"You Watchers," Nadielle said, a smile pricking up the corners of her mouth.
"What do you mean by that?" Malia asked defensively.
"Always so serious. Always waiting for the end-"
"Not waiting for it," Gorham said. "Expecting it. The city might have been here for five thousand years, or fifty thousand, but nothing lasts forever. We watch for Echo City's inevitable end so we can be ready for it."
"Don't mock our purpose," Malia added coldly. "When the end comes, we'll have our way across the desert."
"Maybe you will," Nadielle said, nodding, and the smile was still there. "For now let's eat. You've been on the road for a while, and no good decisions are ever made on an empty stomach."
So the three of them ate. The food was cold but delightful. There were breads and cheeses, smoked meats, dried fruit, yogurts flavored with some of the finest spices, and a sake-fish whose pinkness and subtlety meant it must have come from the Northern Reservoir. Malia ate quickly beside him, eager to get to why they had come, but Nadielle savored each mouthful. Gorham wondered yet again how she managed to procure such good food. The bread had the taste and texture of the very best of the Marcellan bakers, and the cheese must have been matured for a long time. He could ask, but he knew that her answer would be misleading.
"How are you, Malia?" Nadielle asked. The question's meaning was obvious.
Malia shrugged, chewing a mouthful of mixed dried fruit.
Nadielle nodded slowly. "It heals, with time."
"You're twenty years old! If Bren and I'd had children, you could have been one of them." Malia trailed off, staring down at the tabletop but seeing something much farther away.
"My apologies," Nadielle said, but Gorham could see that she was not sorry at all. There was something about Nadielle that removed her from the world of Echo City. It wasn't even the fact that she chose to live belowground, with only the Echoes and her strange creations for company. Sometimes when he looked into her bright young eyes, there was such age there that it terrified him.
"It doesn't matter," Malia said, still staring down at the table.
They ate in silence for a while, Gorham trying to catch Nadielle's eye. But she looked down at her plate, cutting food very precisely, building meat on bread on cheese to gain the most of their blend of tastes. He watched her smooth hands and remembered them working at him with equal dexterity. Everyone who knew of her feared the Baker, and he wondered what his friends would think if they knew about their liaison.
When they had finished eating, Nadielle sat back in her chair and stretched her lithe body beneath the roomy clothes she always wore. Then she poured them each another glass of fine Crescent wine, raised her glass in silent toast, and waited for them to begin.
"We have people all over the city," Malia said. "Watchers, like us, and sometimes just people ready to earn a few shillings. They're instructed or paid to watch for certain things. Signs. Events out of the ordinary. Anything that might signify change. There are frequent false alarms, of course. Messages passed along that have already lost their meaning by the time they reach us. Lies, from people bored of waiting and wanting some money."
"But this is no false alarm," Gorham said.
Nadielle raised an amused eyebrow, but he saw a flash of something darker. Interest? Fear?
"What is no false alarm?"
Gorham glanced at Malia, and she nodded that he should continue. "It comes from three sources," he said. "First, Malia knows an explorer of the Echoes, Sprote Felder, and he has limited contact with the Garthans. He studies them, believes he has their trust, and he says there is concern among several of their deepest settlements. He wasn't specific, other than saying they were unsettled."
"Sprote is a mad old fool," Nadielle said, laughing.
Gorham blinked in surprise. She told me she never leaves this place. "He's a historian," he said. "His work on the Course Canton Echoes is well respected."
"Respected by some," Nadielle countered. "And I didn't say he was stupid, I said he was mad. He spends all his time down in the past."
"As do you," Malia said.
"You know nothing about me," Nadielle said after a pause, staring at Malia until she looked away. "So, the second source?"
"A priest from the Temple of the Seventy-seven Custodians," Gorham said.
Nadielle glanced back and forth between Gorham and Malia as if expecting a joke.
"They're harmless enough," Malia said. "And the Hanharans accept them."
"They allow them. It's different."
Malia shrugged.
"I trust him," Gorham said. "He's a good man, if misguided. And just because he thinks his beliefs are right, he doesn't insist that we are wrong."
"How magnanimous of him," Nadielle said.
"His elders are learned men and women. Intellectuals, not fanatics. Not mad. So I trust him, and he trusts them. And they say that something is coming."
Nadielle was silent for a while, blinking softly in the gentle glow of candlelight. She sipped her wine, picked at the remains of a loaf of bread, and hummed a tuneless melody.
"And the third source?" she said at last.
Gorham looked sidelong at Malia. They'd disputed whether or not to reveal their third source, not because of her privacy but because… well, because she was mad.
"Bellia Ton."
Nadielle laughed-a deep, throaty cough that did worrying things to Gorham's composure. She chuckled like that just after she came.
"The river reader?" the Baker asked. "You claim two sources that aren't mad but I say may be. And then you bring her into the tale? She's as mad as ten rockzards fucking a chickpig."
"Nicely put," Malia muttered.
Gorham held out his hands, palms up, and stood from the table. "Hear us," he said. "She's unreliable, but when she tells a story that meshes with others we've heard, we have to consider its veracity."
"And what story does the mad old hag tell you, Gorham?" Nadielle asked. Her eyes had grown icy, and he didn't like that. Neither did he understand it. He looked to Malia for support, but she was pouting as she picked the flesh from a slice of dried mepple.
"She holds court in a tavern in Mino Mont, right out by the city wall, close to where the River Tharin flows out into the desert."
"I know where she spouts her tales."
"One of our people was there."
"A Watcher?"
Gorham shook his head.
"A mercenary, then."
"Someone who sells us information," Malia said. "That doesn't mean it's false."