"What have you come for?"
"What have you?" the thing replied, and for a moment Nophel wanted to slit its throat. If it thought it could play with him, enter into word games while he was the one with the knife But, game or not, its question rooted in Nophel's mind. What had he come for? To question this thing and serve the Marcellans? Or to seek out something for himself?
"I've done this before," Nophel said, pulling the knife harder. He felt a slight give as it split the thing's skin, and he swallowed the sick feeling rising in him. He could not betray his lie for a moment, or else the Dragarian would never give him anything. It had to believe completely that he was ready to torture and kill it, and once that belief was implanted, he might have a short while to dig for real answers. "I usually start with the eyes, but with you, strange thing that you are, I think the wings will have to go first. You'll fight. I'm sure of that. You're a soldier, after all. But these chains will contain your fight. And I have all day."
There were no snappy answers, no clever retorts, and when he leaned slightly to the side he saw the Dragarian's strange eyes blinking softly as it considered its predicament.
"I was sent out to search for someone," it said.
"Who?"
"Someone… who will save us."
"Save you from what?"
"Doom," the Dragarian said. Nophel felt its fear, the shiver of terror that could not be affected. "The doom of Echo City, rising even now."
"Rising?"
It started to breathe more heavily, shaking. "Please don't make me-"
"What is rising? What doom?"
"The doom that has brought Dragar back to lead us-"
"Lead you into Honored Darkness. I know all your Dragarian swineshit. But I'm not here to listen to your religious crap, and I know you're not here to spout it."
"No," the thing said. "No."
"So what are you looking for?" It did not answer. "What? What?" He jerked back, tugging at the thing's hair even as he pulled on the knife, the sudden movement and violence startling one word from the terrified creature's mouth.
"Baker!"
"Baker?" Nophel whispered. My mother is dead, he thought, and he felt the Blue Water slithering across his tongue once again, smelled it sharp in his nose.
"Our spies tell us that he's back. He will go to her. And he was always ours."
If he had not been distracted, Nophel might have sensed what was coming next. He would have felt the thing's shaking lessen, heard its breathing slow, sensed the rumblings deep inside as it entered into some sort of internal prayer. And he might have taken the knife from its throat. But his mind was on his dead mother, that Baker bitch, and why the hell had this monstrosity come out of Dragar's Canton looking for It flicked its head from left to right and back again, pulling forward at the same time. Its slick hair, grasped in Nophel's fist, tightened around his fingers, and he felt the gush of warmth across his other hand as its throat opened.
The Dragarian cried out in pain, slumping as Nophel fell from its back. He released its head and the knife at the same time, and both thumped to the stony floor. It landed facing him, those stunning indigo eyes fading already as a puddle of blood spread quickly beneath it. The blood was black in the lamplight. Its eyes reflected little. Even as Nophel reined in his shock and crawled to the Dragarian, determined to ask more, why, who, he realized that it was beyond answering anything.
He knelt beside the dying thing and tried to deny the last word it had spoken. But it was beyond denial.
Baker.
Nophel spent a while in the enclosed courtyard. Oxomanlia clung to the sides of the buildings, and usually its sweet perfume would permeate the air at this time of day. But not today. He'd slammed the door behind him, cutting off the dead thing down in that basement, and he held his breath, paused in the moment between past and future.
Baker… Baker…
He had helped them destroy her. Brought them evidence, gathering it through the Scopes, aiding them in building a case, until in the end the Marcellans had decided that it was not in Echo City's interest for her to answer any case. They had wanted her work halted and her voice silenced, and over one terrible night they had done just that. He'd stood beside the Scopes that his mother had chopped to serve the Marcellans and watched as they destroyed everything she had ever done. In that fire, so Dane had assured him, her remains were turned to ash. They had not even wanted her body crucified on the walls as a warning to others, because there were no others like the Baker. Not anymore. Their actions-and his efforts, investigations, and betrayal-had ended the long line of Bakers once and for all and closed a page on Echo City's history. It had been the greatest day of his life.
And now this flying thing from out of Dragar's Canton had come looking for the Baker. He will go to her… And he was always ours. Did they really believe that their old prophesy was coming true?
Nophel touched the deformed ruin of his face. None of the Unseen seemed to see this, he thought, but he knew that was not true. It was simply that the physical meant so much less to them than it did to normal people. A bird called somewhere, startling him and moving the moment on. Behind him was the closed doorway, ahead the narrow alley that led back to the main street. Once on that street, he would have no choice but to return to Dane Marcellan, taking what little information he had. He did not belong out here. He had never killed except at a distance, and the real blood on his hands made him feel sick.
So he walked through the stinking alleyway, soon finding himself standing at the opening where it vented its stench onto the street. He watched the people passing by, and they did not see him. I just killed a man, he thought, though the Dragarian was like no man he had ever seen. It intrigued him that only in death did he think of the flying thing as a he rather than an it.
"New?" a voice asked. Alexia closed her hand around his wrist.
"You've already asked me that."
"Oh. Come and see." She led the way, and even though she had let go of his arm, Nophel found himself following. She weaved through the oblivious crowd, and, unlike before, he found it easier to follow. He still brushed past a fat man and a little girl, but they barely noticed, wiping away a floating spiderweb or the breath of an errant breeze. And as they walked, things began to change.
At first it was Alexia who was different. He saw her fading again, becoming less substantial and showing refracted, distorted parts of the world through her body. Then he felt a shifting of perceptions, something drawn out of him and hauled in by Alexia's closeness and his compulsion to follow, and her body manifested again. This time, it was the world around them that grew vague.
"No," he said, but he kept walking. "Leave me, I have to go." But Alexia turned and smiled at him, mouthing something that seemed to drift in from a great distance: I'm only showing you.
The people around them faded away. Life left the street, color was leached from the buildings and plants as if exposed to a decade's sun in moments, and soon Nophel and Alexia were standing in an Echo City that held no life at all, not even their own. This was a place frozen between times, its plants motionless and lifeless, the sky above wan and empty, and even though the sun hung overhead, it was a pale echo of its true self, unmoving and cold.
"What is this?" Nophel asked, surprised that his voice sounded so normal. He stepped across the street and touched a building. Stone, cool and gritty, just as it should feel.
"The final existence of the Unseen," she said. "This is what awaits us all. I come and go, but every day brings me closer to being here forever."
"No," he said. "It won't be like this for me. My mother would have never meant it to be-"
"Your mother was an experimenter in arcane things!" Alexia spat, and such passion seemed incongruous in this neutral place. "For every thing she got right, there were five that were wrong."
"How do you-"