Echo city

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

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

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

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

"Was that you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll not leave-"

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

She glanced down at him, then disappeared from view.

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

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

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

The moonlight was bright, unimpeded by clouds, and to the south, across this narrow finger of Crescent, rose the imposing mass of Marcellan Canton. Lines of lights snaked up its gentle hillsides where streetlamps had been lit, and window lights speckled the entire shadowy mound. At its pinnacle, the blazing illuminations around Hanharan Heights were there as usual, but there was a particular intensity to them tonight. It was as if every single light in that place was lit. The canton's outer wall was silvered by moonlight, and this was Peer's destination. For some reason, she felt that once she reached there, she would be safe.

We stole their god, she thought. Nowhere is safe. But she tried to shove that idea down as she ran. Grasses whipped around her legs, then she entered a vast field of whorn plants, tall as her shoulders and pungent with their burgeoning crop. Shoving the close-growing plants aside with outstretched hands, she ran as fast as she could, tripping over roots on occasion, her palms sliced from the plants' fine leaves.

She was desperate to reach Rufus again. He'd looked confused and bewildered, but deep down there had still been some measure of control. Whether or not he knew how special he was to Echo City now-if what the Baker said was true, if she could use him to help them all-Peer still felt responsible for everything that had happened to him. Discovering who he was and where he had come from had been a shock, to her as well as to him. But she wanted to help him learn more.

She sensed that she was no longer alone. Risking a glance behind her, she saw nothing, but she knew that the Dragarians were out now, flooding up furiously into the moonlight. Dane Marcellan and the Blades would be dead, and she only hoped that the others had taken full advantage of the lead they had been given.

Stumbling into an area of flattened whorn, she almost came to a standstill, looking around for whatever had made the rough path. But then she saw that it headed south across the fields and knew who had come this way. It'll be easy to follow, she thought, but surprise was no longer with them, and stealth could not save them. It all came down to speed.

Freedom from the oppressive belowground was good, but she had never felt so isolated. Peer ran as fast as she could, her breathing and footfalls the only sounds. She expected a poisoned arrow to strike her at any moment, plunging her into the same agonies that had taken Malia. She considered weaving to distract any potential killer's aim, but that would only waste time. Fast, she thought, faster-just run!

The wall loomed before her, and the path of beaten whorn she'd been following faded out. On top of the wall two shadows waved to her, and she heard a voice calling. Though it confused her, right then it was the finest thing she had ever heard.

"Go left!" Alexia called. "There's an open door." Peer did as she said, rushing diagonally toward a dark shape at the base of the wall, a newfound burst of energy carrying her across the rough ground. And that was when she heard the first of their cries.

Pausing for a moment to look back, she saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thrashing shapes forging through the whorn like a wave of darkness about to wash against the canton wall. Above, other shapes drifted and flapped, low to the ground but faster than those on foot.

She rushed through the door and someone slammed it behind her, plunging them into darkness. Heavy metal bolts were thrown, then timber thumped against timber.

"Where's Malia?" Alexia asked.

"Dead."

"Oh. Come on, we don't have much time."

"I can't see-"

"Grab my hand. I know the way." Peer felt her hand grasped and she held on tight, following Alexia through a twisting corridor to the other side of the wall. They emerged into moonlight again just as there were shouts atop the wall, first of surprise and then alarm. Finally a scream of pain, and the sounds of combat rose again.

"Sleepy Blades getting a taste of the fight at last," Alexia said.

"They didn't see me coming in."

"Like I said, sleepy. Come on, Nophel is taking us to something called a Bellower."

"Good," Peer said, and the thought of sitting back in that claustrophobic pod while the Bellowers blasted them south was wonderful.

"And Dane?" Alexia asked hesitantly.

"I left him and the Blades fighting," Peer said. "I don't think…"

Alexia nodded. "Good. He's caused a lot of pain."

"He saved our lives."

Alexia shrugged, and they started to run again. Soon they reached the others, waiting in the shadow of a butcher shop's canopy. The shop was closed, but the smell of fresh meat still hung heavy on the air. They had all manifested, and Rufus leaned against the wall, head bowed. He was breathing hard. He looked up as Peer approached, staring at her with haunted eyes. Peer felt a rush of relief, and she suddenly felt safer than she had any right to.

"Your friend won't think himself Unseen," the tall Unseen said.

"It's not natural," Rufus said. "It's something of hers." Peer could sense a relief in Rufus that she had returned, and she went quickly to his side, grabbing his hand and glad that he gripped back. "I don't want it anymore," he said. "Get it out of me."

"Not sure we can," Alexia said.

"Maybe Nadielle," Peer said, and she felt Rufus flinch at the name. "Rufus, it wasn't Nadielle, it was the Baker before her who sent you out."

"They're all the same." He looked down at his feet, and Peer noticed Nophel staring intently at him, the deformed man's good eye glittering with tears or avarice.

"What is it?" Peer asked.

Nophel shook his head.

"Really, we need to get the fuck out of here right now," Alexia said. The sound of fighting at the wall had increased, and from several directions they could hear the familiar Scarlet Blades' horns as the call went out. Hundreds would be rushing to join the fray, but Peer was quite certain they would not arrive in time. Already she could see vague shapes flying above the city, circling here and there as they searched the warren of streets, squares, and alleys for their quarry. One fell, twisting and screeching as it flapped at the several arrows piercing it, but she didn't think the Blade archers would be so lucky again.

"They'll find me," Rufus said.

"Not if I can help it," Nophel muttered. "Come on." He led them along the street, dodging from shadow to shadow as they aimed for the route down to the nearest Bellower chamber. Peer knew that something had begun and that the Dragarians-emerging overtly from their canton for the first time in five centuries-would not cease in their quest until they found Rufus.

They followed the deformed man as he led them from street, to alley, and then down beneath the Marcellan levels. He knew where the tunnels were and where the oil torches would be kept. He knew which doors to open and which to ignore. As they emerged into the Bellower chamber and he immediately set about priming the chopped creature, she felt a distance growing about her, buffering her against what was happening. Self-defense, Penler's voice said, and she grinned without humor. At any other time she would have been curious, asking Nophel about what he knew, but today such curiosity seemed redundant. At the city's most dangerous time in history, now it was also at war.

What could be worse? she thought as they gathered around the first of the Bellower pods.

"I can't leave," Rufus said. "I belong back there."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Alexia shouted.

"Rufus?" Peer asked.

"My name is not Rufus," he said. "It's Dragar."

There was silence for a while, and then Nophel chuckled. "Er… fine. Can someone help me with-"

"They told me. I remembered. They paid the old dead Baker to chop me. She used her own essence and that of Dragar, the Dragarians' murdered prophet."

"The Blades killed a terrorist five hundred years ago, not a prophet," Alexia said.

"Then explain me," Rufus said. "They provided the Baker with his essence, stored for centuries in their holiest of holy shrines. She chopped me. And then she used me for her own ends instead. Sent me away. Cast me into the desert. Her experiment."

"So you're saying that you're…" Peer said, shaking her head, too confused to finish.

"Returned to the Dragarians from out of the Bonelands to lead them into Honored Darkness."

"I'm going to hit him again," Alexia said.

"The farther you take me, the more people they will kill to get me back," Rufus said. "Or… you can let me go now."

"We can't!" Peer said. "You're important, and the Baker needs you to-"

"She disposed of me once before. Why does she need me now?"

"Because you crossed the desert," Peer said. "You're immune to whatever's out there. Maybe Dragar was too, whoever he was, and-"

"No," Rufus said, "I'm much more than that." He smiled softly at Peer, and then there was a knife at his throat.

"You're no god," Nophel said. "And you're going to take me to see my mother."

"Mother?" someone gasped, but Nophel did not know or care who.

Rufus simply stared at him, calm and smug, and in his green eyes Nophel saw some of what the Baker must feel. With such knowledge must come superiority. With talents beyond those of anyone else in the city-in their world-there must be power and responsibility.

The air in the Bellower chamber thrummed. Rufus smiled.

"You won't cut my throat."

"No?" Nophel said, leaning in closer, curving his other arm around the tall man's back to pull tight.

"No," Rufus said.

There was movement behind Nophel and he turned, adjusting his position so that he held Rufus in front of him, backing against the Bellower pod, resting against it so that he could see the others. Peer was standing with her mouth open in surprise, as if the world had been pulled out from beneath her. The two Unseen men seemed to be glancing back and forth from Alexia to Nophel, obviously waiting to take their lead from her. And Alexia seemed to shimmer, her invisibility shifting unconsciously as her hand gripped her sword.

"I need to see her," Nophel said. "Need to talk with her."

"But she can't be your mother," Peer said. "She's barely twenty, and you're-"

"Age doesn't matter to them," he said. "They might look different or change bodies, but it's still the same mind. Still the same traitorous… bloody… mind. Right, Rufus?"

"We're going to her anyway," Peer said softly, trying to mediate. She held her hands away from her body, projecting calm. Alexia looked ready to slice Nophel's head off. Nophel almost smiled at the shock his actions had inspired in all of them.

Apart from Rufus. He seemed quite calm. Nophel could even feel his heartbeat-gentle, soft.

"She always has her reasons," Rufus said. "I don't know what she did to you, but I can guess. And she did the same to me."

"But you're not her child," Nophel said angrily. He pulled back on the knife and was rewarded with a satisfying stiffening of Rufus's body. The tall man, so composed, suddenly seemed afraid.

"Don't," he said. "Hurt me and you'll doom everyone."

"You think I care?" Nophel shouted, but his vision was blurring.

"I might not be her child," Rufus said, "but she treated me as a son for a while. I'm not sure how long. It's… confused. But I was with her-she taught me, and walked the city with me, fed and clothed me. And then I learned that it was all part of the experiment."

"I was her true son," Nophel said. "Hers, and Dane Marcellan's." Through his blurred vision he saw the added amazement on Peer's face, and even Alexia stood straighter, hand falling away from her sword.

"You're a Marcellan?" the Unseen gasped.

"No!" Nophel shouted.

"But did you find love?" Rufus asked. He eased back a little, lessening the pressure of the knife against his throat. "I did. Out there, past the desert. She took me in and loved me as her own son."

"Love," Nophel said, and he thought of Dane's final touch on his ugly face, and the way the Marcellan had taken him from the workhouse, given him a home, protected him. He'd been Nophel's point of contact among the Marcellans-a fat, slash-using monster who had treated the Scope watcher with disdain and disgust, but how must it have been for him? To know that he had employed the Baker's bastard son-his own son-in Hanharan Heights, and to know the terrible tortures that awaited them both if anyone there ever found out? Perhaps the only way to protect him had been to treat him like that. But in the end, when everything was falling apart…

"I can see you're not completely unloved," Rufus said. "I'm not sure anyone ever is."

Nophel lowered the knife, but Rufus stayed close, a harsh red line across his throat.

"I wanted to kill her," Nophel whispered.

"I understand," Rufus said, equally quiet. "But wouldn't you rather just ask her why?" He stepped back from Nophel, and Alexia dashed past him, her sword drawn, hunched down, ready in case Nophel went for her with his knife.

But he dropped the weapon and pressed his hands to his horrible, disfigured face, the fluid from several open sores mixing with his tears. Don't be too harsh on the Baker, Dane-his father-had said. She's not like us.

"Us," he whispered, a single word that included him.

Nophel sensed a flutter of movement in the Bellower chamber, a shout, and then a dying scream. Looking up, he saw Dragarians streaming in, the short Unseen already dead on the ground.

"Wait!" Rufus said, but these were creatures ready for war. Some were wounded and bleeding, others wore hastily tied robes from Scarlet Blades they had killed, and one bore the slashed, blood-soaked remnants of Dane Marcellan's fine robe.

Alexia and the other Unseen went for the Dragarians. Peer seemed confused, looking back and forth between the attackers and Rufus. And Rufus stepped forward, hands held up as if to divert the assault.

They advanced quickly, two of them parrying the tall Unseen's sword and grasping his arms while a third drove a bladed hand through his face. He shook but made no sound as he died. They dropped him and moved on.

"No!" Rufus shouted, louder this time, and the sudden attack paused. The chamber seemed to echo with violence. "They haven't harmed me."

"That's my father's robe," Nophel said. The Dragarian wearing it was a woman, badly chopped so that her skin was hardened into chitinous armor, and she hissed at him. He pushed himself away from the Bellower pod, even then thinking, Just what am I going to do? But he had no chance to do anything. The chunk of a crossbow, a punch in his chest, and he fell, the rising chaos in the chamber suddenly very far away and no longer a part of him.

He saw his father's face as he had seen it only once-smiling for his son. And then darkness.

Everything was happening so quickly that, to Peer, it felt like a dream.

She brought up both hands as the Dragarian came at her. Its blades were raised, its eyes lidded for protection, its head lowered, and it moved sleek as a shadow and fast as starlight. Penler, was her last thought, and then she felt the cool kiss of metal against her throat.

"I said stop!" a voice thundered. She knew something in that voice, but it had changed, become whole, and now it sounded like the voice of…

I don't believe in gods, Peer thought as a hand rested softly on her shoulder. The Dragarians backed away, heads lowered slightly. The hand squeezed.

Peer turned and looked past Rufus. Alexia had approached Nophel hesitantly, sword still in one hand. Her edges blurred, but she remained seen as she knelt by the fallen man. He was breathing hard, one hand cupped around the bolt projecting from his chest but not quite touching it.

The chamber took a breath between deaths, and Peer wondered who would be next.

"Peer," Rufus said softly, and she turned to the tall man. "You've been my only friend."

"I wanted to help you," she said.

"And you did." His eyes flicked around the chamber, taking in the bodies of the two dead Unseen and the several Dragarians backed against the chamber wall. They all looked up but kept their heads bowed. Their god has spoken, Peer thought, and perhaps such power and belief was what it was about. Who needed real gods, if false ones could exert such control?

"I will return with you," he said to the Dragarians, "and no one will try to prevent that."

I'm losing him, Peer thought. He's going. She reached for his arm and he held her hand, squeezing gently.

"Doom hangs over the city," Rufus continued. "As Dragar I return, and my blood is as it was five hundred years ago-rich with the way to Honored Darkness." The few Dragarians muttered, shuffling their feet, glancing at one another. "But we will leave in peace. The city's end-days are here, with no need for us to hasten them. Our domes will close again, our warriors will be recalled, and there will be no more violence. This is no longer our home, and we have no more business here."

Alexia was now standing close to Nophel, glancing around uncertainly. When she caught Peer's eye, Peer nodded down at the short sword she held. The Unseen dropped the blade.

"Do you really believe…?" Peer asked, but Rufus leaned in close and took her in a gentle hug.

"To them, I'm their god," he whispered, "and they'll use whatever is in my blood-whatever was in Dragar's blood-to help them cross the Bonelands. Honored Darkness awaits to the north. I find only honor in their desire that I lead them there."

"But Echo City needs you, Rufus!"

"This is not my home," he said, "and Rufus is not my name."

"Dragar is?"

He only blinked, and the Dragarians fidgeted.

"I don't believe in gods," Peer said. "We need your blood. The Baker needs it, and you can't just turn around and leave with them." She nodded at the chopped warriors, their blades folded and stained with drying blood.

"You'd fight them?" Rufus asked.

"Yes!" Alexia said, and she knelt to pick up her dropped sword.

"No," Rufus said. "No." He walked to Alexia and took the sword from her hand, and she did nothing to prevent him. He glanced down at Nophel, blood from the fallen man's wound spreading on the chamber floor. Then he sliced the sword across his own palm.

The Dragarians gasped, but Rufus stilled them with a glance. He told Alexia to empty her water canteen, then squeezed his wound above the container's neck, wincing, his skin turning pale as blood dripped. For a while it was the only sound in the huge chamber, and then Rufus swayed, and Peer dashed to his side to hold him steady. The Dragarians mumbled at her contact with him.

"This might not be enough," Alexia said, but Peer cut her off with a glare.

"Thank you," Peer said. Rufus nodded at her and let her bind the wound. "But you expected this?" she asked. "Ever since you arrived here?"

"I had…" Rufus said, frowning. "Feelings. And I had to follow them."

"And they led you here?" Alexia asked. But Rufus ignored her, looking only at Peer.

"They called me Man from Sand," he said.

"Who?"

"The people across the desert. Their world is called the Heartlands, and their Heart and Mind sees through me. It knows Echo City now. I hope it will welcome you."

"Tell me more!" Peer said.

"It's not for me to tell you," he said. "And I have to go."

"Please!" Peer said. She was pleading now, struggling to grasp the truth she had been seeking her whole adult life. "It's everything I've ever believed in!"

"Then have faith," Rufus said. He turned and walked to where the Dragarians stood in respectful, awed silence. They parted to ensure their bloodied weapons did not touch him, then followed him from that place without a backward glance.

The Bellower chamber fell almost silent; only Nophel's heavy breathing whispered against the walls.

"Well, that was intense," Alexia said. She stared at her two fallen friends, then knelt again beside the motionless Nophel, examining the injury.

"Is he…?" Peer asked, still not looking away from where Rufus had vanished.

"It's not good," Alexia said. "Missed the heart, but he's losing blood."

Peer turned and looked at the water canteen Alexia had placed carefully on the ground. That's the blood we can't afford to lose, she thought. "We have to get to the Baker," she said. "As quickly as we can. We stop for nothing." She glanced up at the Bellower. "I hope I can remember what he did to make this thing work."

"I'm not dead yet," Nophel whispered. "Help me… into the pod."

"So she's really your mother," Peer said.

"My mother."

"Talk about mixed heritage," Alexia said.

And as she and Alexia lifted Nophel into the Bellower pod, Rufus's parting comment imprinted itself on Peer's mind forever.

Then have faith.

He was pacing the vat hall, feeling helpless, silently exhorting Rose to acknowledge him again instead of just sitting on the vat, watching and stirring and watering, when she gasped and fell. She bounced from the shell of the vat, knocked her head against one of the large wooden uprights, and splashed in the warm pool around its base. The sound of her head making contact with the ground was sickening, and even as he ran across to her-fifteen steps, certainly no more-he was certain that she was dead.

He felt an impact through his feet, so powerful that he stumbled a little before regaining his balance. Accompanying it for the first time, a distant rumble… and a roar.

Oh, crap, oh, crap-and he knew how great events often turned on the pivot of a minor, pointless catastrophe. Kneeling beside her, he dreaded what he would see. There was no blood, at least not at first glance. No dents in her head. Her left eye flickered slightly, splashing droplets of water from her eyelashes.

"Rose," he said, reaching out but not quite touching.

Another impact, and dust came down from the ceiling. The vat rumbled and whispered, and he expected its sides to flex and burst at any moment. What's she making this time? He had seen the birth of Neph, and then those three fighting things, and finally Rose, so now what could Rose be making to better that? What monstrous creature would she send after the others to fight whatever was rising? It was like sending a bird after a spider after a fly…

"No!" she gasped. Gorham lifted her head from the water, and her eyes fluttered open. One was still pink and bloodshot, but they were both alert and conscious. She fixed her gaze on Gorham for a beat, then tried to sit up. He helped. She thanked him. Then she slowly lowered her eyes.

"She's dead," she said. "We don't have very long."

"Nadielle?"

Rose stood and held on to the wooden support. She wiped water from her face and looked at a smear of blood across the back of her hand. Her nose was bleeding.

"Are you sure?" Gorham asked.

"She tried to communicate with the Vex while her creations attacked it. Tried to reason with it. But it killed her. The chopped are still fighting it, but…" She shrugged. "Help me back up. I have to make certain the vat-"

"Don't you care?" It killed her, he thought. She's gone-all that life, those gorgeous eyes glazed…

"She made me because she knew it would happen," the girl said, confused.

"I care!" Gorham said.

Rose seemed uncertain, as if waiting for him to say more. When he remained silent, unable to speak, she turned away and looked back up at the vat.

Gorham walked away. I ran over here to help her, he thought. And she never needed my help.

"They'd better bring him soon," Rose said. As if to illustrate her point, there was another impact that shook the ground and made him stagger against one of the ruined vats. His hand slid into a sickly, thick mess, and he wiped it on his trousers without looking.

"If they do, they do," he said. And if Peer is still with them, please, let her talk to me. Let her accept me.

The distance roared, and he wondered what state Echo City was in.

The Bellowers bellowed, and Peer and Alexia traveled south in a pod with the injured Nophel between them. Alexia had administered brief first aid but thought it too risky to try removing the crossbow bolt. At least it doesn't seem to be poisoned, she'd said, and Peer's thoughts had gone back to Malia. It would be difficult telling Gorham about her death, but at least it had been a brave one.

And was I brave? she wondered. Whatever happened in the immediate future, she would never forget the feeling of her sword ending that tortured woman's life.

The journey passed quickly. At last they lifted Nophel between them and headed toward daylight, and he groaned as he walked, trying to help but losing a lot of blood. As they emerged into the dawn from the final Bellower basement-Peer welcoming the sunlight, reveling in the heat on her face, and yet convinced that something terrible was stalking them-the ground was shaken by an immense tremor. Peer staggered against a wall with Nophel, and Alexia went to her knees on the narrow path. Windows smashed, people screamed. The Unseen woman grasped the water canteen.

As the noise of the impact faded, a silence hung over the built-up area-a pause that invited more chaos. But none arrived.

"What was that?" Alexia asked.

"It's getting close," Peer said. "We have to hurry, Alexia. Fast as we can. We've got to get across into Crescent and down to the Baker's labs, and that's two miles away. And…" She looked at Nophel, with his head bowed. We should leave him, she thought. But he had helped them so much-the Unseen most of all-and before she could say more, Alexia had grasped his arm across her shoulders.

"Then we should go."

Smoke rose in the distance, and voices rose in panic again. This was not the usual morning chaos. This was the sound of a rout.

"What's happening?" Nophel asked.

"Come on." Peer grabbed his other arm and they walked along the narrow alley. The smoke she'd seen was thick and rich; the stink of cooking meat hung in the air. And as they rounded the corner and Peer looked down the sloping street, the chaos grew apparent.

The streets were thronged with people, carts, and tusked swine loaded with hastily tied packings, all of them flowing south. Arguments broke out here and there, fistfights flaring and dying out. Farther up the gentle hillside toward the looming Marcellan Canton wall, a building burned. Its windows gushed fire and the roof wore a head of flames, and from this distance it was difficult to tell whether the fire was being tended. One side wall had already collapsed, and burning brands were drifting westward on the breeze. Already there were smoke plumes heading skyward from a dozen secondary fires.

Someone called for their son. A woman screamed. An old man begged for help, somewhere out of sight. Children cried, men shouted, and a tusked swine was shrieking. It had fallen in the road, leg snapped where a hole had opened up in the paving. A family was hastily unloading the beast, and no one seemed eager to put it out of its misery.

Another jolt, and more glass broke and showered into the street.

"The moth said south!" a woman cried as she emerged from a building across the street. She was slapping at her husband's hands as he tried to hold her back. "Come with me!" she begged. "Please?"

"Moth?" was all he said, and the woman held his coat and tried to pull him with her into the throng.

"Moth?" Alexia asked.

"I don't know," Peer said. She grabbed at a woman walking by. "Wait! What's happening?"

"South to Skulk," the woman said. "Haven't you heard? That's what's best."

"The Marcellans have ordered that?"

The woman had walked on, but at that she paused and turned back, barely sparing Nophel a glance. "Ha! The Marcellans? You're joking, aren't you? They don't-"

There was another thud that traveled up through Peer's feet and set her teeth ringing. Somewhere far away, something fell, heavy stones tumbling and crushing. The flow of humanity paused for a moment, then continued on its way, voices a little quieter than before, a little more afraid.

"There's another one," the woman whispered. "If you've got your heads on right, you'll come with us."

"But who told you?"

"Who? People just… know. The terror is rising; go south to Skulk."

"We can't," Peer said. The woman looked at Nophel properly then, a spark of interest in her eyes. Then she turned and went on her way.

"Right, well, that's got me crapping in my trousers," Alexia said.

"Easy… for you to say," Nophel mumbled. "So are we going or not?"

As they set off for Crescent, across the flow of people, it felt as if Nophel was leading the way.

Beside the street at a major crossroads lay the bodies of three Scarlet Blades. They had been dragged to one side and left there, food for rockzards and other carrion creatures. People poured past, heading south for the Tharin. Though Peer could not see that far, she knew that the river crossings would be thronged, and beyond there would be streets filled with panicked, desperate refugees. Nothing like this had ever happened in her lifetime. The whole city was moving.

The terror is rising; go south to Skulk, the woman said, and it had echoed with the sound of something repeated.

The ground shook. The impact was so great that the air before her seemed to vibrate, and the shape and color of the city changed. What is that? she thought, stumbling into a wall to one side. She blinked, took in a deep breath, and realized that, in all the streets she could see, people had fallen down. They recovered quickly, and soon the flow of humanity was moving once again. But for just that moment the city had been still and prostrate.

A cloud of dust rose in the distance where a building had collapsed.

"Won't the Marcellans be doing something?" Alexia asked, staring back and up the long hillside to the spires of Hanharan Heights.

"You tell me," Peer said. "You worked for them."

"They'll be debating a course of action," Nophel said, laughing, then coughing.

"They'll be doing something," Alexia said. But she did not sound convinced.

"We have to go against the flow," Peer said. She looked out across the northern parts of Course at the splash of green in the distance. Crescent. That was their destination, but between here and there were rivers of people flowing south. Escaping something, she thought. We should be going with them. But they had something important to do. These people could flee to Skulk, but that place was still a part of Echo City. If what was rising was as terrible as she feared-as terrible as it felt-they had to go farther. And the only person who might help them do that was the Baker.

"We could go down through the Echoes," Alexia said.

"You know the way from here?"

"From a long time ago," she said. "There was a time… With the Blades, we used the First Echo to bring people back to Hanharan Heights."

"People?"

"Dissidents." She glanced away, because there was a lie in her voice. Peer no longer cared. Perhaps none of that really mattered anymore.

"The city's going to change," she said, but at the back of her mind the change was greater than she could voice. The city is going to die.

"This way," Alexia said.

As they worked their way along the street, there was another terrible tremor. Tiles slipped from rooftops, injuring dozens in the streets below, and weaker buildings slumped in their foundations. The dead Scarlet Blades were already covered in a film of dust, and Peer noticed that Alexia averted her eyes as they passed them by. Maybe she knows them.

They pushed across the surge of people and made their way back up to the Marcellan Canton wall. Go south to Skulk, someone kept whispering, and though Peer looked, she could not see who the whisperer was.

"It's history exploding," a man's voice said. Peer glanced around, and a short fat man was staring directly at her. He was well dressed, his skin was smooth, his hands soft and hair well cut. A lawyer, perhaps, or someone who worked in the upper echelons of the Marcellans' widespread governing network.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"History. Down there." He nodded at the ground, whispering in case the Echoes heard. "Exploding. There's so much of it, see? We've been building on it forever, letting the old times sink down and fade away without saying a proper goodbye. There are phantoms down there that don't know they're dead, and they say there are whole civilizations, whole cities, just going along like they're the here and now. And the Garthans!" He waved one hand and gazed about surreptitiously, though they were surrounded by a hundred other people. "They're the players of the past. Explorers, they call them. But, no. Players. Manipulators!"

"You really think-"

"Hush, girl. I don't think; I know. It's history exploding. It's been under pressure for so long, and now it's all coming back." His face paled, and suddenly he did not seem to be enjoying his rumor-mongering anymore. "Coming back to haunt us." Then he was gone, pushing away from her as though he had contaminated Peer by telling her his ideas.

"Come on," Alexia said. "Through the gate, along the wall, next alleyway." They forced their way against the flow, passing into Marcellan without seeing any sign of the Scarlet Blades that should be guarding it. As they worked their way along the base of the wall, it was not long before they realized why.

The four Blades had been battered and crushed to death. Around them in the street lay the bodies of those they had taken with them-maybe ten people, around whom the crowds parted in silent respect. At least one of the bodies was that of a child.

"I don't want to see any more," Peer said.

"One thing you learn in the Blades: Civilization balances on a knife edge." Alexia tugged Nophel onward, and Peer went with them. "It's the alley behind those poor bastards."

"You won't escape them there." The short fat woman was sitting ten steps from the dead Blades, a slashed red tunic around her shoulders. She bore a terrible wound across her stomach. Peer thought she must be bleeding to death.

"Escape who?"

"The outsiders. Haven't you heard? Dragarians-invading from the north. Garthans-from below." She rocked slowly back and forth, panting, and Peer wondered which corpse she mourned.

"Peer," Alexia said, and Peer was happy to be led away.

"Outsiders!" The woman's voice carried to them, and there were others shouting at her to Shut the fuck up, and Keep it to yourself, and You're scaring my children.

"Here," Alexia said, indicating a half-open door.

The ground shook, people screamed, and a building fell close by. Whatever it is, it's really big. Alexia steered Nophel inside first, and Peer followed, glad to be free of the crowd.

The Scarlet Blade house had been ransacked. Any spare weapons were gone, and someone had defecated on the dead Blades' table. Peer was amazed that, while fleeing for their life, someone would take the time to do that.

"Over here," Alexia said. "I remember using this one a couple of times before." Against the stone wall stood a huge wooden storage unit, shelves now swept clean of whatever they might have held. They waded through piles of smashed plates, torn sheets, and shattered storage jars shining amid spilled food, and Alexia pried with her sword behind the unit.

"Help me… pull!"

Peer and the Unseen heaved and pulled, propping their feet against the wall to give added leverage, and, without warning, the unit suddenly tipped and fell. Behind it was an old door, bolted into the wall five times. It took several smashes from Alexia's sword handle on each bolt to get them sliding.

Behind the door was a spiral staircase heading down and, piled in a nook in the wall, several oil torches.

"We'll see daylight again soon," Alexia said. But hers was a forced hope, and Peer could see that. Darkness had never seemed so forbidding. The three of them stared down the stairwell, listening for the sounds of things rising below, sniffing the air, and wondering just how mad they must be.

Peer picked up an oil torch, lit it on the first strike, and handed it to Nophel. "We'll need our sword hands free," she said. The injured man smiled, ghastly and wan in the torchlight.

"Hate to say it," Nophel said to Alexia, "but do you know the way?"

The Unseen smiled softly, lit her own torch, and started down the stairs.

They traveled two miles through a time gone by, taking it in turns to support Nophel, and all the while the cloying silence was more terrifying than the noise of the crowds they had left behind. In the darkness lay a potential for terrible violence, and that potential was being realized more and more. They heard deep rumbles in the distance-behind them, they thought, though they could not be certain. Some of those rumbles seemed to echo as roars. And sometimes these roars grew and grew, and they had to try to find cover and lie down as the ground shook and dust and rocks fell from the shadows above them.

What are we really doing? Peer thought. The city was shaking to pieces, the population was panicking, and her only aim was to reach the Baker with a canteen of cooling, thickening blood. Rufus might be insane, and the Dragarians thought he was their god. Malia was dead. Many other people were dead. Am I really that mad?

Yet again, she wished Penler was with her. Dependable Penler, whose knowledge and intelligence would see him through these confusions. And, thinking of him, she realized that his life was about to be turned upside down as well.

"They're all going to Skulk," she said to the shadows, but Alexia and Nophel seemed not to hear.

The Unseen led them uncannily across Crescent, transposing Peer's memories of her journey to the laboratory aboveground onto the dead landscape they now walked. Old trails down here echoed the path of current trails above, and Nophel managed the journey without a single complaint. His wound had stopped bleeding for now, but the amount of blood he had lost was shocking. The Dragarian crossbow bolt protruded from his chest just below his collarbone, pinning his dirty cloak to his body. Even if he survived the internal injuries, Peer thought, infection might well kill him.

When they finally drew close to the Baker's subterranean rooms, Peer prepared for the welcoming committee. She glanced around nervously, listening for the sounds of flying things or the cautious tread of the Pserans, but the Echo was theirs alone. She found the door they had entered before, pushed it open, and was suddenly convinced of what would be awaiting them.

Gorham and Nadielle never made it back. They're lying dead way down where the deepest Echoes merge with myth and legend, killed by whatever's shaking the city.

She entered first, walking into the vast womb-vat chamber alone. Lights still shone, but several of the vats had broken and collapsed, slumped to the ground like giant melted candles.

One still bubbled and spat.

And then Gorham emerged from behind the vat. He froze when he saw her, but she had never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

"Gorham," she said, and ran for him. He seemed changed by whatever he had been through, but she would not ask him yet. He looked surprised at her eagerness to see him. Both of them had new histories to learn. But right then, the feel of the present when she held him was all that mattered.

Nophel looked through the wide doorway at the amazing room beyond. Peer hugged a man, Alexia stood inside the doorway looking around in amazement, shadows shifted, air moved, and scenes of destruction were countered by the presence of the single huge vat that still appeared whole.

These were the Baker's laboratories, and it was nothing like coming home.

He took a step forward and groaned. His vision blurred, and he tried to shout at the unfairness of things. All this way, I only need to set eyes on her before…

Nophel's world upended, and soft hands eased him to the ground.

Gorham wanted to talk with Peer, discover what she had been through, connect with her again after being apart for so long. He had never believed that connection would be possible again, not after what he had done to her. But something had changed. And he was not foolish enough to believe that the change was only in her.

She told him about Malia. He told her about Nadielle and Rose. Alexia was introduced, Rose came and took the water canteen containing Rufus's blood, and the Pserans carried Nophel into the vat chamber.

"The Baker's blood son," Peer said. Rose paused for the briefest moment to stare at him, then walked away from them all. Peer stared after her, eyes growing wide as Gorham explained more.

"So she's your daughter?"

"I…" Gorham could not say, because he had not yet come to terms with the reality of that himself.

Rose had climbed the ladder beside the vat, and she sat there with her potions and mixes, carefully extracting blood from the canteen and doing something with it that none of them could see.

"I so need to rest," Peer said. "To wash, and eat, and sleep for a day. But it feels as if it's only just begun."

"The whole city's moving south," Alexia said. She looked tired and drawn, and already she was reminding Gorham very much of Malia. There was an inner strength to her that could never be touched by physical tiredness, and she looked like someone who would get what she wanted. Unlike Malia, her eyes held a restrained humor. He liked that. In the face of all that was happening, it made her seem so human.

"We're in Rose's hands now," Gorham said. "Every chance feels small, but without her there's no chance at all."

Nophel mumbled, still unconscious. The Pserans had quickly melted away after bringing him in, and Alexia crouched by his side, carefully examining his wound.

"It needs cleaning," she said. "And he needs medicine."

The new Baker returned to them, her girl's body and face already appearing older than any of theirs. She's fading even more, Gorham thought, and he only hoped she lasted long enough.

"Do you have medicine?" Alexia asked her.

The girl stared at the prone man, and there was something in her that Gorham had not seen before. Since her birthing she had been busy-either working at the vat, or thinking about what to do next, reading the Baker's books and charts, and making esoteric notes in a thick pad. Now, for the first time, she was still and contemplative.

"Carry him through to my rooms," she said.

"Seeing you is what's kept him alive," Peer said.

Rose looked at her, then turned and walked away without replying.

Peer took a step forward, but Gorham caught her arm.

"And you thought Nadielle was cold?" he said. She smiled at him, and that warm flush he'd felt upon seeing her enter the laboratory returned. They both had so much to say, with so little time.

"I'll tell you when I'm ready," Rose said from where she'd climbed back up to the vat's lip. "You should all rest. When the time comes, we'll have to go south, to Skulk."

"And then?" Peer asked.

The girl looked at her curiously, as if considering a specimen of something she had never seen before. "I remember so much about you," she said.

Gorham felt Peer shiver against his side.

"What will happen?" Gorham asked.

"Then we see whether any of this will work." Rose turned back to the vat.

"Come on," he said. "There's some food left. And wine. We'll drink to success." He helped Alexia carry the unconscious man through the vat chamber and into the rooms beyond, and the air buzzed with unspoken news.

Peer seemed changed. She held her injured hip, but there was a strength to her that had not been there when she'd offer him a dismissive wave goodbye. Her eyes were haunted, but she had a smile for him. He hoped that was a good enough start.

They placed Nophel on the Baker's bed, then sat at a table and passed around a bottle of wine. Before long, Alexia leaned back in her chair and slept, and Peer had to settle Gorham when the Unseen woman began to flicker from view.

Gorham and Peer lay together on the other side of the bed. He watched her close her eyes and sleep, but he refused to do so. This might be the end, and he wanted to spend every moment he had left looking at the woman he had wronged. But as her breathing deepened, he, too, closed his eyes, and he rested his hand on hers as dreams carried him away. Come with me, the voice said. Please, come with me. It was a child's voice, yet it carried the weight of ages. Nophel saw the words in his father's mouth, yet his lips spelled something different, because he had gone against the Dragarians to save his son, not to doom him. There was a pain in his chest and his father frowned, but Dane could do nothing, because he was already dead. For an instant briefer than a blink, Nophel saw the fat Marcellan as he was now-taken apart in the darkness beneath the city.

His eyes snapped open, and his mother was looking down at him.

"Please, come with me." She was whispering. She looked in Nophel's one good eye, but her hands were elsewhere, sprinkling something warm and dry across his bared chest.

Nophel raised his head and looked down at the wound. The bolt had somehow been removed without him waking, and now the girl-the new Baker, two steps from his mother and yet still very much her-was tending the ragged hole left behind. It was red and inflamed, and the dust she dropped hissed slightly as it touched his skin.

"It smells," he whispered, voice harsh and dry.

"It will stop the pain." She averted her eyes.

"I'm dying." There was a weight in his chest, as if his heart had been replaced with a lump of rock.

"The bolt split a main vein. You've been bleeding into your chest cavity. I've seared the split, but it will reopen." The girl looked at him again, and there was something about her eyes that took his breath away. One of them could be mine, he thought. "Please, come with me," she repeated.

"Why?"

"Because you came down here for a reason."

Something thudded through the room, and a swath of spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling swayed. Scurrying shadows hurried across them, looking for prey that had not landed. The bed shifted, and by his side Nophel saw Peer and the man, both asleep. She looked exhausted and at peace. He only looked sad.

When Nophel held out one hand, the Baker took it and helped him up.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"I think I have something to show you." She led him across the room, which was redolent with signs of the mother he had never known. The girl paused when he stopped, letting him lean against her as a faint passed through him. He bit his lip, and she pressed a small flattened nut into his hand.

"Sniff."

He sniffed, and the sharp scent brought his senses back.

In the corner of the room she opened a door, and they entered a much smaller room with a table, scattered charts, and a broken book on the floor. He leaned on the table as she opened another, lower door, and when she started to go down a small set of steps, he did not move.

"You abandoned me," he said, and though it was strange talking like this to a little girl, he could see that she understood every word. "I came here to… kill you."

"I know," she said softly. "Please, come and see what I have to show you." And she descended out of sight.

She's luring me down to kill me, he thought. And when the others wake, she'll tell them I ran raving into the Echoes. But that was not the truth. She's got my mother's corpse down there, hollow and dead with her mind passed down the generations, and she'll ask me to forgive it. But that also seemed unlikely.

The Baker's face appeared in the small doorway again, pale and sad in the poor light. "Come."

I'm dying anyway, Nophel thought, and he went.

The staircase was carved roughly into rock. It curved out of sight, and it was only the sound of the Baker's footsteps that drew him on. Where the staircase ended, the darkness opened up around him. The girl stood a few steps away, but her oil torch could not penetrate the gloom.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"An old Echo. Hidden." She aimed the torch to their left, and Nophel saw a crumbling gray facade. "It was diseased, so they cut it off from the rest of the city."

"And this is about me?" he asked, anger rising. Diseased… cut off… forgotten. Could it really be that simple? He'd heard of wealthy parents in Marcellan Canton giving their children away to workhouses or chop shops if they were deformed, or simple-minded, or did not live up to their expectations in some other way-eyes too close, hair too dark. Was his story really that pitiful?

"My name is Rose," the Baker said, "and I am your mother only by blood. In memory, I am less so. So I've brought you here, because this is the Baker's place. No one has ever been down here, not even Gorham, who perhaps… perhaps I once loved. And there's something here for you to see."

The girl Rose led him through a doorless opening and into a dark room, placing her torch on a table and indicating a chair. Nophel sat, closing his eyes as another faint came over him. Something wet rattled inside as he sniffed the nut again, and he pressed one hand across the wound on his bare chest. It was blazing hot.

There was some basic furniture in this room, and Rose opened a wooden cupboard. She took out some objects and replaced them again, then moved to another cupboard.

"Lost something?" he asked softly.

"I was born only recently." She found what she was looking for and placed it on the table before him. It was a stark wooden box, rough-edged, undecorated. The lid above the simple hook-and-eye catch was smooth, as if it had been opened and closed many, many times.

"What's this?"

"This is your mother's real memory of you." She turned to leave, and Nophel experienced a moment of complete, encompassing panic.

"Please don't go!" he said. "I've been alone all my life, and now I'm dying."

The girl nodded, sat down on a chair close to the door, and rested her chin on her chest.

Nophel turned to the box and opened it without hesitation. Though he was a stranger to his own childhood, he knew that these things related to him. There was a shriveled, wormlike object in a fold of tissue-his umbilical cord, perhaps. A lock of fine hair. A tiny knitted boot-just one-snagged and dusty but still smelling fresh. Fingernail clippings. A simple but effective charcoal sketch of a baby, unrelenting in its honesty-one eye closed and, even then, growths on his face around his mouth and nose. As he examined the sketch, the charcoal darkened and smudged, and he realized that he was crying. He sniffed and wiped his eye, then started to take out other things.

Everything had a worn look, as if it had been viewed countless times. And when he finally piled it all back into the box-proof of his childhood, testament to his creation and existence-he closed the lid and sat back in the chair.

"So?" he said softly.

"Your mother loved you. That's good enough, surely?"

"She gave me away."

The girl nodded, then looked at her hands as if truly seeing them for the first time. They were not the hands of a child. "It's the fate of every new Baker to lose everything," she said. "She was incapable of looking after you, because of the things she did. She was dangerous, as am I. And she did what she thought was best."

"She gave me to a workhouse," he said, but he could no longer summon the anger that had always driven him. It had given way to sorrow, a hollowness inside being slowly filled with his own leaking blood.

"She did what she thought was best," the girl said again. She stood and left, and Nophel followed her back across the long-buried Echo and up the staircase into her laboratories once again. He felt drowsy, and sniffing the strange nut helped only so much. His chest was heavy and hot. And by the time he reached the room where Gorham, Peer, and Alexia still slept, his confusion was settling. As Rufus had said, he had found a trace of love in his father. Perhaps, in some way, there was some in his mother as well.

He asked how he could help.

Nadielle appeared above him, smiling what he had always thought of as a wry smile but what was probably just knowing. She reached down and tried to shake him awake, and when she spoke it did not exactly match the words her lips were forming. You were always braver than you think, he wanted to hear her say, but what she really said made Gorham sit upright.

"We have to leave," Rose said, her face and voice changed. "I've done all I can, but everything is getting worse."

"How do you-" he began, but then he noticed the constant shaking. Dust hazed the room, books slid from shelves, and it was only because he'd been asleep on the soft bed that the vibration had not woken him. He looked down at Peer, where she held his left arm, and across at where Alexia had slept. The Unseen was no longer there.

"She's helping," Rose said.

"And Nophel?"

"He's just left. And, yes, he's helping too."

"On his own?"

"He has a while, perhaps."

A harder jolt, and Peer stirred, mumbling Malia's name.

"Is it all the way up yet?" Gorham asked. "Is it risen?"

"I don't know!" the girl said, and it was the first time he'd heard her raise her voice. A glimmer of panic flitted across her face, then she was in control again, calm and efficient. "I don't know, but we can't wait to find out. I think I have enough."

"Enough what?"

"I'll show you. I hope you got plenty of rest. There's lots to carry."

Gorham gently shook Peer awake. She sat up quickly and looked around, then her shoulders slumped when realization hit her. Her eyes flooded with the knowledge of what was happening and the memories of what they had been through.

"It's time to leave," he said. "Rose needs our help."

Peer nodded and stood without speaking. He told her about Nophel, and they left the room and went out into the womb-vat hall, where Rose and Alexia were standing beside the vat.

What the crap is going to come out of this one? Gorham wondered. But there were no messy processes this time, and the girl Baker climbed the wooden ladder to sit once again on the vat's lip.

Alexia nodded at them as they approached, smiling slightly at Peer. Gorham liked that they were friends. That might not help a lot against that bastard thing rising against them, but in reality it meant the world. Arrayed around Alexia's feet were piles of a thin, wrinkled material, with string ties strewn like dead worms. At a signal from Rose, Alexia picked up one sack and threw it up to the Baker.

Rose leaned over the top of the vat and swept her arm down and up again. The bag came up bulging, throwing vague shadows that seemed to flit away into the darkness. Gorham was sure he heard a whispering, and he frowned and tilted his head to hear it better.

"Catch," Rose said, tying and dropping the bag without even looking. Alexia was there. She caught the bag, tested the drawstring, and lowered it gently to the ground. It looked oddly weightless.

Next time, Gorham caught the bag. He tweaked the drawstring and gasped as several small shapes flew from the bag's mouth, circling in tight circles before fluttering off into the darkness.

"What are they?" he asked.

"Bloodflies," Rose said. "Another." Alexia lobbed the bags up to her, Rose filled them, and when she dropped them someone was always there to catch.

"Do you really think these will work?" Peer asked.

"It's the best I could do," Rose said. She grunted each time she reached down into the vat now, and each time Gorham thought she was going to fall.

But he caught and tied the bags, and realization hit him-release the flies, hope they bite, and in their bites would be traces of Rufus's chopped blood. There was a terrible randomness to it and a reliance on the untested idea that Rufus survived the Bonelands because of something that ran in his veins. But Gorham also knew that Rose was right. It really was the best she could have done.

"Is this like the moths, bats, and lizards?" Gorham asked.

"They were proven," Rose said. "Used before, though on a much smaller scale. These…" She grunted, dropped another bag. "Bakers have tried things like this before, to spread cures in time of plague. But I have no firm memory of something like this ever working."

"Marvelous," Alexia said.

The sounds resonating through the Echoes were now constant. They were accompanied by those staggering impacts, and Gorham feared that the ceilings would fall and crush them flat. He heard what might have been distant cave-ins, but he could not let them concern him. Their route was set, they were on their way, and it would take death to stop them.

They stacked the filled bags away from the vat. There were twenty in all, and they writhed and flexed with their insectile contents.

"So that's it?" Peer asked. "That's the hope of Echo City?"

"If Nadielle was right about Rufus's blood," Gorham said.

"She was right," Rose said, as she climbed back down the wooden ladder. "She made him, after all. She'd have known."

"But it was still a guess!" Gorham said, frustrated by Rose's pronouncements. "Nothing more."

"Lots of what the Bakers do is derived from best guesses," Rose replied, shrugging. "That's the basis of experimentation. It's all theory. We're just good at putting it into practice." She walked toward the main doors leading out into the Echoes, and when she turned and saw them standing there, she seemed surprised. "It's time to leave."

"Right now?" Peer asked.

"The Vex won't wait for us," Rose said. She looked like a corpse. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and the shattering idea hit Gorham that she was only temporary. Nadielle hadn't had long, and she had chopped Rose to serve a purpose, nothing more. Where will the next Baker originate? he wondered. It was not something he wanted to dwell upon.

So they followed her from the womb-vat hall, each of them carrying several of the light, flexing bags. Gorham left last, and Rose was waiting for him outside the doors. She smiled softly and looked back into the rooms.

Leftover flies were rising from the vat in a swirling cloud, moving in beautiful synchronicity.

"We'll never return," Gorham said. This is the first of many places I'll be leaving forever, he thought, and he was as scared and excited as a little boy on his first trip out of his canton.

"No," Rose said. "But we'll leave the doors open for anyone else who might." She scratched at her arm, and he suddenly noticed the fresh blood speckled there. He grabbed her hand and twisted-the knife cuts were plain, on both underarms, and he had seen their like before.

"Nophel?" he asked.

"Yes. The city streets will be dangerous."

Gorham understood. "And who better to guide our way than the keeper of the Scopes."

Rose nodded, smiled, and seemed to be about to say something about the disfigured man. But Gorham guessed there was nothing left to be said.

They set off through the Echo, heading for the closest door that would take them to the surface. Their world shook around them, flinching away from the terrible roars and rumbles that echoed through the darkness.

And Gorham thought, There's no way we can win.

They looked at him strangely, almost as if they knew. Perhaps they do, he thought. Perhaps they were there. There's no telling how old they are.

She'd called them the Pserans, and they were guiding him across the Echoes. He'd only recently come this way with Peer and Alexia, but he'd been spitting blood then, in terrible pain and hovering on the boundaries of consciousness. Now he felt stronger, buoyed by the Baker's medicines, though he knew that he was dying. His senses were sharper and his purpose more defined, yet his breathing bubbled and he tasted blood when he coughed.

He'd be returning to Hanharan Heights a new man.

Nophel's arms stung where Rose had pricked them, but the pains had been offset by the touch he had been granted of her mind. The depth of that place had shocked him, the shattering extent of her knowledge exposed to him in a flash faster than thought, and he'd been left reeling. But then Rose had held his face in her hands and looked him in the eye, and he had seen the pain that went with such knowledge. She is never a child, never carefree, and can never truly love. In that, he found a closer tie to his mother than he had ever believed possible.

The two Pserans moved quickly, checking frequently to make sure he was keeping pace. They seemed unafraid but sad, and he guessed it was because this was the last task they would perform for the Baker. They passed a small group of Garthans, but the subterranean dwellers pulled back at the sight of the Pserans. Other things large and small approached in the darkness, fleeing the sounds reverberating through the Echoes rather than stalking prey, and the Pserans were always there to ensure his safety. At last they watched him up into daylight, holding back in the shadows, and retreating without a sound when he turned to give them thanks.

Nophel, Scope keeper for the Marcellans, bastard son of the Baker and Dane Marcellan, rose from the shaking Echoes of the past into a chaotic present.

Four people walked quickly through the Echo. Peer, feeling more fragile with every step they took, remained close to Gorham. Gorham, the leader of an organization whose worst fears were coming true, felt more lost than ever. Alexia, raised a Hanharan but whose beliefs had been taken advantage of, was now bitter and adrift. And Rose, who was mere days in this world but nonetheless possessed a mind almost as old as Echo City itself. They walked in silence because there was little left to be said. They walked with purpose. And, in all of them, doubt worried and bit, closing gentle fingers around their hearts and threatening to crush.

Peer had never been afraid of feeling insignificant. Even when she worked with the Watchers' political arm, she'd believed that most of what she did was trivial. It had implications, she knew, but hers was not a name that would ever be remembered. Then, in Skulk, banished and in pain, she had existed day by day on her own. Penler had been there, and his guidance, help, and support had seen her through many lonely times. But she had been one of many sent to that ruined place.

Now she was afraid, and some of that stemmed from loss of control. She had spent days doing everything she could to help a city unaware of its impending doom, but whatever might happen was out of her hands. She walked toward the culmination not only of the last few days but of everything. The city had been here for longer than anyone knew, and it was all about to change.

The ground shook. The air vibrated with potential. Something roared. Rose gave nothing away, and in that Peer recognized their true danger.

All she wanted to do was sit with Gorham and talk about old times, because events were far outpacing the differences between them. Though she still felt the physical pains of his betrayal, he was the last solid rock she thought she could hold on to, a love from her past who was so much more now. There was desire, but that was a gentle feeling compared to the depth of connection she felt to him. And it was in the intensity of his obvious guilt that she found her own capacity for forgiveness.

This has always been way beyond the two of us, she thought, and that made them so much more important to each other.

"What are you thinking?" Gorham asked.

"That we're close to the end," she said.

"Or a new beginning."

"You really believe that?" They were approaching the route up out of the Echo now, and Rose was walking faster. This girl's never even seen the daylight, Peer realized.

"I hope that," he said. "This is everything the Watchers have waited for."

"Feared."

"That too, but it's been a practical fear. We've fought our concerns by trying to discover a way to move past them. The Marcellans, the Hanharans-they surround their fear with more fear, hoping to smother it. Those bastard priests think up more ways to make people feel crap about themselves, and we're persecuted for realism."

"All religions are real to someone."

Gorham scoffed.

"Really," she said. "You should have seen the Dragarians with Rufus."

"Let's see which one saves us from the Vex," he said.

"I don't want to see it," Peer replied. Gorham had described his and Nadielle's journey down, what had happened at the Falls, and how that had changed Nadielle. The Baker had not been able to truly convey what she had seen, but her fear had been enough. That and the guilt that bound generations of Bakers together.

Now Rose was feeling it too. That was why she fought against whatever weakness was trying to strike her down.

"Maybe we won't have to," he said. "By the end of today we'll be away from the city."

"And by tomorrow we might be dead."

"It's all just possibilities." Gorham reached out to take her hand. He squeezed, she squeezed back, and she saw the gratitude in his eyes.

"Isn't that all the future can be?" she asked. Gorham did not reply, and as they climbed up through the ruins of the old farmhouse, she wondered what possibilities were about to be realized.

At first she thought the Vex had risen and they were too late. Crescent was deserted, but to the east and south, smoke hung above the slopes and hillsides of Echo City. It drifted toward the west, blown by the familiar easterly breezes of late summer, and she could see a dozen flaming sources on the high slopes of Marcellan. She and Alexia had left fires behind, but now it looked as if the whole city was ablaze.

"Are we too late?" Alexia asked.

"No," Rose said, but she was not looking at the fires. Her eyes were aimed at the pale-blue sky, streaked here and there with wisps of white cloud. The sun was above the city, barely obscured by the smoke this far out. To the northeast, the pale ghost of the moon hung low to the horizon, biding its time. Red sparrows flitted here and there just above the grass, plucking insects from the air. A family of rathawks rode the thermals high above. "It's beautiful," she said, and for the first time Peer heard something human in the girl's voice.

"It's burning," Alexia said.

"Anarchy," Gorham said. "From what you described, the Marcellans will be doing their best to halt the migration. At times like this, there are always those who'll take the opportunity to…" He drifted off, shrugged.

"Settle scores?" Alexia asked.

"Maybe. Some just have chaos in their hearts."

"Peer and I saw plenty on our way here," Alexia said.

"Can we release them yet?" Peer asked. The bags strung over her shoulders were bulging and shifting more as the sunlight warmed them. The bloodflies were excited. Peer was revolted, and yet she knew that each insect contained the essence of Rufus's chopped blood. He was as close to her now as he ever had been.

"No," Rose said. "Closer to the people. When we reach Skulk."

"That's almost ten miles," Alexia said.

"Then we should walk quickly," Rose said. "And we'll soon have help." She looked at Hanharan Heights through the drifting smoke, and for a moment she closed her eyes.

The smell of smoke hung in the air, and the farther south they went, the worse it would become. Then there was Course Canton to negotiate, the Border Spites, the Levels… and all the while, the city would shake with terror at the thing rising beneath it.

"How long until this Vex arrives?" Peer asked. "Where will it rise? What will it do?"

Rose turned to her, then glanced at Gorham and Alexia to include them in her reply. "I'm no god," she said. "There's plenty I don't know."

"But you made it," Gorham said, his voice cool with accusation.

"A Baker long before me-" Rose stopped when she saw Gorham's growing anger. In that instant, Peer loved him a little more. "But, yes. She made it, and then she threw it away, because it was imperfect and dangerous. She just didn't throw it far enough. Please, we need to hurry. We'll know when it arrives, and we must reach Skulk before then."

They started walking, Rose in the lead, the others strung out behind. It surprised none of them that a girl whose skin the sunlight had never touched knew exactly which direction to take.

Nophel thought about becoming Unseen, but that would have been no help. Whether people saw him or not, the streets were chaotic, and he would be moving against the flow. So he took a deep breath from the nut clasped in his hand and forged ahead.

As he saw the chaos and destruction, the bodies in the streets and the burning buildings, the fear on people's faces and the useless efforts by Scarlet Blades to temper the flow of fleeing humanity, his mind was on the contents of that old, worn box. They signified a pain in his mother's heart that he had never considered-he had always imagined her filled with hate and inhumanity, not sadness and loss. And they drove him on now, because he was doing this partly for her.

She's a little girl with an old woman's eyes, he thought of Rose, and in some ways she was the living memory of the city. Constantly reborn, her knowledge handed down, she was the echo of Echo City in blood and flesh.

Bleeding, coughing, Nophel made his way uphill toward Hanharan Heights. He passed dead people and fallen buildings, but they were invisible to him. He felt the city's doom constantly transmitted through his heels, and at one point, when a dreadful roar came from somewhere to the south, the ground shook so much that he believed this was the end. But the tremors settled, people picked themselves up, and Nophel started to climb again.

He cast his face upward in case the Scopes were watching for him. He would be with them soon. His breath bubbled and blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but after everything that had happened, he could not even consider failure. That would be the cruelest joke that Fate could ever play.

While much of the city fled, he climbed, and it was only as he reached the Marcellan wall that he went Unseen.

The first half of their journey was easy and fast. They crossed the southern border of Crescent into Course, passing the waterfront areas by the Western Reservoir where thousands once spent their leisure time eating, drinking, and sailing; the area was all but abandoned. There were some who had stayed behind, ignoring the strange warnings they'd received or heard from someone else. Several taverns were full to bursting with drunks. The overflow sprawled on the streets outside, fighting, sleeping, some of them fucking under the sunlight as if this was the last day they'd ever see. Perhaps some of them truly believed that, Gorham thought, but it never took much for a drunk to drink like the world was about to end.

There were bodies in the streets. Not many, but enough to show that the relative silence was far from normal. A mother and daughter lay dead beneath a second-story window, and a sprinkling of mepple blooms had fallen across their bloodied clothing. Several Scarlet Blades had been killed and stripped outside a large, faceless building that had once stored produce from Crescent. The warehouse now stank of fruit turning to rot, and the dead Blades were adding to the smell. Each of them had a sword handle protruding from the mouth. Farther on, in a small square where a water fountain still gurgled cheerily, at least thirty people lay dead, with hands tied behind their backs and throats slit.

"Bastards!" Peer said, and Gorham shared her rage. He'd seen this before, three years ago when the Marcellans were cracking down on the Watchers and needed the city to know how serious they were. Back then, most of those killed had been Watchers and their families. Here, he suspected those executed had nothing in common other than a wish to follow their instincts south.

"Why didn't the Blades get the message?" Gorham asked. He thought of those moths, lizards, and bats, drifting or running through the city and spreading the word he had given them.

"Maybe some did," Rose said.

"Not enough." He breathed deeply, taking some comfort from the fact that the Blades had been fed their own swords.

"We can't stop every time," Alexia said. "The city's in turmoil, and there'll be more. Peer and I saw the start of it, and it'll only have grown worse."

"You're right," Gorham said. I'm not sure how much of this I can see without going mad.

The ground shook. Things fell. They walked on.

Rose paused now and then and closed her eyes, frowning. After a couple of these occasions, Gorham asked her about Nophel, but she shook her head sharply and they moved on. Not there yet, he thought. Maybe he's dead. He had no idea what had passed between Rose and the deformed man, and right now he had no wish to find out. They all bore the weight of their own past; he knew that better than most.

When they reached the River Tharin and started across Six Step Bridge, the going became tougher. A group of Scarlet Blades had set up a checkpoint on the bridge, and they were charging people to cross. They were drunk and smashed on slash, and two of the female Blades wore what appeared to be male genitals on strings around their necks.

There were maybe a hundred people sitting across the bridge, some in front of the cafes lining each side, and others apparently camped on the road. Many were drunk. A couple appeared to be asleep, or dead.

Gorham sat down and the others followed.

"We can't let them slow us down," Rose said.

"No pay, no way," a teenaged girl a few steps from them said. She held an empty wine bottle in one hand and a bag of slash in the other. Yet her eyes were clear and her voice strong. She had been crying.

"What's the price of passage?" Peer asked.

"For you…" the girl said, lips pressing together. "Can't you guess?" She pretended to drink from the bottle, wiping her dry lips. Tears streaked her flushed face. "Bommy tried to protect me. He… stood in their way."

"They killed him," Alexia said.

"Threw him in the river. The river! They cut off his… They didn't even have the decency to cut his throat first."

Gorham closed his eyes, trying not to imagine Bommy's final moments.

"I'm waiting," the girl said, leaning forward. "They've been drinking all morning. One of them fell down drunk just now; the others dragged him away. So I'm waiting."

"If you try-" Gorham said.

"I'm not going to try anything. I'm going to do every one of them-with this." She pulled her jacket open, displaying rips in her shirt, scratches across her neck, and, in her belt, the cheap, dull sword she must have found in one of the taverns.

"Come with us," Gorham said. "We're going south."

"Your women going to give in peacefully, then?" the girl asked.

"Fuck them," Alexia said. "Watch this." Lying down behind Peer and Gorham so that she was blocked from the Blades' view, she started to fade away.

"What the-!" the girl shouted, stumbling backward.

Rose was by her side almost instantly, easing her to the ground and whispering, "You're drunk."

The girl-wide-eyed, scared, in pain and mourning-seemed to react to Rose's touch. She looked up into the young Baker's eyes and smiled.

Gorham did not even hear Alexia stand, but he felt a nudge on the shoulder as she passed him by.

"Come on," he said to Peer. "She'll need some help."

"I can't kill anyone else, Gorham," Peer said, almost manically.

"You won't need to." And he smiled at her, because he thought he knew what Alexia intended.

They walked up the slight rise of the bridge toward the roadblock, and the smell of bad wine and burning slash became much stronger. Gorham was careful to keep his hands away from the sword in his belt-in the shadows of a tavern's canopy, he could see a Blade resting a crossbow on a wooden privacy screen-and he tried to offer an appeasing smile. They'll think I'm coming to offer Peer as our crossing fee, he thought, and his smile suddenly felt like a grimace. Relax… relax…

"I don't like this," Peer said.

"When I point, just look that way." He hoped that Alexia was as serious as he thought. He hoped that she was still a soldier. And, most of all, he hoped that these murdering bastards were as superstitious as most Blades he had met.

One of the women with genitals strung around her neck staggered forward. She stopped ten steps from him, drawing her sword and pointing it. It had blood smeared across the blade.

"You wanna cross, she's gonna pay," she drawled, and Gorham saw a fleeting shadow appear and then disappear again behind the woman.

He raised his hand and pointed at the woman. "You pay first," he said, and her head tilted back and her throat opened up. The string bearing her trophies parted and they fell. Blood sprayed up and out from the slash across her neck. Alexia turned her so that the struggling Blade sprayed her companions.

Then the woman fell heavily, and several steps away Gorham caught another brief glimpse as Alexia manifested for a beat.

"He pays too," he said, pointing at the man closest to Alexia. His eyes widened and then his throat opened as well. He raised his hands and flipped quickly onto his back, gurgling as the front of his tunic turned red.

They panicked. Of the six left, five backed away from Gorham, swords forgotten, wine bottles slipping from their hands and smashing on the road. The last Blade stalked toward him but stared at Peer. He had hungry, mad eyes and an ugly lolling tongue. This time, Peer pointed, and the Blade's eyes burst as an invisible knife was drawn quickly across them.

"I'm blind!" he shouted, holding his hands before his face but not quite touching. "Help me, I'm blind!"

The drunk girl raced past Gorham and struck the man around the head with the wine bottle. It shattered, and he fell. Gorham was going to reach for her, pull her back, but then Peer grabbed his arm, and when he looked at her he could see the pain of memory scarring her face.

As the girl set upon the screaming man with the smashed bottle, they ran, Gorham trying to snort out the stench of blood. Rose was with them, along with a crowd of others, given the opportunity at last to cross the bridge and flee south.

"The terror is rising; go south to Skulk!" someone shouted, and Gorham gasped at hearing the words he had sent out.

Alexia was waiting for them at the other end of the bridge, manifested again and wiping blood from her hand. When she looked up at them, Gorham knew that nothing needed to be said.

"Not far to go," Rose said mildly. "And not long left."

It was not an easy journey. Being Unseen did nothing to ease Nophel's pain or prevent his wound from gushing blood again. The nut pressed almost constantly to his nose, he became light-headed with its effect, but he was convinced that he would fall without it. A mass of Scarlet Blades were stationed at the entrance to Marcellan Canton, standing close to one another as they stared south and west. In their eyes he glimpsed the reflection of chaos, but he did not want to look too closely.

If I glance back, I might lose all hope. So he crept between them. Some turned and frowned, as if at a memory. Others stepped back and raised their swords, and if they'd taken a swipe at the thin air before them, his head would have rolled.

He passed through the guarded gate into Hanharan Heights when it was opened to allow a group of Marcellans to exit. He recognized them-three members of the Council-and none of them had ever spoken to him. He'd always been a subject of their disdain. It was good to see terror in their eyes.

His journey from the gates to the viewing room was a blur of pain and darkness. Many oil lamps in the Heights had been extinguished, and the halls and corridors were all but deserted. They'll be in the Inner Halls, he thought. Praying to their Hanharan god, hiding in his First Echo, begging for help, mercy, and salvation. Lot of good that will do them.

In his viewing room, the mirror was cracked but not shattered. There were bloodstains across the floor where a body had been dragged. His father's actions, perhaps, but he no longer cared. All he cared about was seeing that small group on their way and seeing his mother one more time. His offer of help had been quickly accepted, and he had shushed her concerns about him remaining in the city. I'll soon be gone, he'd said; I'd rather the time I have left is well spent.

He tweaked the controls, but there was no reaction-no views of the city and no signs of life. Nophel groaned and went on, heading for the fifty stairs that would take him to the roof. Don't stop, he thought, keep moving on, and he felt the fresh slick of warm blood across his chest.

The Scopes were silent, awaiting his return and his tender touch. He went to the Western Scope and looked out over the city, scanning the tumultuous streets and wondering where Rose and the others were now. His arms itched, and when he scratched, he reopened the shallow wounds.

"Not long now," he said. "Not long, and I'll be able to help." He shooed away birds that were pecking at the Scope's eyes, washed fluid from its tense body, eased chains, and scooped handfuls of balm, working it into the folds around the Scope's head and neck. Leaving the roof, he looked back at the other three Scopes and felt a pang of deep guilt at not tending them as well. But the city had ceased being his concern. There was only one way left for him to look.

Back in the viewing room, he relaxed in his chair with a gasp, his vision swimming, arms and chest bleeding. And then he laid his hands on the controls and started his search.

Rose paused and closed her eyes again, and this time she smiled softly. "South of Six Step Bridge," she whispered, "at the junction of two roads."

Peer turned and looked up through the haze of smoke at Hanharan Heights, far to the northeast. She imagined one of those giant Scopes up there, extending its neck and turning its monstrous eye, and that brought a brief, unexpected memory of her mother. Long dead now. Peer wondered what she would think of her daughter. She thought she would be proud.

"And I see you," Rose said. She looked at the others, still smiling softly, and nodded. "We can move faster now," she said. "Nophel can see our way for us, warn us of dangers, and guide us along the easiest route to Skulk."

"How can you talk to him?" Peer asked, but Gorham touched her arm and rolled his eyes. "Oh," she said, quieter. "Baker stuff."

As they moved on, Rose was muttering to herself, an ongoing conversation with a man no longer there. Constant vibrations were rising through their feet, and as they entered the heavily built-up southern half of Course Canton, there were fewer and fewer unbroken windows. Glass speckled the ground, crunching underfoot. They passed a burning house. People ran, some screamed, and there were more bodies. Could fear drive so many to this? Peer wondered. Was Echo City really built on such a thin crust? They came to a place where a building had collapsed across the road, blocking their route completely. A few people were digging with their bare hands, calling names as they searched for buried loved ones. Peer wanted to stop and help, but Rose steered them through an abandoned house and emerged in a small herb garden, climbed a wall, and veered left into a narrow, deserted alleyway. Still muttering, her arms still bleeding, the girl seemed hardly there.

They followed Rose through gardens and squares, wide streets and narrow alleys, and even though all around them they heard the sounds of chaos, they seemed to travel in a bubble of calm. Nophel steered them away from trouble and urged them south, as quickly and as safely as he could. Peer was humbled by the trust the Baker placed in that poor, brave man.

Everything Peer saw-every scene of random violence, goodwill, or heart-wrenching tragedy-brought home to her more and more that the city was at an end. When the Vex arrived, everything would change. The four of them bore the responsibility of ensuring that there was a future for some.

Gorham was keeping her strong. He was a constant presence beside her, and whenever she glanced aside he always seemed to be looking at her. There must be such a desperate need for forgiveness in him, but now he projected only strength and confidence.

The bags of bloodflies twitched and moved, a sickening sensation but one that drove her forward. We can release them soon, she thought. Soon. And then whatever this new, young Baker had done to the flies would be out there, and there would be only one way to find out whether they had worked.

She thought back to the day she had first seen Rufus coming in across the desert. Even rushing across to him and back again, she'd been reticent. Will I be able to step out into that desert? Will any of us? And then she realized that the decider would not be what might lie ahead but what was behind.

The streets and parks became more crowded the farther south they went. Many people had started the journey but ended it in a tavern or parkland, perhaps losing the urgency that Gorham's message had implanted in them or maybe just deciding that whatever was coming offered no escape. The Hanharans among them-most of them, she realized, because indoctrination was one of the Marcellans' greatest powers-would be praying silently to their deep prophet, asking him for salvation were they to die that day. Children cried and parents bustled, but there was a surreal air to the whole scene.

"Don't they realize what's happening?" Peer asked.

"How can they?" Gorham said. "The ground shakes, and that has happened before."

"Never to this extent. The fallen buildings. The fires."

"Most of the fires are started by people," he said.

After a while Rose guided them to a park where dozens of standing stones had been raised to signify important points in the city's history. It was called the Learning Fields, but today thousands of people were passing the stones without a second glance. Peer had come here once on a school trip when she was ten years old-a three-day journey, across the city and back to Mino Mont, that had opened her eyes to the rest of their world. The day spent touring the Learning Fields and being lectured by the historians who had made this place their life was one of the fondest memories of her childhood. Passing the rocks now only made her sad, because she could feel the rich history of Echo City being forgotten already. She wondered how many Echoes were left untouched below this place and whether any of them were even there anymore.

At the far edge of the Learning Fields, they found the long street before them thronged with people. They looked for another way around, but neighboring thoroughfares were equally jammed.

"Nophel says the streets are all like this between here and Skulk," Rose said.

"There's no way around?" Gorham asked. "No route through or below the buildings?"

"Even his Scopes can't see through walls."

"How far are we from the Skulk border?" Gorham asked.

"A mile," Peer said. "Perhaps less."

"The Border Spites won't let people through," Alexia said. "They're mean bastards."

"They're also cowards," Peer said. "Little more than mercenaries. They'll have run at the sight of this many people. This must just be the line waiting to get in."

Skulk, she thought. How unprepared was it for this? It could never feed and water thousands of people. The Southern Reservoir was kept mostly drained so that those who lived in the ruined canton could be kept under constant threat of thirst, and stoneshrooms could not feed the whole city's population.

"How many do you suppose came?" she asked, raising her voice above the crowd's hubbub.

"Not enough." Gorham was looking back the way they had come, across the Learning Fields and past the imposing wall of Marcellan Canton. On the slopes above, a whole sector seemed to be blurring.

"What the crap is that?" Alexia said.

Peer squinted, rubbed her eyes in case they'd picked up dust, sniffed the air for smoke. But nothing improved her vision. And nothing changed what she saw.

A spread of buildings and streets almost a mile across sank from view, sending up great billowing clouds of dust, explosions of rock and bricks, and a horrendous roar that swept in across the Learning Fields like the cry of a dying god. The Echoes were swallowing the present and making it history.

"Oh, by all the gods!" Peer said, adding her voice to a thousand exhalations of shock and terror. "It's gone."

"Just sinking down," Gorham said, aghast. "All those buildings. How many people?"

Rose stood between them and held on to their arms, slumping down. The crowd was surging away from the park, as if the cataclysm that had befallen the city several miles distant could reach out and consume them all.

Perhaps it can, Peer thought, and, looking at Rose's face, she knew there was no perhaps to it. This was the beginning of the end.

"Vex?" she shouted above the crowd.

"Open the bags," Rose said. Though her voice was soft, Peer heard every word. "Release the bloodflies slowly. We'll make a path through the crowds. We have to reach Skulk's southern walls. We don't have very long."

Penler!

Gorham hugged Peer around the shoulders, and she relished his warmth. But when Peer closed her eyes to lose the dreadful sight, she was presented with another-Malia, spluttering in agony, dying beneath her sword.

And she knew that she could not leave anyone else behind.

Gorham went first, holding his initial opened bag up high before him. The flies spewed out and spread, thousands of them, hazing the air around him before darting off in all directions. Perhaps it was because they had been incarcerated for so long-or maybe because of something the Baker had done to them-but they spread and dispersed quickly. A few people cried out in surprise as they were bitten, but most pulled away from Gorham and the others at the sight of what they were doing, and a route opened along the street.

Peer came behind him, with Alexia and Rose bringing up the rear. This is when we find out, he thought, and the strangeness of their actions struck him. Releasing countless flies into the air might decide whether everyone he could see now lived or died. He wanted to explain, but they would never have believed.

He saw a woman swatting a fly on her arm, and he almost cursed her for a fool.

They moved quickly along the street, and when his first bag was empty, Gorham unslung another, pricked its corner with his knife, and hurried on.

"Save your last bags for Skulk," Rose said. The buildings around them were more dilapidated, obviously lived in but fallen into disrepair, and Gorham hoped that meant that they were approaching the Levels.

He had never been this far south. Skulk was another world, a part of Echo City that people knew existed but most tried to cast from their mind. Like Dragar's Canton, it was a section of the city cut off from the rest, though its purpose could not have been more different. He'd had many arguments with friends and fellow Watchers about the moralities of banishing people from the rest of Echo City, but he had always seen it as fairer than the alternative. A thousand years before, during the brutal reign of the first Marcellan family, criminals were banished to the Markoshi Desert, the city walls patrolled so that anyone trying to return would be captured and boiled alive in sleekrat oil. Banishment was surely preferable to that.

And there was still the Marcellan crucifixion wall for the worst offenders.

Then Peer had been tortured and sent to Skulk, and it had become more of an unknown land to him than ever before.

A fly landed on the back of his hand and bit. It was a sharp, brief pain, and when the fly fluttered away, he looked at the tiny wound it left behind.

"I've been bitten," he said above the excitable crowd's voice.

"Will I feel a change?"

"I don't know," Rose said, sounding weaker than before. He glanced at her, and she was marching on with a determined expression, her face, arms, and hands speckled with dozens of fly bites. She met his gaze and looked away again. She wanted neither pity nor any more questions.

"You okay?" he asked Peer, and she nodded, turning her arm so he could see several bites across her wrist.

"I'm itching all over," Alexia said.

"You should wash more."

"Fuck you, Watcher."

By the time they reached the Levels, they had each emptied all but one of their bags. People behind and around them yelped and swore as they were bitten, and Gorham was amazed no one had tried to stop them. Just another bit of strangeness in their lives today, he thought. And then he saw Skulk for the first time.

To their right stood a watchtower, several people in its upper levels waving everyone on. To their left was the blazing ruins of another tower. He could smell cooking meat, and he blinked the smarting smoke from his eyes.

"Quickly," Peer said, and she was the first of them out onto the Levels. This is her place, Gorham thought.

The going was slow. Many people were crossing, though plenty seemed to be holding back, the ingrained fear of Skulk causing them to hesitate. What must they think of the sudden idea to come here? He thought of asking someone, but he felt apart from everyone other than his companions. They had come here not as refugees but as saviors.

He untied the last bag of flies and hurried after Peer. She seemed keen to reach Skulk. Maybe she thought of it as coming home. I'll have to tell them soon, she thought. I'll release the flies and then go for Penler. Make sure there are a few left in the bag for him. She knew that he probably would not still be in his home, that he had likely moved on when she left, that what was happening today would have drawn him out, fascinated and afraid. But she also knew that she had to try.

"Peer, slow down!" Gorham called behind her, and she realized that she had broken into a run.

"I'm going for Penler," she said.

I left a man in Skulk, she'd told him.

"I know," he shouted, "but will you just wait?"

She paused and looked back at Gorham, Rose, and Alexia. They'd halted beside the hump of a burned-out building, and Gorham was leaning in close to Rose, listening to her soft voice. She seemed weaker than ever, but Peer still thought the new Baker had more strength left in her than most. Or was that wishful thinking? Right then it seemed to matter so much less. They'd done what Rose had asked of them, and now it was in Fate's hands.

Rufus had told them so little of what was out there, but perhaps detail did not really matter. What mattered was that there was something out there, beyond the murderous sands and lifeless dunes, and beyond the sun-scorched corpses of those who had tried before. Their world is called the Heartlands, Rufus had said, and their Heart and Mind sees through me. It knows Echo City now. I hope it will welcome you.

But that was vague and nothing that they could communicate to anyone in the midst of such chaos. Instead, the people would need someone to lead them out into the desert. Someone to lure them. The idea of being the first to go out there and keep walking, seeing whether this new, young, fading Baker's ideas had worked at all… that would take someone special.

Peer sagged as realization struck her: It would take Penler.

"Gorham!" she called. "I've got an idea. I'm going to find-"

"Penler," he said again, nodding. "And I'm coming with you." He said something else to Rose and Alexia, then trotted over to Peer. "Better to split up anyway. Spread the bloodfly love."

"That's why you're coming?" she asked, smiling.

"Of course. Why else?" His feigned innocence made her chuckle, and she could not recall the last time that had happened.

"Welcome to my home," she said, indicating the first line of Skulk buildings not far away, and part of her enjoyed the flash of guilt in Gorham's eyes.

They waited until they'd crossed the Levels before pricking the final bags. Many of those crossing had been bitten already or were being bitten as the plague of flies followed the general direction of travel. But there would be people in Skulk who had yet to be exposed, and Peer wanted to give them as good a chance as any.

She kept glancing back toward Marcellan Canton. She reckoned that the area that had been swallowed down into the Echoes was five miles distant, and a pall of smoke and dust still hung over the whole site, obscuring the view. The glow of fires burned through here and there, and they must have been voracious to be visible from this far away. She tried to resist the feeling that they were relatively safe here in Skulk. Though the destruction seemed to be behind them, she could still feel the ground beneath her shaking. The Echoes below this place were fewer, the buildings here older than almost any in Echo City, but that did not mean they were safe. Whatever was rising-Rose had called it the Vex, muttered in hushed tones of abject terror-would have the whole city as its playground.

Nowhere was safe. The city was finished. She felt sick but also a barely veiled excitement at that. Everything she had always believed as a Watcher was about to be explored for real. In a matter of days, everyone in Echo City might be dead… or some of them could be somewhere else.

They ran where possible, and where there were too many people, they pushed through the crowds. Reaching the first of the buildings, Peer drew her knife and pricked the last bag, agitating it with both hands until the flies started pouring from the tear. Gorham did the same.

The streets of Skulk were awash with thousands of people who had never considered that they would be here. Some wandered in confused groups, aimless and seeking something more, casting fearful looks at their surroundings. Others were sitting along sidewalks or in the street, on fallen ruins or in the windows of the taverns and cafes that had been set up here over the years. Whole families sat together in protective huddles, and here and there single people roamed, lost and alone. Peer felt the urge to tell them what was happening-but if she stopped for one, she would have to stop for them all.

The crowds parted as she and Gorham rushed through the dilapidated streets, flies spewing from the shrinking bags. They left behind the familiar yelps of people being bitten. When Peer felt that her bag was almost empty, she pinched the slit shut and tucked it beneath her arm. These are for Penler.

"Done," Gorham said behind her. "Peer, wait."

"No time," she said, and Gorham cursed as he struggled to keep up with her.

The confusion was palpable. Encouraged to flee to this prison district by urges they could not identify, everyone was now waiting for whatever came next. Marcellan Canton was visible from most places, and where it was not, the people still seemed aware of what had happened there-what was still happening. The fear showed in their eyes.

This is not the place I lived in for three years, Peer thought, and she was glad for that. Skulk had never seen so many people, and even when she passed a small cafe where she sometimes drank five-bean while reading one of the books collected in a central library, it no longer seemed familiar. Only now did she realize that it was people who shaped the face of a place, not the place itself.

"How far?" Gorham asked.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," he said, panting hard. They paused on a street corner, leaning against a wall.

"You've let yourself go since I left," she said, offering a smile to show she was joking.

Gorham shrugged, looking around nervously. She felt protective of this place and what had been done here. The Marcellans sent those they thought were the worst of the city this way, and most of them had made a go of forming a functioning society.

"I used to live over there," she said pointing along a street. "Half a mile away. Small house, nice. Still had pictures on the wall."

"You don't need to tell me this," Gorham said.

"It's no problem," she said, looking back along another street at the imposing mount of Marcellan. Smoke hung heavy over that canton now, drifting west across Course. "We're becoming strangers to the whole city, and…" She trailed off. Gorham said something to her, but she could not hear. Blood thrummed in her ears, her heartbeat increasing, breath raking at her throat. She felt a fly land on the bridge of her nose and bite, and she welcomed the brief spike of pain, because it was the only hope she had.

Gorham grabbed her arm and shook it, and she raised one hand to point. Around them, the sound of panicked flight and frightened conversation subdued.

Something was rising out of Marcellan. Blurred and disfigured by the smoke and dust still hanging above the collapsed area, the shape was gigantic, pushing through the pale clouds and glittering as though wet. It was difficult to judge size from this distance, and Peer did not want to. She could not. It was unbelievable, terrible, and to try to judge the magnitude of the thing wavering above that hole…

"Oh," Gorham said, and it broke through her muffled terror. He held her hand and squeezed.

Now people were screaming and running. Some fell, others trampled them. Peer and Gorham just stood. They'd been expecting something, but nothing could have prepared them for this.

The thing protruded above the city, shifting back and forth in the dust and smoke cloud, fires erupting around its base, a great column of flame spewing up and out from the hole in the shoulder of Marcellan Canton, and nothing of it was identifiable. For that, Peer was glad. It was a gray, glittering edifice, larger than any building, taller than Marcellan Canton's tallest spires, and if a great eye, or a mouth, had opened somewhere across its girth, she thought perhaps she would never recover from the madness that would bring.

"We need to find Penler," she said, amazed at how calm her voice sounded. Perhaps grabbing on to something rooted and certain was all she had.

Just before she turned to drag Gorham away, the thing tilted sideways. It fell with surprising slowness, but when it struck the ground, the violence was terrible. Buildings shattered, fire billowed, dust exploded in pressurized twisting torrents, and then the sound rolled in across the Levels, testament to the terrible destruction.

The shock wave came next. It knocked them off balance, and Gorham went down. Peer knelt next to him and covered her head with her hands. People cried, buildings fell, some screaming ceased.

As the rumble lessened, Peer said, "Gorham."

"Yeah. Penler."

They entered the rush of panicked humanity. Penler's home lay to the south, so they let the tide take them. But it was not long before Peer realized that they were just another part of the tide.

Nophel had watched them for as long as he could-as long as the Scope could extend itself that far, and the smoke did not obscure his view, and the rush of fleeing humanity did not swallow them. But then, inevitably, they were lost to him. And his last sight of the small girl who had once been his mother was as she leaned on the man's arm and let him help her along.

But the wounds on his arms still bled, and he could still touch her with his mind.

Sprawled on the floor, he looked at the bloodstains beneath him. He coughed again and added to them, and for a moment he panicked, thinking that perhaps this would be the last time he fell. But the Baker's ministrations had been skilled. His wound was a solid, burning pain in his chest, but still he managed to kneel, and then he took a deep breath before he turned back to the screen.

If the Scope was turned, its eye ruptured by flying debris, its mountings wrenched by the impact of that thing, I'll be blind until I draw my last breath. But the screen, though flickering, still showed an image of the city and the thing that had risen and fallen across it.

Nophel hauled himself back up into his seat, breath rattling in his chest. He kept glancing at the screen and away again, not quite believing, not able to acknowledge exactly what he had seen. But there was no denying the sight that awaited him.

He laid his hands across the controls and coaxed the best view from the ailing Scope.

Dust and smoke hazed the air, but he could focus through them, zooming in on the sprawled thing where it lay in a new valley of its own making. A thousand buildings had been crushed beneath it, along with untold thousands of people, and fires were spreading across the southern and western slopes of Marcellan Canton. Buildings folded, their walls exploding outward where the ground beneath them broke, and several fault lines progressed across the city like roaming monsters. One of them reached the tall Marcellan wall directly to the west and cleaved it in two.

Nophel grinned at the symbolism and wondered where the Marcellans and Hanharans were right then.

Two other shapes were rising slowly on either side of the massive fallen thing, pressing down against the ground and heaving, and he could barely believe that they were limbs.

The size of the thing was difficult to comprehend, because it was alive. So when Nophel saw the shapes parting from it-red dashing things that seemed to snake away from the fallen mass and steer themselves through the ruined streets-he tried to focus on one of them instead. He used the tracking ball to control the Scope, following one of the red things as it flowed along a sloping street like a globule of fresh blood. Nophel could only guess at its size-the girth of a tusked swine, perhaps-until it encountered a small group of people.

As it grasped them in its whipping appendages and pulled them toward itself and started to eat-then he could judge its size.

Nophel closed his eyes, and the Baker saw. He felt her fear and sadness, and that made him afraid and sad as well.

North, she whispered to him, and he urged the Scope to strain against its mounting, turning its eye toward the north as it had when the Dragarians first emerged. It did so more easily than he imagined, and he supposed it might be pleased to look away.

Working levers and dials, Nophel brought the northern extremes of Echo City closer. The domes of Dragar's Canton were as still as ever, but then the Baker whispered, Beyond, and he lifted the Scope's eye slightly and stretched it farther.

There was desert, the familiar bleached yellow of the Bonelands. And beyond the shadows of the domes, a tide of darkness washed out from Echo City.

"They're going," Nophel whispered. The Dragarians were leaving their retreat. He only wished he could coax the Scope to look farther, bring the distance in closer, because he wanted to see the Baker's other abandoned son one last time.

Back, Rose whispered gently. Not long left now, so one last look…

"I'm not afraid to die," Nophel said, hoping that she heard. And he drew the Scope back to the southwest, toward the risen mass of the Vex. Trying to shake the enormity of what he had seen to the north, he scanned slowly across the risen thing's surface. There seemed to be deep rents in its flesh, from which bubbled great gouts of blood-red fluid. And from these gouts manifested the dashing things, rolling and bubbling, crawling, and then running through the city's fallen streets.

The Baker could see, and Nophel felt her fear and resignation. But, with the sight of the Dragarians' flight, he could also sense her hope.

The building beneath him shuddered from a terrible impact. He almost slipped from the chair, such was the extreme of movement, and he heard the ominous crunching, cracking sounds of stone crumbling under tension. The image on the screen wavered, and then he heard a sound that was deeper and more terrible than the sound of the breaking city-a cry, a scream, and Nophel closed his eyes and felt blood dribble from his left ear.

The image shivered and veered up to the clear blue sky. For a moment all he saw was beauty, hazed by a thin skein of smoke that was all that indicated what was happening below. And he realized that the Scope had looked away because it was scared.

"One more look," he said, unsure whether he was talking to the Scope, or himself, or the child Baker. He touched the levers and dials and viewed the risen thing a final time.

Dust and smoke obscured much of it, and flames erupted here and there. It seemed unconcerned by the fires. It shifted and flexed, its countless appendages worming through the streets, destroying another hundred buildings with each movement. And then Nophel frowned. It was covered in… something.

He turned a dial and the Scope took him in.

The monster's hide was stippled, rough, and mostly pale. He focused in some more, stroking a guiding ball when the Scope began to shake with fear again, and then he realized what clothed the thing.

Bodies. Thousands of them, tens of thousands; skeletons and rotting corpses, some piled so deep that hundreds had sloughed off in drooping, skinlike jowls. They decorated the thing's hide like the pustules on his own, and Nophel put one hand to his face.

He could feel the Baker seeing through him, and her shock echoed back at him, a guilt that was not his own.

He coughed and blood flowed from his mouth, thick and dark. He guided the Scope to pan along the thing, moving inward all the time, sweeping its huge eye toward what he thought of as the Vex's head. He could sense that the Scope wanted to turn away, and he was sure that soon it would, denying his commands for the first time. And he would never blame it. But for now he had to see, because everything he saw, the Baker saw.

There were larger bodies pierced on huge spines lining the thing's hide. These were black and silver, and many-bladed, and looked fresh. Around them were dark, steaming scars on the leviathan's skin. And as Nophel moved on…

His breath stalled. He snapped a lever to freeze the image and saw a body that caught his attention. Surrounded by rot and bone, this body was new, pale and red in equal measure. He tried to push the Scope closer, unconcerned now at the discomfort he must be causing the wretched creature, ignoring the insistent prodding in his mind from the Baker to look away, look away… and then he saw the face, whose familial features he recognized. Its mouth was open wide in an endless scream. One arm was pinned high, as if waving.

The Scope died, Nophel's vision faded, and his body was lit by the mass of pain in his chest. He sat back in his chair, eyes closed. He welcomed the calming touch on his mind that did its best to see away the pain, though it was now beyond calming.

"Mother," he said.

And then he drove out that influence with a force of will, because he had no wish for her to feel his death.

Penler was standing on top of the ruined home next to his own. He was staring north while everyone else fled south, and for a moment Peer simply watched him. It felt as if she had been away from Skulk for years, not just days, and Penler's appearance lived up to that idea.

He stood like an old man. His thinning hair waved behind his head in the warm breeze washing down from the north, and she could see that he was squinting. He can't quite see, she thought, and she knew there was much to tell him.

Gorham stood close to her, one hand pressed against the small of her back. If she'd felt a shred of possessiveness there, she would have shrugged him away, but he was as scared as she was. Contact was something they both needed. That, and friendship.

Penler froze, then slowly turned. "Peer," he said, and grinned as if the world was no longer ending.

"Penler," she said. "I hoped I'd find you still here."

He took a final, long look north, then worked his way down the slope of rubble. Old he might be, but he was still sure-footed from half a lifetime of living among the ruins.

"Nowhere else to go, it seems," he said.

"This is Gorham," she said, and perhaps Penler heard a whole history in her voice, because his smile was uncertain.

"I've heard so much about you," Gorham said. "I think you saved Peer's life."

"She's a strong woman," Penler said.

"Here." Peer ripped her fly bag open and a handful of flies escaped, circling up into the air, darting left and right. Several landed on Penler, and one bit. He did not wince or make a noise. When the fly lifted away, he looked closely at the small speck of blood, touching it gently with one finger.

"What have you just done to me?" he asked, though with curiosity rather than suspicion.

"Hopefully saved your life," Peer said. "We have to go out into the desert, and-"

"And then we'll die."

"No," Gorham said, but he did not sound convinced.

"We think not," Peer said. "The Baker-"

"I thought the Baker was dead!"

"Oh, Penler," Peer said, and there was so much to tell. She closed her eyes, and fatigue hit her then, the darkness behind her eyelids luring her down to sleep. "I have some stories for you, my friend. So many. And there's plenty I think you'll be able to help us explain. But first…" She opened her eyes again, and Penler was staring at her in a way he never had before. I really broke his heart, she thought. I shouldn't have brought Gorham with me.

"First?" Penler asked.

"You've seen what's happening," Gorham said.

"I've seen something."

"The doom of Echo City," Gorham continued. "Rising from the Chasm below the Falls." He shook his head, and Peer knew that none of them could adequately express what they had witnessed and experienced.

"Where's the visitor?" Penler asked.

"With the Dragarians," she said, and Penler's eyes opened wider.

"He came from the Bonelands," he said softly.

"There's going to be plenty of time to explain." A rush of enthusiasm almost overwhelmed Peer. "But right now we have to leave and take as many people with us as we can." She grabbed his hands and pulled him closer, then wrapped her own hands around his and put them to her chest. He felt her heartbeat, and she saw that familiar twinkle of humor and intelligence. She was glad it was still there. She'd feared her leaving might have extinguished it forever.

"And you think they'll follow me into the desert," he said.

"I know they will."

"You think they'd follow me?" Gorham asked, eyebrows raised.

"No," Penler said, and his smile seemed genuine. "Though they might line the walls to watch you die."

"Nice," Gorham muttered.

"Don't mind him," Peer laughed, "the old bastard has a way with words."

"Words are all we have," Penler said, and his smile turned sad as they all recognized the truth in that. "Is it really the end?"

"You saw what came up," Peer said.

"I saw something. I don't know what."

"The Bakers are to blame. But the latest is also to thank." She touched the swollen fly bite on his hand. "For this."

"Where is she?" he asked.

"Out there somewhere," Peer said, nodding into an uncertain distance.

"With an invisible person," Gorham said. Penler glanced at him, smile unsure, and then turned back to Peer.

"And this all began because of Rufus?"

"In truth, it began generations ago. I'll tell you everything."

"When we're away," he said, and Peer nodded.

"We'll need food and water," she said.

Penler stared at his house, unmoving.

"I'll go," Gorham said, and he dashed inside. They waited in companionable silence, staying close as they watched people rushing southward. Gorham emerged moments later with a water sack and a bulging backpack.

"Ah, stoneshrooms," Peer said.

Penler grinned and took Peer's hand. They turned south and headed for the city wall a mile distant, and Peer felt tears threatening. Penler had turned his back on his home, his maps, his studies, his books and projects and writings, and all because of what she had told him. All because of her. She felt a warm, rich love emanating from him that she had never felt from Gorham, and she realized he was the father she had never known, holding her hand and leading her away from danger.

"I've been waiting for you to come back," he said.

"Liar."

"No, really." He raised an eyebrow, maintaining his seriousness. "I always knew you found me irresistible."

Peer laughed out loud, and people around them stared at this madwoman amused by the end-times.

Sheltering along the base of the city's southern wall were several hundred Garthans. They shook in the heat of the summer day, shielding their eyes against the unbearable light, and people kept a good distance from them. They scratched at vivid red bites across their naked bodies. Peer hoped they would follow everyone else out into the desert but hated to think what effect the unrelenting sun would have on skin so used to darkness.

Gorham stared at them strangely, and Peer knew he would have a story to tell her later.

Penler led them to an open stone staircase, and they climbed to the top of the wall. It was wide here, arranged with seating that looked mostly inward, and she remembered sitting here many times with Penler, discussing, debating, and arguing. She felt an odd nostalgia for such good times.

The place where she'd first seen Rufus was a mile to the east. She looked along the wall in that direction, and the mass of humanity stunned her. The wall was packed with people, and below them in the streets and roads that led along the wall's base were many more.

"So many," Penler said. "This used to be a nice quiet place."

"They're lost," Gorham said. "They're looking for someone to tell them what to do."

"Aren't we all?" Penler asked.

"No," Gorham said. "Not everyone needs that."

Peer raised her hands and smiled at both men. "Now's not the time for a religious debate."

"If not now, when?" Penler asked.

From the north came continuing sounds of destruction. A column of smoke and dust rose high above the city, thick and textured at its base, spreading and dispersing higher up where the desert breezes grabbed hold. It was rooted on the southwestern slopes of Marcellan Canton, but fires were apparent at many other sites across the city, from eastern Mino Mont to western Course. At the base of the cloud of dust and smoke-even from this distance-they could see movement.

"Later," Peer said again. "There'll be plenty of time later."

"It's good to hear your confidence."

"Penler, there's somewhere beyond the Bonelands," she said. "He didn't tell me much. He wouldn't. But it's there." She frowned, looking over Penler's shoulder.

"And?" he asked.

"And he said something there sees us, and he hopes it will welcome us."

Penler was silent for a few beats, glancing back and forth between Peer and Gorham. At last he said, "And you're the ones who cannot entertain gods," and then Penler turned to the crowds.

He stood with the grace of someone half his age. Peer knew that he commanded respect in Skulk, but she was also aware that most of those around them now had come down from the city. Their clothing gave them away, as did their smooth skins and the fact that they carried belongings with them. People in Skulk owned little.

This was the moment when they all had to cast differences aside and listen.

"Echo City is doomed!" Penler shouted.

"No shit!" a voice said from the street below. A man was crying, children were laughing and playing, and a hundred voices mumbled unheard replies to Penler's pronouncement.

"Look behind you and see what ignorance and blind faith will bring," he roared. "Fear and death with no hope for something more! What are the Marcellans doing to counter whatever this sudden threat might be?"

"I saw Blades raping a woman in the street!" a man yelled, and voices surged again, expressing disgust or offering other stories.

"That's because they're afraid. Fear breeds desperation, and from desperation comes such violence. They're afraid because the Marcellans offer them nothing else. They'll follow Hanharan because they're told to, not because they choose to listen to him in their hearts."

Peer shifted uncomfortably, but she knew what Penler was doing and respected the roots of his own beliefs. There was no way he could get the crowd on his side by expressing non-belief, and even if that could help, she knew he never would. He was an honest man who would not deny his own philosophies. And that bullish honesty was why they would follow him.

"And what are you listening to, old man?" someone called.

"I'm listening to someone I call my friend," he said. He pressed both hands to his chest and looked out over the crowd.

"Who the fuck are you, anyway?"

"That's Penler. You can trust him."

"I don't trust criminals!"

A roar rose, the crowd surged, fists flailed. Penler glanced down at Peer and she nodded at him, giving him whatever encouragement and support he needed. Someone I call my friend, he'd said, and she smiled at his shrewdness. He could never lie-one of his weaknesses, but also his greatest strength-but he could let the listeners interpret what he said in their own ways.

He held up his hands and the crowd calmed. He had them, she realized. They were willing to watch and listen while the city fell behind them, because this was the first time someone had really spoken to them. They'd all woken with whispers in their ears, but now they could see and hear the person offering them advice.

"I'm told there's hope," Penler said. "I'm told you came here at the behest of your own inner voices. And look around-I see no Marcellan costumes here, no Hanharan priest's robes. That means we're all special. That means we've all been given a way to escape. To escape that." He pointed over their heads, over the top of Skulk's tallest buildings at the monstrous column of smoke. As if at a signal from him, another tremor shook the ground, and moments later the sound rumbled in, shedding tiles from rooftops and knocking people to the ground.

"And we have to escape!" Penler cried. "There's a way to defeat your fear. You have to trust in yourselves and trust in me."

"But how do you know?" a woman shouted.

"I've always known," he said. Then he stepped down from the parapet, crossed the wide head of the wall, and stood overlooking the desert with his back to the city.

Peer shivered. A chill went through her. The desert burned, dead and barren, and the thought of going out there terrified her. Gorham held her hand and pulled her forward. They shouldered past people until they were standing close behind Penler. And then Peer gasped as her friend started to descend a crumbling staircase leading down the wall's outer face.

She panicked. Is this enough? Did he say enough? Will they think him mad? Will they turn their backs, on him as he's turned his own on Echo City? She looked around the crowd and paused, seeing a face she recognized. It was a woman who'd picked stoneshrooms from the same rubble fields as Peer. The woman caught Peer's eye… and smiled.

She believes, Peer thought.

"Come on," she said, pulling Gorham after her. They stood on the wall and looked down at the desert below.

Penler was already halfway down. The treads cantilevered from the wall, rough and never used, and he was pressed back against the stonework to avoid their crumbling edges. But still he descended with confidence, never once pausing, never once looking back.

Hundreds of people leaned over the wall to witness his descent, and hundreds more stood farther back, waiting to see what would come of this.

Peer looked at the sands that had played no part in the city's life other than to offer it a place of death. Gorham clasped her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek.

Peer went first.

He had found a form of forgiveness and a diluting of his guilt in the woman he had betrayed, and he would not betray her again. Though every scrap of flesh and blood and bone told him to turn back, he did not hesitate for a moment. Peer was already on the baked sand and walking out after Penler, and Gorham followed, feeling the change in texture beneath his shoes and biting down a sudden urge to vomit.

She did not look back at him, and there was intense trust in that. Likewise, Gorham did not look back at the city wall, and he trusted that the people would follow. It'll take only a few, he thought, and then a few more. And then we'll be committed to discovering whether those fly bites were worth the prick of pain they gave us all.

The sand was hot and hard, shifting slightly beneath him as he walked. Gorham looked at the bite marks across his hands and arms, but they were not changing. The sun felt hotter out here. It was late afternoon now, and soon dusk would be falling, and they would be out in the desert without anywhere to sleep, little to drink, and the city behind them would call and There was a noise behind him, the likes of which he had never heard before. It started low and far away, like a dog howling in the night, but it rose and grew louder-a howl that turned into a scream-and louder, and every hair on his arms and neck stood up, his balls tingled, and his legs grew weak. He paused but still did not look back, because he had denied himself the city forever.

The cry went on, louder than anything he'd ever thought possible, a shattering exhalation of rage and hunger, fear and triumph, and he was certain he saw cracks opening in the ground all around him as the land itself shook in sympathy, or shivered in fear.

As the cry faded, voices rose behind him. I won't look back, he thought, I can't look back, I'll never look back.

But he could look sideways.

Running across the sand toward him, fleeing the city at an angle, came Alexia. She was carrying Rose on her back, and the Baker waved. It seemed such an odd, innocent gesture that Gorham waved back, as if greeting a friend's daughter rather than the most powerful person the city had ever known.

"They're coming," Rose called as they grew closer. "They're following! Don't stop, Gorham. Don't stop walking for anything."

"What was that?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

"The Vex is risen." Rose looked more haunted than anyone he had ever seen. There was such knowledge in her eyes, but he wanted none of it. "We're the lucky ones," she said. "The lucky few."

The few, she called them, and Gorham walked on with Alexia beside him. The Unseen was sweating in her old Scarlet Blade clothes, and her hair was plastered to her head, but she wore an expression of grim determination.

The few walked on, and soon, from behind them, Gorham heard the many beginning to follow. There were footsteps and voices, shouting and crying, and even a few bursts of laughter. And as the sun dipped toward the Markoshi Desert's western horizon, Echo City already felt very far away.

All through the night, they heard the sounds of destruction from behind them. Thunder rolled across the sands, and the city became a blazing pyre on the northern horizon. A breeze blew into their faces, drawn from the south by the conflagration, and at least that meant the stink of the burning city was kept at bay.

"What could cause such burning?" Gorham asked when they stopped to rest at last, and for a while none of them had an answer.

After a while Rose said, "After so long in the deep, climbing the Falls, perhaps heat is all the Vex seeks."

"You really believe that's all?" Peer asked, and Rose did not answer, settling down beside Alexia and closing her eyes.

But none of them slept. They huddled close for warmth, and all around them they heard the sounds of humanity uprooted-crying, sobbing, wild laughter, and groans of pain. When dawn came, the mournful tears began. Bodies lay here and there, causes of death uncertain. Peer could not even begin to entertain the fact that the desert had started to kill them.

They commenced their second day of walking with the city smoking far behind them. They were too far away to make out any detail, but the fires seemed to be dying down as morning passed into afternoon. The rising smoke grew lighter. And then the distant sound they had heard before leaving the city-pain, frustration, the scream of some mad thing shown only more madness in its future-accompanied them until dusk.

Peer had felt sick for a while, but that soon passed. Even Rose seemed stronger than before, though the little food Gorham had managed to grab from Penler's house would not last them very long.

"People are dying," Peer said, as they sat around a fire that night. Thousands more campfires burned around them, lighting up swaths of the Markoshi Desert-a place known for time immemorial as the Bonelands. They burned clothing, belongings, and wood gathered from the scattered remains of old wagons and other constructs that had made it this far in the past. Peer smelled cooking meat and tried not to imagine what it might be. Several groups of Garthans had accompanied them out, walking far apart from them.

They'd talked today about how many people they thought had walked, and estimates ranged from Gorham's ten thousand to Penler's two hundred thousand. None of them had any concept of such numbers or what that many people looked like. No one would ever know for sure.

"Fear," Penler said. "Thirst. Hunger. Not everyone brought food and water with them." There had already been fighting, and late that afternoon they'd seen a father stabbing a man to death after he tried to steal food from his children. Peer was glad to have her friends around her. Alexia still carried her sword, though she had discarded the tunic that identified her as an ex-Scarlet Blade.

"Illness," Gorham said. "Maybe some are succumbing."

"There will be many people who weren't bitten," Rose said, and Peer sat up straight, staring at the girl.

"I never even considered that," she said. She felt guilty at finding hope in the deaths of so many, but, looking around the fire, she saw the same hope reflected in everyone.

"Time will tell," Penler said. She'd told him everything during that first afternoon and evening, answering his questions and bringing in Gorham and Alexia when there were answers she did not know. When she told him what had happened to Rufus, he'd grown pale, and then Rose had revealed what she had seen through Nophel. A dark tide heading north, she had said.

Everything I wrote about the Dragarians… Penler had whispered, but he would say no more. Perhaps he was seeing justification in a lifetime of belief.

Or maybe he was wishing he'd gone with them.

He had been quiet ever since, rarely contributing to their discussions. Peer knew when he was brooding. She also knew that he would talk when he was ready.

No one tried to take charge. Some looked to Penler-those who had been at the wall and seen him venturing out onto the sands-but his silence drove them away.

The people from the doomed city walked, and fell, and died beneath the sun and the moon.

They were five days out from the city. It was behind them now, below the horizon, evidence of its ruin little more than a pale smudge in the sky. Peer tried clinging to hope, and Gorham clung to her, slowly losing his way. Out here in the Bonelands, the past felt like it belonged to someone else, and she told him she forgave him. Hugged him close. It helped, for a while.

Their food and water were finished.

People died around them. They were left where they fell, after whatever food and drink they still carried was taken. Whispers passed this way and that of cannibalism, rumors drifting like the breeze that still blew in their faces. The Garthans had gone, either dead or drifted in another direction, and so the alleged flesh-eating was much worse.

Some people turned to go back.

It was not the desert killing people-it was exhaustion, hunger, thirst, desperation, and hopelessness. Peer was confident that the young Baker's chopping of Rufus's blood, and the bloodflies, had worked. But perhaps even that would not be enough to save them.

The walkers had spread out, not drawn in as Peer had expected, and for as far as she could see behind and around them, the desert was speckled with refugees from Echo City. But before them was only sand. Something in all of them drove them on-Penler most of all. He was old and weak, suffering badly and still mostly silent, and Peer feared he was grasping on to one small fact to keep himself going: He had been the first into the Bonelands, and he would be the first to reach their destination.

Where they were going could not be discussed, because nobody knew for sure. Peer had told her companions what Rufus had said about the Heart and Mind, but that meant nothing to them. His words echoed for them all: I hope it will welcome you.

For now they were just walking.

Rose spoke little, but when she did, Peer took note. The girl would never have a child's mind. "This is an adventure we've been waiting for forever," she said. And, "She did her best… she gave us time." And, "I'm sorry."

That afternoon, they took on a little boy they found crying over the body of his father. And, that evening, the little boy died.

Rose cried. That was what astonished Peer more than anything. The Baker cried for one death, while the destruction of a city and countless people had left her merely contemplating the histories buried in her mind. It made her seem almost human.

Rose started to fade next day. They waited with her while the sun passed its zenith, because she could not walk anymore, and even Alexia was no longer strong enough to carry her.

"I'm the last Baker of Echo City," she whispered to the heat, and when Peer tried to protest, the girl grasped her hand. "We've lasted too long already. After what we have done, do you think the Baker will be welcomed elsewhere?"

Peer remained silent, because she could not answer that honestly. So they stayed around her as others passed by, and no one else knew who the little dying girl was.

"Fading away," Rose said softly as the sun touched the horizon. "Nothing lasts forever." Gorham was kneeling beside her then, holding her hand. He seemed confused, but Peer held back because she sensed he needed space to be with the girl. He'd call her if he needed her.

And after Rose passed away, Peer was there for him.

Next morning, as they started to stagger across the desert for one more day, Penler was the first to speak.

"Last night I smelled something on the breeze," he said.

"What something?" Alexia asked.

"I'm not sure, but not desert. And I feel something. Something…"

"What?"

"Reaching out. Sensing. Don't you feel it too?" His eyes sparkled, but Peer had to shake her head.

"No," she said, saddened by his confusion. But Penler always had been amazing, and it was a hope she would cling to.

"Then we're getting somewhere?" Gorham asked.

"Maybe," Penler said. "Perhaps somewhere we never should have been. Who knows what made this desert what it is? The Baker has made us able to cross it, but who or what made the Baker?"

"Does it matter?" Peer asked.

"I think so," he said. "I think so very much."

She thought about the Baker as they walked, and what a mystery she really was.

Their skin was burned and peeling. Their tongues were swollen. More people died. They stopped that night, but only a handful of small groups found material to light fires. They tried sucking moisture from their clothes, and Penler chewed at his shoe leather before laughing and lying down. By the time dawn touched the horizon, there were no more fires left.

That morning, many people chose not to walk anymore.

Penler led them, and the others followed. Alexia seemed the strongest of them all, and Peer drew strength from both the woman and the old man. She could never stop as long as they walked.

"Do you still feel it?" Peer asked.

"Yes," Penler said.

Later, when she found enough strength for another question, she asked, "What do you think happened to Rufus?"

"You heard Rose," Penler said. "Honored Darkness. As we walk south, he leads them north. They believe in it… and that will be their strength."

"But what is it?"

"Perhaps it's exactly what the Dragarians believe-a place that is timeless and forever. Or maybe it's simply a place far to the north, where the sun never touches. Whatever, they have the strength of their… their faith… and…"

Penler went to his knees in the sand. It was almost a relief. Peer sat beside him and hugged his head to her chest. Gorham was behind her, his face split and bleeding from the relentless sun. And Alexia remained standing, and always would, as if to sit down was to give in for good.

Peer looked at the people around them, and most of them were stopping as well. He didn't want it, but they've been following him all along. There were thousands of them, still determined, fading, and dying, because Penler had told them there was hope.

Peer tried to ask Gorham what the Baker had done to them all, but she found that her throat was too dry to speak, her tongue too swollen. She rested her cheek on top of Penler's head, and Gorham sat beside her. It was too hot and painful to touch, but his hand in hers was all that mattered.

Virtually blinded by the heat, unable to speak, she squeezed his hand to show that she could love him. He squeezed back. And that made it easy to close her eyes.

In their dreams, a voice said, The Heart and Mind has seen you, and you are welcome. And later, perhaps only hours before they would have died, shadows fell across them.