by Stacey Berg
“Patri, anything I can do, the least service—”
“You retrieved the Saint, Echo. That was far from the least service.”
Her belly tightened. There was much that had happened with the Saint that she had never told. Not what had happened; she had described that all, in precise detail, without variance, as often as required. But no one knew what she had thought in that dark night. How she had nearly failed. Had wanted to, for that one instant, when instead of the city’s salvation she saw only a frightened, desperate child.
That she must never confess to anyone, not even the Patri.
“Any hunter would have done it, Patri. I only happened to be the one.”
The corner of his mouth drew up. “As I happen to be Patri now. We have no luxury to pick our circumstances. The city thrives, Echo, but this is a dangerous time, perhaps as dangerous as any since the Fall. There are still not enough cityens to guarantee our survival, and yet there are so many, we scarcely have enough food, enough power. It is a difficult balance. The smallest wobble either way could tip it. If we could find other cities, other Saints to help—” He broke off; she saw again the weight of his burdens.
“Surely the Church will provide, Patri. The Saint is young and strong.”
“Yes.” His eyes fell to the print; he sat lost in thought for a moment before he looked up at her again. “What I spoke of is a problem for the priests. You need not concern yourself. But I do have another duty for you, now that the matter with Ela is resolved.”
Hunter spoke quickly, so that she didn’t have time to think of Ela. “I can pack tonight, Patri, and be back at the farthest arrays within four days at the most.”
“Criya will tend the arrays.”
She blinked back surprise, laced with dismay. “Patri, I am most familiar with the desert. I assumed—” She broke off under the weight of his mild gaze. “Forgive my error, Patri.”
“It is forgiven.” He studied her, lips pursed. At last he said, “I have sent you away too often, Echo. I want you close for now.”
“I am honored, Patri,” she said, but her stomach knotted again. Her mouth felt dry; she should have drunk more this morning. “May I know my assignment?”
“I have decided that you will work with the juveniles for a time. It is good for them to gain from the experience of many different hunters. It is also good to assess them from many vantage points. As I said, this is a difficult time. We must identify any weaknesses, and act to correct them however necessary.”
The type is starting to blur, she heard in memory. There might be more to cull. She forced herself to meet his eyes. “My service to the Church in all things, Patri.”
“As it should be.” The ritual words hung in the air.
Then the Patri said, “Report to Criya any new information she should have about the arrays before she leaves. Then see Kam Hunter 364; she has the details of your assignment.” As she rose he added, “I am glad you’ll be watching over the young hunters, Echo, as I watch over all of you.”
She finally caught up with Tana that evening. By the time Hunter arrived at the training ground, the 378s were already passing around stringy meat, the remnants of the canid they had killed. That was part of the lesson too: nothing went wasted.
Tana, perched on a piece of broken wall where her presence would not distract them, nodded greeting as Hunter approached. Her gnarled hands cupped a bowl of grains she must have brought from the refectory. “My jaws are too stiff for canid,” she said. “Not that I ever cared for it.” She smiled crookedly. “It’s a good thing we have the Church. I would never make it outside now.”
Hunter did not want to picture the old woman outside. Struggling, fighting. Lying in the dust, perhaps, at the bottom of a cliff whose edge she had misjudged . . . “You’d find a way,” she said.
Tana raised an eyebrow. “I’m not so old you need to lie to me, Echo.” Her gaze flicked back to the 378s. Hunter could not help noticing the way she had to squint a little to bring them into focus, the dark irises clouded with too many years in the sun, the whites shot through with red.
“I’m sorry, Tana. I meant no disrespect.”
“I know. You meant to be kind. That’s even worse. No, don’t worry. I’m not going to fuss like the Materna. Though I’m as old as her, you know. I remember the year she was tithed in to the Church. Those days, the girls wanted to be nuns. It was an honor, and their life here was so much better than anything they could expect in the city.”
“It still is.” Hunter thought of the conversation she’d eavesdropped on so long ago. “And I still don’t understand why the cityens have such difficulty accepting the need. Without the nuns, the Church couldn’t survive. Without the Church, they wouldn’t survive.”
“Yes, I know the catechism. The cityens know it too, that’s not the problem. They’re like the juveniles; we have to help them put their knowledge into practice. Sometimes it’s easier than others. But you haven’t been in the city lately, have you?”
“I’m taking a training patrol there tomorrow.”
Tana grunted, amused. “I’m sure you’d rather the desert.”
“I serve wherever the Patri sends me.”
“I’m not criticizing you, Echo. It’s not against the catechism to enjoy our duty. And you’re good out there, the best we’ve made in a long time, I think.” The praise only added to Hunter’s unease. Why would the Patri not send her where she was best suited to serve? Hunters occasionally rotated duties, it was true, for freshness or cross-training. But she feared a darker reason. He wants to keep me here. To watch me. Tana asked, “What batch are you taking?”
Hunter flicked her eyes in the direction of the 378s.
Tana laughed outright. “That will make it even more interesting. This batch is a challenge, Saint knows.”
The 378s passing the plate were quiet, almost somber, though even from the back Hunter could tell Gem’s studied casualness from the other girls’ ever so slight reluctance to taste the butchered animal. They’d be thinking how it had been alive one moment, meat the next, their doing. Remembering things that hadn’t mattered in the hot excitement of the chase, harder to face now as they stared at their dinner, the way it had trembled, trapped and frightened, the sounds it had made as it died.
“Be careful of Gem,” Hunter warned.
“My eyes still see, Echo. Just not as far as they did.” The corner of Tana’s mouth turned up in something that wasn’t quite a smile. The plate went round again; Gem took another portion. “We were bloodthirsty like that once too. It’s in the denas. She’ll make good use of it. We all do.”
Hunter had known Tana all her life. That did not make what she was about to ask safe. The juveniles, beyond earshot, had finished their meal and begun practicing the weaponless combat techniques that every hunter learned from earliest childhood. Hunter watched them for a moment, then said, “Do you think . . . You’ve seen more hunter batches made than anyone besides the Patri and Materna.”
“Dozens,” Tana agreed.
“Do you think something’s happening to the whole hunter line?” There, it was out. She waited for the reprimand that such a question deserved.
Tana only cocked her head. “Like what?”
Hunter let out a breath. “I don’t know. Maybe that . . . that it doesn’t replicate the template the way it used to. That there’s more drift away than there should be.”
“You really think something’s wrong with Gem?”
Not only with Gem. “I don’t know. She’s strong. Quick to make decisions, even where she should be more cautious. Very certain of herself.”
Tana’s mouth quirked up. “That sounds familiar.”
“But there’s more, Tana. An arrogance. A lack of respect. Saints, she aimed her stunner at you today. She might have fired.”
“She didn’t.” Tana shrugged without par
ticular concern. “Besides, what if she had? I’m almost past my usefulness. If she learned something, it wouldn’t have been a total waste.”
“Tana . . .”
“Kindness again, Echo? Now, that is peculiar in a hunter. Much more worrisome than arrogance.” She shook her head at Hunter’s expression. “I’m teasing you. Yet another strange behavior. Maybe you’re right after all.”
“I don’t understand you.”
Tana smiled again, distantly. “I don’t especially understand myself either. This last annual or two . . . One day, Echo, I looked around and realized I was the last of my batch. Not long after that I was the oldest hunter left. Up until that moment, I felt like I could sit down with a training cohort and start it all again. Then I knew there was only forward, and that it was always going to be shorter than backward. Of course, that was before you were weaned. So I was wrong, by the numbers. But in here,” she said, tapping a finger against her graying temple, “it was true all the same. And now I’ve begun to think odd things, to wonder. . . . Perhaps it’s not an accident that we don’t usually survive so long. We aren’t made to question. Yet here I am.”
Hunter’s heart sped up. “Tana, what kind of things do you wonder?”
For a moment Tana seemed about to answer. Then Hunter heard the distinct whoosh of breath from lungs as one girl missed a breakfall and landed flat on her back in the sand. Tana rose, setting her bowl aside and dusting herself off. “I’d better stop them before bones are broken. It would be a terrible waste if anyone had to miss a training patrol with you.”
CHAPTER 5
Hunter led the 378s into the western edge of the north-most clave, one of the earliest areas reclaimed as the population had rebounded from its nadir. Here, the buildings had substance, some of them reclaimed and rebuilt ruins, others constructed entirely new, albeit from reused metal and stone salvaged elsewhere in the city. Between them, sometimes running alongside the road itself, small plots of crops grew in haphazard rows, not the grains that were grown in mass in the stads, but vegetables, edible plants, even small fruiting trees. It reminded Hunter of the priests’ garden behind the domiciles. Water would always be a problem, but cityens had placed cisterns everywhere to catch the precious run-off from the rare rains.
This area was often used for teaching. The city was a confined space compared to the desert, but there weren’t nearly enough hunters to patrol every alley in every clave. Instead they concentrated on maintaining order in the most important parts: the north end where cityens had begun to accumulate goods, the stads where the grain was grown, the west road that led to the Church. This particular zone was safe, and the cityens living here were used to hunters and unlikely to be alarmed by their exercises. Other places, where men found themselves farther from the Church’s watchful eye, would be different.
“How,” Hunter asked the juveniles as they studied the street, “would you take control of this block if you had to? Fay?”
The girl hesitated, dark-circled eyes closing in thought. It should not be so difficult for her to concentrate. “I—I would order the cityens out.”
“That is a child’s answer, Fay. Suppose they disobeyed. What then?”
“I would remove the cisterns,” Delen said.
“Not unreasonable. But do you know where they all are?”
“No,” Delen admitted. She thought a moment. “But I could survey in advance. Then when the time came, I’d be ready.”
“Good,” Hunter said. “Hunter patrols routinely gather such information. You must always be aware of the resources at your disposal. You have a question, Ava?”
“Might the cityens not keep additional supplies within their living areas? It would be more convenient for them, and they might have enough to last them several days.”
Hunter nodded. “That is a disadvantage of Delen’s plan. Lack of food or water will eventually force prey to emerge, but it can require some time.”
A few cityens had gathered to watch them curiously, from a respectful distance. Hunter regretted her choice of words, though probably they hadn’t heard.
Gem, inattentive, frowned down the axis of the road. “Gem Hunter 378, what is your thought?”
The girl brought her gaze back to Hunter without haste. “I would station hunters with projtrodes at each end of the street. Then I would start a fire in the central building. When the cityens emerged I would stun them all. If any resisted I would force them back inside.”
Hunter regulated her breathing. “That would be unnecessarily destructive.”
“I would have control of the block.”
The juveniles eyed Hunter, waiting for her answer. At last she nodded. “Your plan lacks subtlety, but it is technically correct. That is adequate for now. Let us consider another scenario.” She led them on, deeper into the clave, until they came to a metalsmithing shop. The report she’d received had said the man here was friendly to the Church; he was certainly happy to have juveniles to show off to, even if they were juvenile hunters. He probably didn’t mind the gold grain chit Hunter gave him either. He took his time showing the 378s around his work area while his usual customers waited in the front room. “So there you have it. I used to have to hammer every piece separate. Now,” he boasted, “we can melt it, like as you see, and pour it into molds. Not so long since we figured it out, but it already makes a big difference.”
“You didn’t invent that, it’s Church tech,” Gem said. “I’ve seen it in the prints.”
“Be as it might,” the smith said, his tone a bit less friendly, “it’s us that figured it and us that’s using it now, so seems just as like it’s ours. Anyway, it meets the need, and that’s what matters.”
Hunter watched closely while the juveniles debated that. “It seems a fair assessment,” Delen said. “We sometimes come up with the same solutions independently on an exercise, and everyone is credited.”
Gem hesitated, then nodded, apparently accepting the soundness of Delen’s judgment. The man, humor restored, showed them where he kept the fuel and how he fed the forge. Gem, Hunter thought darkly, was probably marking that among her resources. At last the lesson ended, and the 378s gathered in the street outside the shop. “A word,” the smith said quietly from the doorway. Hunter hung back to listen. “North is quiet, everyone knows that, but sometimes we hear talk. Nonsense, mostly, people being how they are, but there’s a bit of it I think the Church might want to hear.”
“Go on,” she said.
He glanced back into the shop. “There’s lots of cityens know how to pour metal now, and other things too. What I said to that young one—I don’t want you thinking I’ve mistook my place. Everything we’ve got is given by the Saint, one way or the next. I know that. But I hear there’s some in other claves as may be forgetting the Church’s help in that and this. Saying we can find our way ourselves, the like.”
“Do you know who these ‘some’ would be?”
His burly shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Benders, Wardmen, I don’t know. Don’t know for sure it’s true, even. Just a thing I heard, that I thought the Church would want to know.”
She would have questioned him further, but just then an irritated customer came out to find the cause of the delay. “I need to get that wheel fixed, Tren, I have a load to take to market day. Are you—oh, begging pardon, respected hunter, I didn’t know you were still here. I can wait, Tren.” He scuttled back inside.
“Best be going,” the smith said. “Commend us to the Church.”
“The Church is grateful,” Hunter answered, dropping another chit into his palm.
The young hunters walked back towards the Church in silence, absorbing the day’s lessons. The spire rose before them in the distance, and atop it the metal mast whose light-charging panels, flashing as they slowly rotated in the setting sun, drew the eye from every point in the city, and beyond. At the very apex of the mast a
dish rotated ceaselessly, listening for signals from the desert arrays. Even at night, lit only by the power coursing through it, the cross glowed, pulsing almost imperceptibly in a slow, steady rhythm, like breathing, or a heartbeat. The Saint’s, perhaps, for she regulated the flow of power to the spire as she did all the other functions of the Church. Hunters could see that light from a long way away, like a star set low against the dark shadow of the earth, unblinking and immovable. It had accompanied Hunter through many long night watches, a fixed point to settle on while the rest of the sky circled through the hours.
Fay said, “When they first dropped us in the desert I looked for it. That was how I knew which direction I should go.”
“That was proper, Fay. A hunter can use any stationary mark to take a bearing, even without wayfinding equipment.”
“Why—” The girl swallowed. “Why didn’t Ela think of it?”
Because she was weak. But she hadn’t been. She had simply made a mistake. A single misplaced foot. “I don’t know, Fay. Perhaps she tried. Perhaps she made a series of small errors that compounded.”
“Would the Saint know, if we could talk to her?” Delen asked.
“We can’t.” The words came out harsh. “Only the priests know the Saint’s thoughts.”
Gem looked at her. “You knew her before she was the Saint. The ascended one, I mean. I heard the Materna talking about you with the Patri.”
Talking about me. Saints. She had to gather her wits to make a sensible reply. “Hunters chanced to meet her from time to time. You were too young.”
“What was it like to see her grow?” Ava’s eyes were huge with curiosity. The 378s would not likely see another new Saint in their lifetime.
“Like seeing any of us grow, I suppose, only by herself, instead of in a batch.” Lonely, she had thought the girl, surrounded by priests and older nuns all the time, but no one like her around her, ever. “She wasn’t trained the way we were, of course. She wasn’t ever going to have to live in the desert, or even in the city.”