"He's not yours yet," his mother's voice says. That's all. The silence that follows is heavy, like a bubble ready to burst or a claw about to scrape up the inside of a vat. Rufus (what is my name, what does she call me other than son…?)
– freezes, breath held and one foot raised. He lowers it gently, glancing down to avoid stepping on anything-grit, paper, an insect-that might make the slightest sound. He lets out his held breath, then opens his mouth to slowly draw in another.
And then the voice comes, and it sets his skin tingling.
"All for us, Baker. Our commission, Baker." It's a horrible voice, wet and guttural, and each word is formed by someone or something that does not usually speak the language. And though awkward and forced, its disdain for his mother is palpable.
"He's not quite ready," his mother says. She sounds weak. Rufus is not used to that.
He sees most of the people his mother works for, and though he does not really understand the forces of commerce when applied to his mother's gifts and talents, he likes the fact that they have visitors. Smiling Hanharan priests with their soft hands and ready smiles, Scarlet Blade soldiers wearing smart uniforms and swords, businessmen from Marcellan Canton with strange ideas that his mother nods at, adapts, and re-creates; they all provide color and variety to the days, now that…
Now that she no longer takes him out. It's too dangerous, she said recently, and that was after she'd been drinking wine and sinking lower and lower in her wide seat. Since then she'd forbidden him to ask why.
Rufus moves softly, slowly, heading for the door leading to a small storeroom. It is always left open because his mother says, Stuff in there needs to air. He touches the cool wood and waits for that deep, strange voice to come again before pushing it open. He cannot quite hear the words this time-the voice is lower and quieter, a burgeoning threat. In the room, he breathes easier and looks around.
None of these partitioned rooms has a ceiling. He looks at where the sloping ceiling of the great hall meets the outside wall at the far end of the storeroom. There are shadows there, and heavy spiderwebs. And, piled in the corner, wooden boxes that he can never recall seeing opened, moved, or touched.
The conversation continues, his mother's voice steady but afraid, the stranger's deep and difficult. Neither voice is raised, but Rufus has seen enough to know that there is nothing friendly here. It's too dangerous, his mother said, and he wonders whether, after this, staying inside will be too dangerous as well.
He climbs the boxes, taking his time. They creak and groan, but no one seems to hear. On the highest box, lying almost flat, he lifts his head slowly to peer over the top of the partition, and when he sees the thing talking to his mother, he draws in a sharp breath, ignoring the spider that is crawling across his forehead toward his left eye, not seeing his mother's startled look as she spots him… seeing nothing but the thing turning its head and fixing him with its piercing indigo eyes, then lowering slowly to its knees and stretching out its spidery hands for him "Rufus!" Peer was shaking him, slapping him softly around the face.
"What is it?" Malia asked.
"Nothing." She shook some more and Rufus started awake, pushing away from the wall and wiping at his left eye, his right hand held out before him to ward off something none of them could see. "It's fine," she said softly, grasping his seeking hand and squeezing tight.
"What's wrong with him?" Gorham demanded. "He was acting strange back in Course, and now this?"
"He's confused," Peer said. She resisted talking slowly, as to a child, because that would be petty. "He's overwhelmed and afraid."
"Well, try to calm him," Gorham said. "If he's worried now, when we go down to the Baker…" He trailed off, but the implication was clear.
"What's down there?" she asked, looking up at Gorham. He liked to stand that way, she remembered, while I took him in my mouth. Maybe it always was about dominance with him.
Gorham squatted close to her, glancing up at the Watchers and nodding along the road. Keep watch, that look said. Peer had yet to ask him how many Watchers there were left, and whether they all ever met, and what exactly he was now leading.
"She's careful," he said, glancing back and forth between Rufus and Peer. "She has to be. Not many people know about her, and as far as she's aware, the Marcellans think her mother died and left nothing. They think they ended the ancient line of Bakers, and she likes it that way."
"What happened to her work?" Rufus asked, and there was something more than curiosity in his voice.
"The old Baker? After she was killed, they destroyed everything. I can still remember the fire, though I was a teenager then. Didn't know what any of it meant, only that the Scarlet Blades had caught and executed… I think they called her a 'threat to the city.' The fire burned for three days, and by the time it started dwindling, they'd set up food stalls and ale wagons for the curious."
Rufus nodded, still holding Peer's hand. His own was slick with sweat.
"Why?" Gorham asked.
"I'm interested," Rufus said. "You're taking me to see this important woman, whom the rest of the city knows little about. The rulers of your city killed her mother. I'm wondering…" He looked away, and Peer thought, Just what is he wondering?
"The rulers of the city will kill you if they know about you," Gorham said. "Reason enough?"
Rufus nodded, smiled, and touched his forehead-a curious gesture that none of them recognized. "Sorry," he said.
"No need to apologize." Gorham stood. "We'll go down soon. Malia and I will go first. We know what to expect."
"And what's that?" Peer asked.
"Nadielle protects herself well. We'll meet chopped people on the way down. Just warning you."
Peer felt a thrill of fear and excitement, and Rufus nodded. He did not appear at all concerned.
When Gorham stood and chatted to Devin and Bethy, Peer leaned in to Rufus to help him up. "What did you dream?" she whispered.
"I don't know," he said. "A nightmare, I think. I don't like nightmares."
"Something from the desert?"
For a while he said nothing. They stood together against the wall, and he was still clasping her hand, like a frightened child hanging on to its mother.
"No," he said at last. "The desert is still a blank to me."
"Come on!" Gorham called. "A short walk this way, a short wait, and then say goodbye to the stars."
"Nice way of putting it," she mumbled, and, when she looked up, Gorham was looking at her as if he'd heard. Once, lying naked on the rooftop of her old family home in Mino Mont, the sweat of sex drying on their skin, they had each chosen and named a shape in the stars. She could remember neither shapes nor names-too much had happened since, her desire to forget too strong-but that sense of contentment and peace washed over her briefly now, surprising and powerful.
Then Gorham turned away, and she remembered what he had done. And even that memory felt as though he had abused her, not loved her, on that long-ago roof.
Markmay believed in that cruel mistress Fate, and he also believed that she could be read and predicted-translated from the meanderings of a beetle in a maze, the viscous drip of poison from a wisp's leg bladder, the sway of hanging chimes in a breezeless place. He traced the veins in a rubber plant's waxy leaves, then drew maps with the tracings, applying them to a book of shapes and shades handed down from his great-great-great-grandmother. By the time he reached the end of a mug of five-bean, he felt ready to read its message, discerning truths in the spatter of bean dregs. His mother had taught him how to do that, and he had many fond memories of sitting with her before a roaring fire, reading Fate's path in cooling bean shells. Some called him fool, but he would merely pass them by and content himself with seeing their deaths in a slab of shattered ice.
Today, Fate was telling him that something was coming.
Markmay's home was in the lower levels of Hanharan Heights-a complex of rooms, corridors, and staircases that wound around, above, and below other dwellings. He had no windows in his home and only one doorway, but the places where he ate, slept, and fucked were twisted around and through the daily life of Echo City. Those around him were not aware of the shape of his home. They put occasional scrapings and thumps down to the mass of buildings around them expanding and settling with the sun. But Markmay knew better. His home was a maze, and when he watched those beetles in their smaller mazes, he saw himself. At the end, when he killed them and took them apart to read the truth of their insides, his own guts ached in sympathy.
In one room, seven heavy bone chimes hung from knots of chickpig hair cast into the plaster ceiling. He sat among them for a while, trying to still his thumping heart lest it transfer to the chimes and spoil his reading. He closed his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, but the excitement was there. Something coming, he kept thinking, because as yet he had no idea what. Stilled at last, he opened his eyes slowly and looked around.
Six of the bone chimes were swaying, too slightly to set their parts colliding and singing but moving nonetheless. There was never any air movement in Markmay's home-that would spoil so many readings-other than when he moved. He watched the chimes, then looked closer at the bone that did not move. It was the longest of them, its knuckle weight closest to the floor.
Markmay leaned slowly to his side and crawled from the room. He left a trail of sweat on the wooden floor behind him. His home was not hot.
He hurried up a curving staircase to a circular room. This was the highest part of his home. Its walls flickered with the light from seventy-seven candles-one for each of the six-legged gods supposed to wander the desert, though Markmay held no allegiance to any such foolish superstitions-and when he closed the heavy door behind him, they danced like excited puppies. He sat in the center of the room and repeated his calming process from before: slower breathing, settled heart, motionless.
When he opened his eyes, the candles were still agitated. Those that danced the most burned with a purple flame, and Markmay knocked several over in his panic while leaving the room. He slammed the door shut behind him and knew he must refer to the book.
Back down the circular staircase, across an empty room, along a doorless corridor, down another twisting staircase that wrapped a Hanharan priest's home like a secretive snake, and in a wide, low-ceilinged room Markmay sat at a table and opened the huge book it held. He went to one page, back to another, forward almost to the end, and all the while he was making notes with a rockzard-spine pen on a pad of rough paper. Sweat dripped from his nose and chin onto the paper, and he wiped it away. It smudged the ink, but that did not matter. This was recording, not reading, and the next person to read this would not be concerned with smudges.
Markmay had the ear of Wendie Marcellan, one of the more senior members of the Council. She told him that none of the others knew of her predilection for Markmay's unusual readings-indeed, she had hinted more than once that some would find it blasphemous-but Markmay knew the Marcellans to be not quite so virtuous as they seemed. He was almost certain that there were other readers informing other Council members, but that did not concern him. He was the best, Wendie paid him well, and whenever he asked, she sent one of her whores to keep him company for the night.
When he finished his notes, he sat back and stared at the filled page. He was shaking his head.