Nophel turned to the box and opened it without hesitation. Though he was a stranger to his own childhood, he knew that these things related to him. There was a shriveled, wormlike object in a fold of tissue-his umbilical cord, perhaps. A lock of fine hair. A tiny knitted boot-just one-snagged and dusty but still smelling fresh. Fingernail clippings. A simple but effective charcoal sketch of a baby, unrelenting in its honesty-one eye closed and, even then, growths on his face around his mouth and nose. As he examined the sketch, the charcoal darkened and smudged, and he realized that he was crying. He sniffed and wiped his eye, then started to take out other things.
Everything had a worn look, as if it had been viewed countless times. And when he finally piled it all back into the box-proof of his childhood, testament to his creation and existence-he closed the lid and sat back in the chair.
"So?" he said softly.
"Your mother loved you. That's good enough, surely?"
"She gave me away."
The girl nodded, then looked at her hands as if truly seeing them for the first time. They were not the hands of a child. "It's the fate of every new Baker to lose everything," she said. "She was incapable of looking after you, because of the things she did. She was dangerous, as am I. And she did what she thought was best."
"She gave me to a workhouse," he said, but he could no longer summon the anger that had always driven him. It had given way to sorrow, a hollowness inside being slowly filled with his own leaking blood.
"She did what she thought was best," the girl said again. She stood and left, and Nophel followed her back across the long-buried Echo and up the staircase into her laboratories once again. He felt drowsy, and sniffing the strange nut helped only so much. His chest was heavy and hot. And by the time he reached the room where Gorham, Peer, and Alexia still slept, his confusion was settling. As Rufus had said, he had found a trace of love in his father. Perhaps, in some way, there was some in his mother as well.
He asked how he could help.
Nadielle appeared above him, smiling what he had always thought of as a wry smile but what was probably just knowing. She reached down and tried to shake him awake, and when she spoke it did not exactly match the words her lips were forming. You were always braver than you think, he wanted to hear her say, but what she really said made Gorham sit upright.
"We have to leave," Rose said, her face and voice changed. "I've done all I can, but everything is getting worse."
"How do you-" he began, but then he noticed the constant shaking. Dust hazed the room, books slid from shelves, and it was only because he'd been asleep on the soft bed that the vibration had not woken him. He looked down at Peer, where she held his left arm, and across at where Alexia had slept. The Unseen was no longer there.
"She's helping," Rose said.
"And Nophel?"
"He's just left. And, yes, he's helping too."
"On his own?"
"He has a while, perhaps."
A harder jolt, and Peer stirred, mumbling Malia's name.
"Is it all the way up yet?" Gorham asked. "Is it risen?"
"I don't know!" the girl said, and it was the first time he'd heard her raise her voice. A glimmer of panic flitted across her face, then she was in control again, calm and efficient. "I don't know, but we can't wait to find out. I think I have enough."
"Enough what?"
"I'll show you. I hope you got plenty of rest. There's lots to carry."
Gorham gently shook Peer awake. She sat up quickly and looked around, then her shoulders slumped when realization hit her. Her eyes flooded with the knowledge of what was happening and the memories of what they had been through.
"It's time to leave," he said. "Rose needs our help."
Peer nodded and stood without speaking. He told her about Nophel, and they left the room and went out into the womb-vat hall, where Rose and Alexia were standing beside the vat.
What the crap is going to come out of this one? Gorham wondered. But there were no messy processes this time, and the girl Baker climbed the wooden ladder to sit once again on the vat's lip.
Alexia nodded at them as they approached, smiling slightly at Peer. Gorham liked that they were friends. That might not help a lot against that bastard thing rising against them, but in reality it meant the world. Arrayed around Alexia's feet were piles of a thin, wrinkled material, with string ties strewn like dead worms. At a signal from Rose, Alexia picked up one sack and threw it up to the Baker.
Rose leaned over the top of the vat and swept her arm down and up again. The bag came up bulging, throwing vague shadows that seemed to flit away into the darkness. Gorham was sure he heard a whispering, and he frowned and tilted his head to hear it better.
"Catch," Rose said, tying and dropping the bag without even looking. Alexia was there. She caught the bag, tested the drawstring, and lowered it gently to the ground. It looked oddly weightless.
Next time, Gorham caught the bag. He tweaked the drawstring and gasped as several small shapes flew from the bag's mouth, circling in tight circles before fluttering off into the darkness.
"What are they?" he asked.
"Bloodflies," Rose said. "Another." Alexia lobbed the bags up to her, Rose filled them, and when she dropped them someone was always there to catch.
"Do you really think these will work?" Peer asked.
"It's the best I could do," Rose said. She grunted each time she reached down into the vat now, and each time Gorham thought she was going to fall.
But he caught and tied the bags, and realization hit him-release the flies, hope they bite, and in their bites would be traces of Rufus's chopped blood. There was a terrible randomness to it and a reliance on the untested idea that Rufus survived the Bonelands because of something that ran in his veins. But Gorham also knew that Rose was right. It really was the best she could have done.
"Is this like the moths, bats, and lizards?" Gorham asked.
"They were proven," Rose said. "Used before, though on a much smaller scale. These…" She grunted, dropped another bag. "Bakers have tried things like this before, to spread cures in time of plague. But I have no firm memory of something like this ever working."
"Marvelous," Alexia said.
The sounds resonating through the Echoes were now constant. They were accompanied by those staggering impacts, and Gorham feared that the ceilings would fall and crush them flat. He heard what might have been distant cave-ins, but he could not let them concern him. Their route was set, they were on their way, and it would take death to stop them.
They stacked the filled bags away from the vat. There were twenty in all, and they writhed and flexed with their insectile contents.
"So that's it?" Peer asked. "That's the hope of Echo City?"
"If Nadielle was right about Rufus's blood," Gorham said.
"She was right," Rose said, as she climbed back down the wooden ladder. "She made him, after all. She'd have known."
"But it was still a guess!" Gorham said, frustrated by Rose's pronouncements. "Nothing more."
"Lots of what the Bakers do is derived from best guesses," Rose replied, shrugging. "That's the basis of experimentation. It's all theory. We're just good at putting it into practice." She walked toward the main doors leading out into the Echoes, and when she turned and saw them standing there, she seemed surprised. "It's time to leave."
"Right now?" Peer asked.
"The Vex won't wait for us," Rose said. She looked like a corpse. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and the shattering idea hit Gorham that she was only temporary. Nadielle hadn't had long, and she had chopped Rose to serve a purpose, nothing more. Where will the next Baker originate? he wondered. It was not something he wanted to dwell upon.
So they followed her from the womb-vat hall, each of them carrying several of the light, flexing bags. Gorham left last, and Rose was waiting for him outside the doors. She smiled softly and looked back into the rooms.
Leftover flies were rising from the vat in a swirling cloud, moving in beautiful synchronicity.