by Stacey Berg
A giddy laugh rose in Hunter’s throat at the image of Lia arguing with Gem over Hunter’s insensible body. She choked it back. “What about Loro?”
“The boy? He was none of my concern.”
“Don’t let them do this to her, Gem.”
The young hunter met her eyes evenly. “Systems are failing all through the Church, Echo Hunter 367. The cityens will break through the barricade soon. Then we’ll have to decide whether to start killing them, or step aside and let them overrun the compound and all the buildings.”
Saints. No wonder the Patri looked like that.
The floor shook at some distant explosion. “Crop powder,” Gem said. That explained the sacks.
Downstairs the Church doors groaned open. “Echo?” Lia called anxiously.
Hunter flung herself down the ladder by the rails, ignoring the skin burning off her palms. She tripped at the bottom, stumbling over a weanling. “Indine,” she croaked as she climbed back to her feet. “Get them below ground. They’ll be safer there.”
“The Patri gave no order.”
“Go!” Hunter snapped, already turning for the sanctuary. The trampled weanling, too much asked of her, began to wail. Indine shot a look that way, lips thinning, then nodded, taking the weanling’s hand. Gem, jumping lightly from the ladder, delayed to help marshal the others. Hunter left them to it, limping with what speed she could manage back to Lia.
Three hunters and a man entered the sanctuary. Brit and Delen, bearing heavy packs, and Ava beside them, hand pinioning the Warder. “The aircar failed,” Brit said to Lia. “This was all we could carry.” Priests snatched the packs, began rooting through prints in desperate haste. “We found this man as well. He tried to stop us.”
The Warder’s forehead was smeared with soot, clothing torn and singed, though he appeared otherwise unharmed. His old vest had been shredded in the tumult, the remaining rags hanging from his shoulders; nervous fingers plucked at air where the hem had disintegrated. His face seemed to have dissolved into a featureless dough of fear and dismay, but it lightened when his rheumy eyes found Lia. “Lia, my child, what are you doing here?”
She turned a closed face on him. “Trying to stop what you started.”
The Patri tore himself away from the boards. “What is all this?”
“I sent them,” Lia said, a hint of defiance in her voice. “The prints might help. I didn’t expect them to bring the Warder.”
A muscle twitched beneath the Patri’s eye. He caught the Warder by the collar. “See what your disobedience has wrought.”
The Warder bobbed his head, larynx working, but he found the strength somewhere to meet the Patri’s eyes. “The Church started this long ago. I only wanted to protect my people. The children. I thought you would see reason.” His hands clenched, and tears choked his voice. “I didn’t imagine you’d rather kill us all. But it’s not too late. It’s not, I’m sure. Withdraw from the city. Without hunters to provoke them, tempers will cool the sooner. I beg you, please.”
The Patri shoved him back to Ava in disgust. He stabbed his finger at a glowing dot on his boards. “We arranged a fire near the granary. That will draw them away from the Church.”
Lia whirled on the Patri in dismay. “You’re burning the grain?”
“It shouldn’t get that close. Not if they use sense. If they don’t . . .” The Patri shrugged, face hard. “We have enough stored here to last the winter.”
“The cityens would starve!” The shocked accusation was out of Hunter’s mouth before her mind even formed the words.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” It was the closest to anguish she had ever seen on the Patri’s face. For the first time in her life she thought, He has no plan. No: there is no plan. Even in the worst days of her exile, she had been certain that he worked according to a grand vision, whether she could ever understand it or not. There had been a kind of comfort in that knowledge, cold as it was. But now even that was ripped away. Even he did not know what to do. “What do you expect?” he went on, his voice rising. “They resisted the tithe. They killed hunters. If cityens die it will set us back a hundred annuals, but if the Church dies it will be the end of everything. Everything.”
“Besides,” Gem said in a sensible tone, “we’re not the ones doing it. They’re still fighting each other, mostly. At least for now. Fortunately they’re not very efficient.”
“How can you talk that way?” Lia cried. “Efficiency? They aren’t your machines.”
At that moment lights blinked once, twice, then steadied, dimmer than before. A priest at the altar made a small sound of alarm, holding up a frayed piece of wire. One of his fellows rushed forward to help him strip and reconnect it. The Warder’s eyes widened, anger giving way to fear. “Your machines are dying, aren’t they? The Saint? It’s happening already? How can that be, I thought—”
The Patri said, “The city’s struggles weaken her. But the new Saint will be strong. We’ll make the Church what it was again.”
Lia’s eyes flicked to the altar, then closed. Her lips compressed in a thin line, hands fisting at her sides. Hunter strained against her bonds to touch the med’s arm, all the comfort she could offer. Ava and Delen exchanged uneasy glances. If Hunter could have spared a thought she would have been sorry for them. No lesson had prepared them for all this.
The floor shook with another, louder rumble. Lights flickered, came on, flickered out, leaving them in near darkness, the only illumination a faint glimmer from the boards, and a brighter glow at the altar where scurrying priests buzzed and fluttered around the Saint. Yet another flash, and a priest fell with a wordless scream of pain, and the smell of something burning. It smelled like food. A coil of nausea wrapped around Hunter’s belly.
Lia ran to the Saint. She laid a palm atop the withered body while the priests scrambled around them, her lips moving almost silently, her face intent. Hunter just made out the murmured words of comfort. “Shh, you’ll be fine, I’m here, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. . . .” Hunter’s vision blurred; unable to raise her hands, she could only shake her head angrily to try to clear her sight.
The Warder had begun to babble. “The prints, I understand now, yes, we’ll go back to the Ward. There are more in my office, many more, and Lia is such a gifted healer. A bit of time and surely she’ll find some way—”
The Patri’s furious arm swept a pile of prints to the floor in a crash. “There is no more time!”
In the shocked silence every face turned to him. Even the priests froze at their boards, stunned, their hands suspended above dials and switches.
The Patri calmed himself with a hunterlike effort. “Begin preparations for the ascension.” He took Lia gently by the shoulders, drawing her away from the altar. “Come, child. They have work to do, and you must make ready.”
“Lia?” The Warder’s face crumpled as understanding dawned. “Oh, no, my child. No, it cannot be. This must just be some terrible misunderstanding. You mustn’t do this. Get away from her!”
He tried to grab for the Patri, but Ava held him back. “Get him out of here,” the Patri snarled.
“No, you mustn’t make her. . . .” The Warder’s voice died, his pleading gaze jumped from Lia to the Patri, and finally to Hunter. “You—you brought her here for this?”
A searing pain scorched Hunter’s heart. As if she felt it, Lia shook free of the Patri, coming to Hunter’s side. “Leave her alone,” she said. “You don’t know anything about it.”
Only Ava’s hand kept the Warder upright as his knees gave way. His face dropped into his hands; his shoulders shook. The Patri made a wordless sound of disgust, turning away. But then the Warder gathered himself to search out Lia’s face again, something besides sorrow touching his filmy eyes. “I’m sorry, child. I’ve been beyond a fool, and I know you can never forgive me.” He struggled upright; Hunter could almost hear
his old bones creak. “If I could take it all back, I would. If I had known, I never would have . . . But if you are to be the Saint, there will be more good in the Church than I could ever imagine.” He covered his eyes again for a moment, then found a tremulous smile for the hunter beside him. “Young Ava, again, isn’t it? This time it is I who have not done so well. But if you let me go, I will try to make it up. I set those people on that road out there; I might yet be able to talk some sense into them. At least I can try.”
“There’s no point,” Hunter said harshly. “They won’t listen. It would be a waste.”
The Warder plucked a thread from the shreds of his sweater, squinting at it in the dim light. “Sometimes I pull one of these and the whole thing comes unraveled.” He flicked it away. “You never know.” He limped towards the doors. No one moved to stop him.
“Wait.” Lia ran to him, pressed her cheek to his. “Go with the Saints.”
Brit looked after him. “I might increase the odds of his success. With your permission, Patri.”
A faint line drew between the Patri’s brows. After a moment, he nodded, thin-lipped. Brit inclined her head to him, then, after a long, measuring look, to Lia. Then she was gone.
The Patri laid a hand on Lia’s shoulder. “Come. I will help you.”
“No,” Hunter said. She forced herself between them. Gem cuffed her away, not hard, but it was enough to send stars across her vision. She stood swaying uselessly, trying not to fall.
“We all have our duty,” the Patri said heavily. “Let her do hers.”
“It’s not her duty to die for you!” Hunter cried. “Saints, is that all you know? There has to be another way. You don’t have to do this. You didn’t have to have Gem kill Tana. Saints, if you had just told me the truth—none of this had to happen!”
Gem said, “I told the truth. The weapon misfired.”
“Because he tampered with it?”
The Patri let out an impatient breath. “This is ridiculous. I had no part in Tana’s death.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hunter said flatly. Once it would have chilled her heart, such blasphemy. Now she wished the Church would strike her dead, to prove that it was able.
Nothing happened.
The Patri loomed so close she could smell the sour sweat beneath his robes. Behind him on the altar the priests worked quickly, efficiently now, a new purpose to their motions. Hunter’s heart hammered in fear. “I owe you no explanation,” the Patri said, “but I will tell you anyway. Perhaps this last lesson will do you good. Yes, Tana came to see me that night. About Gem, and other things that troubled her. She asked me what I was going to do, and I told her I didn’t know, beyond to trust the Saint. She began to laugh. She said the Saint had said the same thing. It made no sense to me. She was still laughing when she left.”
A chill spread through Hunter’s veins. There is a plan, Tana had told her, with that wry grin that had made it seem as if she saw everything from a very great distance. It wasn’t her own imminent death that would have given her that look. And there had also been the oddly compassionate way she had spoken to Hunter, tried, in her own dry way, to comfort her. She had seen the way the future twisted around both of them, weaving threads into one knotted plan binding tight as any rope.
Only not the Patri’s plan. And not Tana’s either. Not Tana’s alone.
I think I’ve learned to read the patterns. And I don’t like her answers.
Hunter stared at the shrouded figure on the altar. Not you. Not you.
Lia laid a tender hand on the Saint’s brow beneath the wire crown. “Oh, Echo . . . She knew. She knew exactly what she had to do.”
The Patri stared at the Saint, eyes narrowed at first, then growing round with wonder. When he spoke, his voice was hushed with awe. “She did it because of you. The last hunter she knew, before she ascended. The one who brought her back from the desert. There was more that happened than you ever told, wasn’t there? Enough for her to know—” His eyes alit on Lia. “The patterns that were out there, the wild Saint—she made sure that Echo would do it again. Would find you, and bring you here to save us.”
Gem took an involuntary step back, eyes widening like a child’s as she suddenly saw the pattern. She bowed ever so slightly towards the figure on the altar. “We are made to serve,” she said, her voice oddly choked.
“No,” Hunter whispered. “No.”
Lia took Hunter’s bound hands. “It was the only way. She had to drive you away from all this.” Lia’s gesture took in the priests, the Patri, the Saint herself. “She knew you could only find me if your heart was free to search.”
“No,” Hunter said again. Heat built behind her eyes. I don’t care whose plan it was. I won’t let it happen.
All thought narrowed into one tight beam. Get Lia away, get her far from here, to freedom and a chance to live. That one last mission she could accomplish. Hunter took a deep, slow breath, drawing up the final reserves of strength. The Patri stood close to Lia. If Hunter had him, they would have to listen to her. But she only had one chance. If Gem got to her first it would be no contest.
She was starting to move when the floor bucked, throwing her off balance. Her ribs hit into the hard edge of the altar with a pain that turned her vision black, and she tasted blood. Though her ears hadn’t registered the noise from the blast, all sound was muffled, coming through from a great distance. Dust choked her, and a fit of coughing almost sent her the rest of the way into unconsciousness. She fought it back with some last thread of discipline.
Think like a hunter, she ordered herself. One last time. Think.
The cold slab under her hands was the altar. She fumbled, fingers searching as far as her bonds permitted, then finding what they sought. Pulling with the last of her strength, she hauled herself up, refusing to consider what she was clambering over until she perched precariously at the top, then feeling her way along the ropelike cable until she felt the connector. She grasped one side in each hand and stopped. Still the blackness refused to lift. She stayed where she was, gasping for breath.
It took a moment to realize that the sparks across her vision, flashing in time to a grinding wheeze, came from a source outside her eyes. Blink, blink, blink, and then catch, the emergency lights coming on as someone, a priest it must be, hand cranked a generator. In the dimness Hunter saw Lia, safe in the circle of Gem’s arm. The med’s eyes scanned the room, searching, the way she searched a body for injury. Then she found Hunter’s face.
Gem followed Lia’s gaze. The young hunter’s raised hand suddenly held projtrodes, aimed dead at Hunter. Ava and Delen split off, flanking the altar on either side, static wands ready.
Hunter crouched over the Saint, aware now that her hands were wrapped around the snake of cable running from the Saint’s crown to the priests’ boards. The priests around the altar stood frozen in horror. Even through the thick walls of the sanctuary she could hear the occasional distant boom of something exploding, like a heart beating fit to burst.
“Let her go,” Hunter ordered.
“Echo Hunter 367, cease,” the Patri thundered. “You will destroy the Church.”
“We don’t deserve to survive,” Hunter cried. “All of this, since the Fall—for nothing. A waste that only put off the inevitable. You think you know so much, you and your priests and your order and your Church. You think the Church has saved us, since the Fall, and it has, but for what? For what? Not for this. We didn’t save the city, we brought all this on it. It isn’t what we were taught, not what we tell ourselves, but it’s what we’ll always come to—protecting ourselves, not the cityens. Betraying them to keep things the way we say they have to be. Look at us. We’re all unsound. The Saint, wearing out so soon. The hunters we have to cull because they don’t copy true. Saints, do you think I don’t know what I am?” She heard Lia’s wordless gasp of protest, went on recklessly, now
that all was lost— “All of this is only a damaged copy of what it should have been. It can’t go on like this. It has to change.” Her hands clenched on the conduit. “I won’t let it go on. Let Lia go, or I’ll kill the Saint.”
They all gaped at her in disbelief, the Patri, Gem, even the priests who tore their eyes from their boards to watch the calamity unfold. Lia too, until she turned her face away. Gem’s arm tightened, pulling her closer in a gesture that seemed to draw some cord tighter around Hunter’s strangling heart.
Fury distorted the Patri’s face. “Enough of your blasphemy! Gem.” Gem raised her trodes, reluctantly it seemed, but her hand was steady. Hunter felt a coldness settle in her bones. It was the end. She could take the junction down, or evade the trodes, but not both. And she would not let them have Lia. She raised the cable as best she could, showing it clearly so they could make no mistake of her intentions. Gem hesitated, casting a glance at the Patri.
“Even she wouldn’t sacrifice the whole city,” he said flatly. “It’s time.” He motioned, and priests came forward eagerly to take Lia’s arms.
Lia tore herself free. “I’ll tell you when it’s time. If it’s time.” Before the priests could stop her, she scrambled up beside Hunter on the altar. Seeing the Patri’s consternation, she gave a harsh laugh. “The mind has to be willing when the crown goes on, doesn’t it? Yes, I thought as much. Otherwise Gem would have tapped me over the head in the desert and I would never have awakened.” Her smile fled, and she swallowed, averting her eyes from the Saint. “At least not as myself. So now you listen to me, all of you. Look, look at what’s happening. We’re tearing ourselves to pieces. Don’t you see? All of us. Our plans, our schemes—we have to stop it. Echo’s right. We can’t go on like this.”
“I’ll get you out of here,” Hunter promised. “I’ll find a way.”
“I’m so sorry, Echo. If it were just you and me—” Lia stopped Hunter’s protest with a gentle finger on her lips. “We’re like that fierce little girl of yours—almost ready to stand on our own, but not quite yet. For a while we’ll still need the Church’s help.” She scowled down at the Patri. “But all of you need to listen. You have a choice to make: help us grow up, or bring another Fall. And, Gem, you might as well put those down. Echo goes free and unharmed, or you’ll never get a thing from me. And don’t think you can wait until—after—and do it then. I’ll know. Believe me, I’ll know.”