by Stacey Berg
“It doesn’t matter,” she said to Lia. They hadn’t discussed the children since the day Hunter had failed to bring them back.
“It does matter,” Lia chided gently. “You must have cared about them very much.”
Hunter stared unseeing at the capture. “I taught them what I could while time permitted, that was all.” The loss rate has been acceptable, she remembered saying once. Ela stared at her impassively. Tana. They didn’t say whether they would still agree. Her shoulders twitched in a spasm she forced into a shrug. “What happened after that wasn’t up to me.”
“Oh, Echo.” Lia’s golden eyes brimmed. “Don’t you even know when something hurts?”
Very early the next morning they were awakened by a frantic pounding on the clinic door. Sounds of argument brought Hunter to her feet and ready, but it was only Justan who entered with an urgent message for Lia. Quickly gathering supplies into a bag, the med told Hunter, “Come with me. We have to hurry.”
Loro stood in the frame of the outer door, blocking the way of a man craning his neck to see in over Loro’s shoulder. “Exey,” Lia exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
“My brother’s wife,” the man told her. Exey was the fabricator who made the paper, Hunter remembered. “It’s the baby. She’s been trying since yesterday, but it won’t come. She’s gotten awfully weak. No one knows what to do.”
“Benders,” Loro spat.
“Cityens,” the man retorted. “Same as you. Lia’s all our med, not just the Ward’s.”
“I’m not taking her into the Bend, not at night.”
“My brother’s wife is at my shop,” Exey said harshly. “Neutral ground, just like this place.”
“Please, Loro,” Lia said, getting between them. “There isn’t much time.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Please.”
Loro puffed out his cheeks. “All right then. We’ll all go. You first, Justan. Go ahead, take Teller.” But to Hunter he said, “Not you.”
“I might need her help. Please,” Lia repeated. “We have to hurry.”
Loro shot a dark look at Hunter as if he suspected that she had devised whatever incident it was specifically to work her way further into Lia’s favor. Hunter returned him her blandest stare. “You’ve never needed help before.”
“I haven’t had it before,” the med said sharply, caught up in the tension, then her tone softened and she smiled. “You’ll be with us, Loro. Nothing will happen.”
Loro hissed a breath through his teeth, shaking his head, but he held the door open for Lia to pass. As Hunter went to follow, he barred the way with his arm. “Do exactly what I say out there, hear me?”
If she pinned his hand against the jamb it would be a simple matter to snap his elbow with a quick strike. The temptation was so shocking that it froze her in place. Loro saw her hesitate and misunderstood. “Good.” He jerked his hand back, letting her pass. They were halfway down the street before she trusted herself to breathe again.
Exey led them in a race through still-dark streets Hunter had not seen before, though she recognized the general direction as Bend-wards. They passed quickly from the broader passages of the Ward to narrow alleys that had barely been cleared, snaking among tumbled-down wrecks that might not have been touched at all since the Fall, and the few lights strung along the road were very far apart. The claves abutted closely here, she recalled from the maps she had studied, but what seemed a short distance on the map made for a nervous trot in the dark. Loro and Exey went first. Justan hurried Hunter and the med close behind, eyes darting from mounds of tumbled debris to the twisting turns of the way ahead, moving nimbly despite his girth. Teller followed last of all, making certain no one could come up behind them.
Once they had to skirt what looked like a flattened mound of purposely burned fiber. Melted polymer had hardened across the dust. There were footprints in it, bare ones. Whoever had made them when that plastic was hot wouldn’t have been walking for a long time after. “What happened there?” she whispered to Justan, hoping Lia hadn’t seen.
“Benders,” he hissed back. “With a grudge. Come on, this isn’t a good place t’ stop.”
Hunter stayed as close to the med as she could, extending her senses in all directions to search out any threat. Her heart pounded out of proportion to the exertion. She had run through streets like this before, hurrying another girl along a dangerous road. That had ended in death. But this time nothing happened, and after a while the alleys began to widen again, rubble clearing into more orderly spaces, until finally Exey stopped them in front of a shop, displayed wares just visible behind translucent panes on each side of the door. A few people had gathered outside, murmuring and pacing anxiously the way cityens did when they had nothing useful to offer. Family, Hunter supposed, or neighbors.
Loro made them wait while he went inside. Even through the door Hunter could hear a long muffled groan, followed by a series of sobbing breaths. Exey bounced on his toes, craning his neck to see in, anxious as if it were his own woman in there. Finally Loro returned, jerking his head at the doorway, and Lia rushed inside, Hunter at her heels.
A brief glance as they passed through showed a room much like the trade Hunter had visited her first night in the city, goods neatly stacked around a clean-swept wooden floor. There was no time to see more; Loro led the way down some stairs into the workshop proper. It reminded Hunter of the priests’ laboratories in the vaults of the Church. Workbenches along the walls held various equipment laid out in orderly fashion, tools mounted above with equal precision. A large table that probably belonged in the center had been pushed to one side to give more space on the floor. Lightstrings had been rigged much more carefully than usual, in a pattern that would give excellent illumination to the benches and table. Most of the lights were off; only a single string of shaded bulbs lit a woman who lay on a pallet on the floor, her swollen belly bared by skirts that had worked their way up around her chest as she writhed. She groaned again as Lia knelt by her legs, making a rapid assessment. Hunter moved quickly to take her shoulders, propping her from behind, and making sure no flailing hands could reach the med.
“Shh . . . Shh . . .” the med crooned. “You’re fine, fine. . . .” She looked up at the boy wringing his hands by her side. Exey’s younger brother, no doubt. “This is her first, isn’t it?” He nodded, white faced with fear. “That’s why she’s having such a hard time. We just need to turn the baby. She’ll be all right.”
Hunter heard the tension behind Lia’s reassuring words. She remembered the woman at the clinic, whose first baby had been wrong way up.
That baby had died.
The young father clutched at the edge of the table. Lia said, “Why don’t you wait outside? It won’t help if you faint on top of us.” The boy fled almost before she finished telling him to go. “Loro, could you send someone for more water? This will be messy.”
Hours later, Lia washed as best she could in a corner while the exhausted woman held the baby to a small breast while the young man, nearly as pale, sat beaming by her side. “Th-th-this is all I h-have—” The boy couldn’t get the rest out, only pushed a still shaking hand in Lia’s direction, something shiny in his palm. Offering payment, Hunter realized, but not the old stamped gold chits the Church issued; rather, these were coppery, irregular, as if someone had melted wire and poured it into home-made molds.
Lia shook her head, smiling. “Don’t worry, I—”
“We don’t need that,” Loro interrupted from the doorway where he’d been rebuffing anxious visitors. “Here’s how you pay us back: anyone asks, you just say the Warder sent help when you needed it. Sent it free, even to the Bend. Make sure everyone knows. Hear me?”
“Of c-c-course. I w-will.”
“Good.” Loro glanced down at the swaddled form. “Boy or girl?”
“Girl,” L
ia said. She stopped smiling.
Loro’s gaze darkened. “By the time she’s old enough, it won’t matter.”
That night, when they sat across Lia’s worktable alone as usual, Hunter said, “You didn’t need my help this morning.”
Lia spread her hands palm up, unabashed. “I wanted you to see.”
“I’ve seen babies born before.”
She sounded too like a young hunter trying hard to act unimpressed, but Lia took no offense. Instead the med asked curiously, “The ones the nuns bear? Is it the same?”
Hunter remembered the young women in the brightly lit infirmary, each tended by a priest and one or two of the older nuns, everything calm and orderly until the strong squalling babies fought their way into the world with hunter fierceness. All while wide-eyed older versions of themselves watched, learning firsthand where they came from. “Some of it is.” Considering, she admitted, “I only saw a few.”
“I’ve lost track of how many I’ve helped bring out by now. It’s a good change. Jonesen, the old med I learned from—” Lia’s eyes misted, before she went on briskly, “He told me that his teacher’s teacher remembered when it first happened that more babies were born alive than dead. Even then most of them didn’t survive. Healthy infants, ones formed right, were so rare, people would come from all around to look at them.”
Hunter nodded. “If the first generations hadn’t listened to the priests and coupled with the mates they were assigned to, it would have been even worse. Without the variability there wouldn’t be any cityens at all.”
Lia looked at her thoughtfully. “There are still hunters. Are you really all the same?”
Gem, standing over Tana’s lifeless body in the Churchyard. Do you think something’s happened to the line? “The denas are. How they’re expressed can vary.”
Lia’s golden eyes rested on Hunter. “I’ve seen hunters before, of course, but never anyone like you.”
It was hard not to look away, to speak evenly past the constriction in her breath. “I was made the same as every other.”
“It must be quite a process. I can’t imagine a whole Churchful of you.”
“It isn’t exactly—” Hunter started to explain further, then stopped at the light in Lia’s eyes. She was, she realized, kindly, gently, being teased. It was so unlikely that she could only sit there with her mouth open, waiting helplessly for it to shape words.
The med grinned, pleased with herself. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, I guess; the cityens can only make babies their own way.” She chuckled, the habitual gravity falling away unexpectedly, a momentary glimpse of what she’d look like happy and carefree, like the pampered nuns. If only she’d been tithed as a child, Hunter thought with a sudden pang, those lines wouldn’t be carved so deep; the little laugh she gave now would come so much easier. “And they seem to like it. Good thing, too: the city’s going to need all the children we can make for a long, long time.”
“The city’s going to need the Church for a long time too.”
Hunter regretted the words instantly as the med’s face turned sober again. “People don’t like the tithe very well.”
“I know.” Hunter remembered the lesson Tana had tried to teach her so long ago. “But if they thought about it, they should. The Church just takes a few girls, and their life is so much easier than in the city. They’re provided for, they’re given shelter and plenty to eat even in a bad annual—the people who care for them should be happy to have them chosen.”
Lia leaned back in her chair, eyelids starting to droop. Exey had awakened them very early. “If they got to choose, maybe they would be. But the girls are just taken away, want to or not, and even if it’s not that many, every family is sure it will be their daughter. You wouldn’t know, but being so helpless feels awful. It frightens people, and that makes them angry. Afterwards, when they remember why the Church did it, they do feel better, but it isn’t easy. It’s always been like that, long as I can remember, but this year . . . Somehow it feels different. The tithe is soon, and people are saying things. . . . Almost like they’re planning to do something about it this time.”
Everything went still inside Hunter, the way it did in the desert when she finally sighted her prey after a long time tracking. The tithe is coming, and I’m concerned that it will provide a focus for the misguided, the Patri had said. Lia sat across from her, trusting, innocent. That couldn’t be allowed to matter. The Patri’s doubts had centered around one particular cityen. If he had plans, and if he had confided them to Lia . . .
“Have you asked the Warder what he thinks?” Hunter asked, mouth dry.
“Yes, of course.”
“And?”
“He told me that it was natural, in the circumstances I see people in, to hear the worst of their fears, and that I don’t need to be concerned about it. We didn’t discuss it again.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “He doesn’t want me to worry, and I don’t want him to worry that I’m worried.” The med stifled a yawn. “Sorry. Long day. You must be tired too, even though you never seem to show it.”
As if the words made it so, a weariness flooded through Hunter that had nothing to do with the hours awake. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” Lia murmured, then sighed and pushed herself to her feet. Hunter rose too, reaching an arm to steady her. The med leaned into the support for a moment. “Goodnight, Echo. Thank you for watching out for me today.”
And Hunter stood a long time, staring at the closed door, a hand to the cheek that burned where the med’s lips had ever so lightly brushed against it.
CHAPTER 17
“Welcome, my dear.” The Warder kissed Lia on the cheek, gesturing for her to enter. A cool, slightly damp palm met Hunter’s hand. “Welcome to you too. We’re glad to have you join us.”
“Thank you.” This room was part of his living quarters, in the same structure as his office; she had never been brought here before. This time she wasn’t blindfolded. Up one set of stairs on the shady side of the building, the quarters occupied a corner, with windows that opened wide on each side to let in the breeze. The windows had real glass here too, not the repurposed polymer used so many other places in the Ward. It was, she thought, the only real sign of luxury she’d seen around him. Whatever extra resources he had, he didn’t waste them on himself.
Even this late in the evening it was still hot outside, but someone had managed to rig a drop that ran a small fan, providing extra ventilation, and that along with the thick walls made the room quite comfortable. Loro, Justan, Teller, and a few other men Hunter recognized but did not know had already sat down at the table in the center. Loro patted the one empty chair between himself and Justan to show Lia she should sit there, favoring the med with a smile and Hunter with a self-satisfied stare as she was left to take a seat further down the table. She suppressed a sigh. Hunters got over these games as children.
“Here we are,” Milse announced, backing through the door bearing a platter heaped with greens in one hand and a serving bowl of roasted grains in the other. He set them down with a flourish next to a loaf of the usual bread, so fresh it was still faintly steaming. The smell made Hunter’s mouth water. “Last scraps of the week. Eat up, they won’t last another day.”
“It all looks wonderful, Milse, thank you.” The Warder started the platter and passed it along the table.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Lia marveled, reaching for the greens. “Look, Echo, your favorite. Scraps, Milse? You always come up with something, but this is amazing.”
“Well, I’ve had more time, since Echo’s been helping you with visits these last few sevens.”
“That’s another reason to be glad you’re here,” the Warder said with a smile and nod at Hunter. “Although when I invited you to stay, I didn’t realize it would have such direct benefits as on our mealtimes. It only shows how we can turn chance ev
ents to our favor if we just take care of each other. This time it’s worked out all for the best.”
“Uh-huh,” Milse agreed, with an arch look at Lia that unaccountably made the med turn pink.
“Oh, stop,” she said, but she was smiling.
The conversation wandered off from there, Justan telling some convoluted story about a friend of his, the friend’s cousin, and an introduction he was angling for that had them all chuckling, even Lia. Teller, whom Hunter had rarely heard speak other than to curse the Benders, took it up from there, and the merriment escalated until people could hardly eat for laughing. Looking around the table, Hunter wondered if the Patri’s fears were mistaken. It was hard to see any threat in these people. Even Loro, laughing along with the rest of them, was only a boy trying to protect his own, and doing, she had to admit, a creditable job. The Warder himself, unassuming and almost bashful, even here among his inner circle, seemed least likely of anyone she had met to challenge another cityen, let alone the Church. The Patri knew more, she reminded herself, saw broader patterns. But he hadn’t been certain; that was why he had sent her to investigate.
If he had sent her. The tired old argument began again in her head, drowning out the cheerful conversation. She closed her eyes, willing her thoughts to silence.
“Okay?” Lia asked softly, touching her hand beneath the table.
Hunter caught herself back to the present, cursing herself for letting the weakness show. She nodded, and the med sat back, but her face was troubled, Hunter’s fault. Ignoring a stab of guilt, Hunter made herself turn her attention again to the others.
“Don’t know about th’ rest of you,” Justan was saying around a mouthful, “but night b’fore market’s always my favorite.”
