Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  Maybe tomorrow.

  WHEN I WOKE UP, I didn’t hurt nearly as much. And Bya was still with me. I’d scooted down during the night until I was lying down, and when I woke up, my left arm was draped over his shoulder.

  “Light,” I said aloud, and not only did a soft light come up, but my vid-screen came up too. The doc who had taken care of me at the debrief was on it.

  “This is a recording. Hunter Joyeaux, you are ordered to take bed rest today, and you are off duty for the next day after that. You should be fully healed by tomorrow, but you’ve lost blood, and we’ll want to be sure you weren’t infected or poisoned by those bites. You are not confined to quarters, but sleep as much as you can and take the medicines that arrive with your meals. That is all.”

  There was a recorded—and very formal and stiff—congratulations from Uncle; it looked and sounded like something he recited from a script every time a Hunter got a particularly good kill. Only at the end did he unbend enough to give a hand signal of “well done” that only he and I would recognize. Which made me blush a little.

  I flexed my arms and hands experimentally, and while stiff and a little painful, they didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as they had before. Bya’s spit is really good at making things heal fast, but this was even faster. I was impressed and I wasn’t worried about toxins or infection; it would have taken care of that, too.

  Bya grunted, and raised his head to give me a measuring stare. “Yeah, I’ll be all right,” I told him. “You can go on back.” If I was going to have a reaction to nearly getting killed, it would have been last night—nightmares. I didn’t remember any, but then, if Bya soothed them away for me, I wouldn’t. I only ever get the shakes in the first twenty-four hours now.

  Bya licked my face and jumped down off the bed, and I opened the Portal for him, and he faded back home. I ordered breakfast, and got another shower. I think another pound of cement and brick dust came out of my hair again. My legs were all wobbly when I was done, so I figured I had better take the doc’s advice. I got my tray from the cart when it arrived, put the old tray on top, and staggered back to bed. While I ate, I reviewed the raw vid a couple of times, and finally came to the conclusion that while I should have been a lot more alert, I hadn’t been as stupid as I’d thought I’d been. That wretched Wyvern had been mostly hidden from view from every angle; clearly he had been waiting to ambush Knight if Knight had found a back way out of the hole. And, of course, it showed us being outside the outermost Barrier, not inside it. Which made what the medic said in the helichopper make a lot more sense. He’d been talking for the cameras, of course.

  With a vague sense of dread, because I really didn’t want to find out I was ahead of Ace, I checked my standings. I was still number two, and Ace had opened up a bigger lead, which was a relief, actually. I called up his channel, and he had scored a very impressive series of kills yesterday. It looked as if he and his Hounds had overturned every rock and poked into every hidey-hole in the territory. He’d even routed out a Vampire and made pretty short work of the fang-face with just him and the two Hounds, and he’d done it all without even mussing his hair. After the recap, his channel showed him live, going out to another tough district. “Good for you,” I said, and then the pills that had come with breakfast hit me like a hammer between the eyes and I curled up for a nap.

  When I woke up again, I felt pretty good. My arms and hands were a little stiff and tender, but they didn’t hurt. Unwrapping the bandages, I found there were pink lines where the gashes had been. I decided to get dressed and go to the range to practice, then to the room full of exercising machines to make up for not going out hunting. But before I did, feeling bold, I searched for Josh’s number; I got it, but the little icon next to his name said he was “not available to talk,” so I just left him a vid message with cam feed to the effect of “Thanks for checking on me last night, I appreciate it! And thank you again for that amazing dinner!” I actually managed not to blush while I was recording it.

  I didn’t do badly on the range, and the exercising machines were kind of fun, if weird. Obviously we don’t have those at home; if you want a workout, you get someone and spar. I got a good sweat going, like I would have after a sparring session. I figured I would go get some dinner, meet up with the others in the lounge like we always did, and then sleep.

  The exercise rooms had been completely empty. That was kind of unnerving for someone who was used to living practically in the pockets of everyone else at the Monastery, but even the solitude wasn’t helping me put everything I’d learned together with what I knew and come up with an explanation for why things weren’t feeling right.

  Then I found something that always helped me think—there was a sauna in the exercise room! We had one at home, and just letting the steam bake me into a puddle, generally while I let my mind drift, usually shook things loose.

  So I wrapped myself up in a towel and found a bench at the back and laid myself down on it. And sure enough, clearer thoughts started forming up in my head.

  Apex and the other big cities—or at least, so I was thinking—were at a turning point they might not even realize was happening. At first, of course, it had been a pure battle of survival against the Othersiders; the major battle was here, where there was the biggest concentration of army and armed services people, but especially Army Corps of Engineers and all the tech people who lived around this spot. Then Barrier tech got figured out, and safe spots could be created, Apex first. Those safe spots quickly became cities, and inside the cities, things were “known” to be safe. So far, so good. You could expand the Barriers, at least to a point where you could actually grow food and be mostly self-supporting. Things got a lot safer.

  And that was where people got complacent. They got not only all the old tech back up and running, they got better tech. You could be absolutely certain that you wouldn’t get attacked by anything but maybe a nuisance like a Piskie if you were inside the most-protected zone. Life was really good. You maybe thought you didn’t need Hunters anymore, at least not in and around the city.

  And…okay, I already knew I had to keep quiet about that. But what was the pressure on Uncle, and how did I fit into it? Maybe it wasn’t just that the Othersiders were getting smarter and some of them were learning to come over and under the Barriers a lot more often…Maybe the Barriers themselves were getting weaker, or the Othersiders had figured out a way to get through them, the way the trains and choppers did. Maybe that was what Uncle had found out, and he wanted to say something. Probably his original intention in bringing me here instead of some other Hunter had been to show that he wouldn’t spare his own kin from duty…and maybe that had backfired on him when he wanted to make this new danger public. Because once…whoever it was…had found out I was his kin, they’d gone to him and said something like “Keep your mouth shut about the Barriers, or we’ll make it hard on your niece.”

  I could see that happening. I mean, I’ve read history books from before the Diseray. There were all kinds of things that people could have done and should have done that would have prevented it. And they didn’t. Because the people in power liked where they were just fine, thanks, and they stayed there because of people with money. And the people with the money didn’t want to lose a single cent of that money doing the right things. Power makes you stop thinking of anything but yourself.

  And just as I got to that point, I heard the sauna door open and shut, and two sets of footsteps. I was well hidden by the steam, and whoever it was stayed near the door. It seems they had come in here to have a conversation. So…maybe it was wrong of me, but I stayed quiet and listened.

  “Nothing ever stays the same. People change, and so have the Othersiders,” said someone whose voice I didn’t recognize. “They’re getting smarter.”

  “Or maybe something is teaching them,” replied the other person. I thought it might be the armorer. “The premier can’t have anyone realizing that. The Cits will just start asking why they aren’t sa
fe anymore and start looking for someone who could make them safe again.”

  “Well that goes no place good….”

  “Who else would they look to but General Priam?” There was a long pause. “But it goes deeper than that. I think this may have started happening a good long while ago. I think that’s why the premier started the full-time vidding of the Hunters years ago.”

  “That goes no place good either.”

  “Exactly.” There was a very long pause. Now I thought I knew why they had come in here. All this steam was probably very bad for recording equipment. I closed my eyes and breathed very quietly. “Meanwhile the Othersiders start getting inside the outermost Barriers. Just a few at first. But, for whatever reason, in the last six months or so it’s started getting slowly, slowly worse. Smarter things are getting in, and more of the little things getting in.”

  “And no one noticed because of creep.” I knew what that was. We talked about “creep,” when we talked about strategy at home. When things just kind of creep up on you so gradually you don’t know it’s happening until someone points it out. “You think anyone besides the prefect’s niece noticed?”

  “It’s a good thing we have room. If things are going downhill, we’re going to need a lot more Hunters.”

  Now that things were falling into place, everything I was seeing started to make more sense. It explained why there were Hunters like Ace—they were still under the impression that Hunting was mostly entertainment for the Cits, not something serious, unless you were unfortunate enough to draw a territory outside the Prime Barrier. And internal politics explained Uncle’s behavior and his warnings to me.

  “So what do we do about it?” asked the second fellow.

  “Stay sharp, keep our eyes open. This is all just my speculation for now.” Then the door opened and closed again, and I was alone.

  I waited a good while, then left, got a shower, and headed for the mess. I was keeping my expression absolutely neutral so no one would read anything in it, if they happened to be watching me on the ubiquitous cameras.

  That’s why my head came up like a spooked deer’s when the first thing I heard was “Hey, it’s Hunter Joy!”

  It was someone I didn’t really know, but I recognized her from the lounge—blond girl, green and pink colors, gymnast’s build. She grinned at me. I smiled tentatively back.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, the armorer was eating here—and he got up and left his meal to come over to me. So that might well have been him in the sauna….“I see you took the bandages off,” he rumbled, and reached for my arm. “Let me have a look.”

  “Uh—” I flushed a little as he rolled back my sleeve dispassionately. I mean…he’s Elite. And he was paying attention to me. “I heal fast. One of my Hounds has healing spit—”

  “Mine does too,” said the armorer, examining the scars as he turned my arm side to side a little. “This is looking good. Good job out there, by the way. Potentially stupid move, ramming your hand down a Wyvern’s throat, but at least you had the sense to jam the mouth open first. I was on the way, but I wouldn’t have been able to get to you two before things went bad for Knight.” He let go of my arm and patted me on the back. “Overall, well done. And the teaming job you did with Knight on the second beast was first class.”

  I was so shocked I could hardly move, because an Elite had basically just said I’d done a good Hunt and good strat. And I stayed kind of in shock, especially when several of the others came up to shake my hand and say things like “Well done” and “Gutsy moves.” I think I stammered my thanks, blushing the entire time.

  They waited while I got my food, then kind of waved me over to where they had all pushed their tables together. Knight wasn’t there, but Karly was, and the others were all people I knew from the lounge. There were about eight of them, including Karly, all senior to me, and we all started dissecting the Hunt while we ate. It was like the vid-sessions, only without the jokes or the vid-screen. Mostly I kept my mouth shut and listened. These people all had more experience than I did in Hunting here, around Apex. There was at least one Elite, and for all I knew, there might be more.

  And I learned a lot. Stuff Karly hadn’t been able to tell me before she got hurt, like how to tell where sewer tunnels were when they weren’t obviously marked, that there were doors sprinkled around with a particular symbol of three triangles meeting inside a circle that meant there was a smallish bunker behind them. That Wyverns hunted by line of sight, and if I could break that, they would keep going in a straight line and I could circle around behind. This was even better than the vid-sessions; I guess since I’d proved I wasn’t full of myself, I’d kind of passed the “not-a-jerk” test.

  So when Ace came in with his group, and looked at the gathering with surprise, I was the first one to say, “Hunter Ace, that was awesome work yesterday.”

  He looked at me warily, as if he suspected I was being sarcastic. “It wasn’t a Wyvern,” he replied.

  “And you didn’t end up on your butt dripping blood, either,” I pointed out. “If there’d been anything in the neighborhood that had smelled blood in the air, I’d’ve been rabbit on toast.”

  He figured out I was being sincere, I guess, and gave me a kind of grudging nod. He and his gang didn’t join our group exactly, but they didn’t sit on the other side of the room, either. They plunked down close enough that they could listen, but kept their conversation among themselves, which was okay. Not everybody wants to talk about work over dinner; I can respect that.

  I kind of wanted to say something friendly to him, but I couldn’t think of what, so I settled for being as quiet as I could and listening to the others.

  When the topic moved on from Hunting and it looked like everybody had gotten really engaged in the conversation and I could slip out without anyone noticing, I did just that. I was about halfway down the hall when my Perscom beeped, and Knight’s voice came out of it. “Hey, Joy, meet me at the atrium, will you?”

  “Sure,” I said, as my Perscom obligingly showed me the way to this “atrium.” Turned out it was a courtyard, complete with a fishpond and a Zen garden with stone lanterns so like home, it made me both homesick and happy at the same time. But it wasn’t open to the sky like I thought at first; it had glass over it. Bulletproof, break-proof, probably armored glass, most likely. I sat down next to the pond, and hopeful fishes came up to see if I had anything to eat.

  Knight turned up as they were drifting away in fishy disappointment. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey, yourself.” He sat down next to me and handed me a little bag. “Fish food. Don’t destroy their faith.” We both tossed some on the water and the fish came surging back, happy again. “Just wanted to let you know that my folks are talking to the ones you gave me the contact information for, and we’re pretty sure a lot of people are going to relocate. Not everyone.” He shrugged. “You know how it is, some people put down roots and can’t be torn out. But most are pretty excited. My girlfriend is, for sure. And I’m going to feel a lot easier knowing she’s going to be somewhere better. Maybe after having moved once, moving here won’t seem so scary to her. So thank you.”

  “Oh—wow! That’s fantastic,” I said. “But the mines—won’t whoever is bossing the mines be mad about losing the miners?”

  “Reckon they’ll have to send in machines, like they do for crops, and the few that are left can run ’em,” Knight said with a shrug. “They can’t force us to stay. We just never had a place to go to before.”

  He leaned over then and did something I would never have expected in a million years. He kissed the top of my head, all shylike. He was flushing as he said, “Not one Hunter in all the time I’ve been here has taken thought for helping someone that wasn’t another Hunter. You’re really special, Joy, and not just because you’re a Hunter. It’s because you think about other people all the time. Put others ahead of what you want. That’s—that’s real rare. Makes it feel as if you were my sister.”

&nbs
p; Now it was my turn to flush. “It—it’s just how I was raised,” I stammered. “Any one of us up there would do the same, Knight—”

  “Mark,” he interrupted me.

  “What?” I was confused for a moment.

  “Mark. My name’s Mark Knight,” he repeated, grinning. “The ‘White Knight’ business was just a nickname that stuck. Now, you’ll get to sleep in, come the morning, but I’ll have to patrol, so I’d best get some pillow time. I just wanted to thank you before the cameras figured out where we went.”

  I nodded as he stood up. “I’m glad I could help, Mark. I couldn’t stand thinking of the bad choice they were having to make between poison and Othersiders. Now the choice won’t be quite so bad—live above the snow line, or Othersiders. Cold’s a fair sight better than poison.”

  “It is that. Night, Joy.” And with that, he waved and took himself off. I stayed in the garden, since it was the first really peaceful, really homelike place I’d been since I got here. It being dark and all, you got the illusion it was real nature, rather than nature-under-glass. From time to time I tossed in a little fish food, and thought about how much the Masters and monks would like this.

  We actually had a Zen garden, even though it was below freezing all the time. We had two; one specifically a snow garden, just rocks and dead branches and stone lamps, and another in a greenhouse, where we grew herbs. It didn’t have a fishpond, though. The snow garden was used for the sorts of meditation that are supposed to make you immune to cold. I was never that good, though I’ve seen some of the monks out there, wrapped in wet sheets, serenely drying the sheets with the heat of their bodies.

  It felt as if something that had been all tight in my chest started to loosen up. And, hey, I’d already done some good. I might not have family here, but it was beginning to look like I could have friends.