Echo City Read Online Free Page A

she could fade away. She was a prisoner who was growing to like her prison, an exiled victim of an insidious dictatorship who was forgetting the fire and rage that had fueled her past. Often she would strive to reignite that fire, but it never felt the same.
Just let it come
, Penler would say to her, referring to the gentle contentment and not the righteous passion she had once felt. She hated him and loved him for that, the infuriating old man. He was trying to save her, and she was determined to convince herself that she did not want to be saved.
    This is not my home
, she thought again as she walked through the narrow streets, but this morning Skulk Canton felt just fine.
    She passed through a small square and saw familiar figures setting up stalls for breakfast. She bought a lemon pancake and had her mug filled with rich five-bean, and she dallied for a while, enjoying the sights and smells of cooking, the sound of bartering, and the good-natured air of the place.
    “You’ll be late!” a big man called as he stirred soup in a huge pot.
    “The ’shrooms will wait, Maff,” she said. “What’s cooking?”
    He motioned her over, and Peer smiled as she negotiated her way through a throng of hungry people. Maff always enjoyed revealing the recipes to his top-secret brews.
    “Tell no one,” he whispered as she drew close, his breath smelling of beer and pipe smoke, his big hand closing around her long, tied hair. “I had a consignment of dart root delivered yesterday. I’m mixing it with rockzard legs, some sweet potatoes from Course, and my own special ingredient.” He tappedthe side of her nose and glanced around, as if they were discussing a coup against the Marcellans themselves.
    Peer raised an eyebrow, waiting for the great revelation.
    “Electric-eel hearts,” he whispered into her ear. “Fresh. Still charged.” She felt his bead-bedecked beard tickling her neck and pulled away, laughing softly. When she looked at him, Maff was nodding seriously, pearls of sweat standing out on his suntanned skin. He touched her nose again. “Tell no one.”
    “Your secret’s safe with me, Maff.”
    “So …?” he asked, lifting a deep spoon of the soup toward a bowl.
    Peer held up both hands. “I’d like to wake up in the morning.”
    Maff shrugged and continued stirring the soup, and even as she bade him farewell, he called over a short, ratlike man. He whispered in the man’s ear, nodded down at the soup, and his secret was told again.
    In her early days here, Peer would have wondered what crimes Maff had committed to deserve banishment. Such thoughts rarely crossed her mind anymore. She left the square and weaved her way through narrow streets, the buildings overhead seeming to lean in and almost touch. The sun shone, though she still thought it would likely rain that afternoon, and Skulk Canton was buzzing with life.
    She passed a group of men and women lounging on the front steps of a large building. They wore knives and swords on show, and all bore identical scars on their left cheeks—the unmistakable arc of a rathawk’s wing. They observed her with lazy eyes and full purple lips, displaying the signs of subtle slash addiction, and one of them called to her softly. Laughter followed. She ignored the call and walked on, maintaining the same pace. She didn’t want them to think she was running because of them, but slowing could have been seen as a reaction to the voice. They were part of the Rage gang—slash dealers and sex vendors—and she had no wish to be involved with them in any way.
    She soon reached the first of the stoneshroom fields. There were already dozens of people at work, scrambling across the spread of ruined buildings in their search for the prized fungi.Much of the wild plant growth had been cleared from the rubble, making the stoneshrooms easier to spot and giving them space in which to grow, and the ruins were stark and depressing in the morning sun. Some areas still bore the dark