Echo City (54 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They frowned and wondered what it could be.

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

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

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

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

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

And yet her true age was measured only in hours.

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

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

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

“There should be another book,” she said.

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

“No,” he croaked.

“She would have left it with you to hand to me.”

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

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

“How much do you know?” he asked softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

“I’m not so sure,” he said, but somehow the girl’s words gave him comfort.

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

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

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

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

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

“The Vex is ancient history,” she whispered.

“And all of Echo City’s history is here.”

“Then
tell
me. Quickly!”

“First tell me your name.”

“I have none. Will you give me one?”

“Let me think.”

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

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

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

“There are six domes,” Malia said, sighing because she’d said that a dozen times already.

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

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