by Stacey Berg
“What can she be to you?” the Patri asked, bewilderment thinning his voice. “She’s a hunter. A tool, nothing more. She’s not even a true copy, just a dangerous mistake. She knows, she confessed it herself. Don’t you see?”
Lia drew Hunter around to face her. Hunter felt that look to her core, shamed, at the sweat and dirt caking her face, at the way her hands shook on the conduit; most of all, at the way she would let Saint and Church and city fall to ruins in a heartbeat if it meant saving Lia. The Patri was wrong. She wasn’t dangerous. She was worthless.
“It’s you who doesn’t see,” Lia said softly. Her hand caressed Hunter’s cheek, withdrew. Then the med crossed her arms, looking down at the Patri and hunters and priests. “I’m telling you: it’s time for everything to change. Now you decide if you’re ready.” And then her breath caught, and her voice began to shake. “But hurry.”
The Patri stood staring blankly for so long that Hunter wondered if the strain had broken his mind. Then something lit behind his eyes, lifting his sagging features and filling them with desperate hope. He bowed his head, then raised his face to the altar, lifting his palms wide in offering. “My service to the Saint in all things.”
Lia, white face streaked silver with tears, bowed her head into her hands, then nodded.
“I won’t let you do this,” Hunter cried. “Look at her. Look at her.”
Lia did. Her wise, calm gaze took in the Saint’s wizened face beneath the crown, the skin stretched tight across bone worn free of every trace of human softness, the sunken eyes that stared at visions nothing living could see. When Lia looked up, her lips were trembling but her golden eyes, melting with tears, held nothing but compassion.
“No!” Hunter’s grip tightened on the junction, beginning to pull it apart. The Saint’s wasted body twitched.
Lia laid her hands gently atop Hunter’s. The touch shot through Hunter’s nerves like the pain of the Church doors, paralyzing her. “Echo, you know I have to. I can save them—the cityens, the hunters even. The children.” She was weeping in earnest now, tears running down her face, her voice trembling with them. “But I can’t do it by myself.” She drew a quivering breath, then steadied. “Yours will be the last face I see. Please, Echo. I love you. Give me that to take with me.”
Hunter strained against the bonds until she held Lia’s face between her hands. Every instinct screamed protest. Pain ripped through her chest with each beat of her heart. She touched her lips to the med’s forehead, then her mouth. She tasted tears, salty as blood. They stood like that for a moment out of time. Then: “Look at me,” Hunter said at last. “I love you.”
Lia looked at her, and smiled.
Half blind with anguish, scarcely able to breathe, Hunter held Lia’s face between her hands as the med eased the crown off the dying Saint and slipped it over her own head. Hunter kept her eyes locked on Lia’s, refusing to blink, willing every breath, every last heartbeat to Lia through that gaze they shared, ignoring everything else in the world, aware of nothing but Lia, even as the lights came on full bright, the boards flashed and spun into a steady rhythm, as the others, no more than shadows in the corner of her eye, pointed and murmured in amazement at the Church coming back to life, as the sounds of battle faded away and died. She saw Lia’s face transfixed with awe and wonder, her golden eyes burning brightly as a beacon, glowing from within. She heard the sharp intake of breath, felt the body sag against her as the thought, the awareness, all that was Lia spun burning through the wires, out across the city she would heal.
She saw Lia looking back at her for one last moment.
And then she saw the Saint ascend.
The engines strained at their very limits, pushed as far as Gem dared beyond the last relay’s range. No one had come this far in living memory. Even out here Hunter could still smell smoke, an acrid reminder of disaster that would linger for days, though most of the fires had been put out by now. The city had new scars to bear, wounds that might take a lifetime to heal. A hunter in another hundred annuals, if there were still hunters then, might survey the dead areas, spare a moment to ponder what had happened, then turn without further thought to whatever task she had at hand.
Hunter wondered how much of what she had come to know was left, and who; she pictured Exey standing in his workshop, surveying and contemplating and already grinning his crooked grin as he imagined what he could craft out of the ruins. Brit had limped in, hurt but likely to survive. No one had seen the Warder, but then, they might not; there was much to accomplish in the city and cityens were already organizing themselves to take care of what they could without any hunter’s help.
Hunter wouldn’t be there to see it; she had her own task, one that no one else could do. She hopped out of the aircar as lightly as her stiff bones could manage. Her pack, bearing little more than a receiver to hunt signals crossing the empty air, a few basic supplies, and the rewired stunner Gem had handed her without comment, made an insignificant load.
Gem said, “Ava and Delen and the others are already gathering the rest of the Warder’s prints. Perhaps the priests will have found answers by the time you get back.”
Hunter was strangely touched by Gem’s faith in her return. But she said, feeling the slightest curve come to her lips, “Are you wishing my search to be for nothing, Gem?”
“Of course not.” A pause. “The Saint made a good choice, Echo Hunter 367. Both Saints.”
It was a moment before Hunter could speak. “You should be getting back, Gem; the Church needs you.”
“Echo.” Her young self looked down at her from the open hatch. “I swear to you, I will protect her with my life.”
“That is a formidable thing, Gem Hunter 378.”
One last time Gem studied her, searching for mockery, finding none. Then the young hunter nodded. “Goodbye, Echo Hunter 367.”
She stood there until the whine of the aircar’s engines, protesting against the dust and the distance from the Saint, died into nothing. The vast emptiness of the desert spread before her. If there were other cities, other Saints, they could remain hidden there for lifetimes.
But Criya had said once that Hunter was good at finding things. She had only been half right, Hunter thought. Not just finding things, but bringing them home.
Hunter stood still, listening. As always, the answer was silence. No words sounded in her ears. No voice spoke within her mind.
But now that she knew how, she could hear. Echo hitched the pack higher on her shoulder and took the first step forward, while her Saint whispered endlessly in her heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
More people than I can thank here contributed to this book. I would like to name a few: my parents, who made reading as natural as breathing. My brother and sister, who helpfully suggested that I dedicate this book “to my siblings, without whom so much more might have been accomplished.” Other than that, they’re the best siblings a person could have. The kind and brilliant Kelley Eskridge at Sterling Editing, for helping my dream come true. My agent, Mary C. Moore, who pulled my story out of the slush. Rebecca Lucash at Harper Voyager Impulse, who is a pleasure to work with. And most of all my wife, Mary, for everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STACEY BERG is a medical researcher who writes speculative fiction. Her work as a physician-scientist provides the inspiration for many of her stories. She lives with her wife in Houston and is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas. When she’s not writing, she practices kung fu and runs half marathons.
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COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DISSENSION. Cop
yright © 2016 by Stacey Berg. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780062466129
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062466136
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