"Gorham, don't be afraid," Nadielle said again. She slid down the side of the vat and landed with a splash. The vat hung open and steaming, but already the gap the thing had emerged through seemed to be shrinking. The huge container was repairing itself, as walls lifted and wooden buttresses shoved upward.
When Gorham looked at the newborn again, it was already on its feet. It was using its bladed hands to scrape the wet stuff from its hairless skin. Its legs were long and thin, ending in feet that sprouted thick spines. There were also spines projecting an arm's length along its backbone, flexing and spiking at the air as they stretched. Even as he watched, Gorham saw its skin darkening and hardening. The sound its blades made as they slicked moisture from skin turned from a clean, soft hiss to a harder scraping. In contact with the air at last, it was developing armor before his eyes.
Nadielle stood before her newly chopped creation. It was more than a head taller than she was. Gorham watched, fascinated and appalled, as the thing knelt on bony knees and rested its head on Nadielle's shoulder. She stroked its hair and kissed its head, glancing over its shoulder at Gorham and waving him closer.
He shook his head, but she persisted. "Come here, Gorham," she said. "Meet my new child. It's strong and hard, and it knows how to fight and kill. But more than that, it knows how to protect. I want to teach it who to protect, so come here."
As he went, fear was slowly merging with wonder. He'd just witnessed something incredible. "You've chopped a warrior?"
"I've been working on him for some time. Will you name him?"
The thing was looking at Gorham now, its eyes wide and dark. Does it see me as a human? he wondered. Is there real intelligence in there?
"He thinks," Nadielle said, perhaps seeing the questions and doubt in his eyes, "but it's a different kind of intelligence. You'll not discuss the finest points of philosophy and religion with him, but he could take a dozen Scarlet Blades and wear their scalps for hats."
"And you want me to name it?"
"Unless it is a suitable name."
"No," Gorham said. He paused a few steps away, and Nadielle leaned in and started whispering in its ear, all the while looking at Gorham. The thing never took its eyes from him. Even when it blinked, it did so with one eye at a time, so that he was always in its view.
"He knows you now," she said. "He'll never turn against you, and his life is dedicated to your protection."
"And you?"
"I'm his mother. Now, a name." She smiled sweetly, and Gorham thought she was enjoying this display of her strange, wonderful, terrible talent.
"How about Neph?"
"God of sharp things," Nadielle said. "Appropriate." She whispered to the thing again, and Gorham heard the name Neph mentioned several times. It closed its eyes, Nadielle pulled back, and it was named.
"So when we go down," he said, "what are you expecting?"
Nadielle's smile slipped a little. She touched Neph's face as it pressed against her like a hound twisting against an owner's hand. "Not knowing the answer to that is why we need him."
Neph keened softly, and as it stretched, its blades scored lines in the floor.
"So now we go?" Gorham asked.
"Yes, now we go. You leave first with Neph and the woman, and I'll catch up. I have to make sure no one can enter my rooms while I'm away. It's time to open another vat."
Later, with Neph stalking ahead as silent as night, Gorham asked what the second vat had contained. Nadielle would not tell him. She averted her eyes and smiled at the woman, and when he asked once more, Nadielle walked quickly ahead.
Gorham followed, brooding. He and Nadielle carried food, climbing equipment, and other supplies, leaving Neph free to protect them, and already his shoulders were chafing from the straps. The thought that he would not see the sky again for days was harsh. The idea that Peer and Malia were up there now, searching for perhaps the most important person the city had ever seen, inspired a heavy sense of dread.
And Nadielle's strange woman watched him with her wide blank eyes.
Rufus is not his name-he has no name, because as far as he remembers she did not give him one-but in memory, this is now how he thinks of himself. So Rufus, his younger self, is lying in the sand, and all there is for him to see is the low baking desert and the pale-blue sky, as if even that is scorched by the sun. And though only just born, Rufus feels that death is very close. There is no food, and the heat is burning the fluid from his body. She'll be sad, he thinks, not quite certain who she is. He swallows a mouthful of saliva, and the vague thought of her passes away entirely, replaced by a taste that brings a brief but intense recollection of a dark, cold stone wall. Then even that is gone, and Rufus thinks only of himself.
A long time passes, and then the shadow comes. Its touch seems to soothe his burning skin. He sighs, and his throat hurts. His tongue is swollen. I'm almost dead, he thinks, and those words feel strange in his mind. He knows how they are used and what they mean, but he is lost.
Rufus looks up into the shadow that blocks the sun, and the shape is unfamiliar to him. It comes closer, kneeling before him. It makes a guttural, deep rumble interspersed with clicks and hisses, and he realizes that it is talking.
"I'm lost," he says past his swollen tongue, and it's like talking through a mouthful of food. The corners of his mouth are split, and he winces, feeling blood flowing across his face.
The shape inclines its head, and now his eyes are becoming used to the shadow. He blinks a few times to moisten them some more. The shape smiles. It's a whole new experience for Rufus, and he wonders whether he can ever look like this.
It removes part of its face as it reaches for him, and his shock is tempered by the feel of something cool and wet pressed against his lips. He half-closes his eyes and sucks, and water flows into his mouth. He sighs and swallows, closing one hand around the hand of his helper.
Drinking, enjoying the contact of his skin on someone else's, Rufus searches his thoughts and shallow memories for something to relate this to. But though he feels something deep down begging to be released and revealed, his recollection is blank. This is all new.
His helper's face is dark and smooth, eyes deep and protected behind a transparent film stretched across a network of fine wire filaments. It's a woman-he can see the swell of breasts against the thin white gown she wears-and her full lips are moist and shiny. Her hair is long and glinting with bulbs of water. He's entranced by these droplets, because they seem to slip and flow as the woman moves, catching and casting tiny rainbows and shedding them again just as quickly. He lifts his hand from his helper's wrist and reaches up. She smiles-her eyes behind the film crease at the corners-and leans forward some more. Rufus takes in a deep breath and smells the woman for the first time. His child's brain is almost overwhelmed by the barrage of scents, and though his memory is not rich, he can still identify a sweetness and the heat of spices and warmth. He touches her hair, thick yet smooth, and one bulb of water makes contact with his forefinger. It breaks and flows across Rufus's skin. He sighs with pleasure as another burn is soothed.
The woman speaks again, but Rufus shakes his head. He cannot understand her. And then he sees that, though smiling, her eyes are also flickering this way and that as she examines his body. He's naked, and the relentless sun has scorched him terribly, stretching and reddening the skin all across his shoulders, back, and stomach. His legs and groin have escaped the worst of it, hidden as they have been by his stooped shadow for much of the time, but his ankles and feet are blistered and weeping. He sees sympathy in his helper's eyes, but also confusion.