by Stacey Berg
She went to the sanctuary then, despite her vow, but only as far as the nave door, where she could watch unseen. Stigir sat beside Dalto, the panel lighting their faces from below, as if they sat by a fire burning green. “The systems adjust remarkably fast,” the Preserver said. “But what if the main power lines come down?”
“Those lines are buried,” Dalto said, but Echo heard the worry in his voice. “But I’m afraid we might see worse surges. We must complete the interface quickly.”
“I want that as much as you,” Stigir said.
Echo couldn’t see his face, but something in his tone sent a grating hum through her nerves, like the wind whistling through the wires.
Gem appeared at the door from within. “You have been avoiding the sanctuary.”
“My services have been required for storm preparations.”
“If your other duties permit, perhaps you could assist here as well.”
The request sounded strange coming from the girl who had been so arrogant. “You have always performed adequately without my assistance.”
A pause, then: “Perhaps you are right. One can watch as well as two; there is no sense wasting a resource.”
Echo remembered what Indine had said, about Gem’s wanting to set patrols to look for Echo’s return. She remembered too Gem’s justification. “Is that all it is to you? A matter of resources?”
Gem cocked her head. “What else should a hunter consider?”
Friendship. That we matter to one another. But hunters did not speak of such things. Then Echo saw in Gem’s face that that was what she offered, like a handhold for a slipping grip, if one dared to reach for it . . . Echo couldn’t find her voice. After a moment Gem’s lips drew up on one side, a kind of smile that held something besides humor. “About Khyn. I was wrong to think you had any consideration other than the Saint. If I have been unduly—”
The outer doors clanged open. Voices shouted in alarm, a shocking noise in the layered quiet of the sanctuary. Echo sprinted through the nave, wishing that she were armed. “Quickly!” someone shouted.
It was too late for weapons. Nyree stumbled through the doors, covered in blood. That she was still on her feet at all meant that most of it must come from the body she carried in her arms. The woman was still breathing, great irregular gasps accompanied by a bubbling wheeze. Echo tried to take her, but Nyree refused to let go, lumbering towards the priests’ domicile, and the laboratories below. Priests scattered out of her way, instruments dangling forgotten in their hands. “In here,” one ordered, rushing ahead of Nyree to fling open a door.
Nyree laid the body on a narrow padded table. The woman flailed, struggling for air. “Hold her,” the priest commanded. Echo grabbed one arm, Nyree the other and they pinned her while the priest ripped off her shirt.
It was Marin. The wheezing sound was coming from a great gash in her chest, low down on the right. Every time she tried to breathe bubbles came up through the bright oozing blood. Blood came through her mouth, too. It gurgled in the back of her throat, a nightmare drowning sound.
The priest slapped a cloth onto the chest wound. “Hold this.”
Echo pressed a palm over the bandage. She could feel the grating of bones underneath. “What happened?”
Nyree’s voice was taut with fury. “Warders,” was all she said.
Brit came behind, breathing hard, and her face hard, too. “There was a gang of drunk cityens roaming the streets, agitating about the Preservers and blaming the Ward for bringing them. It didn’t have to make sense for the Wardmen to take exception. We got them apart, but a couple ran a Wardman into the fringes. Marin had them stopped, but the idiot Wardman pulled something out of his pocket. It wasn’t a weapon, he was faking, but everyone panicked, and the gang must have had friends waiting, because then there was projectile fire.”
“They fired at a hunter?” Echo said in horror.
“At the Wardman,” Nyree gritted. “She took it. The rest of them ran. When I find them—”
The priest pushed to the top of the bed, a thin tube in his hand. “Tip her head back and hold it steady.” Nyree took Marin’s face in her hands, and the priest slid the tube down her nose. She bucked weakly. He hooked the tube to a glass-walled machine, adjusted a dial. Inside the machine a piston stroked; Marin’s chest rose, then fell. The priest tipped a few drops of liquid into the piston chamber. Echo smelled something sickly sweet. “The Saint will breathe for her, and ease the pain. If I can fix the damage . . .”
His hands were quick, deft as a hunter’s with weapons. Deft as Lia’s had been, when Echo used to watch her tend injured cityens in her clinic. She envisioned the Saint on the altar now, knew that the consciousness spread all through the city would not neglect one life, however insignificant. But the med had never been able to save everyone. Though the priest worked furiously, Echo soon saw that it would not matter. She did not need to hold Marin still now; the young woman’s hand was limp in hers. The air the Saint pumped still leaked out through the gash the priest could not close. Sometime in the action, a crowd had gathered to watch from the doorway; they were silent now, as still as the body on the bed. Echo felt the pulse in Marin’s throat. It beat thin, irregular, and the pauses grew longer. “She is not going to survive.”
“No,” the priest said. His busy hands paused.
“It is too soon to stop,” Nyree objected, still cradling the hunter’s bloodless face.
“Do what must be done,” Echo ordered the priest. Then to Nyree she said, “I will assist. You need not stay.”
Nyree crouched there a moment longer, breathing harsh. Echo shifted, ready to move between her and the priest if Nyree’s control failed.
It did not. The hunter straightened, her hands painting Marin’s cheeks with blood as they withdrew. “Her service to the Church,” Nyree said, and shouldered her way out the door.
Echo held the vials of preservative as the priest, no longer concerned with the damage, sliced through to the ovaries. The thumb-size blobs of flesh floated in the glass. Another priest came forward to take them reverently. “I will begin at once,” he said.
The medical priest turned a dial, and the piston stopped. He slid the breathing tube free. There was one more wet gasp, then nothing. Echo looked down at the blood-streaked face. It had been Marin; now it was not. Somehow Echo was always surprised.
A choking sound came from the doorway. Khyn stood there, a hand clamped over her mouth, and a look of horror on her face.
Khyn sat on the edge of the bed in the Preservers’ quarters, hands folded between her knees. “Alive,” she whispered, eyes welling. “You take their seed while they’re alive.”
“There is not usually the opportunity,” Echo said, tamping down a spark of anger. Often when a hunter died the ovaries could not be recovered in time, a waste that cost many potential batches. There were never enough hunters—not even enough to find the projectile weapons, so a fool could not frighten other fools with the mere idea of one. “The priests say the process works better when the material is fresh.”
“Opportunity? You might as well have killed her with your own hands.”
Ela, dead at the bottom of the cliff.
“You eat the capri you cull. Surely you must understand.”
“Those are capri,” Khyn said. A violent shudder shook her body. “Netje saw this in you, when you killed the one in the flood. I know, you’re going to say you saved her life. It’s not that. It’s the way—you didn’t care. Not about the capri, not about Marin. It’s all the same to you, what happens to anyone, isn’t it?”
That Marin should have died for something so stupid as the imitation of a weapon . . . Echo felt a touch of Nyree’s fury. She struggled to keep it out of her voice. “We are made to serve. Marin Hunter 373 would have made the same choice.”
“If you say so.” Khyn dragged a sleeve across her face, looking so much like Netje that they might have been batchmates. She stared at the floor. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I don’t
know. I don’t know.”
A flood of weariness overtook Echo. She made to sit, but Khyn stiffened. “Perhaps some time alone will help you compose yourself.”
Khyn finally met Echo’s eyes. “Yes,” she said, her face settling into new, strange lines. “That’s exactly what I need.”
Chapter 22
The hunters did not have to search for the Wardman Marin had died to save. Teller brought him to the gate only hours later, a youth barely out of boyhood, one eye blackened and his face contorted with tears. “He’s sorry,” Teller snarled, and threw the boy at the hunters there, leaving him alone. They held him until Nyree arrived. Echo, hearing the disturbance, followed with her heart in her throat. But Nyree only studied him, her face an empty mask, while he blubbered and begged for his life. “Find out what he knows, then lock him with the others,” she said at last, and turned and stalked across the yard.
Soon after Kennit came, alone. He looked almost as bad as the boy, shadowed eyes darting around the office. “Tell the Patri,” Kennit begged. “We heard as what happened, and we’re sorry, North is, truly. This is what I warned of, what I feared. I know the hunters will search, maybe they’ll even find who as did this, but after that there will be others, and others more . . . But he can stop it, the Patri, please, he must. He must send the strangers away, now, before they provoke worse. Before it all happens again.”
The Patri refused to see him. Echo took Kennit back to the gate, a hand on his arm. It trembled beneath the fine-woven polymer. “Calm yourself,” she said. “You have nothing to fear from the Preservers.”
“It isn’t only them.” He looked at her with a ghost of his old disdain. “I’ve heard as hunters aren’t afraid of anything. It must be true, or you’d know fear’s not a thing as telling makes a difference.” His voice began to shake again. “The old Patri started before as I was born, and all those annuals I never even saw him. Strange things as make a man afraid.”
She watched from the gate until the wind-blown dust obscured him from view. Then she went in search of Nyree.
Echo found her in the refectory, directing preparations to convert the huge room to a shelter for when the wind made it unsafe to cross the open yard. The place was crowded already, and soon would be packed with all the nuns and priests and juveniles who would normally be out about the compound. Pallets had been brought to let the nuns rest comfortably; the juveniles would sleep on the floor. The smaller ones were already making a game of it, curled up under the tables as if they camped among the desert ruins. Brit and Gem worked at one end, stacking large containers of water that Indine and the older juveniles passed from outside in a hand to hand chain. On the far side Nyree was arranging chairs, lining them up against the wall with greater concentration than the task deserved.
Echo took a chair in each hand and carried them over. Nyree took them wordlessly and fit them into place. When she noticed Echo still standing there, she asked, “Is there something you require?”
“No. Yes. I wanted to say—” Echo stopped, like a juvenile without a satisfactory answer in a drill.
Nyree looked at her coldly. “I am not interested in your thoughts about duty or service.”
“We will find the weapons makers. When the storm has passed, when the Preservers have finished their work—”
“It is good to know that you place such a priority on the search.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I am not interested in parsing your words either. The hunters who could be spared are searching. There is likely insufficient time for them to find anything. I have ordered them to pull back well before the storm hits.”
Echo took a deep breath. “We should bring the Preservers in from the desert as well.”
“The aircar will provide adequate shelter.”
“Even if it does, the hunters guarding them will have to withdraw.” Gem and Brit were bringing more chairs this way. “Kennit was here again. There is more unrest within the city than just a few troublemakers.”
“I know that,” Nyree said. “That is why I want the Preservers as far away from them as possible.”
“If we bring them back to the Church, they will not be exposed to the cityens,” Echo insisted.
Brit slid the chair she carried into place. “Do you think they would give up their weapons?”
“No,” Echo admitted reluctantly. “Nor would we, if the situation were reversed. But if we leave them unguarded—” She broke off as the lights dimmed, then came back. That is normal in the wind, she told herself. The wires shake. It does not mean a difficulty with the Saint. But Gem’s eyes flicked towards the sanctuary too. “We cannot risk any confrontation between them and the cityens. We have seen what happens when passions run high. Many on both sides could be killed.”
“There are not that many Preservers,” Gem said reasonably.
“You sound like Indine,” Echo snapped. As if she heard, Indine looked toward them, frowning at what she saw.
Echo said to Nyree, “If you care about nothing else, consider the cityens. Even one Preserver with an energy weapon could do great damage.”
“Are you saying they are the danger now?”
“You twist my words, Nyree. I am only considering every possibility, no matter how unlikely. That is what a hunter does.”
“Then consider this: if the Preservers do endanger cityens, it is you who put them in position to do it. If you had obeyed me to begin with, they would have been neutralized at the aircar the instant they arrived. There would be no threat to the cityens—no threat to the city at all.” She did not add, “Marin would be alive.” The words rang in Echo’s ears louder than if she’d spoken.
Echo gripped the back of a chair, struggling to keep her tone reasonable. “We need Stigir. He must complete his work. If not, the city will be in greater danger than any weapon could bring.”
“The Church preserves the city,” Nyree said. Indine stood at her shoulder now, and Brit by Echo. “The Church does. Not strangers. Not a hunter who has never obeyed an order that didn’t suit her. Even back to the days of the old Patri—if you had carried out your mission, if you had eliminated the threat from the Ward before they rebelled—but you thought you knew better. You always think you know better. You question, you doubt—the old Patri was right to cast you out. You disgrace the Church.” She made a sound of disgust, deep in her throat. “You disgrace the Saint.”
“Do not speak to me of the Saint,” Echo said, too loudly.
A sudden silence fell across the refectory, making the wind outside sound very loud. Nuns and priests turned in unison towards the disturbance. The juveniles froze in the midst of their games. Adult hunters, confronting each other in public—it was unheard of. They waited to see what calamity must unfold.
Nyree drew herself up, balanced light and easy on the balls of her feet. “It’s time that someone did. That is the heart of the matter, isn’t it? The Patri sent you, but it was Gem who brought her. You would have run. You would have sacrificed everyone else, as long as you had what you wanted.”
The fighting hormones surged through Echo, her pulse thrumming in her ears like a sanctuary alarm. “You know nothing about it, Nyree. I have had enough of you, questioning my every move, poisoning the other hunters against me. Casting doubt on all my service.”
They were there now, those other hunters, a loose handful scattered around the perimeter of the room. Everyone watching, hunters and priests and nuns, and the whole room so silent that the water trickling from a forgotten container bubbled loud as a drowning breath. All watching Echo. Waiting to see what she would do. Her fists bunched.
Nyree’s lip curled. “Is this what you want to show them, Echo Hunter 367? A hunter unable to control her anger? Is that how you serve?”
The moment stretched to breaking. Then, without haste, Gem stepped between Echo and Nyree. She gestured to Brit. “If you could bring a few more chairs? We must complete our preparations before the storm hits.”
�
�I concur. There is much work to do.” Brit didn’t move. “Indine?”
Indine’s heavy-lidded look transferred itself from Echo to Nyree, and back. “I concur.”
There was a tight silence. Then Nyree said, “I too.” She smiled for the nuns and priests, a mere baring of her teeth. Her voice was calm; her face expressionless, but the skin around her eyes was tight, the bones’ sharp edges showing through. “If you wish to endanger yourself guarding the Preservers, I have no objection. I will not risk anyone else. Otherwise—I suggest that you return to your cell, Echo Hunter 367. I suggest it very strongly.”
Everyone still watched, waiting. Echo forced her fingers open, drew a blank hunter mask across her features. “I live to serve,” she said for all to hear. Her words rippled through the silence, joined by more, the watchers resuming their conversations, relieved voices too loud as they tried to drown out uncomfortable thoughts. The juveniles resumed their activities with greater vigor than before, to demonstrate that they had not been frightened. Echo spun on her heel and left.
In the doorway she nearly walked into Khyn and Stigir. A shadow of the earlier horror crossed Khyn’s face again, and by Stigir’s expression Echo knew Khyn had told him everything. But the look in his eyes was not horror, only a weary confirmation, as if he had known it all along.
She stepped aside for them to pass.
Her hand, poised to knock, hesitated as if some forcewall came between it and the Patri’s door. Don’t be a fool, she told herself. You have faced him before, and the old Patri as well. You must make him understand.
Her knuckles fell against the wood with a hollow thump. “Enter,” came the curt response.
Jozef sat alone, surrounded by prints that were organized into neat stacks, and the shelves were full of them too. Most had been collected by the priests, perhaps even before the Fall; others had been unearthed from the vaults beneath the domicile. Some had even been brought on Lia’s orders from the Ward, in the hope that they contained information that might save the old Saint. Those pages might as well have been blank, for all the good they’d done.