Echo City (37 page)

“Where can we go?” Nophel asked. The woman turned and beckoned him after her, and already he perceived a relaxation in her pose.
Perhaps she already knows why I’m
here
, he thought.
Am I really that obvious?
She led him through a warming steam curtain and into another corridor, this one curved and confusing. At its end she opened a door and welcomed him inside, standing back so that he could pass. Still she averted her eyes. The room was small—bed, chair, a bath in the corner, shelves adorned with all manner of oils and soaps. It stank of old sex.

“Dane Marcellan sent—” he began, but Fat Andrea cut him off.

“I was hoping. So?”

“Six wisps play their mepple strokes.” He remembered it from the map, and speaking it aloud made it sound no less foolish.

The woman relaxed, sighed, and sat down on the bed. She held her head in her hands for a beat, then rubbed her face and looked up at him again. She had changed. She looked older, more weathered, and he knew he was seeing Fat Andrea for the first time.

“What does the fat old bastard want?” she asked.

“He said you could lead me on toward the Baker.”

The woman smiled. “I can send you on your way, but I can’t lead you. I’m too busy here. I need the money for …” She laid a hand on her stomach and looked away, but not before Nophel saw her skin fade to a painful gray. She looked sicker than sick.

“I have money,” Nophel said.

“Good. Then pay me for your hour and I’ll tell you the way to Ferner’s Temple.”

Nophel went to object—Dane had said these people would lead him, not send him—but the woman’s pain was almost a heat in the room, the atmosphere redolent of wretchedness.

“I’ll pay you for two hours,” he said. Fat Andrea did not protest, and a few beats later he went back out through the gloomy corridors, past the ex-Blade, who sent him on his way with a few mocking remarks. At the end, Andrea had looked at him with those hooded, enticing eyes again, and perhaps she’d seen past his deformed face to the man inside. Or maybe his generosity had made that possible. But he’d felt no pangs of
desire, and he had no wish to take anything from Andrea other than a way through the streets.

He followed that way, and by the time the street cafés were filling for lunch, he found himself at Ferner’s Temple. He’d not expected to find a real temple. But the last thing he’d anticipated was a tavern.

   Through the early part of that afternoon, Nophel was passed along a route of contacts and places that, if what Dane said was right, would lead eventually to his sister, the new Baker. Dane’s message tube sat heavy in his pocket, and though he still felt moments of temptation, Nophel did not open it. There was a sense of loyalty to Dane and also the continuing belief—more proven with every contact he made and yet more confused as well—that Dane was more allied with the Watchers than with the Hanharan religion that had controlled the city for so long.

But there was also the alleged sister whom Nophel had never known about. He had spent a lot of time studying the Baker’s long ancestry over the years, and everything he read made him more satisfied that his treachery had been a good thing. Always feared, rarely fêted, the Bakers were an oddity in Echo City’s history that had persisted despite the many factors standing against them: lack of fealty to any government, practitioners of arcane arts, blasphemers, loners, and wielders of powers that would intimidate the powerful. As with any family, their history was checkered, with criminals, philanthropists, and monsters all holding the name of Baker for a time. Across the space of twelve thousand years over which he had managed to trace their ancestry—and though there were large periods in that extensive span when their line had become untraceable—they went from publicly visible to rumored as dead. People loved some and hated others but were always fascinated.

And there was always someone calling for their eradication.

The more he researched, the more amazed he became that no one had killed off the Bakers’ line long ago.
Perhaps they’re too hard to kill
, he thought.
I believed it had happened in my lifetime, but now …

One other factor—the decider for Nophel, the silver seal upon the casket of his betrayal—was that there were very, very few instances of a Baker’s giving birth naturally. He was one such example, and she had thrown him away.

She’s no sister of mine
, he thought. Whoever this new Baker might be, however possessed of her mother’s talent and knowledge handed down from the past, he had no doubt that she came from somewhere vastly different than he did. He was a Baker’s child, and she little more than another chopped monster.

But that did not mean he had no wish to meet her. On the contrary, he was eager. Perhaps in her he would find an answer to the question that plagued him always:
Why did she cast me aside?

He drove down self-pity. His bitterness toward his mother was rich, and though he had learned that it was not necessarily his betrayal that led to her death—the Dragarians had killed her, or so Dane claimed—the responsibility still sat well with him.

He wondered what this new Baker looked like, how she spoke, what her young life had been. Dane had told him little, feigning ignorance, but Nophel sensed in the Marcellan a wealth of knowledge that he was simply unwilling to share. Such was the prerogative of a Marcellan. Most of all, he wondered whether this sister knew of his existence. If she
had
known about him all this time, then she must have chosen to not trace him or contact him. He did not care. That only made things easier.

The day was hot, his mind was abuzz, the past was becoming a shady, misunderstood place. And with every step Nophel took, the future came closer, more exciting than he had ever hoped and perhaps offering the chance for some sort of revenge.

Ferner, landlord of Ferner’s Temple, was a thin man with an abnormally large head, and he carried the veined tracework of a drunk across his cheeks and nose. He seemed not to notice Nophel’s disfigurement, and he sent him to a chocolate shop close to Course’s western extreme. It took Nophel a while to walk there, and, in the end, tiredness overcame him
and he bought a carriage ride. The two small horses walked slowly, breaking wind and generally ignoring orders shouted at them by the driver, until finally the western wall of the city came into view. Nophel muttered his thanks and disembarked, walking ahead of the horses toward the wall.

The chocolate-maker was an incredibly thin woman with a huge nose and a chopped third limb protruding from her hip. Her right hand gathered samples to sniff and taste, while her two left hands measured, stirred, and poured into a vat of new chocolate. She said nothing when Nophel entered her shop, simply staring at his disfigured face and continuing to work. When he told her that Ferner had sent him, then repeated the code words Ferner had whispered into his ear, the woman halted in her stirring for a beat. Then she carried on, using her third limb to stir while her two natural hands carved something onto the back of a slab of dark chocolate. She wrapped it, handed it to Nophel, and, when he offered some money, shook her head and waved him away.

He left her shop and read what she had carved.

By late afternoon he had visited three more places, imparting code phrases to six people, and he was convinced that he was being followed.

It was surprising how quickly he became used to being seen again. People stared at him and steered their children out of his path, and some of them offered uncertain smiles of sympathy. Those he respected most were the ones who either ignored him or treated him as they would anyone else—trying to con him out of money, overcharging him for food or services, or shoving past him in the street with little more than a mumbled apology. They made him feel human, while the frightened ones and the smilers turned him into a monster.

The last person he was directed to was an old man sitting on a bench by the main canal leading from the refineries to the Western Reservoir. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and heavy coat, even in the heat. Beside him on the bench were a fishing rod broken into three pieces, fishing paraphernalia, and a wooden bucket filled with water, in which a single fish swam in tight, slow circles. The woman who’d sent Nophel
here had told him that Brunley Bronk sat on the same bench every day between the hours of noon and sunset, and most other times few people were able to find him. She said it was an old man’s habit, but to Nophel it sounded like someone making himself available.

Nophel had doubled back several times on his walk along the canal, leaving the overgrown towpath and slinking between buildings, trying to make out who was following him. There was never any sign, but that only served to unsettle him even more. He felt eyes on the back of his neck. And since his experience with the Blue Water, he knew that not seeing someone did not mean no one was there.

So if the Unseen followed him, what of it? He did not know the rules and capabilities of his mother’s potions, whether he would still be able to see the Unseen after taking the White Water. But he was also sure that such people would know of the Baker’s continued existence, because they could sit in any shadow in the city and see, hear, and smell every secret.

Besides, caution was good, but paranoia would not serve him well.

He sat beside the man and looked down at the fish.

“You’re from Dane Marcellan,” the old man said.

“How did you know that?”

“Tell me.”

Nophel muttered the code that the woman who’d sent him this way had written down for him. The old man nodded and scratched at his ear.

“Eat the paper,” he said. “Don’t want you dropping it so that just anyone can use those words. They have power. See this?” He held out his hand.

“What am I looking at?” Nophel asked.

“My reaction. Those words. They stop the shakes, because they make me excited. Something’s happening. And you’ve come to ask me how to find the Baker.”

He knows!
Nophel thought.
I’m close now, so close!
The weight of Dane’s message tube made itself obvious in his jacket pocket, as if aware that the end of its journey was near. He glanced back along the canal path, but the only movement was the splash of ducks and the scamperings of canal
rats. They were twice the size of normal city rats, fattened on birds and frogs and water mice.

“What you looking for?” the old man said.

“Nothing.”

“You thought you were being followed. You should have said.” The man had turned to him now, and any lightness was gone from his voice. Nophel saw the seriousness in this man’s eyes, and the startling intelligence, and he berated himself for forming foolish opinions.
I thought he was feeble
.

“So what do you want with the Baker?”

“It’s not me, it’s Dane Marcellan.”
I hope he can’t hear my lie
, he thought.

“Why?”

Nophel snorted. “I can’t tell
you
anything like that! You expect me to—”

The cool touch of keen metal pressed against his throat. A hand curved around him from behind and clamped across his forehead. And, in the center of his back, he felt the bulky heat of a knee.

“One wrong move,” a woman’s voice said.

“So who the crap is he, Malia?” a man’s voice whispered.

Nophel felt the woman lean in close and sniff at him. There was something animalistic about it, something brutal, and her voice purred like a serrated knife through flesh.

“Marcellan pet.”

   They took them farther along the canal to Malia’s boat. It wasn’t the safest place, but it was the closest. Malia and Devin guided Nophel, an arm each and a knife pressed into each side. They let Peer bring the old man Brunley. Brunley complained that he’d have to leave his fishing gear behind, but Peer assured him that they wouldn’t be long. She could not inject any certainty into her voice. For all she knew, Malia was going to kill them both.

Inside the moored canal barge, Malia quickly drew curtains across the windows, while Devin tied Nophel into a chair. Brunley sat on a comfortable bench behind a small table, crossing his hands before him and watching the proceedings with a sharp eye.

“What are you mixed up with now, Brunley?” Malia asked.

“Fishing,” he said.

Peer glanced from one to the other, and she could sense the long relationship between these two. Malia spoke to the old man without looking at him, bustling at a cupboard, and he answered in a lazy voice.
They’ve been here before
, Peer thought.
The questions, the deceits
.

“Fishing with the Marcellans’ Scope keeper?”

“Is that who he is? I’ve never seen him before.”

“Tell him,” Malia said, standing before Nophel. Devin had tied his bonds good and tight and retreated outside, sitting on the barge’s roof to keep watch.

“I’m thirsty,” Nophel said.

“I’ll throw you in the canal later.” Malia turned back to the cupboard, and an uncomfortable silence descended.

This isn’t finding Rufus
, Peer thought. They’d been sitting in the tavern, dividing Course and Crescent into search districts on a large sheaf of paper, when the whore Andrea had arrived. She’d been running, she stank, and she’d grasped Malia’s arm and dragged her into the toilets before any of them knew what was happening. Peer had not seen Malia controlled like this by anyone before. As she’d looked around at the others, eyebrows raised awaiting an explanation, Malia had come storming from the toilets, violence in her stride.

From there, to the canal, to here, and still Peer was as confused as she’d been at the beginning.

“What’s the Marcellans’ Scope keeper doing here?” Peer asked. Nophel looked at her—one good eye, and a face ravaged by growths. He stared, perhaps expecting her to look away, but she’d seen a lot worse in Skulk.

“Looking for the Baker,” Malia said. And that was when Peer knew Malia meant to kill the Scope keeper. Talking about the Baker so freely before him—even mentioning her in his presence—meant that he would not leave.

“Who are you?” Nophel asked.