"No, Nophel. I trust you as my messenger, but your mind is still corrupted with vengeful thoughts of your mother."
"But she's dead!"
"Yes, and I made the mistake of telling you that it wasn't your betrayal that led to that. Maybe you're angry. Unfulfilled. I need this message delivered, but I also need to trust that you won't harm her."
"Why would I harm my sister?"
Dane had stared toward him for a while, his eyes wavering slightly across the shadowy space that Nophel filled.
"Just go," the Marcellan had said. And he'd held out the sealed message tube for Nophel to take.
Descending from Hanharan Heights and making his way west, Nophel thought many times about breaking the tube and reading the message. But if the Marcellan had been in contact with this new Baker for so long, doubtless the message would be in a code or form known only to the two of them. Break the tube and he would shatter the trust Dane had placed in him.
He moved through the streets like a breeze or a whisper, turning heads here and there but never attracting real attention. He watched for more Unseen, but there were none. Perhaps they all congregated to the north.
North. What he had seen chilled Nophel like nothing ever before. The Dragarians streaming out of their canton, the way they had moved, and flown, and crawled… If it weren't for the Scopes, he would never have seen, and whatever fate was about to befall Echo City would have settled quietly upon him in his sleep.
Perhaps that would have been for the best. He'd always been plagued by the fact that he had no belief in anything but eventual doom. And he did not trust that a method to leave the city would ever be found, even if there were still those searching for one. Had he been the worshipping kind-had he a god-he would have prayed that the end did not arrive in his lifetime.
Why would I harm my sister? he'd asked. He wondered exactly what she was and what her relationship had been with their mother. She had taken on the dead bitch's mantle, after all. The new Baker.
Nophel slipped unchallenged through one of the western gates of Marcellan Canton's wall, then paused and looked out over Crescent Canton; though green and lush, it felt empty. And finding a hidden corner, he cracked the vial and drank the White Water, because he wanted to be a part of this world again.
"How do you find one person lost in the world?" Malia asked.
Peer shook her head and took another drink. They were sitting on the street in front of a small tavern, Devin, Bethy, and several other Watchers around them. She knew a couple of them from her time before her banishment, but she had forgotten their names. They glanced at her as if she were a ghost, and she shared their discomfort. She was nervous, uneasy, frustrated. The drink did nothing to temper her sprinting heartbeat. They should be moving and looking, not sitting and musing, but she understood Malia's strategy. They had to devise a plan; otherwise, they'd all be rushing around the city like wingless wisps.
"Do you still have anyone in Hanharan Heights?" Peer asked. One of the Watchers glared at her, and she wanted to say, I suffered too. Her arm and hip ached in sympathy with her memories.
"Not anymore," Malia said.
"What about the bat? You have ways of sending messages. There are doves and tailcoats. And can't you access the Web?" Peer's mother had used the Web several times for her tax collecting-a vast network of pipes and wires through which messages were screeched and passed along by the chopped. But they were inexpertly chopped-not products of the Baker-and the system was frequently flawed. A message could change with its retelling, mistakes made.
"The Scarlet Blades monitor it like rathawks," Devin said. He'd met them there earlier, arriving just before Bethy; neither of them brought news. Rufus might as well never have existed at all.
"Right," Malia said. "Even if we could access the Web, it's far too dangerous. We alert the Marcellans or Hanharans to Rufus's existence, and we might as well give him up for lost."
"Might as well anyway," a male Watcher muttered, and raised his ale.
"No!" Peer shouted. She stood and knocked his hand aside, mug and ale spilling across the table. He sat back in surprise, one hand slinking down to his thigh, but she was over the table before he could do anything more, her arm across his throat. "There's hope," she said quietly. Eyes were on her now, and not just the Watchers'. Several people had paused in the street, and a group sitting inside the tavern observed through the wide open doors. She'd drawn attention to them all, but right then she didn't give a crap.
"Peer," Malia said quietly.
"Do they all know?" she asked, looking around the group.
"Yes."
"They all know everything?"
Malia nodded. Watchers exchanged nervous glances, and then Peer sensed the loaded atmosphere she'd somehow missed before. Some of them were drinking too quickly; others did not touch their drinks at all. Feet shuffled, eyes flickered, and there was a dearth of conversation. This was not a group of people out for a drink. It was a gathering of Watchers aware that what they'd waited for all their lives might have arrived.
"There's hope," Peer said louder. "We just have to find it." She eased back from the man and he picked up his spilled mug, nodding softly at her.
This is when we grow weak, she thought, and suddenly Penler's unspoken beliefs in a deity or deities seemed to make sense. This is when faith in nothing makes us scared. We're rationalists and realists, but doesn't everyone need something to believe in?
"Where?" Devin said. "Show us the hope."
"The Baker," Peer said, and she pictured that strange young woman's confident smile.
"You've seen her, Peer," Malia said after an uncomfortable pause.
"Yes." She was uncertain what Malia meant, troubled by the stillness that had fallen over the group.
"Well… she's mad."
Mad. Peer raised her own drink and took a long draft, taking the time to think about Nadielle, Gorham, and what the Baker could possibly do to help any of them. While she was venturing down to assess the dangers rising from below, the city itself was suddenly filled with threats.
"Maybe," Peer said at last. "But who wouldn't be, knowing what she knows? We take Rufus to her, and she can still help us. She must."
Malia sighed. Devin swallowed more ale.
"We have to look!" Peer said. "Start searching, and if that brings the attention of the Scarlet Blades, then we have to fight."
"Now you're mad," someone muttered.
"So this is it? All this time wasted?" She looked around at them, and her voice rose into a shout. "You're giving up?"
"Hush!" someone said, but she had their attention. She looked pointedly at Malia, lowered her voice again. "All those dead Watchers, nailed to the wall for nothing?" She pulled up her right sleeve to expose the ugly purple scars around her elbow and biceps. "All those people tortured, so we can sit and drink fucking beer while our last hope is lost out there somewhere?"
"You've heard the whispers," Malia said. "The Dragarians are out. They probably have him already, and they'll take him back to their canton, and that will be it. We'll never see him again, and the next thing we know will be war with the Dragarians as they fulfill their own prophesies. And when they realize he's not their savior, they'll kill him."
"So it's hopeless," Peer said.
"Yes."
"Right." She stood and shoved her stool back. It fell onto its side on the pavement, and she glared around at them all. Those who knew her had believed she was banished to Skulk forever, and in some of their eyes she saw grudging respect for her escape. Those who did not know her saw only an intruder. It was sad that the Watchers' jealous protection of their outlawed beliefs inspired such paranoia. "Rufus is a friend of mine," she said. "I brought him into the city and exposed him to everything that's happened. So I'm going to go and find him."
"Into Dragar's Canton?" Devin scoffed.
"If I need to." There's no way I can, she thought. This really is madness. But it had gone too far for her to back down now, and she was too angry to even consider doing so.
"What about Gorham?" Malia asked.
"What about him?" She turned to leave, then glanced back. "At least I'll be doing something positive when the end comes." And their murmured conversation as she walked away could have been the distant echo of some subterranean thing coming for them all.
Rufus is moving, his body jarring against something solid, and when he opens his eyes he sees green.