by Stacey Berg
“We’ve seen what you can do empty-handed,” Stigir said. Then she heard him expel a heavy breath through his nose. “The hatch is stuck.”
She almost laughed. That would have put quite a crimp in Nyree’s plan. “I can push it up from beneath.”
The aircar rocked slightly again, the vektere redistributing themselves. “If you offer the smallest threat, we’ll kill you,” Stigir warned. In his place, hunters would have found her mere presence threat enough.
She pushed the protesting hatch up another foot, enough to let her climb through. Eight vektere surrounded her, stun batons on their belts, the red eyes of their energy weapons focused on her. The memory of the smoking holes piercing the dispensary wall came back unnervingly vivid. Taavi met Echo’s eyes with the faintest of nods. There was a new hardness in her face, an expression Echo recognized. She knew that she had put it there. She looked around at the Preservers. “If you hope to see Khyn again, here is what you must do.”
Nyree did not gainsay Echo’s plan, but her hard stare promised a reckoning later. The Preservers scarcely liked it better.
“How do we know you’re not leading us into a trap?” Stigir demanded.
Nyree’s lip curled. “You don’t.”
“We should stay with the aircar,” Jole muttered, half to himself.
That had been Nyree’s argument as well. But a report would be nothing to the Patri. Echo needed him to see the Preservers himself, hear the evidence that they could help. He would understand. He had to.
“Our word,” Echo said as Stigir pressed his weapon to her temple. She tried to meet his eyes without moving her head. “If we wanted you dead, it would have happened already.”
She smelled his fear, souring the sweat that dripped into his beard. Taavi and Jole were frightened too, their fingers white around their weapons, their eyes flicking from the aircar to Stigir’s face. They knew they had a better chance, scant though it might be, out here than in the heart of the hunters’ power. Echo said, “We need your help. The Saint does. I promise that no harm will come to you if you do not provoke it.”
It was a strange procession back to the Church: Echo walking slowly beside Stigir, his weapon at her head; Taavi and Jole armed the same, one in front and one behind; Nyree, Brit, Marin, and Gem encircling the Preservers. The rest of the vektere waited safe in the aircar, or at least as safe as they could be, surrounded by hunters. As long as no one did anything stupid, the truce there should hold. The situation here was more volatile: Nyree would respond to the slightest provocation, and that Echo would certainly be first to die would not cause her the least hesitation.
To get to the Church they had to cross the edge of North clave. Word had spread quickly, and the road was lined with cityens. At first it had been just a few, but as the little party came deeper into the inhabited areas, the crowd swelled, women and men and children, all come to witness what had not been seen in four hundred annuals. The return of a single stranger in a hunter’s custody was nothing compared to an aircar full of them arriving on their own. If those watching were disappointed by the sight of a few tired and dusty humans looking about nervously, it didn’t show. The crowd stood in eerie silence, amazed; but any trivial event, a shout, an inadvertent stumble, might trigger disaster. Echo felt Stigir’s tension in the fingers clamped to her arm. She forced herself to relax, willing him to follow suit.
They came around a corner and found cityens spilled across the road, waiting. The hunters slowed, not showing their weapons yet. “Stand aside,” Nyree ordered the crowd.
Once they would have melted away at a hunter’s mere glance; but that was before the rebellion. And, Echo thought with a chill, some might be carrying projectile weapons of their own. Stigir’s weapon ground against her temple. “Don’t let them see,” she murmured, keeping her eyes on the crowd. He jammed it into her side instead, high under her arm where the charge would go straight to her heart.
“Who are these, then?” someone called.
“None of your affair,” Nyree said. It was not the answer the crowd needed; Echo felt their amazement edge into uncertainty, touched with anger.
The man’s voice tightened. “Those aren’t cityens as from any clave! They’re strangers!” There was a brief moment of silence, overtaken by a rising babble. “Where did they come from? How did they know?”
“They are friends,” Echo said, before Nyree could make things worse. “Come at the Patri’s bidding.”
“Don’t look as you’re treating them as friends,” a woman said, loud enough to be heard by all. “Nor them as you. Are there more?” She squinted up the road as if she expected to see an invading force advance.
But another said, “Old Patri always told us to look for others. One day, he said. Maybe as today’s that day.”
Then the crowd parted, but not for the hunters. Kennit hurried through from behind, face as white as if he’d fallen into a bag of his flour. “These strangers have no place as in our city. One’s bad enough.”
Echo could see the Church spire from here, the dish turning, the arms of the panels outstretched to the morning sun. The Saint’s embrace, Lia holding her city. “These are the survivors the Saint commanded us to seek,” she said. “Let us pass, cityen.”
But Kennit answered, “The council ought to have a say. I’m not questioning the Saint, I would never. Nor the Patri, if it comes to that. But as to what a hunter tells, and one as might even have been excommunicated on a time . . .”
Those near enough to hear murmured agreement. They were still just an attentive crowd, not yet a mob, but the smallest shift in the ground beneath them could send them over that edge. And the delay was unnerving the Preservers. Stigir’s fingers dug into Echo’s arm. A drop of sweat slid down Taavi’s face. Echo sensed the fighting hormones rising in their blood. Nyree felt it too; she spread her feet and let the stunner on her belt show. Her projectile weapon, still hidden, was just as close at hand.
The crowd edged back, but only a little. They scowled now, and some of them mirrored Nyree’s stance. Brit took a casual step left, making herself a separate target. It was standard procedure: if they needed to fight through the crowd, she would take that flank, leaving Gem and Nyree to split right and middle. The numbers were unfavorable, but the cityens were untrained; the hunters would not normally have to do lethal damage to pass. But the Preservers were a burden; they could not be left behind with their energy weapons to wreak havoc on the cityens before they were overwhelmed.
If it came to that, Echo’s duty was clear. She shifted her weight, too subtly for Stigir to feel, but enough that if he killed her, her body would fall into him. The hunters would ensure that he didn’t have time for a second discharge. But she couldn’t let it come to that. The Saint depended on her. Think, she told herself, think of something.
Nyree put her hand on her weapon. The crowd teetered on the cliff’s edge; the next action would decide everything.
Into that gap Gem stepped forward. She raised her empty hands in a gesture that included all the cityens. Her gaze lifted towards the shining spire; despite the distance, the same glow seemed to touch her face. Her eyes shone in it, and she smiled. Echo’s breath caught. To the spire Gem called, “Our service to the Church in all things.” Then she dropped her gaze to the cityens, letting it play over all of them, slow and certain. “The Saint preserves the Church, the Church the city. Thank the Saint.” There was only silence. She said again, with utter hunter command, “Thank the Saint.”
Another moment of silence, and then a voice from the crowd called, “Thank the Saint.” Another took it up, and another, and it carried until even Kennit had no choice. “Thank the Saint,” he gritted, stepping aside, and the crowd parted, letting the hunters and vektere pass through.
Echo wiped sweat from her eyes with a hand she refused to let tremble.
“Clever,” Nyree said when they were out of earshot of the crowd. Gem did not reply, and all the rest of the way her gaze was focused on the spire.
>
Tension leapt anew in the Preservers as Nyree took the side road that funneled them towards the secondary gate. Once within the walls they had no hope of fighting their way out. “Tell me again why we should trust you,” Stigir demanded.
“I serve the Saint,” Echo said. It explained nothing, and everything.
Nyree slapped her palm on the gate panel without waiting for Stigir’s reply. It swung open ponderously. Stigir’s fingers tried to meet through Echo’s arm. She wondered if she would feel the energy weapon’s bolt or simply cease to exist between one breath and the next. She raised her eyes to the spire. The mast turned, its rhythm slow and steady. She tried to slow her racing pulse to match. Her heart beating with the Saint’s, with Lia’s . . .that would be enough, between now and the end, if only she could know that the Saint were safe.
Stigir jerked her forward, through the gate.
Hunters waited inside, arrayed just like the cityens along the road. The Preservers’ passage through the forcewall had showed on the priests’ panels, of course. Even the juveniles were there, unarmed but still a weapon to defend the Church. Fury stood a little apart from the rest of the 384s. Thunder gathered in her face at the sight of Echo captive in Stigir’s grasp. She took a step forward, then another. Indine gave a sharp order; Fury, all her attention on Echo, didn’t even glance her way. Echo shook her head, eyes boring into Fury’s, willing the girl to be still. Small fists knotting, Fury glared a long moment in Stigir’s direction before retreating to her place.
Nyree led them on. More and more hunters attached themselves to the group as it passed, until by the time they approached the heart of the compound, the tiny group of Preservers was completely surrounded, with Echo at their center.
And then, finally, they were there.
Chapter 20
“Four hundred annuals since we’ve had visitors, and you choose this moment to arrive.” The Patri’s thin lips quirked into a smile that for once contained real humor, though not of a kind that would be enjoyable to share. Despite Nyree’s objections, he had ordered Stigir brought to him immediately. “I will see these strangers come to call on us. Vanyi left me so many gifts. Surely this is the one he would rather have had for himself.” There had been a brief but fraught negotiation over the circumstances: the hunters would not permit armed vektere near the Patri, and the vektere would not give up what they thought was their only advantage. Finally a compromise had been reached, and now Stigir sat in the Patri’s office, Jole standing directly behind him. Nyree took her usual place by the window, and Echo was seated beside Taavi, who held the Preservers’ single weapon, a stun baton she held against the base of Echo’s neck. Echo hoped nothing tempted Taavi to use it; she needed everyone to live long enough for her plan to work.
“We came to get our citizen back,” Stigir said. “If your hunter”—Stigir spoke the word with a touch of disdain—“told you anything true about us, you would understand that we would never stop trying to find her.”
Echo could imagine Khyn’s consternation when she heard that they had succeeded. She would be apprehensive, yes, in case of Stigir’s lingering anger; but she had been away from her home for many days now, living among strangers, and that grated inside like sand inside boots, an irritant that could be tolerated, until the sudden prospect of relief rendered it nearly unbearable. Gem had her somewhere under guard.
“You seek her well prepared,” the Patri said. “We do not have weapons like yours. You could certainly make plenty of trouble for us if you chose.” Nyree stirred, disturbed that he had given away even that much; it was an error the old Patri never would have made.
Stigir said, “We’re peaceful people. We do not seek trouble. When your citizen came to us, we offered kindness. We saved her life. In payment she stole Khyn from us.”
“Echo Hunter 367 has been known to act in haste,” the Patri said dryly. “Let me be plain with you. When she returned with news of your existence, I saw no hurry to seek you out. We have waited all these annuals; we could wait a little longer. So I thought. But now here you are. After all—ah, thank you, Luida.” A nun came in, bearing a tray with a pitcher, some glasses, and a cut loaf of bread with cheese. Echo recognized her, the girl who had always been laughing; but some recent grief had driven the smile from her eyes. Echo felt a pang of regret, then set it aside. There was little enough for anyone to laugh about. “I thought refreshments would be welcome after your dusty walk,” the Patri said. “Though I understand that our choices are meager compared with yours.”
“You are kind,” Stigir said. Luida served him first, a gesture of respect, then the Patri, then the rest of the vektere. There was a moment of awkwardness with Taavi, who could not put down her stunner to accept both water and food; Luida settled for balancing the plate on the young vektere’s knee.
“Please,” the Patri said. “Enjoy.”
Stigir lifted the cheese to his mouth, then stopped, nostrils flaring.
“Do you wish me to taste it for you?” Nyree asked.
The little space the Patri’s casual welcome had bought contracted into a tight silence.
Taavi handed her cup to Echo as if they were back sharing a meal in the glasshouse. Echo accepted it automatically, and the vektere took a bite of the bread and cheese. “It’s delicious,” she said, in a tone close to her old lightness. “You must have a different kind of capri here.”
“It is bovine,” Echo said stupidly.
The rest of them ate then, silent until Stigir finally set down his plate. “Your hospitality is generous. I hope you take no offense at what I’m about to say. I’m sure that you know something about us by now. I believe”—Stigir cast a hard glance at Echo—“that we know something about you as well. We won’t be so foolish as to give any of you a reason to consider harming us. But your citizens along the road were not exactly welcoming. We left our friends in the aircar on Echo’s word that they would be safe there. But now I wonder—”
“The hunters there will watch them,” the Patri said. “To protect everyone from any misunderstandings that we would all regret after.”
Stigir said, “Give us back our citizen and we will go. That’s the surest way to avoid such difficulties.”
The Patri’s thumbs wrestled each other. Echo’s heart pounded, but not from fear of the stunner Taavi still held steady. Jozef was the Patri. Vanyi had to have chosen him for some reason. He bore many burdens; in that regard, the Preservers were only another problem he had to deal with. But in bringing Stigir to him she had given him an answer to a problem as well. She only had to help him take it.
She said to Stigir, “I regret causing you so much worry over Khyn. Thank the Saint you arrived here safely.”
Stigir’s nod was stiff. “It was a long journey. It’s a relief to know that it wasn’t wasted. If your Saint is to thank for that, then I am grateful.”
The Patri’s hands stilled. “I understand that your aircar needs repair. While that is taking place, we might as well make use of the time. You have come all this way. I confess that I am curious. Are you not?”
“Our duties are enough for us,” Stigir said. Then he looked around the room, at the hunters, the Patri, and last at Echo. His shoulders rose and fell. “But it is our custom to study and confer, not to resolve our differences with violence.” He gestured, and Taavi set aside the stunner with obvious relief. “I’d like to see Khyn now, please.”
Granting his wish would be premature. Keeping the newcomers separate from Khyn provided leverage, and split three ways, none of the Preservers could afford to make trouble that might endanger the others. The prospect of reunion with Khyn could be dangled in front of Stigir as motivation should the Patri decide he needed it. Whether the Patri had thought all that through was doubtful; Nyree certainly had. But there was a better way to gain Stigir’s cooperation. Before the other hunter could speak, Echo pushed back her chair. “I will bring her to you.”
Khyn stopped short, her hand on the door. A classroom in the hunters
’ domicile had been hastily rearranged as quarters for the Preservers. “How did they seem?” she asked for the third time.
“They came for you. That says enough.”
“Maybe.” Eagerness and anxiety warred in Khyn’s expression. She patted her braid, poking at the escaped strands with trembling fingers, then gave up. “Might as well find out.” She pushed open the door.
Stigir rose slowly, eyes raking Khyn. She stood still, biting her lip. Taavi and Jole exchanged an uncertain glance. Then Stigir opened his arms, and Khyn flung herself into them. Taavi and Jole joined the embrace, and they all clung to each other for a long moment, until Stigir set Khyn back, hands on her shoulders. His cheeks creased above the trimmed beard. “Are you well? Have they hurt you?”
Khyn shook her head, wiping her eyes. “They’ve been as good as they know how, I think. I’ll tell you all about it later. Stigir, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for things to turn out the way they did. You have to believe me, no matter how it looked, I only wanted to help. I should have listened to you. I kept thinking how angry at me you must be . . .” The words tumbled out in a rush, as if she’d been holding them back a long time.
“It only matters that we’ve found you.” Stigir embraced her again. “Thank the Preservers. Here, sit by me.” He wrapped an arm around Khyn’s shoulders; she leaned into him with a sigh. “We’d practically given up hope.”
“I knew you would keep looking,” Khyn said. “But all this time I’ve thought . . . I wondered if I’d ever see the Preserve again. And now you’re here . . .” Voice trailing off, she wiped her eyes again. “I don’t know what to say. This city—it’s not like anything we could imagine. Everything’s so strange, but I’ve learned so much.” A hint of defiance crept into her voice. “The population here used to have problems like ours with the babies, but they figured them out. They have children—wait until you see! I’ve made their priests teach me part of how they do it, how to tell which women are most fertile—I still don’t know enough, but it’s a good start.”