"There's more that you don't yet know," Malia said to Peer. Then she blew the bugs into the tall man's face.
And when she leaned forward to ask him her first question, he began to scream.
On the rooftop of the tallest building on the highest hill in Echo City, a Baker's child fed four Scopes and made sure their chains were secure. He liked these monsters, enjoyed the sickly wet sounds their mouths made when they opened, and breathed in the stink of them that even the stiff breeze up here could never completely carry away. He smoothed their thick, rough skin beneath their leathery covers. He scooped their shit and swept their piss to a far corner of the roof and into a chute that took it away. Sometimes he spoke to them, knowing that even if they heard they could never understand. His mother had made them well, while she had made him badly.
His name was Nophel, and he had named himself. She had never honored him with a name. He doubted she even gave him a glance before sending him to Bedmoil, the largest workhouse in Mino Mont. It had been the greatest moment of his life when he aided in her downfall twenty years before.
Nophel had taken his name from one of the six-legged gods of the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians. His Marcellan employers disliked that, and the Hanharan priests who occasionally visited him hated it. But these reactions interested him, and intellectually he knew that the name had become more than just a part of him. Nophel, so the temple's teachings went, was the god of quiet things, and he had spent his life keeping to the shadows, whispering while others shouted and ensuring that he could go where he pleased. Old Dane Marcellan had taken to using Nophel for some of his more covert activities, and Nophel liked that well enough. Even so, alone up here with the Scopes was the only time he would reveal his mutilation to the skies.
He fed the Western Scope, the last of the four, using a wide spoon to scoop the chickpig and mepple stew into its drooling mouth. It made small, satisfied grunting noises as it fed-the only one of the four that did-and he heard its stomach rumbling as it swallowed the food. A thick membrane slipped down and up across its massive eyeball, clearing dust and renewing its view. While it chewed its last mouthful, Nophel knelt to check its gears, mountings, and cogs. They were well greased. He pulled a lever, forcing the thing to shift its weight slightly. The complex support system moved and flexed, but he heard nothing. That was good. Next he ensured that the reading tube's entry point to its body was not sore or infected. It entered at the back of the Scope's neck, and Nophel hated the bristly pink junction of silk tube with rough skin, because it reminded him of his own deformed face in the mirror. There was no sign of inflammation and it was dry. That pleased him, because it meant he would not have to apply any soothing cream.
Soon the time would come to move the Scopes around the roof, changing their positions to avoid resting sores. But not yet. That was a task he disliked because it revealed their true genesis: humanity. Covered in leather shrouds, they were monsters to him. When he moved them, seeing them walk, holding their shriveled hands to guide them across the rooftop because their eyes could see only far away, not this close in-despite all that, they seemed almost as human as he did.
He walked one slow circuit of the roof and looked out and down over Echo City. In some directions he could just make out the pale hint of the Markoshi Desert on the horizon, but mostly it was only city he saw, the great sprawl of ages. Towers rose here and there, and the spires of temples. The arches of the failed skyride network-the metal rusting, some sections fallen into memory, as had the dozens of people killed on its first and last ride-pricked the sky to the west. But none of them was nearly as high as Hanharan Heights. It looked so timeless, yet in a thousand years this view would be completely different. The place where he now stood would have been subsumed beneath the steady march of progress, and whoever stood upon Hanharan Heights' summit might be five hundred steps higher. And what of forever? he thought. He often attempted to wonder that far ahead. The city could not rise endlessly, and though he did not fear it-Nophel feared little-eventual stagnation, then regression, was his prediction.
He stood longest next to the Northern Scope. It was the quietest of the four, the stillest, and there had been times when he thought it dead. But if he leaned over the roof parapet and looked at its eye, he could see the moisture there and the concentration as it looked past the spread of Crescent's farmland at Dragar's Canton.
Though ten miles distant, the pale curves of Dragar's six silent domes were clearly visible. Nophel appreciated a mystery, but this one troubled him.
"So let's see what's to be seen," he said, and the breeze stole his words away.
He always bade the Scopes farewell, though they never answered back. Deep down, the root of their humanity must still exist; the Baker bitch had seen to that. And he liked to think that, even if they did not hear or answer, they sensed that he cared for them.
He descended the winding staircase that led to the viewing room, fifty steps below the exposed roof. Halfway down, he tied his robe tight and lifted his hood, just in case one of the Marcellans or, gods help him, a Hanharan priest had found reason to pay him a visit. But the room was silent, other than the steady rumble of brewing five-bean and the crackle of the fire he'd set in the hearth. Warming already, mouth watering in anticipation of the brew, he glanced at the huge viewing mirror set in the center of the room. The four wide reading tubes hung down from a hole in the ceiling, and behind the viewing mirror stood the complex apparatus used to select tubes. The western tube was connected right now, and Nophel saw the glint of sun on the Tharin's surface. It made the river appear almost alive.
Nophel poured a large mug of five-bean and sat before the viewing mirror. As always prior to seeing what they could see, he needed to see himself. He pulled a lever and the western tube disconnected with a soft hiss, the living image on the mirror fading and then flickering to nothing.
Nophel lowered his hood and smiled at his image. The single pale eye, his other eye a blood-red ruin. The dark skin split and bubbled with fungal growths; they would need pricking and bathing again later. His teeth were good, bright and even, and that made his smile the most monstrous aspect of all.
"Nophel, king of all the city," he muttered, laughing as he reconnected the western tube. Echo City's last king had been quartered and sent to the far corners fifteen hundred years before, and Nophel's utterance was an amusement only to himself.
For the next hour he controlled the Western Scope with a series of levers and dials. Rising within the reading tubes were the thin pipes that carried Nophel's hydraulic commands, and from his seat he could spur the Scope to turn its head left and right, up and down, and to extend its neck, thereby turning the great lens of its eye and bringing distant things in close. He imagined the chopped creature grunting as he turned dials and pulled or pushed levers, and perhaps it still had the taste of chickpig in its mouth as it obeyed promptings it did not understand. The Marcellans viewed the Scopes as little more than machines; Nophel alone acknowledged their spark of life.
From the expansive farmland of Crescent Canton to the water refineries of Course, he focused in and out, enjoying the sense of flying across the city. Smoke rose from tall chimneys close to the western wall, steam drifted southward from the refineries, canals flowed, streets bustled, rathawks drifted and swooped. He could see straight along the river from here, and he tweaked a lever, commanding the Scope to close along the Tharin as far as it could. The image on the viewing mirror grew, quickly passing the city walls and reaching far out into the haze of the desert. The image paused, Nophel nudged the lever impatiently, and the Scope stretched farther. The view was now simply a mass of hazy air and pale desert landscape, but he sat staring at it for some time. The Marcellans said there was nothing beyond the city, yet here he was. He reveled in this slight rebellion, realizing that it was foolish yet enjoying it nonetheless. If the Marcellans knew where he looked, he would be in trouble-yet nothing like that worried him. He sometimes believed that Dane Marcellan-the one who had taken it upon himself to look after Nophel-was even a little scared of him. One day that fear might serve him well, but for now he simply toyed with it.
Nophel worked for the Marcellans, but he lived for himself.
The image began to waver as the Scope grew tired, and he stroked the dial that gave it permission to draw back into itself. As it did so, its sight passed across the area to the north of Course where the Baker had practiced her monstrous arts until two decades before. Nophel smiled grimly and went about switching Scopes.
A hiss of escaping gas, the soft click of well-oiled gears, and he pumped the footrest that boosted pressure in the hydraulic systems. Draining his five-bean and going to pour more, Nophel felt the familiar thrill at what he would see next. Dragar's Canton was always motionless, quiet, enigmatic, yet he could watch its stillness for hours. They're down there, he would think, or maybe not, and both stark possibilities held him enraptured. The streets were full of rumors, of course, but there had been no verified sighting of a Dragarian for almost forty years.
When he returned to the viewing mirror and turned a dial, he dropped his mug of five-bean. He barely sensed the pain as the liquid scalded his foot.
Then he lifted his hood, closed his robe, and rushed from the room, heading down.
There were several Scarlet Blades in the corridor outside the Marcellans' rooms. They were lounging in wide leather seats, playing lob dice and laughing as one unfortunate lost more and more shillings. They glanced up at Nophel's approach, and the laughter chilled.
"I need to see Dane Marcellan," he said.
"Dane's busy," one of the tall female soldiers replied. Someone chuckled.
"Then I'll fucking un-busy him!" Nophel roared. One Blade stood and drew his knife; another took a step back. Nophel shook, his surprise at how he'd raged at them smothered by the fear and excitement that had taken hold.
"Fine," the woman said. "I'll pick you a nice spot on the wall." She kicked at the door handle behind her and shoved the door open with her boot. They all knew that Nophel would never hang on the wall. If and when the time came, he'd disappear quickly and quietly, and his body would float down into the Chasm with so many others.
I scare them, he thought, and he glared at the soldiers as he passed by. A couple of them glowered back, but their eyes flickered away before his did. The others did not watch him through the door at all.
He entered the long, wide corridor that ran the length of the Marcellans' living quarters, hurrying quickly past displays of rare artwork, sculptures, and religious artifacts from thousands of years of Hanharan dominance. As always, he spared a quick glance for the glass-enclosed finger bone-the priests and their more-devout followers believed fervently that it was the index finger from Hanharan's left hand-then paused outside Dane's door.
A moment of doubt gripped him. Is it really Dane I need to tell? But of all the Marcellans, Dane was the closest to a friend he had. And there really was no one else.
Heart thumping from exertion, eye wide as though it could retain the dread image of what he had seen, he thumped once on the door and then entered.
Dane was standing naked at a table in the far corner of the room, cooking slash and inhaling the fumes through a series of wet pipes. The flesh of his ample thighs and buttocks quivered as he breathed in, and Nophel heard the sighs of gentle pleasure. In the center of the room, reclining on the vast round bed, two naked women idly stroked each other. One of them glanced up, apparently unconcerned at being disturbed. And then she saw Nophel.
"Oh!" she gasped. She stared at his face, still shadowed by the hood, her brazen nakedness a sign of her sick fascination. I'm not a person to her, Nophel thought, and he felt the familiar flush of shame that he had spent his entire life trying to push down.
Dane turned around, taking a moment to focus. "Nophel," he said.
"We must talk," Nophel said.
Dane pulled the pipe to his lips again and pursed them around its end-a delicate action for such a fat man. His rounded stomach hung so low that his genitals were almost hidden from view.
"Poor man," the other naked woman said. She had slipped from the bed and stood, unashamed, scratching idly at her stomach with one hand while she looked at him.
"Leave us if you will, ladies," Dane said.
"But, Dane," the first woman began, "we were just getting-"
"It's important," Nophel said. He was looking at the women as he spoke, and he took several steps forward, knowing that the burning oil lamps would cast more light onto his face from this angle.
The standing woman stepped back, crossing both hands over her sex.
"Tomorrow," Dane said. He turned his back on the women and breathed in more slash, waving Nophel over.
The women left without dressing, exiting through a door hidden in an expanse of books lining one wall. Nophel had never been in there, though he knew it led to a series of stairs and corridors-Dane's own private route down into the vastness of Hanharan Heights. He felt a pang of jealousy that Dane would let two whores use this way yet not let him, but he shoved it aside. This was not about favors, or even trust. Both men wanted what was best for the city, and though their outlooks might differ, they came together about the bigger picture.
"It's been a while," Dane said. He turned and smiled. "You're sure I can't interest you in…?" He nodded at the door through which the women had vanished. "Rebec really is very good. She does things with her lips and a mouthful of dart root that'll have you calling to Hanharan's divine cock for mercy."
Nophel shook his head. Dane's blasphemy never surprised him. "They pity me," he said.
"You interest them. They'd explore you."
"A gateway opened in Dragar's Canton."
For a moment Dane's smile remained as he blinked away the effects of slash, absorbing what Nophel had said. Then his face dropped and he became the politician Nophel knew so well.