"Don't be," she whispers. His mother looks around furtively, then pulls her hood up over her head. He doesn't like it when she does that; he can no longer see her beautiful green eyes. There were precious stones called emeralds, she once told him, buried deep in the ground that is now buried beneath the domes of Dragar's Canton. People used to go there many hundreds of years ago and dig them up.
Why? he asked.
Because they were beautiful.
So are your eyes, but people don't dig them up.
She nodded for a while, staring at him, until finally she said, It's all about having something for yourself.
"I have something for you," she says, producing a silvered metal flask from her pocket.
"One of your magic drinks?" he asks.
"It's not magic!" she says, almost spitting. Her sudden anger could have frightened him-but he knows she will never do anything to harm her son. She loves him. "It's only magic because people don't understand it, that's all, and people are scared of what they don't understand. They have to give it names to protect themselves from it." She holds him hard, staring into his eyes, and he thinks, She really wants me to listen. This is how she speaks when she has a lesson to teach. "People try, but they never get it right. I know how to do it, because of… knowledge passed down to me. If you'd known my mother, and hers, you'd understand. But this is not magic."
"Yes, Mother."
"If anything, it's a curse." She looks past him at the thing approaching across the desert. "A curse on me, and a curse on…"
"Mother?"
"You," she whispers. Then she uncorks the flask, holds the back of his head, and tips it to his lips. He drinks, because she wants him to and she'd never do anything to hurt him. And as he sits on the cold wet stone, watches the huge lumbering thing walking in from the desert, and sees his mother going out to greet it, something starts to happen.
First he forgets his name.
"Grab his hands!" Peer shouted, and when Gorham did so she felt that she was taking control. She held Rufus's head still, whispering and soothing, and when he opened his eyes at last he looked lost. There was nothing there-no knowledge of where or even who he was. Then he focused on Peer, and she felt the fear slowly draining from him.
"I forgot my name," he said.
"I called you Rufus."
"Rufus. That's not my name."
"I know," she said sadly. "Maybe the Baker can help you remember."
"The Baker… she's…" He squeezed his eyes closed again, but the thrashing and scratching did not return.
"What's wrong with him?" Gorham asked, speaking as if Rufus wasn't even there. Peer glared at him without answering.
"Someone's coming," Malia said. She was standing several steps away from them, staring into the darkness in the direction in which the Pseran had disappeared.
"Her?" Peer asked.
"I doubt it," Gorham said. "She rarely leaves her laboratories."
"How many times have you been down here?" Peer asked.
Gorham glanced at her and away again, off into the darkness. "A few," he said.
A shape emerged from the shadows-the naked Pseran walking smoothly toward them. She was both beautiful and monstrous, and Peer wondered what else she would see that day.
"The Baker will see you," she said, and Peer noticed that she was looking only at Rufus. There was a slight smile on her face but also a creasing of the brow, which could indicate confusion-or fear.
"Which way-" Peer began.
"Gorham knows." The Pseran drifted in closer to Rufus, circled him once, and then, without another word spoken or a glance at any of them, she disappeared into the Echo once again.
"Come on," Gorham said, and he led them from the track and across ancient fields.
Peer walked behind Rufus, trying to keep her eye on his back but finding herself distracted by what they were walking across. She had never been able to envision whole landscapes of dead fields and gentle hills cut off from the sun and sky like this. It seemed unnatural, and walking across ruts tooled into the ground generations ago made her sad.
"Here," Gorham said. He stood before a door cast into a steep hillside, the stark gray stumps of old trees stubbling the ground all around.
Rufus took a deep breath.
"Are you all right?" Peer asked.
"Yes," he said. "Hungry."
"Good," Gorham said, and his smile seemed genuine. "The Baker always has a feast to hand." He pushed the door open and entered, and Peer followed the others into a new world.
She had never imagined anything like this. She'd heard tales of the old Baker and her incredible warehouse laboratory and how the Scarlet Blades had destroyed it all twenty years ago. The Watchers had always held the Baker as one of their own, though even before her banishment, Peer had known the lie in that. The Baker was unique, last in a long line of freak geniuses among Echo City's scientists, experimenters, and charlatans. At least, most of Echo City believed she was the last.
And now here Peer was, about to meet the Baker's daughter.
Really? she thought. Daughter? This woman had been chopped, not born. Grown in one of the womb vats she saw in the huge room before her, or one very much like them. Created, somehow, by her mother's strange art.
The vats were huge and bulbous. They seemed to cast shadows where the many oil lamps should shine. Moisture trickled down their sides and splashed on the stone ground, and when it hit it took on a sickly viscosity, spreading red as blood before slipping into floor drains. Pipes and tubes hung overhead, converging and spreading again from several points where cogs turned, gears scraped, and steam escaped from vents and flues. The steam fell instead of rising, dispersing to the air and giving the whole room a heavy, humid atmosphere.
The closest vat was a dozen steps away. Peer could hear noises from inside-mewling, scratching, and a grumbling so low that, rather than hear it, she felt it low in her guts.
"Gorham…" she began, but her old lover had already walked on ahead. There was a woman standing beside one of the vats, tending to an array of tools laid out on a wide table before her. She glanced up at Gorham's approach, offered him a half smile, looked beyond him, caught Peer's eye… and then she saw Rufus and dropped the curved metallic tool she'd been holding. The noise as it struck the table and clattered to the ground brought home the relative silence of that place. This was not a noisy factory but a quiet laboratory, its processes proceeding with a calm confidence.
"Who are you?" Rufus asked, and Peer noticed a change in him. It was as if he were a held breath, and with every glance around that amazing chamber he was about to scream.
"My name is Nadielle," the woman said. She was quite short and unassuming, but as Peer walked close to meet Nadielle, she sensed the power in her. Nadielle's eyes were fixed on their tall visitor, her mouth working slowly as if chewing words she could not utter.
"This is Rufus Kyuss," Peer said.
"Named after a god," Nadielle said.
Rufus remained tense, glancing from the Baker to those vats and back again.
"You're the new Baker?" Peer asked.
"New?" Nadielle glanced at Peer, her eyes instantly harsh and threatening.