Dissension

by Stacey Berg

  But Hunter’s mind had snagged on something else. “The Warder shelters orphans?”

  “Yes.” The med pursed her lips in surprise. “Didn’t you know? He takes them in, all that make their way to him, if there isn’t anywhere else for them to go. I thought that’s why you brought that baby. . . .”

  The children would be safe here.

  She refused to call the thing beating wings against her ribcage hope. It was simply good sense, she told herself, another duty she could fulfill. Three lives that didn’t have to be wasted after all.

  She only needed to go back to the desert to retrieve them. They wouldn’t want to come, at first, especially not the fierce girl, but they’d be sensible enough once they understood that there would be food and a safe place to sleep. It would take some time for them to get used to being around so many strangers; the boy probably wouldn’t speak to anyone for weeks and the girl might never give up hiding food and weapons, but at least there wouldn’t be canids sniffing around their camp every night, and the toddler would adapt quickest of all. She felt a strange lifting in her chest as her lungs tried to take too deep a breath. It would work. It must. All she had to do was—­

  “Are you all right?” Lia was staring at her, eyes wide with concern.

  “I need to see the Warder.” She looked straight at Lia, no disguises now. “Please.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Children!” The Warder’s voice thinned with anger as the pointless questions tumbled out. “How could you just leave them there? Children alone in the desert? Why didn’t you bring them with you?”

  “I asked them,” she said sensibly, “but they were afraid. They didn’t want to come.”

  “Asked them? For Saint’s sake, what were you thinking? You should have made them. There are times you don’t ask children what they want, don’t you realize? You make them do what’s best for them, because you know and they don’t. I can’t imagine leaving them to face all the dangers beyond the wall. It’s been sevens now! Why haven’t you said something before? So little food, and the canids, and the hunters have warned us that in some places there are holes in the ground, and terrible falls if you aren’t careful. . . .” He shook his head, looking at her, anger running out of him all at once. “I see I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already told yourself. I just wish you had made them come.”

  “I didn’t know you would take them in.”

  His voice rose again, bafflement rather than anger this time. “Saints, child, what do you think we are?”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  The Warder puffed a frustrated breath, twizzling a stray bit of thread between his fingers. “When you first came to us, I asked Loro to look around where you found the baby you brought here. Where you told us, and,” he added, apologetically, “a little bit farther. Just in case you might have, well, been confused about where you’d run across him. Abandoned children . . . I wasn’t sure whether to believe you, but if by chance there were more nearby, I wanted to find them right away. Of course I didn’t think to ask you, I just assumed that anyone who knew such a thing would have said . . .” He shook his head, frustration directed at himself now. “I should have thought more carefully. If Loro had known exactly where to look, he would have found them, you know.” Behind him, Loro nodded, frowning at Hunter as if he blamed her for thwarting his efforts. It would have been a triumph for him to bring more children to the Warder. For a perverse moment, she was glad she had set a false trail. Then sense kicked in with a profound ache.

  “He wouldn’t have. They wouldn’t want to be found, not by strangers. But they’re out there. They know me; they wouldn’t hide if I went back.”

  The Warder did not answer directly. “Lia tells me that you know your way around a difficult situation. She likes you, and she’s very grateful for your help. That makes me grateful as well.”

  “The Ward is lucky to have her,” Hunter said. The children, she urged him inwardly. She could only focus a small part of her attention on anything else. I want to go look for the children.

  “Yes,” the Warder agreed. It took her a fraction of a second to realize that he was still referring to Lia. “She’s our only med since last winter, you know.”

  “She told me.”

  He nodded. “A dark time for us all, a very dark time. Lia thinks you could be a great help to us, if you would be willing to stay.” Behind him, Loro twitched. The Warder must not have shared his plan with him, or maybe the offer had been spontaneous.

  She gave a small shrug, as if it didn’t overly matter to her whether she stayed or not. It was nearly true in this moment. “I’d like to go look for the children myself,” she said again.

  The Warder leaned back in his chair, fingers steepling. “Loro, please don’t feel that you need to stay. Echo and I will be fine. I’m sure you have other things you have to see to.”

  Loro straightened. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “I appreciate it, you know I do, but truly, it isn’t necessary for you to inconvenience yourself. Please, I would just feel guilty for wasting your time.”

  “No, sir, really. I don’t mind staying.”

  “Yes, I know,” the Warder said gently. “But you may go.”

  Loro came around the side of the desk so Hunter could see his face. He did not speak what he was thinking, not in front of the Warder, but his glare made it perfectly clear. She was beginning to find him tedious. “All right, then, if you’re sure you don’t need me.” The Warder nodded again, leaving him no choice.

  After the door closed, the Warder said apologetically, “He’s a bit on edge right now. There was a little incident with the Benders last week. We don’t really have any problems with them, you know, just every now and then the young men’s tempers run a little hot. Especially with the tithe not so very far away. He’s just always been protective of me.”

  It was the same excuse Lia had made for Loro. Maybe it was even true. “I can’t fault him for being cautious,” she said, which was also true; but it only made it more surprising that he would leave her alone with the Warder, unless it was a test. Or maybe the Warder was really enough of a fool to trust her. Either way, she wanted to be done with it and out searching. There wasn’t much time to spare. If the children realized they were being hunted, they would disappear.

  “Especially in these times, perhaps.” The Warder paused, eyes wandering to the prints on the shelves behind her. “I’ve had word that the Church excommunicated a hunter some weeks ago.”

  All Hunter’s attention snapped to the man in front of her. She had planted the trail carefully to lead to this moment, but that made it no less dangerous. If they suspected her of treachery—­well, there had been guards outside the door when she arrived, and test or not, Loro no doubt needed only the slightest excuse. If it came to that, she could almost certainly escape with her life, but that was worth nothing if she lost her foothold in the Ward. “I heard that too,” she agreed noncommittally.

  The Warder looked directly at her. “Was it you?”

  “Yes.” She sat calmly, letting him study her, a scrutiny almost as thorough as the Patri’s, despite the filmy eyes.

  “Why did they do it, child?”

  “I asked too many questions.” He would have heard that much at least, and there was no reason to lie. Still, the words pricked at the back of her throat like tiny splintered bones that stuck going down.

  He nodded slowly. “Then you went to the desert. That’s how you found those children.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated, weighing how far she could go. If she pushed too hard, he might cut her loose altogether, leaving her back where she had started the day she entered the city, or worse. She could not risk that. But the soft lines of his face sagged, reminding her that there might be another way with him. And she wanted that other way, or everything she had worked for would have been wasted
. “I’d like to go look for them, please.”

  The Warder rose, walking to his window. Another test, perhaps, his back turned to her and nothing between him and the drop but a thin pane of glass. But this was not the Church: a hunter might be bold enough to tempt her that way; she doubted that a cityen would. And besides, whatever rumors of discontent had reached the Patri, the cityens had four hundred annuals of the hunters’ protection behind them. The Warder would surely not think one capable of such a thing. Even one who had been excommunicated.

  The Warder looked down across the city, hands clasped behind him. “How many do the Church estimate lived here before the Fall?”

  “Four million,” she answered, startled by the heaviness in his voice.

  “And perhaps forty thousand of us now. Barely enough to inhabit the edges of these ruins. You would think, after four hundred years, that we would have started to recover.” He tapped the glass with a fingernail. It rang like a crystal bell. “Oh, some ways, we have, we have. We’ve unearthed some of the old skills, rebuilt some of the simple machines. We have fabricators now, you know, more than a handful, who can make wonderful things like this window. We even understand some of the machines we’ve found buried in the ruins, though we can’t begin to repair or remake them. Primitive, our ancestors from Before would have called us, but we are making progress. Sometimes we even figure out how to do a thing ourselves, before the Church shows us.” A time may come that they think they know more than we do. But the Warder’s voice held sorrow, not triumph. “Last winter, more of us died in the sickness than had been born in the spring. That hadn’t happened in a long time, at least since I was a boy. Many of the children, our most precious resource, were left without parents.”

  “I know that part,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice.

  “Yes, of course you do.” He paused, pressing the pads of his hand lightly against the pane, like Lia examining the gravid woman’s belly. “A few more years like that, and there won’t be anything left of us but a handful of savages, fighting with each other for scraps.” His sigh was not for whatever he saw out the window. “Sometimes I think we’re just postponing the long slide down into the dark.”

  “The Church will preserve us.” Her reply was automatic, like the signal sent from the sanctuary out into the desert. What did it mean, if there was no one to hear? Her reflection hung mute beside the Warder’s, ghostly in the glass.

  The Warder spoke to the ghost. “Sometimes I wonder. Priests who huddle over instruments, never venturing outside the Church walls, a few hunters copying yourselves over and over—­what for? I know the teachings, of course I do, but sometimes I have to wonder. Why do you keep doing it? Why do we?”

  How dare he question? She stifled the flash of anger. He was a cityen; he could say what he wanted, even if he trod close to the edge of blasphemy. It was not his responsibility to share the Church’s burden. Besides, he probably didn’t even understand what his words meant. She said, “The Church, the Saint—­they will preserve the city. It has always been that way, since the Fall. It always will be.”

  He turned to face her, and she saw that he understood completely. “You believe that, do you?”

  “Yes.” It was not the Warder’s gaze she felt, but Tana’s, sightless eyes staring at her, seeing the lie. The betrayal.

  “Yet they threw you away,” the Warder said, very softly. “Your hunters and priests.”

  The jagged bones in her throat stabbed in time with her pulse. “They did what they thought best,” she whispered.

  “Because you asked questions? Wanted answers for the death of a friend? Yes, I know that part too.”

  That morning on the Church steps came back to her, vivid as blood spilled fresh across bleached sand. The Patri’s words, the ones that cast her out. Disobedience. Doubt. He had proclaimed them for all to hear, Church and city, so they would mark her anywhere she fled. Surely it had all been part of his plan. It must have been. The only way to set her on this path, bring her to this place . . . Yes, it would have been easier if she had been warned, had known what he was going to say; but then her reaction might not have been convincing enough. He had taken the safer course, trusting her to trust him, as she had promised. He had counted on her not to give in to the very things he accused her of in public. He could not have known the things she struggled not to think, still refused to consider now.

  No one could.

  “The Church has no room for doubt,” she told the Warder and herself. “They were right to do what they did.”

  The Warder smiled at her sadly, as if he heard what ran beneath the words. “Not if they wasted you, Echo.”

  She could not answer, only stared at him, voiceless as her dead.

  “Well.” He dropped heavily back into his chair, then forced a smile. “You must think me terribly weak, giving in to these dark thoughts. It’s true. I’m not strong, like you, but fortunately, the Church is forgiving. They can put up with an old man’s ramblings. And they’ve lasted this long, you know, so they can’t be utter fools. Maybe they’ll take you back someday.”

  “Maybe,” she whispered.

  His eyes rested on her, judging more kindly than she did. “Think about my offer: until that day comes, work with us here. We would welcome it, and your skills would be put to good use. That would bring you some comfort, I think. And as I said, Lia likes you.”

  She was so distracted that she nearly missed the victory. The pieces had lined up neatly as a training exercise, ever since the infant had appeared in the desert—­earlier even. Since that terrible day in the yard. If she’d been testing the young hunters, she would have made it more difficult than this. It was, she estimated dispassionately, a nearly perfectly executed plan. And now it could not hurt to ask—­in fact, would only encourage the Warder to think he had won—­ “I’m very grateful for the offer. And I’d like to be useful.” Yes, that would be just what she should feel and say. “But I’d like to look for the children first, please.”

  He hesitated, torn. “I understand how you feel, believe me. That any child could be lost, through carelessness, let alone on purpose—­you know how terrible that makes me feel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fingertips worried at a hem. “So you understand how much I want to let you go. But Lia is stretched thin—­I know that she would deny it, but I see how hard the work is on her—­and there must be things you know that she doesn’t, after all. You can help her, teach her. . . . The desert is dangerous, isn’t it, even for a hunter? I don’t like to have to say this, but it’s been more than three sevens now, hasn’t it, and the chances that those children survive seem, well . . . I’m so sorry, truly. But it would only compound the waste if something happened to you out there.”

  “One day,” she bargained, like a cityen arguing over chits. “That’s all I ask. Then I’m yours.”

  He should say no. His argument had been sound, a safe plan to make the best of his resources. He knew it too, she could see that in his eyes. But he looked at her as if it mattered how she felt, and he gave in. “Very well. I suppose a day is not so much to ask. Loro will go with you—­yes, I think it’s necessary. I know you can handle yourself, but two are safer than one, even if the one is you. I wouldn’t like an accident to befall that a simple action could have prevented.”

  She didn’t argue further; she had her victory, after all. “Thank you,” she said, swallowing hard.

  “One other thing, Echo.”

  She waited.

  “Most of us don’t know what—­who you are. Hunters look alike, but with that long hair, and wearing our clothes—­or maybe it’s just that up close, the resemblance isn’t as great as we expect. At any rate, only Lia and myself are certain. Best to keep it that way.” He pulled on his hem, nervous for the first time. “We’ve kept with your story that you’re a trader from the north clave, but we, you know, added a bit. We’
ve been saying you had some trouble there, and spent a while living alone on the edges.” Like the deranged man she had seen talking to himself when she first came into the city. She raised an eyebrow, amused despite everything else. Tana would have laughed outright. The Warder’s thin lips curved into a relieved smile at her reaction. “Well, you know, it will go a ways towards explaining anything—­unusual—­that you do. But please, be careful, especially with Loro. He has no great love of the Church. They took his sister, you see, when he was a boy. I’m afraid that no matter how well he understands the necessity, he’ll never forgive them for that. Better for everyone if you don’t remind him of his grievances.”

  Little changed after that day, except that sometimes the faces of the children added themselves to the rest of the silently watching dead in Hunter’s dreams. Maybe if she had respected them less, regarded them properly as cityens instead of pretending to herself that she could teach them the same skills that helped juvenile hunters survive the desert—­but Ela didn’t survive—­maybe they would have been afraid to stay alone, and Lia would be looking after them now, and they would be safe. But there was no point imagining things that had not happened, Hunter told herself, and wishing against what had simply wasted energy that could be put to better use helping Lia now.

  Saints knew there was enough work to be done. Sometimes, if the waiting room emptied long enough before dark, the med, attended by Loro or another guard, even went out to see those who couldn’t come to her. Hunter would have found these excursions both useful and diverting, but Loro and his men always found an excuse to prevent her. She was not a prisoner, exactly, but they contrived to limit her movement nearly as if she were, and the times she was left alone, there always seemed to be at least one guard about, who would watch over her politely but carefully, with the explanation, when she asked, that there was nothing at all unusual going on, they always watched the clinic like this. She wondered if the Warder had set them to it, or whether it was all Loro’s doing. Despite his youth, the men clearly followed him, and she could see why; he was brusque with them, but in a comradely way, and there was no denying the air of competence he brought to everything he did.