children readied for school, they heard a quiet, insistent noise from below: thud… thud… thud.

They frowned and wondered what it could be.

Gorham sat and watched the girl come to life before him. There is my daughter, he thought, and yet she could never be. She was chopped, as much a monster as the Pserans or the Scopes, and she would not know him as Father.

He had carried her from the womb-vat room into Nadielle's bedroom. Naked, slick from the fluids that had nurtured her to such a size so quickly, she had already been looking around with those wide, curious eyes. Yet she had nestled into him, arms around his neck and head pressed against his chest. He'd felt her heartbeat, and that had given him pause. She really is alive.

Now he watched and waited, and it was amazing. He would never understand exactly what Nadielle had done here and certainly not how. But as the girl's awareness grew and her knowledge seemed to expand in her head like a balloon, so he believed he was coming more to terms with what she was.

The urgency was still there, crushing him like a giant hand bearing down on both shoulders. But Nadielle had left the girl here to prepare for Rufus's return. In a way Gorham felt useless, but he was also thankful that he could watch as the Baker's processes continued outside the vat.

She's the new Baker, he thought. She had the body of a girl maybe ten or eleven years old, but her eyes were already those of an adult. There was still confusion there and traces of fear, but at times Gorham also saw a striking wisdom and a depth of experience that would have been impossible in anyone else her age.

And yet her true age was measured only in hours.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to settle the feeling that he should never have been here. He was a pragmatist-that had driven him since his early years, and it continued to guide him through his adult life as a Watcher. Yet what he watched here could not be real. Nadielle scoffed at the word magic, and Gorham had always allied it with the beliefs of Hanharans and the other, smaller religious sects throughout Echo City. Yet what more suitable word was there? If an act such as the Baker's chopping used talents, forces, and knowledge far beyond the understanding of anyone else in the city, wasn't that magic? It consisted of processes rather than spells or hexes, but he suspected they were processes that no one else but the Baker could perform, on the very edge of any science it was possible to understand. Nadielle had told him that much was passed down from chopped Baker to chopped Baker-he could see the stark evidence of that in the burgeoning knowledge before him now-but she had never explained how she did what she did. The Bakers had been practicing like this through the centuries, and that lent power to the concept of their own particular magic.

The girl was sitting on the Baker's bed, a gown tied tight around her waist, with Nadielle's books spread around her. There were sheafs of paper piled everywhere, notebooks, and those ancient books the Baker had brought from her secret rooms. The girl read as she ate-she had been eating ever since the birth-and she never once glanced at Gorham. He might as well not have been there, but he continued to bring her food and drink, and he knew that she was more than aware of his presence. Her hair was long and tangled. Her skin was pink as a newborn baby's. Yet it was her eyes-his eyes-that made his breath catch each time he saw them.

She ran her hands across one of the oldest books, turned a page, and touched the ancient words. She read and gasped. She can read, Gorham thought. She's been in this world for mere hours and she can read, comprehend, understand. Crumbs fell from her mouth as she chewed, and she brushed them from the books with a gentle reverence. She understands the value of knowledge, and that's something some people don't realize in a lifetime. The girl was more amazing with every moment, and Gorham found himself observing from a greater distance. The first time she spoke, he was so startled that he thought he'd been woken from a dream.

"There should be another book," she said.

Gorham stood from his chair and backed away. He nudged against the wall, knocking something from a shelf. It smashed on the floor, but neither man nor girl averted their gaze.

"No," he croaked.

"She would have left it with you to hand to me."

"No," he said, firmer this time. "Not with me. She left nothing with me." That bitterness burned, and the girl's knowing smile stunned him.

She glanced around at the scattered books again, as if looking for one she had not yet seen.

"How much do you know?" he asked softly.

"Enough," she said. She rubbed her temple, then lowered her hand, the smile now gone. "Enough to know that something is missing."

Gorham shook his head, going over Nadielle's final words in his mind. He'd been angry, and perhaps sad, but he was certain he remembered everything that had been said. If she'd left something for the new Baker and told him about it, he would have remembered.

The girl keened and tipped to the side, resting her head against the open page of a huge old book. Gorham dashed across the room, and his every step closer made her more real.

"What's wrong?" he asked, reaching out but not quite touching. Though there were tears, her eyes were still older than they should have been. She gasped, sobbed, then pushed herself upright again. She seemed to be in pain, but when she reached out and took his hand, the touch was gentle, the hold firm.

"She rushed," the girl said. "But I'll be fine to do what needs doing." She had fine blond hair, and Gorham noticed a streak of white on one side. He was certain it had not been there before-he'd have noticed it when he carried her in here, surely? But his thoughts then had been in a mess, his senses distracted. She took some shortcuts. He wondered where else this new Baker lacked her creator's qualities.

"I think I know where the book is," the girl said. She pulled against Gorham's hand to help herself up, then closed books to clear a space around her. "Sit. I need to talk to you."

"Why?"

"Because the old Baker left you here with me for a reason. You're the book-her diary of the final days. You need to tell me everything you know and all the reasons why she chopped me while she was…" She smiled that knowing smile again. "I'm sure she cared for you."

"I'm not so sure," he said, but somehow the girl's words gave him comfort.

"The urgency is hot in me," she said. "I've no time to learn or research. You have to tell me what's happened, and try not to leave anything out."

"You're so new," he said. The deeper he thought about it, the more terrifying it became. "How can you talk? How do you know all those things?"

"No Baker is new," she said. "We're all continuations. I can tell you the color of the Baker's eyes from a thousand years ago. I can tell you what food the Baker from three thousand years ago favored."

"Then if you know everything, the name Vex will have meaning."

The girl paled, pressed her hand to her forehead, and grasped Gorham's hand to steady herself.

"The Vex is ancient history," she whispered.

"And all of Echo City's history is here."

"Then tell me. Quickly!"

"First tell me your name."

"I have none. Will you give me one?"

"Let me think."

"Think while you're talking," she said, and for the first time he heard a trace of Nadielle in the girl's voice, saw a glint of the old Baker's cool, detached humor in her eye.

So he talked, and some time into his story he named the girl.

"It's been too long," Peer said, hand pressed against her aching hip. Ever since the Unseen had left with Nophel, she'd been unable to sit still. She'd paced the two hidden rooms of the ruin where they hid, wearing a path back and forth across the gritty floor, and several times Malia had told her to fucking sit down. But Peer could not be still when everything else was in motion. So much depended on what happened here, and the responsibility she felt for Rufus Kyuss was almost crippling.

"There are six domes," Malia said, sighing because she'd said that a dozen times already.

"Still. It's been too long." Peer knelt close to one of the windows they were avoiding and looked at the incredible city outside. They'd seen very little activity since hiding themselves away. There were flitters of movement and now and then mysterious sounds that they could not identify-distant growls, an insistent clanging that had continued for hours, a long, low wail that rose and fell in random increments, and that thumping that seemed to rise from the ground. But there was no indication that they had been seen and no sign of the others.

Peer leaned back against the wall and stared across at Malia. The Watcher woman was sitting with her eyes closed, though Peer knew she was not asleep. She was meditating, perhaps, or simply thinking about what had happened and what was to come. The woman was Gorham's friend, and if put in this situation a few days before, Peer would have been quizzing her nonstop about her old lover. But that seemed so inconsequential now, compared to what was happening. Gorham had given Peer to the Marcellans for the good of the Watchers, and she had to accept what had failed between them for the good of the whole city.

Far too long, she thought.

"We should go," Peer said. "Make our own way in, look elsewhere. We can cover more ground than-"

"Than invisible people?" Malia asked without opening her eyes.

A distant wailing sound began-but this was different. The one they'd heard before had sounded like the cries of a wounded animal, but this was more regular. A continuous rise and fall.

Malia opened her eyes. "That's an alarm."

"They've been caught."

"Or they have him." Malia stood and approached the window beside Peer, sword in her hand. She was edgy, more animated than Peer had seen her in a while. Maybe she'd simply been preparing for this.

"We need to be ready to move as soon as they're here," Malia said. "We'll go on ahead, make sure the route out's clear."

"What about Rufus?"

"They'll be protecting him." She nodded at Peer, then clasped her arm. "He's more important to the city than to you, Peer."

"I know that," she said, but the truth hurt.

They watched the landscape outside, unable to see far because of the honeycomb structures filling the dome. And when the Unseen returned, it was not from the direction they expected.

"We need to move quickly," a voice said. Peer spun around and raised her short sword, and Alexia stood behind them.

"You have him?" Malia asked.

Alexia leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths, fighting off a faint. "Yes. I came on ahead."

"Is he…?" Peer began.

"He's fine. Unconscious. I had to knock him out. I'm not sure he really wants to come."

"What?"

"Doesn't matter now," Malia said. "So, you're the soldier. What's the best way to go from here?"

Alexia grinned. "Well, when I was a Blade, in situations such as this we'd usually resort to running like fuck." The others entered behind her through a gap left by a fallen wall: Nophel, the two other Unseen… and, slung between them, Rufus.

"Back the way we came," Alexia said. "But, to stay together, we all need to remain seen, unless you two-"

"You'll have more of a chance on your own," Peer said. "Fade out again, and go as fast as you can. Malia and I will remember the way on our own. And if we trail behind you…"

"Yes," Malia said. "It'll be us they catch first, and that will slow them down."

"A drop of blood is all it takes," Nophel said.

"No," Peer said, and Malia also shook her head. It was no longer simply fear of the condition that made them refuse. It was the realization that they could provide a distraction.

"Fine," Alexia said without argument, and the Unseen began to fade. She placed her hands on either side of the unconscious Rufus's face and concentrated, and he, too, began to fade.

"What?" Malia gasped, surprised, and before Nophel flittered from visibility, he pointed at his bleeding arm.

They slipped from the building. Peer had never felt so naked and exposed. The dome sloped away above them, and without staring up it could have been just another expanse of gray sky. A thousand windows stared down at them, dark openings in the faces of incredible structures, and behind any one there could have been a Dragarian waiting for this moment. Perhaps they've been playing us all along, Peer thought, and it was an unsettling idea because…

Because she'd been thinking the same about Rufus. He'd killed the Border Spite and the Watcher easily enough, and he'd fled the Baker's laboratory as soon as he heard the truth-almost as if he'd known the truth all along, and this was all just a ploy to get here.

But perhaps her imagination was running away with her. If there was any truth in that, he'd have forced them to let him stay. He might talk like a child, but she had a feeling he had a much wider understanding of things than any of them gave him credit for.

They approached the dome's edge, dropped into the dried canal, and headed back down into the tunnels from which they'd emerged an unknown time ago. Sunlight still streamed through the hidden windows in the dome's roof, but it had taken on a darker, deeper hue, and she suspected that dusk was approaching outside. She wondered how much things would have changed when dawn next touched the city.

It was as they struck alight their oil torches that Peer first heard the sounds of pursuit.

She and Malia froze and stared at each other, heads tilted. The sound came again-a low, secretive grinding, like something dragging itself over the ground.

"You go on," Malia said, and before Peer could protest, the Watcher woman was climbing back toward daylight.

Peer moved deeper into the tunnels, alone and terrified, and looked for a place to wait. She could not simply leave Malia behind and flee, much as every part of her wanted to. And neither could she move on; even now she was unsure of whether she was going in the right direction. So she hunkered down behind the remains of a tumbled wall, wondered what the building had been, and soon heard footsteps pounding toward her from the direction of the dome. She thought of extinguishing the torch but decided to keep it alight. If the person running at her was not Malia, she'd need to see what she was fighting.

"We can't stay here," Malia said, rushing past. "Come on."

Peer ran after her, handing Malia the torch and trusting the Watcher's instinct. Malia moved this way and that without any apparent hesitation, and Peer only hoped she remembered the way correctly.

"Lots of them," Malia said. "We could wait and fight, but we wouldn't hold them up for long. Useless."

"So what?" Peer panted.

"We find somewhere narrow and try to hold them back."

"Just you and me?"

"Yeah. Narrow enough for one or two, and we'll do what we can."

We'll do what we can. That meant die. Peer felt curiously detached from the possibility, as if she'd already died once before and knew it was not so bad. Yet her will to live was strong-to see Rufus and help him as much as she could. To see Gorham again. He'd been afraid when she left him with the Baker, and the manner of their parting…

I could have said goodbye, she thought. I could have given him some inkling of forgiveness, at least. But that would have been a betrayal of herself. She had not forgiven him, could not. But that didn't mean they could not still be friends, of a sort.

And Penler. She'd made herself a promise to see him one more time. Failing in that would feel like letting him, not herself, down.

Behind them in the tunnels, echoes drifted in: growls and scrapes, the flapping of wings, the slithering of things across the ground. They merged with the sounds of their own footfalls. The sounds were growing louder, even though Peer and Malia were running as fast as they could. Whether they reached a suitable place of ambush or not, the choice to run or fight would soon be made for them.

Peer drew her sword, and it felt pathetic in her hand. Not long now. Not long until she discovered the truth about death and what lay beyond. Would she be taken down to Hanharan, in whom she did not believe, and welcomed into his shadowed embrace? Or would her senses blink out one by one until there was nothing to comprehend and no comprehension at all?

A Watcher all her life, right then Peer was no longer sure what she believed.

An arrow flicked past her ear and struck Malia in the neck. She grunted and fell, and Peer tripped over her flailing limbs. And then redness rose around them, and the sound of fighting and dying filled that subterranean place.

Sometimes Sprote Felder believed that the statues spoke to him. He did his best to listen, but their words were distorted by time and confused by languages he had never known. He thought he'd researched all the old dialects, reading them on inscriptions hidden from the sun for countless years, but perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps there was so much more that he could never know.

The noise in his head was constant. Sometimes he screamed until he could no longer draw breath past the rawness in his throat, but that did nothing to cover the impact noises he heard from below. Other times he stuffed dust and dirt into his ears, wetting his finger and shoving it in as far as he could in the hope that it would solidify, cementing out the terrible truth. But then he'd slump to the ground and bang his head, and the plugs would fall out.

The tall statue before him was regal and aloof, missing one arm that might have been torn off by Garthans. They sometimes came and vandalized these higher Echoes, poor revenge upon the memories of those long-ago Marcellans who had wronged them when they were proud Thanulians. He had often suspected that one day they would marshal their forces, gather their anger, and rise up to exact true vengeance. It seemed that he'd been wrong.

Something else would be the end of Echo City.

He screamed again, raging at the pains in his throat and head. It had been a long time since he'd had a drink. Crawling from the small tomb beneath one of the statues where the Baker woman had dragged him, he'd cracked the water flask she'd left behind, spilling its contents into the dry dust of history. He'd lit his torch and watched it soaking in, amazed that things could still happen when there was no one here to see. That's proof of the city's soul, he'd thought. That it continues on without us, and it'll move on, and on, even when this is all over. Even when we're all dead.

Crawling, pulling with his hands, pushing with his one good leg, smelling the stench of his other leg, where the bone had ruptured flesh and set it to rot, he had no destination in sight. His only purpose was to move, because he had never stayed still.

Creatures ran past him, heading back the way he had come. A mass of small insectlike animals first, antennae waving at the air, ten legs scuttling across the uneven ground. They parted around him-smelling him, perhaps-though a couple came close and chewed chunks from his rotting leg. Larger creatures followed them, some flying, most crawling or running. He knew some of them from his long journeys down here, but there were shining diamondlike creatures that moved on cushions of gas that he had never seen before. Even now the wonder was there, and he reached out to grab one as it drifted by. His hand was slashed in a dozen places. It hissed as it passed by, absorbing his blood and glowing red for a few brief moments.

"Running from something," he said, and he started to crawl faster. Whatever they were running from, he had to see. He was dead but not yet finished, and curiosity and the search for knowledge were his prime motivators even now.

The ground thumped up at his chest and stomach, the regular rhythm of the impacts now ended. "Turning to chaos," he said into the shadows. They did not reply, because there was nothing left down there to hear. Even the maddest of the Garthans had gone-he'd seen no sign of them for what felt like days. "Chaos rising, and the city's reaping what it's sown." Crawl… crawl…

Something moved in the distance. Sprote paused and aimed his torch, but the oil had almost run out now, and the light beam was weak. Shadows shifted again and then dashed across the Echo before him-a huge, flailing thing that ran so fast he could not track its progress. Light reflected from lashing metal objects, and between them was only the darkness of a body built to hide.

This time Sprote did not scream, because he knew this was not the rising thing. This was something that had come down.

"Mounting a defense," he said, but this was not a creation of the Marcellans, and the Hanharans would not allow such bastardization. He knew who had made this, and why, and when he shouted this time, it was a cry of encouragement and defiance.

The impacts increased, the ground now shaking so much that each thump punched him into the air, and each fall drove lances of pain all through his body. From the far distance, across this Echo and from those much deeper, he heard and felt the steady rumble of roofs caving in, columns crushing, history imploding. The noise was immense, and at last, through the incredible volume, he started to distinguish one facet of the cacophony from another: here, the clash of metal against other hard things; there, the cry of something in pain; and elsewhere, a roar fractured by the teeth it was driven past.

The Echo smelled of death, and it was no longer only from him.

The ground opened up before him. The statue park, part of an Echo he had explored many times, split from side to side, and from the new rift something rose up. It was huge, a shifting tower of the dead and rotting, bones and flesh falling from it. His meager vision was clouded with the dust of crushed bones. Clad in the dead of Echo City, the thing beneath the corpses was visible in places-swaths of deep-red hide with cracks that glowed like lava bubbling in the Echo pits beneath Skulk.

Huge limbs the length of a hundred human arms thrashed at things clinging to its sheer sides. And these things-two of them, joined now by the one Sprote had seen rushing across the Echo-were hacking at the monster. Their bladed limbs rose and fell, scattering more bones of the dead and flicking countless body parts into the darkness, digging deeper until they encountered the monster's skin, slashing, rending, and moving on when gouts of fiery blood erupted from the foul wounds they had made.

Sprote's torch faded out, but the scene was lit with the blaze of combat. Old corpses flamed as they fell past the monster's burning wounds, disintegrating across the ground and setting a thousand bonfires. Fires burned on its ridged back. Gases ignited around the fighting things.

And then, far to Sprote's left, another upheaval, and another huge mass broke through the rock from the Echoes buried below. It tipped over and smashed onto the ground, shattering the statues of people dead for thousands of years and spilling a hundred corpses across the soil. At first he thought there were two monsters rising. But when he realized what he was actually seeing, and the ground between the limbs started to bulge as the thing's colossal head forced through, his heart stopped beating for the final time.

The Echoes around the turmoil collapsed, history fell, and Sprote Felder was crushed before he could utter one final, dreadful cry.

"Man from Sand," the voice says, and Rufus opens his eyes. He is in his small room in his guardian's house. Sunrise is near, and the only sounds from beyond are the soft calls of birds waking around the village. Soon the place will be bustling, but there is always that gentle, almost mournful time between night and day when the village seems to be holding its breath. Sometimes Rufus is awake for this and he stares from the window, wondering who he really is. Mostly he sleeps through to daylight. He is becoming comfortable, though afraid that the dreams will never leave him be.

"Who are you?" he asks, and then he sees the flowing yellow robes. A Tender, from the valley of the Heart and Mind. He has never heard of these servants leaving the valley, and he has seen them only once before, one moon ago, when he made his pilgrimage.

"My name does not belong to me," the man says. He is exceedingly tall and thin, his arms almost as long as Rufus's body, his head elongated, his feet large and flat. His face is somber and pale, but his eyes are bright. They glitter in the light of the small lamp he has lit. He sits in the chair beside the bed, and his knees are almost as high as Rufus's head.

"You're… tall," Rufus says, but the man does not react. He is removing something from a pocket hidden within his robes. He settles, and when he seems comfortable he begins to speak.

"Long ago, long before history, at a time when people passed events through song instead of writing, the Heartlands' ancestors fought a war. The causes of the war are long forgotten, but even now there is evidence of its ferocity and inhumanity-both to scales beyond our comprehension-in the eternally toxic desert. And you have seen the dead city deeper in the Heartlands, where only the ghosts of the past reside. There are more like that."

"More? I thought-"

"Our ancestors lost the war. But not as much as their enemies. Half the world died, and the other half struggled on for many painful centuries until it became the Heartlands. The Heart and Mind believes that you are from the world that died."

"But I-"

The man lashes out with the thin stick he has produced from his robes, catching Rufus across the face. The impact is sharp, fast, and surprising. No one here has ever treated Rufus like this. There has been disbelief, and fear, and sometimes hostility. But never violence.

"Silence, Man from Sand!" the Tender snaps, and his voice carries so much more threat than before. "You must listen and do as I say. The Heart and Mind commands that you hear the truth and then obey." He arranges his robes again, shifting on the seat until he is comfortable once more. Then he stares at Rufus. "The Heartlands is the whole world. It stretches for a thousand miles south of here, and we are at its edge. The Heart and Mind was placed here long ago, at the edge of the rest of the world, formed and chopped by the Revered Artist. His was a tortured soul, and upon completion of the Heart and Mind, he let himself fade and die. He believed that he was not for the likes of us. But he will never fade from memory." The Tender looked sad, the first expression that had crossed its otherwise plain face.

"Why did he-"

"His arcane talents caused much suffering before the Heart and Mind emerged. But his purpose was finally achieved. It was based here to guard against future wars. That threat is… long past. But then there comes you."

The welt across his face is stinging, but Rufus holds back the tears. He is not weak. Confused, yes; often. Lonely… sometimes. But never weak.

"The Heart and Mind instructs that you are to return to the sands this coming night," the Tender said. "It senses deep, distant rumblings that trouble it and commands that you leave. No one must know. I will tell you where to meet me, close to the desert's edge. We will equip you, and you will go back to where you came from."

"Just because I'm not like you?" Rufus asks, flinching in expectation of another strike. But the man's face softens just a little, and he sighs.

"You are not like us, any of us. You're an upset that should not exist."

"I don't understand…" Rufus says, closing his eyes and seeing the city, and hearing a voice that might be his mother.

"And that is why you must return," the Tender says. "The Heart and Mind will touch you first, so that it can read you from afar. It is curious about you and where you came from. And it must know what the rumblings it senses forewarn. Knowledge gives it power, and it would have knowledge of your origins. What you see, it will see. What you experience, it will know. Thus it is with every Tender. You will become one."

"And my guardian?"

"She can never know." The man is sour and grim once again, staring at Rufus with a warning in his eyes.

"If I tell her, if I tell everyone-"

"You-will-not." The voice is like fire; the words spell death. Rufus shivers in his warm bed, and the man stands to leave. There is hardly any sound as he moves; no swish of his robes, no impact of feet upon the ground. He's almost a ghost, but Rufus knows for sure that he is real. He can smell a sickly-sweet odor coming from him that he knows has something to do with the Heart and Mind, and the man's shadow is cold.

"I'm afraid," Rufus says.

"Of going home?"

"I'm not sure…" he says, screwing up his eyes. He concentrates. "I'm not sure I really came from anywhere out there." The man bends down, looming over him like a carrion bird inspecting a victim as it slowly bleeds to death.

"But the Heart and Mind is sure," he says. "Sundown, by the Signal Rock."

Rufus nods, unable to speak. The man leaves. And as the sun rises soon after, and Rufus's last day in the Heartlands begins, the coolness of rejection settles over him.

There are no memories of that final day with the people of the Heartlands, because it must have been a happy one. Later, he is standing by the Signal Rock, its flanks scorched black by the hundreds of fires lit and doused there over the years. The Tender is there, as promised, and at his feet is a sled with several covered packages-water, food, the weapons he's been taught to use, a tent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?" Alexia asked urgently.

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

"We have to hide," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then stopped.

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

"Nophel!" he gasped.

"Dane."

The Scarlet Blades hovered uncertainly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why did you come?" Nophel asked.

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

"To help you," he said.

"Why would you-"

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

"And something more?" Nophel asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You took me because you cared."

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

"Did she know?"

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

"Care?"

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

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

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

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

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

Behind them, the sounds of death: screaming and hissing, shouts and screeches, the harsh impacts of violence, and the meaty thunks! of swords meeting flesh and bone. But Peer could not turn to see any of this, because Malia was dying.

The arrow had barely opened her skin, and the blood flow was slight. But it must have been dipped in poison, because the Watcher woman was thrashing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and clasping Peer's hand so tightly her that Peer could feel her bones grinding together.

"Hold on!" Peer pleaded, but Malia could not hear. She'd dropped her torch and it shone ahead of them, casting only a small portion of its light across Malia's face. For that, Peer was glad. She had seen many people in pain before and had witnessed some dying in agony. But this seemed worse than any.

"K… k… k…" Malia choked, and one of her hands shifted quickly to the back of Peer's head. She pulled, and much as Peer resisted, she was no match for Malia's strength.

More screaming came from behind them as the Scarlet Blades fought with the Dragarians. The reasons and implications were far from her right now.

"Kill… me," Malia groaned, the effort immense. She let go of Peer and started to shake again, limbs and head pummeling against the ground, and the foam around her mouth grew darker. She was keening now, an unconscious sound of utter distress, and Peer screamed to try to drown it out.

Her short sword was on the ground next to Malia. Its blade was keen, its point sharp. With all her weight on the handle, it would take less than a beat to pierce Malia's heart and end her pain, but…

Peer grabbed the sword and stood, turning to view the violence behind her. She could make little sense of it-torchlight flickered here and there, illuminating a scene of confusion. Bodies darted and fell, the smells of blood and shit filled the air, and the screams were louder than any she could utter. Because I'm not dying, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut.

When she looked again, something was coming for her.

It flew, large diaphanous wings flapping rapidly in the confined space of this Echo, and it carried something in its hands-the curved shape recognizable as it drew closer.

Bow! she thought, leaping to the side, but Peer knew she could never dodge the arrow.

The flying thing squealed and fell, thrashing on the ground as it tried to dislodge a crossbow bolt from its underside. She never saw the man or woman who shot it.

"Peer!" Malia gurgled, hand closing around her ankle. She pulled, and Peer knelt at her side again. "S-send me… to… Bren."

"I…" Peer said, but then Penler whispered in her mind, words he'd said to her soon after her arrival in Skulk. You're far from a coward, he'd told her as she hugged a bottle of cheap wine, wallowing in self-pity.

She picked up her sword and rested it against Malia's chest. The Watcher woman tensed, controlling her spasms. And though blood still bubbled from her mouth and her eyes rolled with agony, the corner of her mouth turned up in her familiar half-smile.

Peer reared up, crossed her hands on the sword's hilt, and then dropped her weight on top of it.

Malia grunted once and then died.

Panic took Peer. She withdrew the sword, picked up the torch, and ran, fleeing the scenes and sounds of battle, the stench of death, the violence that seemed to stain the very air she breathed. And she craved the fresh air of reality, away from these past times that still echoed with chaos.

He had told her everything and named her Rose. It was his mother's name. Then she had fallen asleep, leaning her head against his shoulder, twitching, and mumbling things he could not understand. While she slept he smelled her hair, and she did not smell like Nadielle. He touched the skin on her face, and she carried a different coolness. He stared into the softened gloom of the Baker's rooms and wondered where Nadielle was, what she was doing, but any possibility that crossed his mind was a bad one.

The girl did not sleep for very long. When she stirred, Gorham was surprised to find that he had drifted off and her movements startled him awake. He'd believed that he was still awake, watching the walls of the Baker's rooms as they expanded and contracted beneath the breath and beat of her far-reaching influence. But seeing the solid walls again, he realized the flexibility of his dreaming. She'll never leave me alone, he thought as he surfaced, and the girl rolled from the bed and stretched.

There was a long, loaded moment when she looked slowly around the room. Gorham sat with breath held, watching the girl watching the room, and she had changed again. Grown older, he thought, though there was something not quite right about that. When her gaze swung back to him at last, he realized-her dreams had been her work, and waking had been the inspiration she needed.

"There's lots to do," she said. "Will you help?"

"Of course. I'm more than just a book."

The girl smiled, then scratched at her arms. The dried stuff of her birth flaked off and drifted to the floor. "I need to wash first," she said. "While I'm doing that, perhaps you can prepare some food?"

"Yes," Gorham said, feeling no qualms whatsoever about taking orders from a child.

While Rose bathed, Gorham rooted through the Baker's cold room to see what food was left. Whatever means she'd had of procuring fresh food must have gone with her, because the remains of older foodstuffs were all he could find. The dried meats and cheeses were still edible, and the sliced mepple fruits, though softening, were far from rotten. He prepared a few plates and left them on the table, and when Rose emerged in some of Nadielle's fresh clothes-the trouser legs and shirtsleeves rolled up to accommodate her smaller frame-they sat together to eat. The girl was distracted, staring intently at a plate of dried meat while her mind worked, and Gorham was careful not to interrupt. Finally, each of them nursing a glass of Echo City's finest wine, she started to talk.

"She cannot stop the Vex," she said. "She knows that."

"You can…?" Gorham began, remembering the effect upon Nadielle when Neph had faced the Vex way, way beneath them.

"No," she said, "but it's obvious in her action. She chopped me as her successor, so she knew the end was close. She knew there were important things for you to tell me, which you have. And the Bakers don't…"

"Not unless they know they're about to die."

"Bakers have rarely coexisted." She stared into her glass. "She'll give us as much time as she can, but there's no telling how much that will be. We have to act quickly. But there are many assumptions. This Rufus has to be found."

"He will be."

"And brought here to me."

"He will be."

"You sound certain, but you can't be. You can only assume."

"Malia and Peer won't stop looking until they find him."

"In a city of countless people." The little girl drained her glass with the action of a seasoned drinker, sighing and licking her lips.

"He stands out," Gorham said carefully. Is she already so pessimistic? Was she born this way?

"Well, assume they do bring him," Rose said. "I'll then have work to do. And though I have ideas about what that is, there will be much preparation." She was talking more quietly now, as if to herself, looking around the room, searching for someone else.

"And what about me?"

"You?" She stared at Gorham again, her eyes piercing and intelligent. Her mother used to look at him like that. A city of countless people, and that's far too small for you, he thought.

"Do you want me to…?" he said, waving vaguely at the books, the papers.

"I want you to help save the people of Echo City," she said softly. "I have ways and means for you to get your word out there. You still have networks? Watchers ready to spread information, should the need arise?"

"Yes, there are some. Though many have been silent for a long time."

The girl nodded. "Caution. That's good, in peaceful times. But now is no time for caution. Now is the time for chaos, Gorham. I want you to organize that chaos."

He shook his head. Am I supposed to understand all this?

"Everyone needs to go south to Skulk Canton. If all the assumptions come in just as we want-they bring Rufus here, he's amenable, my work progresses as fast as I hope, the results are successful-then we'll be on our way there too, as soon as we can. And we'll take with us the means for people to cross the desert."

"We will?" he asked, wide-eyed.

Rose smiled. And there again, in her eyes, Nadielle.

"Spread the word, Gorham. Come with me." She stood quickly, leaning against the table to steady herself, face paling.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine." She smirked at him. "I was just born, you know." She led him from the room, crossed the womb-vat chamber, and headed behind the three ruined vats. Nadielle had never let him go behind there, but he'd explored while waiting for Rose to be birthed. As well as the large curtained routes that led out into the Echo, he'd found three locked doors and one open. Behind the open door was a room with walls full of deep holes. No torch shone in there could reach the end, and he'd wondered what strange chopped things might have made them. Now perhaps he'd find out.

Rose unlocked each of the three locked doors by stroking her hand across a spread of moss on the door's surface. The moss changed color, the doors flexed and swung open, and when she shone her oil torch inside, she smiled.

"Very good," she said. "I remembered these were here, but I never knew how effective…" She trailed off, talking to herself again.

Everything she knows is like a memory, Gorham thought. I wonder what she knows about me? It was an uncomfortable thought-she was only a girl-but Nadielle had always claimed that her mind felt far older than her body. How confusing, how challenging to have experience and knowledge that did not match physical age. Indeed, in the world of the Bakers, what was physical age? A measure of time that they could contradict and tease. Their womb vats and what grew inside them defied time, and flesh artistry was only a small part of their talent.

"What are these places?" Gorham asked. The first room she had unlocked contained dozens of wooden boxes fixed to the walls, and shapes flittered at its shadowy extremes.

"These are our communications to the world," she said. "Bats in here." She pointed along at the other doors, naming each one. "Red-eared lizards, sleekrats, and…" She waved him over and they approached the final door together. It was open only a handbreadth, and the darkness inside seemed heavy and thick. There was no sound coming from within, but Gorham sensed a potential that was almost deafening.

"In here, more-unusual ways to send your message." She shoved the door open and shone her torch inside. The ceiling to the room was open, rising into a dense darkness that seemed to go up and up. Its walls were lined with what looked like flaking paper flicking in the breeze-and then Gorham saw that it was not paper at all, but wings. There were thousands of moths in the room, settled on the walls and apparently asleep. They seemed unconcerned at the light, and only a few took flight. The floor was scattered with dead moths, but only a small number. They clung, waiting, and he imagined the secret sound of thousands of fluttering wings.

"You should send the moths first. I'll tell you how they all work."

"And what will you be doing?"

"I have a vat to prepare," Rose said. "It's all up to time."

"Time and assumptions."

"Those too." Rose stared into the room for a while, lost and daydreamy again.

She's not even a day old and she's trying to save a world, Gorham thought. He reached out and took her hand, and she gave him a brief squeeze before heading back to her rooms. Her rooms. She's the Baker now. He followed, shivering when he thought of Nadielle, where she was at that moment, and what she might be facing.

Rose went to one of the many cabinets, opening and closing several doors, frowning as she looked for something. She paused, concentrating, then spun around and crossed to another cabinet. Behind the first door she opened was the bottle she sought. She brought it across to Gorham and unscrewed its lid. There was a new sense of urgency about her now. Even the act of sitting and eating together, so recently completed, seemed a world away.

"I'm going to give you-"

"You're chopping me?" he asked, stepping back. The bottle looked ancient in her young girl's hands, the glass uneven and distorted, coated in the dust of ages.

"No," she said sharply. "Aiding. Gorham, this won't hurt, it won't damage, and… even if it did, you can't think of yourself now. If I could chop you quickly enough, send you up with the message to spread yourself, I would. There are ways and means. But it would take far too long."

"But this?" he asked, nodding at the bottle.

"A gentle nudge in the right direction. Take this, sit in the moth room, repeat a short message again and again, and your voice will implant that message in the moths. They'll leave and spread it through the city. Same again for the other creatures. It'll be a dream in the ears of sleepers or an epiphany in those awake."

Gorham blinked, taking in what she had said. "Those rooms, they're always ready?"

"And they've been used in the past. That's how I know they work."

"But with methods like that, you could change the city. Steer events, influence…"

Rose stared at him, her silence speaking volumes. Then she tipped the bottle, spilling a splash of its contents into its upturned lid.

"The moths first," she said, "because they'll be most effective. Every message sent is one life saved, or a hundred if the listener spreads the word, or a thousand. And the only people who'll live past what's happening here will be those who take heed."

Gorham tried to comprehend what she was telling him. I can't carry that responsibility. But he realized instantly how self-absorbed that was. Rose was right-this was so much more than him. It was so much more than all of them. That was why Nadielle had left him.

Rose swayed a little, and he saw the weakness in her. She isn't going to last, he thought, and a momentary panic was subsumed beneath a determination to do whatever needed doing. They might not have very long.

"Will you know when…?" he asked, thinking of Nadielle.

"Perhaps. I'm not sure." She held the lid out to him and he took it from her, swallowing the potion and tasting mepple petals, stale cheese, and vinegar. It was not altogether unpleasant.

"The moths," he said.

"Yes."

"I've always hated moths."

"That's because they want it that way." She smiled softly, then turned to leave. "I'll be working on the vat if you need me."

"Thank you," he said, unsure of what for. He watched her exit the room, then followed without pause. He suddenly felt part of-instead of apart from-this incredible place for the first time. And as he approached the moth room he felt a burgeoning sense of hope that had been absent for so long. The terror is rising, go south to Skulk… the terror is rising, go south to Skulk…

He kept his eyes closed because his own fear was still there. He could sense them moving around him, approaching but not quite touching. He felt the soft draft from their wings and the soundless yet loaded movement of their bodies through the air around his head and face. Perhaps they were dusting him, but he could not quite feel that. What he did sense was that they were listening.

He spoke the same line again and again, and the potion Rose had given him did something to his words. They became abstract and meaningless, as though he were hearing them in an unknown language, yet the feeling as they were formed in his throat and left his mouth transmitted complete understanding. He saw the words in pictures that placed him anywhere in the city, yet always with the knowledge of where Skulk lay in relation to where he was. It was a mental map, and his words provided the route.

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

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

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

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

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