by Stacey Berg
The priest folded his hands together for a moment, head bowed, then reached for his board.
“How long to interface?” Stigir asked in a distant voice. His eyes were already losing focus, body slackening as his mind fell towards the link.
“Coming online in ten seconds. Nine, eight, seven—”
Lia. Please. Let them help you. Even if it means we can never—
Dalto’s fingers seemed awkward as Echo had never seen them. His movements were hesitant, jerky. Something was wrong, something even Dalto feared . . .
“Wait,” Echo said.
“It is too late,” Dalto said. Sorrow gathered in his eyes, spilled down his face. His hands trembled as they played across his panel. He adjusted a dial, and Stigir’s body stiffened in the chair. Every muscle in Echo’s body jerked as if the panel fired her nerves too. On the altar, the Saint’s lips parted in a tiny, human gasp.
The alarm shrieked. “Cut the sound, Dalto,” the Patri said. The silence thundered in Echo’s ears, answering the thunder in her heart.
Stop them, the Saint said in her mind. In Lia’s voice. Echo’s head jerked to the altar, where the Saint lay in her eternal silence. Then her gaze dropped to Dalto’s board. She saw the Saint there too, in the dials and readouts, the light playing across the screen, shining like the constellations that guided hunters home . . . The pattern fractured in her vision. She blinked furiously, and it cleared. And she saw. That line, that curve—a gap where it didn’t belong. A step that led to an endless drop—
Dalto’s fingers hovered above the button.
“Four, three, two—”
Saints, Lia, what have I done . . .
Stop them.
Echo’s hand clamped over Dalto’s wrist. She twisted, flinging him half out of his chair.
Jole swung his weapon to her. Echo crouched over the panel as if she could shield the Saint that way. “No one fire!” Gem ordered with twenty generations of hunter authority in her calm voice, and by some miracle, it worked, everyone freezing in place for the split second it took Stigir to open his eyes.
Khyn ran to him, helping him sit. “I’m all right,” he murmured. The circlet gleamed against his hair.
The Patri advanced on Echo. “What do you think you’re doing?” His voice was icy, but it held more death than Vanyi’s ever had.
“Patri,” she choked out, pointing a shaking hand a Dalto. “He has betrayed the Church. I heard him talking that day. When you told him to find a way to stabilize the Saint—‘reduce her to basic systems,’ he said. Somehow when Stigir is in the link—Dalto means to make it happen now—something terrible, something that will hurt the Saint—”
“I’m afraid you misunderstand,” the Patri said. His hands wove together, thumbs tapping a thoughtful rhythm. “Dalto serves the Church most loyally.” He turned to the priest, who was settling himself back at his board. Echo’s heart slammed against her chest. She was missing something still, something of utmost importance to the Saint.
Dalto was not afraid, not as he should have been, his plan exposed. Instead the priest only indicated a pattern on the panel. “It is as we expected, Patri.”
She looked at Jozef. And saw, in his shadowed gaze, that he knew. Her blood congealed. “Patri, what in the name of the Saint—”
The Patri ignored her. He studied the flashing pattern, the Saint’s distress. Then he turned to Stigir. “You, on the other hand—I believe you intended to do more than tune the interface for us. You would have made certain changes, things you thought we wouldn’t notice, or at least not until you were gone. It would have been a gradual winding down, until only the most primitive functions were left.” His lip curled in an expression Echo could not decipher. “I am correct, am I not?”
All the color had left Stigir’s face. His eyes flicked from Dalto to the Patri, and then to the Saint. At last he asked, “How did you know?”
Dalto traced the pattern on his panel. “My life, in service to the Church.”
Stigir stood quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You cannot stop us. If Dalto initiates the circuit with no mind to bridge the interface, she will be destroyed instantly. And if you do not initiate the circuit at all”—he grimaced as an alarm, broken free of Dalto’s control, shrieked again—“she does not have long to survive with the surges as they are.”
“I’m afraid you misunderstand,” the Patri said briskly, “I don’t want to stop you. We seek the same thing. Please, continue.”
Stigir’s face was blank with astonishment. “You want me to do it?”
“If we go on as we have been, we risk losing the whole system. This way we have certainty.”
The wind howled through the gap in the cathedral wall. It sounded like the city screaming. The force of it pushed Echo a half step forward, towards the edge of the cliff.
“She is the Saint!” Echo cried. “That is all the certainty we need!” She struggled desperately for the words that might make them understand. “That day that she rejected your command—it was to save you. She knew the Ward was innocent. That’s why she disobeyed. What you were making her do”—Saints, I brought them the splitter that let them do it—“it was killing her. But she saved you from making a terrible mistake. And to repay her you would destroy her mind. Make her into nothing more than a piece of machinery . . .” Dalto shook his head. She saw again the sorrow in his eyes. It made no difference. He was in easy reach, his throat exposed, his thin neck waiting for her hands to wrap around it . . .
“It wasn’t us killing her,” Dalto said. “It was you.”
Blood loss grayed Echo’s vision. She pressed her palms to her eyes. He was wrong, but it didn’t matter. She had wanted Lia back. From the moment she saw Stigir take off his crown, there in the Vault in the Preserver’s mountain—that was what she had wanted. Everything else was just an excuse. “Patri, please. Believe this one thing: the Saint knows her duty. She chose to serve. Only help her, and she will do it until the last beat of her heart. But not like this! She sacrificed everything for the city, everything! Do not take that from her. Do not make it all meaningless.”
By the altar, Gem drew a breath, sharp enough to hear against the wind. Her face was utterly still. She looked from the Patri to Echo, and then to the Saint. Her head bowed.
The Patri shook his head. “We have lost sight of the reason for her existence, worshipping her too long, thinking of her as a living mystery, a greatness we could never understand. She is not. She is an interface with the systems, no more, as the very first Saint was made to be. And she must be the Saint we need. You have shown me the evidence clearly enough. We will never control her fully as she is.” Jozef laughed, but it was touched with sorrow. “I do believe I finally understand why Vanyi chose me.” He turned to Stigir, dismissing Echo. “I realize that I can’t force you—the mind has to be willing to enter the interface. But it is far and away your most reasonable choice. I am still perfectly willing to keep our bargain. Help us now, and we will let you go, and leave your Preserve in peace. As I said, we want the same thing.”
Stigir stood turning the gleaming circlet over and over in his hands. At last he said, “One day the world will be reborn, but it is not now. This city is an ending, not a beginning. You have brought this doom on yourselves, and you have earned it. But for the sake of the Preserve, and only that, I will do as you ask.” His stare burned into Echo like the beam of an energy weapon. “We should have left you in the desert to die.” He sat down on the edge of the couch. “If anything goes amiss, Taavi, kill the Saint.” On the altar, the girl nodded, white-faced.
“Patri,” Echo whispered. Pain fired through her nerves, paralyzing her. She heard circuitry sizzle, smelled hot metal and smoke.
“Get Echo away!” Dalto said. “Now!”
Jole raised his weapon. “This will be quicker.”
“Don’t—” Dalto started, but it was too late. Before Jole could press the trigger, a shower of sparks erupted from a panel, dazzling in the sanctuary’s gloom. Fo
r the fleeting moment before the tiny stars winked out, everyone turned to watch. Everyone except Gem, who leapt up on the altar in that infinitesimal gap and wrestled Taavi away from the Saint. The struggle only took an instant, but it was long enough for Echo’s fist to connect with Jole’s jaw. She reached for his weapon as it fell, but her broken hand missed its grip and the thing clattered away somewhere out of reach.
And then Gem fell too, folding bonelessly across the altar.
Taavi backed away, face twisted with horror. “I didn’t mean to—” Her breath caught. Then she steadied, aiming her weapon at the Saint. Her finger whitened on the button.
Echo threw herself forward. She struck Taavi’s hands up; the beam stung her cheek on its way to sinking harmlessly into ancient stone. Echo snaked a hand around the back of Taavi’s head, grasping the braid at its root; the other, broken finger and all, crushed across her mouth. She felt the vektere’s lips move, protesting; their faces were so close together that Echo could see the tiny threaded muscles pulling the blackness across Taavi’s blue eyes. “Drop it,” Echo pleaded, but instead Taavi twisted, fighting to bring the weapon back to bear. Then there was no other choice. With a swift and practiced motion, Echo snapped her neck.
Khyn screamed something, but the words were distant, meaningless.
“Gem!” Echo caught the young hunter up in her arms. There was far too much blood pulsing from the hole in her chest, soaking Echo’s hands, dimming the Saint’s glittering shroud. “Gem, no!”
“I promised you I would protect her with my life.” Gem’s voice bubbled, drowning. Her eyes, wide, already blind, sought the Saint. She saw something, or thought she did; a slow, bloody smile played across her face. “I promised I would remember. . . .” She took a long, rattling breath. “Lia,” she whispered on the exhale, and that was all.
For a suspended moment, the sanctuary stilled. Then:
“Lia?” Khyn’s voice broke across the name. “Oh, Preservers help us. The Saint is your Lia?” She dropped her face into her hands and began to laugh, a lost and bitter sound.
Echo set Gem’s body down gently. She rose from the altar. Somehow Taavi’s fallen weapon found its way into her hand.
“Put the crown on,” Echo ordered Stigir. Her face felt numb. Taavi’s last shot must have done something to it. When the Stigir still hesitated she said, “Be willing, or be dead.”
Stigir looked at her a long moment, then shrugged. He settled in the seat and lifted the circlet. Keeping her weapon steady on him, she moved to look over Dalto’s shoulder. “Set the tuning right to make her whole. I can read the boards. If you hurt her, either of you, I will know. I promise you, I will know.”
The priest was brave enough to look to the Patri. Jozef’s lips parted slightly, as if he meant to say something, but no words came. He only nodded once, his face unreadable. Dalto’s eyes squeezed shut; he inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, then let the air out in a long sigh. His hands moved across his panel. Stigir’s face went distant, and his eyes closed. “Interface in five-four-three—”
Echo didn’t even have time to turn. There was the familiar crack, and something hit her in the back with numbing force. She stumbled forward, falling against the pallet. Alarms shrieked and lights flashed wildly; Dalto scrambled at his board. Khyn stood with Jole’s projectile weapon smoking in her hand, a wild grief distorting her face. Echo tried to reach for her and fell, gasping for air that would not come.
Khyn was sobbing. “It’s better for us to die here than hand you the future. Look at what you’ve made of this place! You say you want to serve, but you only serve yourselves. Killing each other, abandoning your children . . . When I saw”—she dragged a gasping breath, as if she too were drowning—“when I saw what you did to poor Marin I knew. If you did that to your own—you’ll never keep your bargain. One day you’ll decide you want what we have. The Vault, the seed, everything—and nothing will stop you. Nothing. You’ll come and take it all, and not think twice. You’ll justify it in the name of your own survival. I thought you were bringing us a new beginning. But all you bring is death.” Then her voice grew preternaturally calm. “Look at you. How could she ever have loved you?”
The words exploded in Echo’s heart like projectiles fired from within. For a moment, she almost believed them. But then she remembered: here, in this room, before the altar the Saint now slept on, Lia had wept: Echo. I love you. Give me that to take with me.
And Echo had.
Nothing would ever make her doubt that.
Khyn aimed her weapon at Dalto. “Get the crown off Stigir.” The priest obeyed silently, helping the dazed Preserver off the couch, while Khyn’s free hand scrabbled over Dalto’s board. The discarded circlet fell to the couch, wires dangling.
Echo crawled to her knees. “Khyn, please!”
Khyn’s hand hovered over the button. She was weeping again, rage and despair. “You should be glad. The city won’t be able to hurt her anymore. You won’t. She would thank me, if she could.”
“She would never put her own good first,” Echo said. Her vision was blurring, darkness rimming the edges. “She never did. She could have chosen—” me, she almost said, but neither of them deserved that thought, continued instead, “She could have lived. She never had to ascend. Please Khyn. You’re a Preserver. Don’t destroy her.”
“This is what your city has made me. What you have made me.”
Time stretched, but there would never be enough of it. Not enough to stop Khyn. To kneel by the Saint, and say that she was sorry. To say anything at all. There would only be this one empty moment forever, now.
Khyn’s hand moved, slowly, descending towards the button.
Echo was sliding towards the edge, but she didn’t try to stop herself. She knew what she had to do. As Khyn pushed the button, Echo snatched up the empty circlet and thrust it onto her own head.
And then she leapt over the edge.
Chapter 27
There was an instant where she could have stopped it. Nearly did, the terror of what she’d done so desperate that the bit of her still connected to her body opened her mouth to scream a last protest. Then it was too late. She had taken the nightmare step over the edge, and there was nothing beneath her feet but emptiness and the long, long fall. Her hand flailed, ripping through a thornbush. The pain should wake her, but it did not. She gasped and thrashed, trying to tear herself out of the nightmare as she had so many times since Lia’s death. Echo, the fading voice that always woke her screamed. But this was no nightmare. There would be no waking.
The terror gripped her, driving all thought from her mind. She was going to hit the bottom, in another moment, the last moment she would have—how long? She twisted mid-fall, searching down, saw nothing but the black abyss beneath. Her body was accelerating towards it even as her arms and legs thrashed, churning the air as if she could pull herself up through nothingness. She heard the thin scream of the air rushing past her, or maybe that was her own voice, she didn’t know, couldn’t think, could only writhe in animal panic, knowing that any second now she would smash into the rocks beneath, feel her body crush and break. The abyss rose to grip her, blackness filling all her vision. There was a word, echoing past, but she didn’t recognize it anymore, and finally the wind ripped even that away, and all she knew was the fall. It would take an eternity to fall, to hit, and in that endless moment she would always be falling, always be hitting, be—
Echo!
Saving Lia.
The darkness exploded into light brighter than the sun. She still fell: not only down, but out, all sense of body gone, no arms or legs but somehow still her senses stretching out, spinning through a crown of wire into an infinite net—
Too big. Too far. The crown burned, her mind did, scorching thought. But with thought went the fear, and now there would be only an infinity of—
Echo. I know you’re here. I know you hear me.
Something was swimming up out of the light. A shape, no more than a shadow
against the unbearable brightness—
Stay with me. Please. As Lia had asked that night, that single night that they had had together. But:
I can’t! I only hurt you. But it doesn’t matter. Back there in the sanctuary, they meant to—but I’m stopping them. You’ll be whole. That’s all that matters now.
The shape took substance, falling up at her, became a body, naked but for its shroud, a crown of fire haloing its head. Beneath it the rocks loomed, suddenly solid, very close. Above—far above—hung the cliff edge she had gone over. The figure’s edges streamed indistinct on the burning wind, but Echo saw the face, every detail. She would know it anywhere, in any darkness, after any eternity. Once it had been Lia, but now also something so much more, so much greater. She fixed her streaming eyes on the luminous gaze, the light behind it. It was the last thing she would ever see. She would have that to take with her.
Saint, she called in the fullness of her heart. Lia. My life, in service to you. It was enough. It would always be enough.
The Saint flew up, and past her, into the brightness beyond her grasp.
Echo, Lia’s voice called. Stay with me.
Don’t worry. It’s not that bad.
You’re such a fool. The memory of Lia’s laughter as she pulled Echo’s face down to hers. I’m asking for me, not you.
And then a hand reached down, towards her. The Saint’s fingers opened, spread wide, an offering.
Echo reached up and grabbed the arm, but it was her broken hand. Her grip slipped, sliding down to the wrist. The strain was too much, too fast, and that grip failed too, leaving the palms clutching, then only fingertips—
Her body hit with a crushing jolt.
I love you. I will always love you.
And then they had each other.
The weight of her broken human body dropped away, left somewhere on the floor of a room where indistinct figures stood in frozen wonder, watching patterns on screens intertwine and change and complete each other, power surging to close every gap, fill every void, the spire above a burning beacon calling every heart to home. Echo rose, or Lia fell softly; locked in that embrace, they landed together, floating. The shroud billowed like a cloud, dimming the unbearable brightness, then settling softly over the body on the altar. As the sanctuary re-formed around them, Echo hovered one more moment, gazing down upon the Saint. I love you, she said.