Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  He blinked at me, then picked up the plate and came back with a proper Hunter’s meal, the kind I would get after a Hunt even if it was a lean year. Because you don’t starve your guard dogs, and you don’t short a Hunter who is protecting you. Not that we ever, ever let anyone starve on the Mountain. That’s not our way. But if the year is bad, Hunters get the bigger shares. Usually we can make up for it by doing regular hunting, and bringing home meat when we are on our patrols.

  Now this was where I truly missed real meat, as opposed to cloned. But they made up for the lack with the seasoning, and anyway, it’s bad manners to complain. And there was wine! I like wine, though as an underager I didn’t get it often, only a glass on Holly Days.

  I pretty much inhaled the meal while my steward pulled the bed out of the wall (so that was where it was!). Bya, my beautiful, sleek boy, got bits, nibbling daintily, unlike a real dog. The Hounds don’t need to eat our food, but some of them like it. I could rest my eyes on him forever in this form: silk-sleek black fur as soft as the sleep cocoon; long, narrow muzzle; pointy ears; whiplike tail; lean and all whipcord muscle, with only his glowing eyes showing he wasn’t a real dog. I was concentrating on the food so I wouldn’t have to think about anything else. My brain needed a cooldown. The steward went out into the hall and came back with my smaller bag.

  “I thought there might be something in here you’d want,” he said a little awkwardly, and smiled, then showed me all the gizmos in the compartment. “Ah, you’ll be on after the news from Apex City in about thirty minutes if you want to watch.”

  Huh…I didn’t know what to say. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, so he took that as a “yes” and turned on the feed. “Remember, if you need anything, press the call button,” he said as he left, taking my polished plates with him, and leaving me in a darkening compartment with brightly colored people nattering away on a holographic display between me and the window.

  I knew I should have been paying attention to what they were saying, but my brain was still trying to process everything when the Apex Prime Vid logo came up, with a fanfare, and then a splash-screed of “SPECIAL REPORT! ATTACK ON THE PHOENIX FLYER!”

  Well that would be me, I guess.

  There were the usual sorts of announcers that sort of blend into each other—for me, anyway. They seem interchangeable. Mostly I was interested in what they were going to say happened, because that was what I was going to have to answer questions about in public. And sure enough, the footage had been tampered with. I studied it hard to get all the little details right. Interesting that they’d left in the Mage Wall, though; could be Cits didn’t know enough about Gogs to know they weren’t Magicians.

  Bya watched too, staring intently. He’d seen other Hounds on vid before, but never himself and the rest of his pack. “You look gorgeous,” I told him. “And dangerous.” He gave me a grin and went back to watching.

  Then things got even more interesting, because there I was, staring at the camera. It was parts of the debriefing I’d done right here in this compartment!

  No wonder the officer had said I had made his job easier. I’d responded to all his cues in such a way that he hadn’t had to edit out the Folk Mage. That meant he could not only play it for those people who demanded the debrief but weren’t allowed to know about the Folk, but he could release chunks of it straight to the news feed.

  “Well, the new Hunter is quite a change from Ace Sturgis, wouldn’t you say, Gayle?” the announcer man asked. “He won’t have to worry about a fashion challenge, but if I were Ace, I’d be watching over my shoulder, because with this intro, she’s definitely trending!”

  “Oh, you never know what’s going to happen to Joyeaux when she gets to the city, Johnny,” the woman replied. “I have the feeling there are a lot of unplumbed depths to this new Hunter. I think she hasn’t even begun to show us everything she’s got.”

  Uh, what? Why were they discussing me as if I was some kind of vid star?

  “Only time will tell,” said the man, with a solemn nod.

  “Well this reporter can tell you one thing,” the woman said, and leaned toward the camera. “No matter what the rumors were about her, now that I have seen her myself, I say Hunter Joyeaux would be a contender no matter who her uncle was! Hunter Ace had better keep sharp if he wants to stay on the leaderboard!”

  “And with that, I’m Johnny Night,” said the man.

  “And I’m Gayle Pierce. And that’s your Hunters on the job! Keeping Apex and the Territories safe!” And there was a sudden bit of fanfare, and a brightly colored Allied Territories symbol with the A for Apex superimposed over it, and the program changed to something else.

  I shut off the vid-feed, feeling not only every bit of my exhaustion, but now confusion as well. Rumors? Oh…great…and wait, what—what was a leaderboard? And what was I going to do about all this? When the Masters said I would be treated like a star, I didn’t think they meant this! This was all turning out way more complicated than I had ever dreamed.

  Before I could even begin to start fretting about any of that, Bya gave me the shove with his nose that told me he knew I was about to have my real post-Hunt meltdown. So I made the vid-screen go away, climbed into the bed, and made room for him. He radiated warmth and a soothing sort of comfort, but still tears stung my eyes. I wanted home and the guidance of my Masters so bad I was sick with it.

  I wanted the Mountain, where I had lived for as long as I could remember, not all this flat land. I wanted snow and the knowledge that there wasn’t one of the Othersiders, not even a Folk Mage, that could stand that much cold for very long. I wanted my little room in the Monastery, no bigger than this compartment, but so much homier, so much warmer, all glowing, polished wood and feather bed and thick down comforters. I wanted people I didn’t have to watch my words with. But most of all, I desperately wanted my Masters, I wanted Kedo, I wanted someone to tell me what to do….

  But they wouldn’t. They hadn’t been telling me what to do for a couple of years now. Like the time when I was trying to figure out how to make the spell for a magic net work. I didn’t know then that Kedo was teaching me how to take two different spells and combine them to make something new. I knew he knew how to make a net, because I’d seen him do it. But he wouldn’t tell me. He’d just looked at me in that way that said, You have all the information; you need to find the way for yourself. That’s what Kedo, or any other Master, would do now, and inside, I knew that.

  Which, of course, only made me feel worse. Then I shook with the fear I hadn’t let myself feel out there, then—and this was new—with anger that those mindless vidiots were making me into some sort of…of…entertainment. Then finally the fatigue hit like a sack of hammers to the head, and I went straight into no-dream-time.

  I woke up at dawn, as always.

  Bya was gone, which I expected. There’s only so much time they can spend on this side, I think. Or maybe it’s just more comfortable for them on the Otherside, I don’t know. I don’t even know if the Otherside they come from is the same as the one that the Folk and the other strangelings come from. What I did have when I woke up was a head full of questions.

  No way to answer them, of course. It would have been nice to be a Psimon and just talk to my Masters whenever I needed to. Psi and magic don’t go together except for within the Folk, though. But…yeah. Millions of questions.

  Again, I used the ’fresher and, since I had my little bag with me, I went ahead and changed out of Hunting gear. It still wasn’t anything like the Cits were wearing, but it wasn’t quite as somber and monklike: a tunic my best friend Kei had embroidered for me over soft leather trousers. The tunic was golden brown linen, embroidered with red and yellow flowers, and it had this nifty wide leather belt that matched the pants and had pockets sewn into it. I pulled my hair into a tail, and thought about my friends back on the Mountain.

  Right now, Kei was milking her family’s goats, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. Not about me ev
en though we’d been friends ever since I beat a Harpy to death for trying to carry off one of the nanny goats. No, she was thinking about Big Tom, and scheming to get him away from Ramona, even though she didn’t have a chance in hell of doing that, and anyway, if she had any sense at all she’d wake up and realize that Dutch down at Silverspring was crazy for her. Right now the other Hunters at the Monastery, Caleb and Rory, Andi and Luce, Big and Little Tom, and Shen and Aci, were all doing their morning exercises, first kata, then the magic ones.

  I wanted to be there, with the Monastery perched on the side of the Mountain in the snow looking exactly like the big Buddhist Monastery at Lhasa did in old pictures, except for solar panels covering the roof and part of the mountainside. It was beautiful, with the thick concrete walls painted a mellow tan and the concrete roof dyed red, instead of tiles. Tiny wind generators along every roofline, each of them with a shaft that was actually a prayer wheel, because, why not? Until you got up there, though, you’d never know you could only see a third of it. The rest of it, including lots and lots of storage, was actually dug into the Mountain. That sort of excavation is something that has to be done very slowly and with a lot of labor now. Back when the Monastery was built, it had all been done by machines.

  When you went around doing your jobs, everyone greeted you, even if they didn’t like you. And with those who liked you, there would be brief touches, pats on the back, hugs. Back home, we’re a touchy bunch. Everyone hugs, everyone kisses, even some of the monks and the Masters, like Kedo. I never, ever lacked for that. It’s not that everyone loves everyone else, but where I come from everyone is loved by someone, and knows it. Now all that was far, far away; nobody had touched me once since I got on this train, and I felt all the more isolated.

  But right now, the world on the Mountain was going right along, counting on me to satisfy the needs of Apex and the Territories and keep them secret and safe.

  And I would.

  So I closed my eyes, tried to be with them even though I wasn’t, and did my exercises. Then I rang for the steward.

  He brought me the same breakfast as yesterday, and looked a little surprised at my change of clothing. “Is this going to be better than what I had on for the city?” I asked him a little anxiously. “I know it doesn’t look like—fashionable stuff, but—”

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured me. “You’re trending. By tomorrow, people will be figuring out how to fab clothing like yours, and in three days, there will be as many people dressed like you as there are people dressed like Ace or Bree or Daze.”

  I blinked at him, not sure what he’d said, but he thought it was reassuring, so I figured I would let myself be reassured. “Uh…who’s Ace?” I asked. “They were comparing me to him on the news.”

  “Hunter Ace is very popular,” the steward told me. “Don’t worry, they compare everyone to him.”

  “Popular?” I repeated. “What’s popular got to do with anything?”

  “People love watching him Hunt,” said the steward, sounding puzzled. “Don’t you—oh. I guess you don’t watch much vid out there—”

  “We’re kind of busy,” I pointed out dryly. “We have to hunt and grow our food for ourselves. And make our own clothing from wool, hemp, linen, and ramie. And cut the wood to heat our houses. And—”

  He laughed, cutting me off. “Never mind, I get the idea. I wish I had the time to explain it to you, but I’m sure they’ll tell you all about it when you get to Hunter headquarters. Now, they’ve cleared the line for us,” he went on, “and we’ve been putting on speed all night. We should pull into Central Station just after lunch, and I have more requests from upline.”

  I blinked again; you never clear the line for any train other than one that carries mega-VIPs. That’s just how it is. That was crazy….

  “Prefect Charmand doesn’t want the vid-hounds to get at you, so he’s sending someone for you. We’ll stop a little short of the station at the same platform that the premier uses, you’ll get off there and be met, and then we’ll go on.” The steward grinned. “I can’t wait to see their faces when they realize what happened.”

  Wait, what? I was going to use the premier’s—

  Well, Uncle is pretty important. And it wasn’t as if the premier was going to want it on a spur of the moment thing. And it meant I wouldn’t have to—wait, what?

  “What about vid-hounds?” I asked, feeling stupid.

  “Gayle Pierce on channel Apex Prime got the exclusive last night—your interview—and now every station wants you covered. There’ll probably be twenty or thirty vid-hounds at the station wanting interviews. Not just the majors, there’s the foodie channel that will want an interview about what you eat, and the hobby channel that will want to know if you do anything besides Hunt, the fashion channel, all four movie channels, the book channel—well, you get the idea.” He nodded as if I would get the idea, when all I knew about was Apex Prime. It was about all we could get. Here I had been thinking that all those vid-dumps that came once a week from the city by mail were all coming from Apex Prime—and I had been wondering how they fit all that stuff in twenty-four hours every day.

  “Oh…” I said in a small voice.

  “But the prefect is seeing to it you won’t have to talk to any of them until you are ready,” he continued, as if it was a given that I would want to.

  Suddenly my palms were damp and I was more nervous than I’d been facing down that Mage. After all, the only thing he could do was kill me horribly. These people…they could make me look stupid.

  The train slowed. The vid-screen popped down, and words scrolled along with an announcement in a female voice that sounded artificially generated. “This is an unscheduled stop. We have not yet reached Central Station. Please remain in your seats. You will arrive on time. This is an unscheduled stop….”

  We’d been rolling through protected lands for some time before that, and the difference between them and the unprotected plains could not have been more graphic. People and machines moved freely through fields so mathematically precise I doubt there was a millimeter of wasted space. Some fields were covered with black vinyl, through which the food plants protruded, to preserve the moisture in the soil and cut down on the weeds. Some supported racks of hydroponics trays. Some were real grain fields, more or less like what I was used to. Not that we didn’t use the vinyl or the hydroponics—the hydro was fed by our tilapia pond—but we didn’t do it on this scale. There were probably some animals out there, because real meat, eggs, and dairy were luxury items that the high and mighty still wanted, but most meat was vat-grown, and eggs and dairy were completely synthesized from vegetable oils. I was pretty sure that the eggs and dairy I’d gotten on the train were real. I was also pretty sure that once I was off the train I wasn’t going to see the real thing again unless Uncle took me to dinner.

  The thing about the protected lands was the Barriers. You could see them in the distance as a shimmer between huge pylons that stretched a thousand feet up. The Barriers were tuned somehow—don’t ask me how, it’s a big secret, and probably involves both squints—that’s what the military calls scientists and technicians—and Magicians. Whatever it is they give out lets ordinary stuff pass without a problem, but let one of the Othersiders try, and it’ll end up ash. Of course, that doesn’t stop anything that can fly over the Barriers, but if something tries that, there’s helichoppers, planes, and stationary guns to shoot it down.

  The closer we got to the city, the more little towns there were, and the more powerful the Barriers got. Finally about a mile out, we passed a really powerful Barrier, one I felt as we went through it, like slamming through jelly that tingled. And then we were in the city itself. Or the burbs, anyway.

  After the Diseray this all was rebuilt, because it pretty much got stomped flat, burned, or just erased. So the city is laid out in a wheel-and-spoke pattern, cut into quarters by the two big rail lines, north–south and east–west. The eastern terminus is farther than I would go, at t
he Port. Now that we didn’t have to travel inside an electrified cage, there were several tracks here. I counted five more on my side.

  We were clearly going to stop well short of the Hub and Central Station. In fact, we got switched over to the farthest track on the line, passed through a physical fence, the sort that I was used to, about twelve feet of chain-link with razor wire on top, and inside the fence was a complex so precise, so gray, and so purposeful, it could only be military.

  We pulled up to a platform. I was already standing up, with my bag in my hand, when the steward opened the door. I was too nervous at this point to keep sitting down. He took my bag before I could say anything, and made a waving motion with his free hand. I went to the end of the car and got off, feeling just about ready to bolt like a feral cow at the sight of a wolf.

  There were actually two people there, both guys, both a couple years older than me. You know, army-recruit-age. One was a dark-haired, dark-skinned soldier in a pristine khaki army uniform. The other—

  Blond hair. Black-and-silver uniform, sleek black trousers that looked like something molded, not sewn, dull silver tunic that buttoned to one side, with a tiny stand-up collar, also with no visible seams. Mirrored one-piece sunglasses that looked more like a visor. I knew the uniform of course, though I had never seen anyone in it before in person. This was a Psimon—someone who had psionic powers rather than magic. He was, almost definitely, a telepath. He might be other things too, but telepathy and mind-reading were the most valued Psimon powers. Psimons were rarer than Magicians, about as rare as Hunters. We’d never had anyone born a Psimon up on the Mountain; or at least, if anyone had been, they kept it to themselves and told no one but the Masters. There was a reason for that. Psimons made people uneasy. You can guess why. How many things running through your head would you like someone else to know? Not very many, I bet. Because that’s what Psimons do; they read your thoughts. Supposedly, they aren’t allowed to go snooping in your head unless you’re a criminal; they’re only authorized to be like a radio, sort of a passive receiver that gets the really strong stuff that is associated with a lot of emotion—like a robber thinking about a robbery he’s going to do, or a would-be murderer about his victim. Supposedly, everyone has a kind of filter in their head made up of all the random stuff they think about all the time that only lets those strong, emotional thoughts get through. That’s supposedly.