Regeneration

by Stacey Berg

  I am with you.

  The voices below changed, brief questions from Dalto drawing even shorter answers, call then response, a kind of chant. Then a long, long pause, and a single word.

  Echo must have heard the switch click, though she didn’t register the sound. It was like the shock after a blow, in the instant before the pain starts. She felt the systems stagger, balance failing, as when the expected ground beneath a foot disappeared and the next step was into air, the body falling, tumbling over the edge—

  No! Not you! I will not let you fall, Saints, Lia, I—

  So strong was the instinct that her arm was actually reaching, hand raised to catch Lia’s before she fell, just as she reached for her every night in the dream. But as in the dream, her fingers closed on empty air, and she was turning from the rose window, crying Lia, Lia, when, between one beat of her pounding heart and the next, she heard it.

  Echo. Everything stopped, impossibly, even gravity suspended. She froze, still to her core. If she moved, even in her mind, the gossamer thread would snap. Echo, is that you . . .

  A high-pitched scream sounded from below.

  Echo threw herself down the ladder as a priest leapt to his feet. In the next instant she realized the sound had been mechanical; but it was followed by a real grunt of pain as a sparking wire snapped against the priest’s hand. A thread of smoke floated up from the charge splitter; Khyn stood staring at it, knuckles white in the fingers clutching the end of her braid. The priests sat motionless, eyes fixed on their boards as they awaited Dalto’s orders; but he too was frozen, staring not at his boards but at the Saint.

  “What is happening?” Echo hissed at Khyn.

  The Preserver shook her head. “Dalto made the last input, then there was one big surge, and—”

  The door flew open, admitting Gem. “The mast is sparking!” the young hunter reported calmly, but her eyes were wide.

  Her words jolted the room back to life. “She’s streaming all the excess charge through it,” Dalto said, hands flying over his board. “It will hold.”

  The Patri peered over his shoulder, as wide-eyed as Gem. “It had better,” he said through thinned lips. Dalto punched more buttons; the other priests matched with their own responses as he snapped orders, one after another.

  None of that mattered to Echo. All she could think was Lia. Every other thought was frozen, even her heart seemed not to beat in the infinite time it took to see the panel lights settle, the pattern return to normal as the sanctuary’s hum—the Saint’s voice—grew whole again. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute. The sharp edge of relief cut through her chest with a physical pain, at the same moment that Dalto spoke.

  “We have regained control,” the priest reported, but his lips pressed thin and white, and the skin around his eyes pulled tight. He shook his head at his board as if he could not believe what it told him. “Or rather, the Saint—” He stopped, took a breath, and said more calmly, “Power is steady—everywhere in the city, including the Ward. The system rejected the command.”

  “Rejected the command?” The Patri’s voice rose in disbelief. “How is that possible?” The charge splitter no longer smoked, though the smell of burned polymer lingered. The priests eyed their panels warily, hands poised for quick action. Behind the anger in Jozef’s voice Echo heard something else. They fear her, Gem had said.

  “It should not be,” Dalto said. A bead of sweat trickled from his temple down to his jaw; he wiped it, then stared at his fingertips. “The surge must have overwhelmed the inputs. The feedback from that destroyed the splitter, but we have stabilized the flow.”

  “Are you sure you have control?”

  Dalto took a long breath. “This Saint—I am sure of nothing.”

  His uncertainty terrified Echo. “Patri,” she began. Jozef’s head jerked around. Before he could speak she said quickly, “The Preservers could help. Khyn says that Stigir knows more than she does. He might know some way of balancing the circuits, some new technology . . .” Khyn nodded, eyes fixed intently on the Patri.

  He said, “Speculation helps nothing. They are not here.”

  “I can find them again, only give me an aircar. Surely it is worth trying.” Anything was worth trying. Saints, Lia . . . Even as Echo watched, a panel light flickered; Dalto steadied it, but his hand trembled. “Or we could signal them in some way—” Hope surged through her. “Turn on the beacon. If they still are looking for Khyn, if they see—”

  “If, if, if. Leave me alone.”

  Her fists tightened; she forced them open. He was the Patri. He could not simply turn away. Any resource, any slimmest chance to help the Saint . . . the Preservers understood about the crown, and the strain on those who wore it.

  Stigir had removed his crown.

  Echo tried a final time. “Patri, I am begging you. We must—”

  He whirled, and she knew at once that she had gone too far. “Do not say must to me, hunter. You have made me too much trouble as it is. Get out of the sanctuary. Speak to no one of what happened here. Go now, before I order you out of the Church altogether.”

  Why couldn’t he see? Her jaw clenched as she bit back her reply. She knew—Belatedly, she realized what the Patri threatened her with. Excommunication, or worse. Once the mere idea would have sent her to her knees. Now all she could think was that she must not give him an excuse. Not when the Saint needed her. The beacon, the Preservers . . . I swear, if there is any way . . .

  As if in response to her desperation, another panel flared. A priest reached for a dial, but Dalto stopped him, saying “Wait, the systems are balancing themselves. I think it’s a—yes, one last bleed-off through the dish. Saints, she is powerful. What would have happened if all that had stayed within the circuits . . .” He shuddered, a swift involuntary motion.

  Echo’s fingers opened, stretched towards the panel. Lia . . . The Patri’s pale eyes flashed. “I told you to get out!”

  Her hand fell to her side. “My service to the Church,” Echo said, but inside, she heard a different word.

  “As it must be.” The reply was automatic; he had turned away already, certain that she would obey this time.

  Yet she paused in the nave, a hand on the outer door. One must serve the Saint. Anything, she thought. I will do anything.

  She could still hear the Patri speaking to Dalto within. It was wrong to listen; she did not care. “You must find another way to control the flow or the systems will burn.”

  “Patri, this Saint’s strength . . . In only these few months, the city systems have been repaired, new ones installed. I am not saying I wish it, but even if she were to . . . to be reduced to all but the most basic functions now, it would be enough.”

  There was a silence, filled only by the pounding of Echo’s heart as it raced in confusion and dread. “Stabilize the systems, Dalto. Eliminate the surges. That is all that matters.” Dalto must have answered with some gesture; after a moment, the Patri spoke again, so softly she almost did not hear. “We must control her. This proves it beyond all doubt. Find a way, whatever must be done.”

  Echo stumbled down the steps. Her ears rang as if the alarm in the sanctuary still screamed, but it was all within her mind. Dalto, the Patri, they had given the Saint an order, and the Saint had refused. How that was possible, what circuits and systems had failed—those were matters beyond Echo’s understanding.

  But she knew she had heard the Saint’s voice. And she feared, with the blind terror of the fall within her dreams, that she would never hear it again if she did not serve her now.

  Echo knew what the old Patri would have done when his first attempt to punish the Ward failed. Jozef could not, under any circumstances, let the cityens guess that the Saint had refused his order. And worse, what he would do if it happened again . . . Before dawn Echo woke Gem in her cell. “Tell the Patri I have seen to the Ward.” She was gone before Gem could question her, and by first light she was at the mill. A Wardman found her there, setting the sack of
crop powder against the base of the wall inside. “You have an hour,” Echo said.

  A crowd gathered, silent with dismay, to watch as cityens hurried to remove the grain and other items that could be carried from the mill. They worked as hard as they could, but in the end it wouldn’t matter. The time was nearly up. “If we had a few more minutes,” someone begged; she only shook her head and stood cross-armed, watching them scramble, their task made even more difficult by the buffeting wind.

  Teller dropped a last sack on a cart and wiped his face. She did not think it was only sweat making channels in the coating of flour dust. His sleeve came away white; beneath the dust, he was white with fury. “How are we supposed to eat? The other mills won’t as take up the load. And not like North or Bend will help.”

  “You should have thought that before you defied the Church,” she said.

  “This isn’t the truce we all agreed to. Take care of each other, that was our oath. The Church to lead us, not to beat us down. Signed in blood, that might as well have been. Lia’s too, as if you cared.” He looked away, lips trembling. “If she knew what you were doing . . .”

  “You are the ones who betrayed her,” she began, then swallowed the rest of it before she could reveal what had happened in the sanctuary, and betray the Saint herself. “The Church won’t let you starve. Come to the Patri when you’ve learned your lesson.”

  He spat, perilously near her boot. Tralene, weeping openly, drew him away. She had been walking among the crowd, comforting them, assuring them, “It’s only as for a little while. We’ll rebuild it. The Saint knows we’re loyal, and that’s as what matters. The Patri will realize soon enough. Come now, go to your homes, let’s not as frighten the children . . .”

  But her words to Echo were cold. “You know us. You know as this is wrong. How can you let the Church do such a thing?”

  “Clear everyone away from here.”

  Tralene’s lips pressed together, trembling with fear and no little anger. Her eyes searched Echo’s face, then clouded as she failed to find whatever she sought there. “You never understood a thing she said.”

  Echo went inside the empty mill and lit the fuse.

  She found Exey in the tower room. She made no attempt to hide her approach; there was only one way out, and if he wanted to take it she didn’t really care. He was sketching again, cylinders and gears she didn’t recognize. She didn’t care about that either. She flung the filigreed clasp at him; it skittered across the print like a live thing fleeing her. “Why were you at the mill?”

  He started to make one of his insolent rejoinders, then changed his mind at the look on her face. “I had to fix the connection to the vanes. The wind tore some of the wiring loose. If the Wardmen would pay more attention to maintenance I could—” His eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t think I had anything to do with—”

  She reached down and hauled him to his feet, then off them. His hands clawed at her wrists ineffectually. Two steps and he was framed in the glassless gap. “What were you doing there?”

  “Fixing the vanes! I swear that’s all!”

  “Someone delivered those weapons. Was it you?”

  “No!”

  She pushed him closer to the drop. “Are you absolutely certain?”

  Terror twisted his face. His eyes, lighter than most cityens’, were nearly consumed by black, the animal response to fear. Sweat beaded his skin; she saw the pulse pounding in the hollow of his throat. Her hands tightened in his collar, choking him. “I swear! I swear by the Saint!”

  She let him go.

  He stumbled across the room, hitting the wall with a dull thud. He clung there, bent over himself, chest heaving in ragged gasps.

  She stood on the edge of the fall. The gusting wind made her eyes blur. She wiped them clear. A clang of loose metal far below drew her gaze down. A body falling from here would take a long time to hit the ground. Long enough to know what was coming. As a girl would know, who slipped over the edge of a cliff. Perhaps if you looked up, fixed on something besides the certain end rushing towards you, it wouldn’t be too bad. Only a moment’s suspension in the air, then nothing at all.

  The wind tugged at her, a warning, or an offer.

  Her eyes lifted to the spire. I am not sorry, she thought defiantly. I told you I would do anything.

  The crossed panels burned coldly, an impossible distance away.

  She stood there a long time, wondering what beacon could guide her home.

  And then she saw the aircar come over the horizon.

  Chapter 19

  Echo crouched behind a pile of rubble just inside the forcewall. Khyn’s passage had shown that the wall was no barrier to the Preservers, but instinct still drew a line, in here, out there. The aircar’s instruments must have been able to detect it too. The hull, rocking alarmingly as the engines wheezed, settled a hundred paces beyond the forcewall, spraying sand. The craft was of a size to carry half a dozen or more. It went without saying that they would be vektere. Likely all of them would be carrying energy weapons.

  Some of the hunters spread out along the perimeter carried projectile weapons. Echo knew the sense of it; they must take advantage of every resource against a potential enemy. But the sight of the weapons in hunter hands made the old wound in her arm ache. And her heart. Too close a reminder of the rebellion, too much a threat of a slide back down into the dark. And to use them against the Preservers meant the end of all her hopes.

  The breeze blew sand with a gentle hiss against the aircar’s skin. Echo snugged her collar tighter. She smelled the far desert on the wind’s cold edge, warning of the coming storm. Another day and the Preservers might not have made it; nothing could fly through the great windstorms. She could hardly fathom how they had found the city at all. With no beacon, no first-hand knowledge of the desert—it seemed barely possible. She swallowed past a dry throat. When she had pleaded with the Patri to seek their help, she had not imagined that they might arrive unbidden. It shook her in a way that finding the Preserve had not. The other hunters must feel it too: a threat from without instead of within, as there had not been in four hundred annuals; a new predator in the desert.

  Perhaps she had made some error, not led them far enough off course, not hidden signs of her passage well enough— She chided herself for wasting energy on such speculation. Blame could be assigned later; Nyree certainly would. It only mattered now that the Preservers were here.

  What frightened her most was that she was glad. The memory played over and over in her mind: Stigir removing his crown.

  Nyree slipped from position to position along the line, giving orders. “When they open the hatch, we rush. Brit will take left, Gem has right. I will assist you in the middle, since you are inadequately armed. Marin and the others will wait in case a second wave is needed. On my signal.”

  Echo’s fingers clenched on her projtrodes. She forced herself to loosen her grip. “That strategy is faulty. Attacking forces the outcome. We should assess their intentions first.”

  “If they mean no harm, they can surrender.” Nyree lifted her weapon. “I am not seeking opinions. Concur or withdraw.”

  Echo wondered which of the vektere had come. Jole, perhaps; Taavi. Honor would have compelled her, if the others were going to risk themselves to rescue Khyn, whom she had unknowingly let Echo take. Echo glanced at Nyree, coiled and ready. In a close fight, the young vektere would stand no chance. But energy weapons against projectiles . . . It was a new equation, once Echo had no experience to solve.

  “Concur,” Echo said. Nyree’s eyes flashed at her; then she was gone.

  Echo looked over her shoulder towards the Church. The spire winked like a daytime star low in the sky. She could not waste the chance to gain help for the Saint. Then she heard a lock mechanism whir, then the wheeze of hydraulics. Her breath quickened. Nyree would signal when the hatch swung partway up.

  Echo launched herself from behind the rock. She ignored the startled exclamation from behind her. She
didn’t even feel the tingling as she passed through the forcewall, only the prickling between her shoulders as she braced herself for a projectile weapon’s crack. It didn’t come. Your problem now, Nyree’s inaction said.

  The door stuttered up with an abrasive grinding, sand in the hydraulics. The sound covered her light footsteps; the vektere might not even realize she was there. In this case, surprise was not her ally. She ducked into the low space beneath the aircar’s belly, then rapped hard on the metal hull. “Stand down,” she called. “I mean you no harm.”

  The aircar rocked on the landing struts as weight shifted abruptly inside. The door stopped moving. Hunters defending the hatch would crouch high and low on each side, covering the angles while keeping clear of each other’s fire. Echo didn’t know what the vektere would do. She pressed her back against the aircar’s smooth skin, trying to peer up through the narrow gap in the door. Bodies blocked the cabin lights as the vektere moved inside. She heard muffled argument within. “Everyone stay calm. I only want to talk to you.”

  “We want the same.” Stigir’s voice, of course. He would never leave anyone behind. Stigir. Hope leapt inside her; she thrust it away.

  “We must be very careful. My friends are waiting. We need to show them there is no threat.”

  “How?”

  Echo wished she could have explained her plan to the hunters. If not for Nyree, they might even have agreed: the danger in it was primarily to the Preservers, and of course to herself. But there was no point hesitating now. She had been committed the moment she’d abandoned her position. If it didn’t work, there was still plenty of time for Nyree to do things her way. And the vektere couldn’t know that a hostage hunter would be no shield for them. She crouched in the sand beside the half-open hatch and laid her projtrodes where they could see. “I’m putting down my weapon. Let me in.”