Ecko Endgame Read Free Page A

Triqueta had first ridden from the city’s southernmost gate, the area had been a trade-road bazaar, loud and rough and muddy, a haven for smugglers and pirates. Now, it was a crazed tessellation of scents and shouts and smoke, tents and lean-tos, all growing one into another like lichens in the wet. There were old hangings and tacked-together cloaks, scavenged parts of stalls, salvaged pieces of wood and stone, all carbuncled against the buttresses, or collaged in corners as if they had been flung there.
    The main roadway was puddled and rutted, strewn with garbage – and seething with people, some directionless and underfoot, others purposeful and frustrated. As Triq tried to shoulder the mare through the mass, beggars crowded about her, held out dirty bowls and dirtier hands; they owned only what they stood in and crying children clung to their legs. In a moment, she and the horse were surrounded by voices and pleas, by the stink of piss and urgency.
    She dismounted, found herself walled in by flesh – the refugee village seemed to have swelled even since the birth of the sun. For a moment, she thought of her own crazed wealth – the hoarded metal from the Elementalist Maugrim’s peculiar treasure chamber. Even if she’d had it with her, it would have been useless – some ludicrous jest of the Gods.
    The rain grew heavier, cold from the sea, and the lightning flashed again. As she came closer to the dark rise of the gate itself, the roadway grew clearer and the crowd began to drift away, back towards their makeshift homes, and whatever hope they could find.
    She wished she had some of her own to spare for them.
    * * *
    Amos was a city changed.
    At the open southernmost gate, Triq found a cluster of freemen and women gathered round a firebox. Their weapons were close but not in hand, and they bore their colours with the casual attitude of soldiers who’d not worn them in training. They eyed her as she came near but they seemed unworried, grumbling among themselves with affable discontent.
    “Breakfast?” She grinned at them, and they grunted in return.
    To the landward of where they stood, spreading all the way back to the city wall, there was a cleared plaza, thick with caking mud. Here, there was a square of more regular tents – a hospice, a foodhall, a tithehall – all makeshift but functioning. Smoke curled into the air, and cloaked figures scurried.
    Above them, the black wall rose like the end of the world.
    “Triq!”
    Through the scattering rain, the sound of her name startled her – it had come from the front of one of the tents.
    “
Triq!
”
    There – was that someone waving?
    At the far side of the square there was a wide sprawl of greenish tent, its awning bulging with water and its guy-lines strained tight. Triqueta blinked, wiped her eyes. Under the awning was a slim, pale-haired figure.
    Amethea.
    Friend and apothecary, with a resilience that had faced down Aeona’s nightmare figments, she was tired and filthy-faced, stained with mud and fluids. Her pale skin was flecked with darkness like the missing pieces of lives.
    As she saw Triqueta look, she ducked out of the doorway and ran, the mud clinging thickly to her boots. It was sheltered from the wind here, and Triq could hear her shouting, words falling over themselves.
    “Triq! Oh, thank the Goddess you’re here! She’s – Gods! – you have to see her for yourself. I can’t even think… been awake for a day and half…” She caught up, panting, and stopped to speak, stroking the walking horse’s nose. The mare snorted at her smell. “Gods, this is so
crazed—
!”
    “Whoah!” Triqueta put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Start at the beginning. I have to see who?”
    Amethea blinked water. Rain ran down her face like tears; her garments were soaked through, bloodstains blossoming into sodden flowers of pink. She gestured back at the tent. “I can’t… You have to come and see her for yourself.”
    “See
who
?”