by Stacey Berg
“It’s not just one year,” Khyn insisted. “The line is failing.”
Echo went cold. She heard it again, the long-ago conversation that was never meant to reach her ears. “The line is failing,” the Patri had said. “There will be more to cull.” How many times since then she had believed herself an example of that failure, she could not count.
“I know it’s hard,” Birn said. He wrapped an arm around Khyn’s shoulder, pulling her close. “But remember what we’re here for. The stewards will find a way. Just be patient for a little while longer.”
Khyn tugged out of his grasp. “We have to open the Vault before it’s too late.”
Birn’s face hardened. “You used to have better sense.”
“You used to be more reasonable.” She looked from Birn to Yilva. “I’m going to see Stigir. Come if you want, or not. It’s your choice.”
“We’ll go with you,” Birn said. “But the team isn’t going to listen. You’re making a big mistake.” But as he spoke, it was Echo’s face he fixed on.
Chapter 4
Echo lay on her bed, listening to the wind roar down the mountain. By the movement of shadow across the high slit of a window, more than three hours had passed since Khyn had gone off to confront the team. “Stay here,” Birn had ordered when Echo made to accompany them. Echo had heard the tiny click of the switch on the other side. Birn didn’t bother to warn her not to hurt herself trying to break through the forceshield. Maybe he assumed she’d listen to him and stay put.
Maybe he had vektere waiting, in case she didn’t.
She thought about the dead baby, and Khyn’s argument with Yilva and Birn. The Patri shared Khyn’s fear, on a larger scale: it would not take many bad annuals to send the cityen population spiraling into a downfall from which the city might not recover. And as for the hunters, and the Saint . . . Refresh the line, Khyn had said. The burden of maintaining the city had consumed the Saint before Lia after only a few annuals. Lia was different—but even the thought of the same thing happening to her made Echo’s gut twist. If Khyn really knew how to do what she suggested . . . Frowning at the ceiling, Echo reexamined the facts she had and determined that they were insufficient. Until she acquired more, she had nothing to report.
Nothing? She could almost hear Lia’s laughter, see the golden eyes alight. You’ve walked across the desert and found a whole new city that’s nothing like our own. They have funny little not-bovines, and a kind of fruit that isn’t a pomme. Bring yourself home and tell me all about it!
For an instant Lia felt so real that Echo could smell her skin as it warmed under the sun on a market day, feel the softness of her body the night they lay together. She almost reached out, to trace the fine crinkled lines at the corner of her eye again—
But Lia was gone.
Echo lay alone, adrift in this faraway place where even the wind smelled strange, sounded strange too as it soughed its way through trees grown greener and denser than she’d ever seen, like the desert in bloom a hundred times over. She counted her breaths, in and out until her heartbeat steadied. The Church remained, and when she returned she would make her report to the Patri, who would parse it for meanings no hunter could hope to see. He would turn the problem over in his quick mind and probe for details she had acquired without realizing, and then he would commune with the Saint, for the Saint preserved the Church, the Church, the city. So it had been, and so it would always be.
And Echo, when he was finished with her, would sit alone in the sanctuary, and bow her head, and listen for Lia’s voice in the silence that filled her heart.
Her eyes drifted closed. The wind increased; she heard an occasional distant thump as small pieces of debris struck outside, and the rolling boom of thunder. She was nearly asleep when the cry brought her back fully awake.
She held perfectly still, eyes closed, listening. The sound had been distant, wrong, something that didn’t belong. Not Marget in the other room; someone outside, calling from far away. All Echo heard now was the wind, but she knew she had not imagined it. After a moment it came again, fainter this time, but the high, tremulous wail could only belong to a child.
She rose from the bed. “Is anyone there?” she called down the hall. There was no answer. Echo tested the forceshield with a fingertip. It sparked and popped, but the discomfort was tolerable. Still she hesitated. They thought the shield would hold her; she lost a significant advantage if they discovered it could not. Maybe she could pretend the power had failed. Then the cry came again, thin and desperate, and she thrust her arm through the barrier, ignoring the pain while she felt for the hidden switch. The forceshield dropped. Shaking out her tingling hand, Echo ran for the outer door. Birn had left no guard; perversely, she wished he had not underestimated her at such an inconvenient time.
A quick glance down the main walkway told her no help was in immediate reach. The wind swirled, but she could manage it. She had been caught once in a desert windstorm. She had only survived by climbing down a ruined shaft, where she clung for hours to the rusted iron ladder, her body sheltered by a fallen beam while debris pelted past her, splashing into the pit far below. Every time something struck her the ladder creaked and bent a little more. When she had crawled back out on shaking arms, she found the sand blown smooth as far as she could see, the trackless distance marked only by the drifts of sand against jutting rock, and the carcass of some less fortunate predator scoured clean to the pink-white bones. Here in the Preserve, the biggest danger would be flying debris.
She turned her head slowly back and forth, listening. Call again, she urged the lost child silently. But it had already been longer than the interval between the other cries. She was on the verge of going for help after all when she heard it again, a shriek of rage or despair woven into the wind. Netje’s voice, she was sure. What would bring the girl out into this storm?
Echo sprinted for the capri pen. A rail had come down in back, leaving a gap the animals could squeeze through, but most of them, with the stolid good sense of herd animals, were huddled together in the safety of the enclosure. Netje was not with them. Echo circled around to the gap. Crescent tracks led straight up the path to the grove. So did a child’s small bootprints.
Echo yanked the red handle on the post-mounted box but heard nothing, not even static.
She ran up the path at the best pace she could manage. It was raining now, the huge drops pelting so thick that she constantly had to wipe her eyes. In the desert the rare rains like this could fill the veins of a dead riverbed so fast that anything foolish enough to be caught there had no chance of survival. She didn’t know the mountains, but already water streamed ankle-deep on the path, and the mud began to suck at her boots. The tracks led her through the grove and up the trail on the other side. Soon the water would erase them, but she didn’t need them anymore; the awful sound ahead was beacon enough.
A fallen tree pinned the little capri right across its middle. Its front legs scrambled madly, digging deep into the mud, but its back half lay flaccid and still. Its pathetic bleating cries scraped across Echo’s nerves like stunner fire. Netje knelt beside it, tugging at the tree with all her strength. Her arms and face were lined with scratches that bled into the rain and turned her tears pale pink, and she was screaming louder than the capri. Echo hauled her up by the arm and set her down beside the path. “Hold on to that tree and don’t let go,” Echo shouted above the wind and noise.
“We have to save it!”
Echo gripped a branch, dug in her heels, and pulled. The mud gave no purchase; her boots carved twin tracks as she slid forward, but the tree did not budge. She tried again, and the branch she was holding broke, sending her sprawling. Once more she tried and failed. The water was knee-deep on the path now, sucking at her legs with frightening strength. The capri flailed, its back half completely submerged, front legs churning the water to muddy froth as it strained to keep its nostrils above the flood. “We have to go,” she yelled at Netje.
The girl l
et go of the tree and flung herself forward, not towards Echo but across the path. She grabbed the capri’s head, lifting it as high as she could. White showed all around its eyes, and its muzzle frothed pink. “I won’t leave it! It will drown!”
“So will we! Come on.”
Echo reached, but the girl jerked away. The movement sent her off balance and she stumbled, losing her grip on the capri. Its head dropped beneath the water. “No!” Netje screamed, and then cried out again as a flailing hoof caught her across the chest, knocking her back into the trees.
Echo leapt forward. She lifted the animal’s head clear with one arm and wrapped the other around its chest, clamping it tight to her body. She pulled, and the capri screamed again, hideously, but it did not even begin to slide free. She felt the trembling all through its small desperate body. She shifted her grip on its head, feeling for the nubby horn. When she had the best purchase she was going to get, she took one deep breath and twisted with all her strength. The snap was audible even above the storm. With a last bleating sigh, the animal went limp against her. She let it slip under the water and reached for Netje.
The girl punched Echo in the chest with both fists. “Get away from me!”
“We must go now.” Echo wrapped an arm around Netje as she had around the capri, pinning both her arms. The girl tried to knee her, and she used the opening to scoop both legs up with her other arm. After that there was nothing the child could do; she struggled another moment, then went limp except for the sobs that shook her entire body. Echo turned down the hill.
A gust greater than the others shook the forest. There was sharp crack, and a tree came down in a cacophony of creaks and lesser cracks, landing atop the limb that had felled the capri, completely blocking the path. No going back that way. Even carrying Netje, Echo might be able to pick her way downhill without a trail, but it would be time-consuming, and she was anxious to find a sturdy shelter out of the way of further falling trees. Echo peered ahead through the driving rain. This was about as far as she had come with Khyn, and that meant—yes. The branch she had broken on purpose on her walk with Khyn still hung in place, by some minor miracle; it swung back and forth but the wind had not ripped it free. She’d estimated the doors in the hillside to be no more than a few hundred paces ahead, and she set out that way now, following the curve of the hill and hoping her guess was good.
By the time she saw the entrance, her legs were aching with effort and her back burned out of proportion to the girl’s slight weight. The weakness frightened her; even a hunter’s body could be pushed past full recovery, and she had used hers ill over recent months. And she wasn’t young, as hunters counted themselves, though their lives were shortened more often by violence than frailty. It shouldn’t matter to her, past the basic urge for survival and the need to fulfill a mission; but as she struggled forward she yearned body-deep to live long enough to look on Lia one last time. Then she remembered that it would not be Lia she saw. The doors loomed, and for an instant it was the Church before her, and she held a different child, a boy she had nearly died to save, and she reached a shaking hand to the panel that would taste her traitor’s blood and burn her for her crimes.
In the next moment her vision cleared, and she remembered where she was. The doors she stood before were metal, not the massive iron-wrapped wood that guarded the Church; and they bore some kind of design, obscured now by the sheeting rain. She pounded a fist hard against them; above the wind and thunder she couldn’t tell if anyone might hear. Nothing happened. She cast around for a rock to bang and then saw what she should have from the first: the panel wired alongside the door. She pounded that too, and stood gaping as the metal slid quietly back into the rock.
She expected a cavern, some ancient fortress carved into the native rock; but instead found herself in a medium-size room, white walled and well lit, exactly like the rooms in the dispensary below. It held only a few chairs and tables, a long rack of hooks where occupants had hung their outer clothes, and two startled vektere who jumped to their feet as she stumbled through, bringing a swirl of wind-driven rain with her.
“Preservers help us! Get inside!” One of the vektere ran for the door; the wind and rain cut off abruptly. The other stood staring, hand on his baton. “What in the world were you doing out in that? You could have been— Who are you?”
Echo ignored him, laying Netje on a table and stripping off her soaked clothes. The girl had long since gone ominously quiet, and her skin was pale and chill. “Get something to dry her with.” Shocked though he was, the man had the sense not to argue. He grabbed something soft off a hook and began to chafe some warmth back into the child’s body. She started to shiver, a good sign, and her skin regained some color.
“That’s Netje!” the other vektere, a woman, exclaimed. “What happened?”
“She was caught in the storm. She is uninjured, only cold.” The words came out shaking, and Echo realized that she was shivering too, now that the heat of exertion had passed. She wrapped her arms around herself and shifted from foot to foot, making a puddle of muddy bootprints on the floor. “Send for Khyn.”
But the woman was staring at her. “You’re the one they found outside.”
The other vektere’s head snapped up. “The stranger!” His hands forgot their task. Echo took a small step forward. The vektere stood closer together than they should. She raised her hands as if to rub her arms, a position from which she could easily defend herself, but the pair made no move against her. Instead the woman only asked, “What were you doing out there with her? What are you doing here?”
“I will explain, but please, see to the child first. Find Khyn.”
“Thank the Preservers, she’s here already. I’ll get her. Hald, you stay with Netje.”
Things moved quickly after that. The woman ran out, not through the big door but across the room; Echo caught a glimpse of a long hallway that must lead back into the mountain. Others entered as she left, workers and a few more vektere, crowding the anteroom and asking all their questions at the same time. She explained briefly while she helped Hald, and a minute later Khyn came running in. Echo moved out of her way, watching until she was satisfied that Netje was sufficiently revived, then dropped into a chair where she sat trying to get warm.
A rolling boom sounded outside, and the lights flickered, going out for the space of a breath. When they came back they were dimmer, and the illumination unsteady. “It’s surges from the storm,” Khyn said. “The stewards will balance them.” Her lips thinned. “Stigir’s still in the link.” The words made no sense, but Khyn was correct; in a minute the lights came back on full, and stayed that way even as the thunder rumbled beyond the door.
Khyn demanded to hear the story for herself while she examined Netje, who by now was sitting up, though she still seemed dazed. This time Echo provided more detail. “The capri could not be saved, so—”
“She killed it!” Netje shrieked. “She killed my capri!”
“It would have drowned,” Echo said.
Khyn tucked a blanket around the girl. “Netje, just go to sleep, you’ll feel much better when—”
“She killed it! She broke its neck!”
The Preservers eyed Echo as if they could see her doing it. With Netje safe they were going to start thinking about what to do with her. This was the place she was not supposed to see, let alone enter, that held something so valuable that someone had built rooms deep within a mountain to protect it. It would be a waste not to learn what it was. She made a vague gesture that she hoped seemed like an apology.
“Let me see your hands,” Khyn said sharply, reaching to pull them into the light. Most of the bleeding had stopped by now, but the palms were bruised and swollen, striped with shallow cuts where the branch had torn through. Khyn drew a quick breath of dismay. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Echo flexed her fingers. “It is nothing serious.”
Khyn scowled at her. “You’re worse than the vektere. They’re always trying to pr
ove how tough they are. Hald, bring that kit over here, would you, and some water. And see if someone can find another blanket.”
Khyn’s touch was light and steady, but it took a long time to dig all the splinters out. Eventually it was done, everything clean and dry, an ointment smeared on the cuts to lessen the sting and clean bandages wrapped around like gloves with the fingers cut out. “Better?” Khyn asked, but her smile seemed forced, and when Echo tried to meet her eyes, she busied herself instead with her pack.
Hald pressed a switch, and the main door slid open a crack. The wind whistled through, carrying a swirl of wet leaves. “It’s raining too hard to take you down now. We’ll all sleep up here tonight and sort things out in the morning.”
The vektere laid down blankets and passed around food procured from somewhere within the back rooms, individual portions of something minced, then rolled thin and dried, that tasted mostly like pomme. Echo chewed a few bites and slipped the rest into a pocket against later need. She could manage easily enough until morning. Netje woke briefly to ask, “Are we camping?” which made everyone laugh, until the girl caught sight of Echo and let out a wail of dismay. “Make her go away!”
Echo rose on stiff legs. “I will sleep over there where I will not disturb you.” The room was warm enough, and she had slept many times on surfaces less comfortable than the smooth floor, hard though it was. She curled up the way any predator would, back to the corner and a head pillowed on one arm. And she watched the inner door, waiting.
Khyn came over after settling the child, a blanket around her shoulders and an extra that she passed to Echo. “Netje will be fine in the morning. I wish I could say the same for the rest of us.” She settled onto the floor with a sigh. In the hours since she’d left the dispensary, her anger had worn into a kind of sorrowful determination. “I dread telling Stigir about the baby.”
“It was his,” Echo said in a flash of clarity.