Of course, you fool. You caused that. He sighed angrily and marched on, picking up speed so that the others had to hurry to catch up.
A mile before the abandoned farm complex that hid their route down to the Baker, Gorham called a halt. To the west towered several mepple orchards, dark smudges against the moon- and starlit sky, and the vague lights from night wisps drifted in and around them as the creatures patrolled against fruit eaters. Other than the glow of Marcellan Canton to the east, theirs were the only lights visible in any direction. The landscape here was completely given to farmland, and the scattered farmsteads were shut down for the night, families resting for the next day of toil.
Gorham sat on a low stone wall at the side of the road, ignoring Malia's questioning glance.
"What is it?" Peer asked. Rufus sat on the ground against the wall, head rested back and eyes filled with moonlight.
"Not too far from here," he said, frowning slightly at Malia. Say nothing, that frown said. Malia looked away, taking a pipe from her pocket and thumbing it full of tobacco.
"So why are we stopping?"
"Because this way down to the Baker is a secret," he said. "It's the Watchers' way. Maybe she sees other people-with Nadielle, nothing would surprise me-but if she does, they'll have their own route to her laboratories."
Peer sat beside him on the wall. Not close enough for contact, but they could talk without having to raise their voices. On the ground beside her, Rufus had closed his eyes.
"I am a Watcher," she said.
"Peer-"
"You want to blindfold me? In case I'm caught and tortured and-"
"Please!" he said, and his voice sounded more beseeching than he'd intended.
She offered a weak smile that the starlight barely illuminated.
"Not you," he said. "Rufus. I don't want him seeing where we're going, and if you think about it for a minute you'll understand. Don't you understand?"
Peer looked at the tall man-he seemed to be dozing now, the rise and fall of his chest even and calm, even though he frowned deeply-and then rubbed her hands across her face. Gorham saw her wince as her right elbow bent, aggravating the air shards buried there.
"Of course," she said. "None of us really knows…" She rested a hand on Rufus's shoulder. He mumbled something and leaned against her leg.
"Nadielle will know what to do," Gorham said. She has to, he thought. And for a moment he almost told Peer about Nadielle and him, their confused and confusing relationship, but perhaps right then that would be a betrayal too far. I left a man in Skulk, she had told him, but he didn't believe she was talking about a lover. For all he knew, she had waited for him and there had been no one since her torture and banishment. He hoped there had, but it was a selfish hope, seeking only to assuage his own guilt.
"I'm looking forward to meeting her," Peer said. Gorham could not make out how honest his old lover was being. Her eyes, silvered by pale starlight, betrayed nothing.
He hears them talking, and then the feeling of the cold wall against his back is replaced by warm sheets, and blankets cover him against the cold coming off the womb vats in waves.
He sits up, stretching the sleep from his limbs and rubbing his eyes. Dawn peers in the row of high windows along the eastern face of the old warehouse. Dust motes dance in the sunlight, and several small birds flit back and forth between metal bracings high in the open roof space. Rufus stands from the bed (that's not my name, this is not my home)
– and looks around for his mother. As far as he can remember, he has never woken before she has. Even in the night, when screaming nightmares rouse him or illness shivers him awake with fever and sweats, she is already sitting on the edge of his bed, offering comfort. He is used to always having her with him, and whenever she is not in sight, he grows nervous.
There are no memories older than a few months, and the absence is one of his greatest fears. It is also the fear his mother does least to calm. There, there, she says when he talks about his lost years, it doesn't matter, only the now matters.
He dresses quickly and descends the ladder from the raised sleeping platform at one end of the warehouse. The stone floor below is cold, even though he wears thick-bottomed sandals, and a light mist plays around his ankles. If he concentrates, he can feel the cold mist kissing his skin. His mother will never tell him what she is working on next. Sometimes, the things she makes scare him. And sometimes they scare her as well. Once he asked why she did what she did, on an evening when tiredness seemed ready to wither her to nothing and tears hung suspended in her eyes-held back, he knew, only by her love and concern for him. Because it's all I can do, she had replied, and he had never heard her so low. The next day she'd been bright and cheery, as if the sun had reignited her optimism.
"Mother?" he calls. His voice echoes around the cavernous warehouse. It was once home to produce brought from Crescent on vast barges across the Western Reservoir, but when more people started crossing the border to select their own, the barges ceased sailing. Sometimes the room still stinks of rotten mepple and dart-root leaves. "Mother?"
There is no answer. He walks toward the vats, keeping close to the wall and sunlight because he never likes going too close. They're strange. Sometimes they vibrate as if something is turning around inside too fast to see; other times they drip water and tick, expanding and contracting as the processes work away. And occasionally he hears sounds. The scraping of bony, sharp things across their inner surfaces. Bubbles breaking surface. Whispers.
There are four large vats and then eight smaller ones, and by the time he's passed them all, Rufus is aching for a pee. This end of the warehouse is home to his mother's workrooms, several smaller areas partitioned off from the main hall by timber walls barely higher than her head. In one there is a toilet and a huge iron bath, and he heads there now to relieve himself and wash sleep and dreams from his skin.
"He's not yours yet," his mother's voice says. That's all. The silence that follows is heavy, like a bubble ready to burst or a claw about to scrape up the inside of a vat. Rufus (what is my name, what does she call me other than son…?)
– freezes, breath held and one foot raised. He lowers it gently, glancing down to avoid stepping on anything-grit, paper, an insect-that might make the slightest sound. He lets out his held breath, then opens his mouth to slowly draw in another.
And then the voice comes, and it sets his skin tingling.
"All for us, Baker. Our commission, Baker." It's a horrible voice, wet and guttural, and each word is formed by someone or something that does not usually speak the language. And though awkward and forced, its disdain for his mother is palpable.
"He's not quite ready," his mother says. She sounds weak. Rufus is not used to that.
He sees most of the people his mother works for, and though he does not really understand the forces of commerce when applied to his mother's gifts and talents, he likes the fact that they have visitors. Smiling Hanharan priests with their soft hands and ready smiles, Scarlet Blade soldiers wearing smart uniforms and swords, businessmen from Marcellan Canton with strange ideas that his mother nods at, adapts, and re-creates; they all provide color and variety to the days, now that…
Now that she no longer takes him out. It's too dangerous, she said recently, and that was after she'd been drinking wine and sinking lower and lower in her wide seat. Since then she'd forbidden him to ask why.