Echo City (59 page)

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?