"She listened to myths?" Peer asked.
"Here," Nadielle said, touching the other large old book. "There's so much in here. It's written that Dragar was born to illicit lovers, one tall with white hair, the other with the greenest of eyes. Their love was forbidden-they were from different Dragarian castes-and they chose to meet in the desert, where no one would see. The child was conceived out there, and when born he was immune to the desert's effects. The Dragarians took him to themselves as a god, named him after their god, and soon after that the Marcellans killed him as a Pretender. So long ago, all of it so uncertain, unproven. But when they came to my mother with the commission, she saw the chance of discovering the truth. They offered a shred of Dragar, his essence."
"I might have died," Rufus said.
"But you didn't," Nadielle said. "You were her greatest experiment."
"I'm not an experiment!"
"Rufus," the Baker said, excited, "you have to-"
"That is not my name!" he screamed. The sudden noise was shocking in that confined space, his fury startling. He swept the books from the table, and clouds of dust dimmed the air.
"Rufus," Peer said softly, because she saw his tragic history.
He struck her. She fell against the wall, hand landing on one of the books. Its cover split from the spine; her arm shifted beneath her and spilled her to the floor, setting her hip aflame. She banged her head. The air darkened even more, ringing with shouts and a scream and the frantic shuffling of a struggle from somewhere beyond the room. Silence, the beating of her heart, and then another scream from much farther away, androgynous in its agony. It could only have been the cry of someone close to death.
Peer stood and swayed, closing her eyes to regain balance. She felt the warm trickle of blood down the back of her neck. Moving carefully, she left the small room and found the larger room beyond empty. Even in the disorganized chaos of that place, she saw that things were toppled across the floor, one smashed jar steaming as its strange contents spat and jumped as if to escape the cool touch of stone.
More shouts, raised voices, and two more screams filled with rage and grief. Peer rushed out into the womb-vat chamber, pausing to see where the cries came from. The vats bubbled softly, indifferent to the drama being played out around them.
Another cry-less a scream and more an exhalation of hopelessness. It had come from outside. She ran across the chamber and through the door that had been left ajar, into the wide dark Echo of fields and farmland from decades or centuries before, and highlighted before her in an oasis of torchlight she saw what had happened. One of the Pserans was dead, her hand clasped to her neck and bloody foam on her lips. He killed her, she thought, but she was not as surprised as she should have been. The two remaining triplets stood close to their sister, but not close enough to touch. They looked on as Nadielle knelt beside her creation and stroked the skin of her face, closing her eyes and weeping gently.
Gorham and Malia stood to one side, their torches lowered and turned off. Peer wondered why. She went to them, trying not to make a noise, and Gorham looked up at her approach.
"He's mad," he whispered.
"What happened?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Malia asked. Even this stern, harsh woman spoke quietly. She was no stranger to grief.
"What did she tell you in there?" Gorham demanded. He grabbed Peer's arm, the potential violence almost surreal in the silent shadows. She owed him nothing.
"That Rufus has come home," she said. She pulled her arm from Gorham's grip, fisting her hand, ready to punch. And she could have punched him, happily. She could have swung her fist into his mouth and felt his teeth loosen beneath knuckles hardened by years of stoneshroom picking.
But Gorham sighed, looking back at the dead woman-the dead thing-as her sisters picked her up at last.
Nadielle stood back as the Pserans carried the body into the darkness.
"Which way did he go?" Peer asked.
"Does it matter?" Malia said. "He's gone, and even if we find him again, he'll be no help. How can he?"
"He holds this city's future in his hands," the Baker said, walking toward them.
"You think you can…?" Gorham trailed off.
"Maybe," the Baker whispered, looking past them all at places none of them could know. "It's been tried before, with rackflies, spreading a harmless germ. But that was long ago, and…" She blinked, snapping back to the present. "You have to bring him to me."
"We have to?" Malia asked, attitude spilling from her.
"Yes, Malia," Nadielle said.
"Can't you help-" Gorham began, but the Baker was already walking away.
"I have work to do," she said. "Find him. Bring him. Nice to meet you, Peer."
Peer almost laughed out loud. Nice to meet you. But she smelled blood, and the air was still thick with the violence perpetrated there.
He was ready to run, she thought. As soon as the moment came, he was ready to run. And as she, Gorham, and Malia began the lonely journey back up from the darkness and into the night, Peer knew that there was so much more to Rufus Kyuss.
He went back into Hanharan Heights as he always did: silently, discreetly, slipping through shadows and pools of light without disturbing either, and all the way Nophel tried convincing himself that it was his stealth that kept him unseen. He knew that was not the case-it was a nightmarish kind of knowing, like the certainty that when you woke up you would find yourself dead-but all the way up the urbanized hillsides of Marcellan Canton, through the well-guarded gates of the Heights, and into the warren of corridors and staircases that led to Dane Marcellan's rooms, he maintained the illusion.
Standing before Dane made it all real.
The fat man squinted as Nophel entered his huge bedroom. There were no nubile young women on his bed this time, but the table of slash in the corner still exuded its sweet fumes, and Dane was piled naked on his bed like a heap of bled swine meat. He sat up and turned his head this way and that, frowning. Then he nodded and waved in Nophel's general direction.
"Even knowing you're there, I see only shadow."
Nophel stood silently, wondering.
"Don't mess with me, Nophel." His tone was serious, and his eyes were no longer out of focus.
"Make me whole again," Nophel whispered.
Dane laughed. It shivered his rolls of fat and set him coughing, which shook his body even more. Nophel wondered how long it would take him to stop moving. He might have laughed, had he not felt so wretched.
"You are whole!" Dane said. "Touch yourself. Feel!"
Obeying Dane's words was almost a subconscious act-Nophel touched and felt. His skin was slick and cool with sweat. He held his hand in front of his face and barely saw it.
"I met the Unseen," he said.
Dane's laughter drifted away, and he was serious again. Shuffling to the edge of the bed, he slipped his feet into leather sandals and shrugged on a robe, tying the cord with a surprising dexterity. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Nophel smiled and wondered whether Dane could sense it.
"Everyone who has ever tried the Blue Water," he said. "They exist-like me. And some are more invisible."
"More invisible?"
"They watch you, Dane," Nophel said, feeling a thrill of power and danger. This is a Marcellan, he thought, but Dane stood amazed before him. "They watch all of you. Perhaps they're too far gone for revenge, or maybe not. I couldn't tell."
"But they died. They went away and died, and you're the one it was always meant for. Your mother made that stuff!"
"I don't believe she knew the real power of it," Nophel said. He walked across the room and sat on the end of Dane's bed. The fat Marcellan took a step back, looking down at where the bedclothes were dipped beneath Nophel's weight.