The girl stared at the prone man, and there was something in her that Gorham had not seen before. Since her birthing she had been busy-either working at the vat, or thinking about what to do next, reading the Baker's books and charts, and making esoteric notes in a thick pad. Now, for the first time, she was still and contemplative.
"Carry him through to my rooms," she said.
"Seeing you is what's kept him alive," Peer said.
Rose looked at her, then turned and walked away without replying.
Peer took a step forward, but Gorham caught her arm.
"And you thought Nadielle was cold?" he said. She smiled at him, and that warm flush he'd felt upon seeing her enter the laboratory returned. They both had so much to say, with so little time.
"I'll tell you when I'm ready," Rose said from where she'd climbed back up to the vat's lip. "You should all rest. When the time comes, we'll have to go south, to Skulk."
"And then?" Peer asked.
The girl looked at her curiously, as if considering a specimen of something she had never seen before. "I remember so much about you," she said.
Gorham felt Peer shiver against his side.
"What will happen?" Gorham asked.
"Then we see whether any of this will work." Rose turned back to the vat.
"Come on," he said. "There's some food left. And wine. We'll drink to success." He helped Alexia carry the unconscious man through the vat chamber and into the rooms beyond, and the air buzzed with unspoken news.
Peer seemed changed. She held her injured hip, but there was a strength to her that had not been there when she'd offer him a dismissive wave goodbye. Her eyes were haunted, but she had a smile for him. He hoped that was a good enough start.
They placed Nophel on the Baker's bed, then sat at a table and passed around a bottle of wine. Before long, Alexia leaned back in her chair and slept, and Peer had to settle Gorham when the Unseen woman began to flicker from view.
Gorham and Peer lay together on the other side of the bed. He watched her close her eyes and sleep, but he refused to do so. This might be the end, and he wanted to spend every moment he had left looking at the woman he had wronged. But as her breathing deepened, he, too, closed his eyes, and he rested his hand on hers as dreams carried him away. Come with me, the voice said. Please, come with me. It was a child's voice, yet it carried the weight of ages. Nophel saw the words in his father's mouth, yet his lips spelled something different, because he had gone against the Dragarians to save his son, not to doom him. There was a pain in his chest and his father frowned, but Dane could do nothing, because he was already dead. For an instant briefer than a blink, Nophel saw the fat Marcellan as he was now-taken apart in the darkness beneath the city.
His eyes snapped open, and his mother was looking down at him.
"Please, come with me." She was whispering. She looked in Nophel's one good eye, but her hands were elsewhere, sprinkling something warm and dry across his bared chest.
Nophel raised his head and looked down at the wound. The bolt had somehow been removed without him waking, and now the girl-the new Baker, two steps from his mother and yet still very much her-was tending the ragged hole left behind. It was red and inflamed, and the dust she dropped hissed slightly as it touched his skin.
"It smells," he whispered, voice harsh and dry.
"It will stop the pain." She averted her eyes.
"I'm dying." There was a weight in his chest, as if his heart had been replaced with a lump of rock.
"The bolt split a main vein. You've been bleeding into your chest cavity. I've seared the split, but it will reopen." The girl looked at him again, and there was something about her eyes that took his breath away. One of them could be mine, he thought. "Please, come with me," she repeated.
"Why?"
"Because you came down here for a reason."
Something thudded through the room, and a swath of spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling swayed. Scurrying shadows hurried across them, looking for prey that had not landed. The bed shifted, and by his side Nophel saw Peer and the man, both asleep. She looked exhausted and at peace. He only looked sad.
When Nophel held out one hand, the Baker took it and helped him up.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"I think I have something to show you." She led him across the room, which was redolent with signs of the mother he had never known. The girl paused when he stopped, letting him lean against her as a faint passed through him. He bit his lip, and she pressed a small flattened nut into his hand.
"Sniff."
He sniffed, and the sharp scent brought his senses back.
In the corner of the room she opened a door, and they entered a much smaller room with a table, scattered charts, and a broken book on the floor. He leaned on the table as she opened another, lower door, and when she started to go down a small set of steps, he did not move.
"You abandoned me," he said, and though it was strange talking like this to a little girl, he could see that she understood every word. "I came here to… kill you."
"I know," she said softly. "Please, come and see what I have to show you." And she descended out of sight.
She's luring me down to kill me, he thought. And when the others wake, she'll tell them I ran raving into the Echoes. But that was not the truth. She's got my mother's corpse down there, hollow and dead with her mind passed down the generations, and she'll ask me to forgive it. But that also seemed unlikely.
The Baker's face appeared in the small doorway again, pale and sad in the poor light. "Come."
I'm dying anyway, Nophel thought, and he went.
The staircase was carved roughly into rock. It curved out of sight, and it was only the sound of the Baker's footsteps that drew him on. Where the staircase ended, the darkness opened up around him. The girl stood a few steps away, but her oil torch could not penetrate the gloom.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"An old Echo. Hidden." She aimed the torch to their left, and Nophel saw a crumbling gray facade. "It was diseased, so they cut it off from the rest of the city."
"And this is about me?" he asked, anger rising. Diseased… cut off… forgotten. Could it really be that simple? He'd heard of wealthy parents in Marcellan Canton giving their children away to workhouses or chop shops if they were deformed, or simple-minded, or did not live up to their expectations in some other way-eyes too close, hair too dark. Was his story really that pitiful?
"My name is Rose," the Baker said, "and I am your mother only by blood. In memory, I am less so. So I've brought you here, because this is the Baker's place. No one has ever been down here, not even Gorham, who perhaps… perhaps I once loved. And there's something here for you to see."
The girl Rose led him through a doorless opening and into a dark room, placing her torch on a table and indicating a chair. Nophel sat, closing his eyes as another faint came over him. Something wet rattled inside as he sniffed the nut again, and he pressed one hand across the wound on his bare chest. It was blazing hot.
There was some basic furniture in this room, and Rose opened a wooden cupboard. She took out some objects and replaced them again, then moved to another cupboard.
"Lost something?" he asked softly.
"I was born only recently." She found what she was looking for and placed it on the table before him. It was a stark wooden box, rough-edged, undecorated. The lid above the simple hook-and-eye catch was smooth, as if it had been opened and closed many, many times.
"What's this?"
"This is your mother's real memory of you." She turned to leave, and Nophel experienced a moment of complete, encompassing panic.
"Please don't go!" he said. "I've been alone all my life, and now I'm dying."