Dissension

by Stacey Berg

  “If it’s true. Could be she’s making it up, just to get close. Everyone wants to see him these days. Trying to get something, all of them. Probably this one too.”

  “Could be. He’ll like the baby, though, they always cheer him up. Gives ’im hope, he says, doesn’t he? Might as well take her. Worst thing that can happen is it’ll just be a story.”

  Loro puffed out his cheeks. “Right. Best be sure. You go back to the edge, keep an eye out for any trouble come down from the Bend. There was a fight at the edge last night.”

  “Heard about that from Teller. Just too much ferm, he said.”

  “Yeah, well, if ours didn’t go drinking ferm with theirs to begin with, we’d have a lot less chance for trouble. You don’t worry about that, just go watch. I’ll take this one in.”

  Justan nodded amiably. “You don’t worry,” he told Hunter, dropping a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Whatever it is, the Warder’ll take care of it.” She felt a tiny twinge of regret as he walked back down the way they had come, leaving her with the frowning Loro. She must be more tired than she thought.

  “Let’s go,” Loro said gruffly, pointing in the opposite direction. As she made to follow, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. It was gentle enough, but she felt the strength of his fingers underneath, despite his lean build; he probably worked at it. His hands were decently clean, nails pared short. His dark hair was clean too, almost as long as hers and tied back neatly out of the way. A man who took some care in how he looked. She noted the detail as a matter of course, in case it came useful later. “Better not try any nonsense with the Warder. I’ll be watching.”

  She gave him the blankest look she had. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Good.” He led her to a building not far down the street and knocked a signal rhythm on the door. It cracked open. A whispered conversation followed, and the door opened onto a brightly lit hall, occupied by someone who did not smell quite as good as Loro. While Loro watched closely, the new guard searched her clothes, finding only the utility edge she had tucked into her waistband to give any searchers the false confidence of having disarmed her. “Wait here,” Loro ordered, and disappeared down the hall, leaving her with the guard, who studied her and the baby with frank curiosity, but asked no questions. She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes, feigning exhaustion until Loro returned. He wrapped a cloth around her eyes and led her up the stairs and deeper into the building. She counted the turns automatically, memorizing the layout as they walked. What sounded like two more men stood outside the fourth door on the left. Loro knocked respectfully, then they ushered her in and pulled off the blindfold.

  Treasure filled the room.

  Paper covered the desk, stacks of it, sorted carefully by size, edges aligned with concentrated care. The walls were lined with shelves holding piles and stacks of prints that must have been salvaged from all over the city. Most of the covers were stained and torn, of course, but a few looked as though they’d been protected, wherever they’d been hidden, almost as whole as the day they’d been made. Hunter’s fingers twitched with the urge to feel those delicate sheaves in her hands, turn the yellowed, brittle pages to parse out the words that had been printed before the Fall. It would be a lifetime’s study, the volumes in this room, worthy of every priest the Church could spare. The Patri would be ecstatic, when she told him—­

  “Loro says you wanted to see me?”

  She came back to the present with a painful jolt. The voice was not the Patri’s, and the man behind the desk could hardly be less like him. For one thing, he was older, with thinning hair that must once have been some shade of brown, now worn of color, the flesh of his face drooping softly past his jawline. His brown eyes had more than the beginning of a gray film around the edges, and beneath his shirt his shoulders were hunched in a way that suggested more bone than muscle. Despite the morning warmth he wore a vest over the shirt, woven from thicker fibers that had frayed badly at the hem. The clasped hands emerging from his shirtsleeves were wrinkled and spotted with too many annuals in the sun, and the thin lips trying to curve a smile had a faint bluish tinge beneath the surface color. He looked a bit like a priest who had spent too long at a magnifier, only without the sharp edge. “Are you the Warder?” she asked with what she hoped seemed like anxious respect.

  He chuckled gently. “These good ­people call me that at times, it’s true. There’s really no such thing, you know. Fetch that chair, would you please, Loro? Now, what do you need, child?” That was so ridiculous that she felt her eyebrows rise. “It’s just an expression,” he said with a sheepish little shrug. “To an old man like me everyone looks so young, you see. But never mind, never mind that. How can I help you?”

  She lifted her elbow, showing him the bundle in the crook of her arm. “It’s this baby.”

  The two men who had been guarding the door had come in with her and Loro. That was poor planning; it left no one to stop her if she meant to escape. Unaware, one of them laughed. The Warder’s smile turned apologetic. “You flatter me, child, but I’m certain that it isn’t mine.”

  “It isn’t mine either, sir,” she countered with the mildest edge.

  Pale eyebrows lifted towards his thinning hairline. “Do you need milk? Food for yourself? That’s easily arranged. You didn’t have to come all the way to me for that, you know. Loro there would have helped, or anyone in the Ward. We take care of each other here you know.”

  There was much interesting information in that brief statement; she set it aside to process later. “I do need milk, sir, but that isn’t why I wanted to see you.”

  “Help finding the father, then?” The man behind her sniggered again. “Now, now, Teller. Don’t be like that. We don’t know this poor young woman’s story yet, do we? She’s not from the Ward, that’s clear enough. Other claves might not have fine young men like you to help our friends stay out of trouble, you know.” Teller subsided, and the Warder’s smile came back to Hunter. “I’m sorry, child; truly sorry. Personal disputes are always so uncomfortable. We’ll help you with the baby, of course we will. If I could give you some advice, though, I’d say to try to forget about whoever he is. If he won’t help you, he isn’t good enough for you anyway.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, but it isn’t a personal dispute. I don’t know where the father is, but I don’t know where the mother is either. You see, sir, this baby really isn’t mine. I found it.”

  No one laughed at that. The Warder leaned forward, elbows on his desk, eyes suddenly narrowed, and his voice grew sharp although the kindly mask didn’t falter. “Found it where, child?”

  This part of the story had taken longest to work out. She could not reveal where she came from, not yet; that would be much too suspiciously direct. And she would not expose the little camp and the children she had left behind. It had been their choice to stay. Yet she had to give the Warder a loose thread to tug. That was why she had left the wayfinder with the trader: he would show it off eventually. No sense in having a treasure like that if he kept it to himself. If the Warder’s ­people were clever enough, they would connect it to her, and begin to guess what she was. And who. A hunter in their midst could be a spy. But the excommunicated hunter, rejected and alone—­managed properly, she could be an asset. They only had to think they had figured it out themselves, discovering a secret she had hoped to hide. It might take time, but that was the one thing she had more than enough of. “Near the forcewall. Way past the northern clave.”

  There was a long silence. The Warder pursed his thin lips. “How do you think it might have gotten there?” he asked at last.

  “Someone left it. They do that sometimes, didn’t you know?” She didn’t need to feign the anger that tightened her voice. The children would be waking about now, if they had slept, to the first morning without her. . . . She jerked her attention back to the Warder.

  “No one I know would do that,�
� he said.

  “I’ve seen it, more than this once.”

  “That is hard to believe, child. There are still so few babies, even now, you know. Every one is precious.” He meant it; she saw the distress in his eyes, not quite strong enough to be anger. She wondered if he had that in him, reminded herself that the Patri thought him dangerous, though he didn’t seem so sitting here.

  She shrugged, not quite respectfully. “You don’t have to believe me. This baby is proof, if you’re interested in that.” The man who had brought her, Loro, didn’t like her attitude; he frowned, taking a half step towards her from his position behind the Warder’s shoulder. She pretended not to notice, focusing on the Warder.

  The Warder shook his head; Loro stopped, scowling. “Tell me exactly how you found him.”

  “Simple enough. I was walking up there, just inside the forcewall. I heard a baby cry, I went to look.”

  “Interesting, interesting. I hadn’t thought that was such a common part of the city for ­people just to be walking.” He might send men to search; it wouldn’t be her fault if they found nothing.

  Hunter permitted herself her own apologetic little smile, as if he were too clever for her. “Well, maybe I wasn’t just walking.” He waited, fingers fiddling idly with a stray fiber on the hem of his vest. She made a show of hesitation. “I thought it might be a convenient place to, well, let’s say leave a few things I didn’t want anyone else to find.”

  “What kind of things, child?”

  She shrugged again. “This and that. I thought I might be able to trade some of it later. But now you’ve found me out.” She let the smile show again, a little more anxiously. “Maybe you’d like to trade? Or,” she added hastily as his eyebrows climbed again, “I can just give it to you. In appreciation for your help with the baby.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, child, but if that’s how you see things I’m a bit surprised you would care so much about a child.”

  She sat up straight, putting on an offended scowl. “It’s one thing to try to get a little extra to carry me through hard times. It’s another to leave a baby out to die.”

  “Or steal one, and make up a story to try to gain the Warder’s favor,” Loro said with a barely suppressed snort of derision. It disturbed the baby, which started, gave a disconsolate wail, then lapsed into a defeated whimper, its little face pinched and miserable. The shopkeeper’s milk hadn’t been enough to make up for the feedings it had missed since it had been abandoned.

  “Now, now,” the Warder began, hands fluttering, but Hunter decided the appearance of maneuvering had gone on long enough.

  “Look,” she said, standing so abruptly that hands reached for weapons in panic. She glanced back over her shoulder at the knives and rods. “You don’t need those. Whatever else you think, this baby needs food and someone to care for him. If you don’t want him I’ll find someone else.”

  The Warder studied her face intently. She let him see it nearly undisguised for just a moment, then slipped the mask back on. That should be enough; if he could not follow the trail of clues she had left, he was not worthy of the Patri’s concern. This would all have been a waste. What she would do then she did not even try to consider.

  The Warder tugged the thread free from his hem, flicked it away, then nodded slowly. “I believe you.”

  He turned to the puzzled guards, who had understood nothing. “Take her to the clinic.” He frowned still, but it was thoughtful. “Lia will look after her.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Loro led her out a different way from the one she had been brought in, accompanied by a few of the men they had picked up inside. It would have been a reasonable precaution, had she been a cityen. As it was, she knew from the twists and turns exactly where down the block the bolt-­hole would lead. It would be no difficulty to find it again if she wanted to come at them that way. Even so she gave them credit for their desire to protect their leader; they were cityens, not hunters, neither bred nor trained for this. It would be imprudent to underestimate them, just as the small predators in the desert had to be respected even when they posed no immediate threat.

  It was well into morning when they emerged into the street. In the desert the children would be settling down to wait out the day’s stifling heat. The boy by now should be pulling the blacking curtain across the entrance to the nest, as she had taught him. The fierce girl would be hunkered on her heels by the burned-­down fire, chewing a piece of dried meat and garnering her courage to face the terrors waiting in her dreams. Would the boy remember to set the tripwire so that if a canid sniffed too close around the tunnel entrance they would have warning? The net above the entrance had been secure, Hunter had rechecked before she left; but how long would that last? If it frayed and broke, the rocks might fall on one of the children if they bumped the pillar as they left. She should have reviewed it with them again. She should—­

  “This way,” Loro said. He took her arm to direct her, not roughly, but it was enough to jostle the baby, which began to howl yet again. Hunter babies were quieter, despite the nuns’ influence.

  “I hope it’s not far to wherever we’re going.”

  “It’s not.” The baby gave one more loud protest and began to root around against her chest. One of the guards tittered, leering at Hunter. “Not much she can do about that,” the man said. “Good thing we have Lia.”

  “Who’s Lia?” Hunter asked.

  “Our med,” Loro said briefly. “Now be quiet.”

  The guards were not nervous, exactly, but alert. She wondered if they had enemies, or simply an abundance of caution. The city was much like the desert. There would be predators here, too, sniffing about, ready to take what was better than they had, if there were no hunters present to stop them. There mostly wouldn’t be. Order and safety flowed from the Church down, but in a place like this, it had to be enforced primarily by the cityens themselves.

  The guards took her down a few blocks, then up to another doorway. Like the Warder’s, this building was made of old brick, but it was only one room high, and probably not much more than three or four rooms inside. A garden had been dug along the walls, a few vegetables but mostly green plants—­herbs, it looked like. Hunter thought she recognized some of them from the priests’ gardens in the Churchyard. The guards did not bother her with blindfolds or false passages this time. Apparently this was a public place. Nonetheless, she noted the way piles of old brick and stone stacked here and there in the street let individual walkers approach, but would deny any large group a straight run at the door. Another sensible precaution, one that suggested something of value to protect.

  The front door opened onto an anteroom, empty except for a scattering of unmatched chairs, obviously created from scrap, but large and soft, with cushioned backs and bottoms. Sheets of thin-­rolled resin, translucent enough to give the room a cheerful brightness, had been placed into shutters that closed over the many windows, bisected so they could be opened to let in the breeze. ­People who came to this room would be comfortable while they waited.

  Loro crossed the room to the far door, gesturing for her to follow. The others trailed at her back; it could still be a trap. Her shoulder blades prickled. She had distracted them with the knife she’d let them find; the thin plastic slice sewn into her shirtsleeve would be more useful here anyway. Pretending to shift the baby to a more secure grip, she slipped the fingers of her right hand into the gap in the seam. One quick tear and a whirl at neck level, and she would have three fewer guards to deal with. The baby sniffled as if it knew and disapproved of her plan.

  Loro disappeared through the door. The man behind her gave a small push. Her fingers twitched in the seam; then she went inside.

  The room reminded her of nothing so much as the priests’ laboratory in the Church, though this one looked simultaneously as if it had been cobbled together yesterday and had been there since before the Fall. There were
six beds lined up against the long wall, narrow but comfortable looking, with clean sheets turned down at one end. The blankets were the haphazard color of salvaged polymer shredded to fine fibers and twisted together, then rewoven into a soft, light fuzz. There were windows here too, and these were open, admitting the smell of the city, not too unpleasant this warm morning. The wall across from the beds was lined with shelves full of boxes and bottles, neatly arranged for easy access to their contents. At the far end of the room was a small desk, with another door propped half open behind it. Remarkably, yet another sheaf of prints bound along one end lay open on the desktop.

  The young woman studying the prints looked up as they entered. “Hello, Loro,” she began, then stopped at the sight of Hunter coming behind him, carrying the baby. She stood in a quick, graceful movement, smoothing her long skirt down. “How can I help you?” Her voice was warm and light.

  “Are you the med?”

  “Yes, I am. Is your baby ill?”

  “It isn’t my baby,” Hunter said yet again. Her voice sounded harsh, abrupt, compared with the woman’s soft tone. “I found it. In the desert,” she added.

  The woman drew a quick breath, glancing at Loro.

  He nodded. “He told us to bring her to you.”

  “Please, lay him down here. The rest of you can go.” Loro nodded agreement, and his men filed out of the room. He stayed, lounging against the wall with a casualness that did not fool Hunter. She ignored him.

  The med patted a hand on the examining bed. Hunter found herself oddly reluctant to relinquish the child, although it was obvious at once that the woman knew her work. She unswaddled the baby, inspecting him all over in a rapid glance. He chose that exact moment to demonstrate his excretory functions. The woman cupped a hand to deflect the stream, not before the first drops splashed onto her skirt. Her eyes crinkled around the edges. They were almost the exact shade of the canids’ eyes, golden brown with a dark rim, and occasional flecks of green mixed in. And they were sad, Hunter saw, not a transient mood but a deep, abiding sorrow that lingered even as she laughed over the baby. “Well, at least we can tell that he’s had enough fluid.” Outraged at being wet, the infant howled. “And his lungs are strong.” She toweled him off, pressing on his belly, peering into his mouth before she let him suck on a fingertip. “That won’t fool him long. What have you been feeding him?”