by Stacey Berg
But it had.
The Patri must be told. Such a threat to the Church could not be tolerated. What he would do to the cityens, when he found out . . . But better now, before the weapons were put to use. Most cityens were loyal; she would make him see. Perhaps, by telling him, she would be serving Church and cityens alike; that’s what Exey’s friends would say. She would be doing what hunters were made to do.
The Church would admit her now, she knew: she had proof of her story, in her pocket, in the torn flesh of her arm. She should be grateful for the wound: it would regain her her place in the Church, where she belonged.
Where Lia did not.
She could not go back.
She had no other choice.
She lay for a long time propped on the injured arm, watching Lia sleep until the pain became unbearable. Then she rose and slipped quietly away.
She felt hot and cold both at once. Saints knew what filth the ball had carried into her body, but the priests and their machines could probably fix whatever it was. If she were there. The Church had to know about the weapons. She had to tell the Patri. But maybe . . . Her mind turned possibilities feverishly, looking for a way, flitting through alternatives in fractured images too fast for her conscience to keep up. She knew that if she stopped to think she would be appalled at her weakness. No, worse than weakness—that could be forgiven. This was something else. Unsound. To care only about her own desires, when she had a duty to perform, to ache after one thing with all her being—no. She did not have time for judgments now.
Where was the place? Annuals ago, Tana had shown her. A last resort, the old hunter had said. A way to call, for a hunter in extremis. She cast back to that day. The alleys were different now, wider, but that didn’t matter; she overlaid the map she had seen as a child on the dust she stepped through here, and it wasn’t long before she found the spot. No guarantee that what she needed would be there; no way to test whether the technology still worked.
Please, by the Saint. Please be there.
She pulled aside an angled slab of rubble, not near as heavy as it looked, but the effort still made her breathless. She had lost more blood than she had realized. Her head ached, making it hard to think. It didn’t matter. There, just inside the tall, narrow gap the false slab had been placed to cover . . . Squeezing into the tight space, she touched a lever that still worked smoothly, squatted by the hidden grate. She knew the words. “My service to the Church in all things,” she breathed.
Into silence. Nothing lived, nothing breathed. No. No. She had to get word to the Church, now. This last duty, and then—she didn’t know. Saint help her, she didn’t know. Down the alley she heard a step, another. Go away, she wished, knowing they would not. “My service to the Church in all things.”
A tiny click. “Speak, if you would serve the Church.” The voice buzzed with the faintest edge of static. Her eyes closed as relief flooded her, dizzying. There was a noise from outside. Dust drifted down on her as someone pawed around the niche. She only had seconds. Think, Echo. “Someone is making projectile weapons. A Wardman named Loro. He wants to stop the tithe. The Patri must know. If he sends hunters into the city unaware it will be a massacre. He has to—”
“Your words are heard.” No way to know if the link was live. It could be a dead reporter, mindlessly replaying a loop.
“Tell the Patri—” She wasted a precious second to control her voice. “Tell him I still serve.”
“Your words are heard.”
“No—tell him—”
“Your words are heard.” Click.
She sat in the dark with her head bowed. If only she could know the reporter was live, she could stay in the city, pretending to await the orders the Patri would find a way to send her. Precious days to stay.
She wanted them with a desperation that hurt almost as much as her arm. If she went away now, she could never return, not to things the way they were.
Not to Lia.
Then she heard the voice.
“Echo—what are you doing in there?” Justan, peering into the niche. Saints, Justan of all people.
“What does it look like?” She straightened, making a show of tugging at her pants.
“This’s Church tech. Who were you talking to?”
“I was telling you to leave me to my business.”
“That’s not what it sounded like.”
“That’s what it was, Justan. The tech here’s dead.” She forced a smile. “Deserves what it got from me.” Believe me, please. She started to walk away, but he blocked the path.
“No. I heard you talking ’bout weapons.”
The words ripped away choice with a physical pain. There would be no staying now. She stopped still, not looking at him. “You must have misheard. I’m sure you did.”
“No,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t know who you were talking t’, but I know what I heard. You said something about weapons, and we found Trallen dead last night, with a big hole in his head. You know something about’t. Come with me, Echo. The Warder will want to hear about this.”
For the space of a breath she was tempted. But whoever had tried to kill her might try again, before she could get word to the Patri. That was her only duty now. She gave Justan one last chance. “You were right. This is a Church matter. Don’t interfere with things above your place.”
Hurt made his boyish face look older. “I liked you Echo, lots. But that doesn’t matter now, I got my duty. And you’re right, it’s not for me to decide. So let’s go now. The Warder’ll know what to do.” His hand closed over her wrist.
Poor fool. She meant only to disable him long enough for her to get away before he could raise an alarm, but he fought back with more skill than she could easily counter one-armed and wobbly from blood loss. She needed him on the ground where she could get a sleeper hold. Dropping her shoulder into his chest, she used crude strength to knock him backwards into the niche. His head struck stone with a loud crack that seemed to surprise him; he fell against the grate, eyes wide, and didn’t move any more.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, dizzy and sick.
The fierce girl appeared beside her, toeing the body dispassionately. “Dead,” she said approvingly.
Hunter closed her eyes. She was hallucinating, from the blood loss, it must be, or the wound could be poisoned. She had seen the mind wander often enough in Lia’s patients, though she had never known a hunter, no matter how weak, to lose the faculty to distinguish illusion from reality. Another sign of her infirmity. She opened her eyes again, and the girl was still there.
So was Lia.
The med knelt by Justan’s body, a hand at his neck. After a little while the hand moved to brush the unruly curls back from his face. Then she rose, a slow movement that seemed to take all her strength. Her face was bloodless. “He’s dead.”
No. Not Justan. She had only knocked him down. She only needed a few minutes’ lead to get away, then he would wake, go back to his interrupted breakfast and—
“I heard you talking to him, and then I saw—Echo, you killed him.”
Hunter couldn’t speak.
Lia’s golden eyes reflected horror. Her voice came out barely more than a whisper. “I woke up, and you were gone. I didn’t know what to think, maybe that you were frightened, after we—” Lia broke off, eyes closing. Trying, Hunter knew, not to see that scene juxtaposed with this one. The monster she had given herself to. Saints, what have I done? The med forced herself to continue, though her voice shook so hard it was barely understandable. “I knew I had to find you, but I didn’t have any idea where to look. Then the guards came in with this girl. They told me she crossed into the city a few hours ago, up North, desperate for help. She had this.” Lia held up a ragged piece of Hunter’s old uniform shirt. “The guards knew enough to bring her straight to me. She led me here
, I don’t know how.”
The girl smiled proudly, scuffing away a bootprint. Then her face puckered. “Boy’s sick,” she said. “Bad sick.”
They could not stand here in the open. “Where are the guards?” Hunter asked.
Lia’s eyes darted to the niche, back. Hunter smelled the sour sharpness of her fear. “Are you going to kill me too?”
Hunter backed, hands clasped behind her, until she came up against the wall. “Please, Lia. Go back to the clinic. Forget all of this.” Say you will. I’ll believe you. I won’t hurt you.
“No.”
“Please, Lia. Go back.”
“No!” The med’s violent whisper might as well have been a shout.
Hunter’s good hand lifted to touch Lia’s face. “Lia, just listen to me. You have to go back. Before something happens to you too.”
Lia jerked away, her face distorted with fear and fury. “Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t you ever tell me what to do!”
The weight of Hunter’s hand dropping through the empty air was more than her legs could hold. They buckled, and only the stone digging into her back kept her from falling. Her lungs heaved for air. The sun burned through her closed eyes into her brain. Someone, alerted by the noise or just unlucky, would find them any minute.
A shadow fell across her face.
Lia’s voice still shook, but she had command of it now. “She says the child is very sick. Take me to him.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not abandoning a sick child somewhere in the desert without help.”
Hunter scrubbed her good hand across her face. “I’ll think of something.”
“Listen to me.” Somehow Lia found the courage to touch her arm. “You’re not a med. If he dies because you couldn’t—” Lia swallowed. Tears swam in her eyes. “I can’t let that happen. Not to the child, not to you, even if you—” She glanced again at Justan, then resolutely back. “I don’t want anyone else to die. Not if I can help it.”
They made it to the forcewall unmolested.
With every step Hunter fought not to let herself fly into a thousand jagged pieces, counting single-mindedly, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, in the most basic ritual of self-control she knew. The girl trotted ahead, glancing back at them over her shoulder often, wordlessly urging them to hurry. Finally they rounded the last corner and came to the barrier. It hummed quietly to itself. A few scraps of fur lay outside at its feet, all that was left of some unwary animal that had come too close. The scavengers had taken care of the rest. Lia hesitated for the first time. “I’ve never crossed the wall.” She swallowed, eyeing the remains. “All my life I’ve been taught that cityens who go outside die.”
“You’ll be safe with me.”
Lia’s face contracted as if she were about to laugh, or cry. The girl hopped from foot to foot, impatient to move on. Lia looked from Hunter to the child, then nodded, unable to speak.
The girl leapt through the forcewall with a little zzzzttt. Lia swallowed again, raising a fingertip to the invisible barrier. “It tingles.”
“That’s all that happens. It recognizes humans. It won’t hurt you.”
Lia took a breath, another, then jumped through the wall in one abrupt motion. She looked back, shaking her arms. “I thought it would be worse.”
“Come on.”
The girl led the way, but Hunter could have found it just as easily. By now most growing things had given way to the incessant heat; the stalks of plants that had already set their seeds in the summer rose brown and brittle like spears amidst the irregular mounded hills, but here and there the tougher specimens still showed a hint of green against the dust. Without the forcewall’s haze, the patches of sky between the clouds glowed brilliant blue, and the clouds themselves showed every shade of gray and purple. A jagged streak of light split the horizon; Hunter counted fifteen heartbeats before the low rumble rolled its way to them. The faintest bitterness of ozone tickled her tongue. A few drops spattered dust by their feet, a tease; there would be no real rain until winter, and precious little then. Still, it woke smells, beyond the acrid dust.
Lia’s eyes were wide, but not from fear. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It’s the desert.”
The med shook her head slowly, astonished. “I never knew.”
“Come on, we have to hurry.”
It wasn’t far. Lia looked around, puzzled, as they stopped by a pile of rubble that looked like a dozen others they had passed, not seeing the entrance two feet from her shoulder. The girl ducked her head and was gone. “Through here,” Hunter said. “Stay close to me.”
They came into the chamber.
The boy lay in the back corner on a pile of rags. Even in the dim light, Hunter’s sharp vision picked out the pallor around his mouth, the hollows shadowing his sunken eyes. It took Lia’s slower-adjusting eyes a moment to find him. “Where—ooh.” The boy stirred, hearing them, trying to push himself further into the corner, animal instinct to protect himself from predators. He was alone.
“Where’s the little one?” Hunter asked.
The girl shook her head. Pain seared Hunter’s nerves.
“It’s me,” Hunter said, dropping to her heels beside the boy. “I brought help.”
“Safe?” His voice was a dry whisper.
She nodded, then, not sure he could see, said, “Yes.”
Lia was already next to her, running gentle hands along his arms, legs. “What’s your name?” The boy frowned, puzzled. Lia turned to Hunter, who lifted a shoulder. What did it matter? Lia’s look was incredulous. “You don’t know his name?”
The boy started to say something, but cut off with a wince of pain as Lia lightly touched his body. She shot a glance at Hunter, eased the rags away from the boy’s swollen belly. Even in the dimness the skin showed tight and shiny red. Lia rocked back, eyes closing for a moment. Then she turned to the girl. “How long has he been like this?”
The girl stared down a minute, thinking, then held up four fingers.
“Saints.” Something close to anger flashed across Lia’s features as she stared at Hunter. “There’s no one else to help them? This is the way they live?”
“They can fend for themselves.”
Lia shook her head in disgust. “You might as well kill him too.” She reached out to grab Hunter’s wrist as Hunter thrust to her feet. “No, wait, I—”
Lia’s voice stopped abruptly, because the girl was holding something shiny hard against her throat. Hunter’s old knife, that she had left as her one gift to them.
“Don’t hurt her,” Hunter said to the girl as calmly as she could manage. “Lia, don’t move. Don’t move at all.”
Lia drew the barest careful breath by way of response.
“She’s my friend,” Hunter said to the girl. “She wasn’t going to hurt me.” The girl looked doubtfully from Hunter to Lia, not removing the knife. “Let her go. She’s trying to help him.”
The girl was very frightened, tension limning the thin face, whitening the knuckles on the hand that held the knife. She stood frozen, like a small animal not knowing which way to run. Then she abruptly stepped away.
Lia raised a hand to rub her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said shakily.
Hunter’s voice came out hard, cold. “Can you help him?”
She knew, from the look in Lia’s eyes. “May we speak privately?”
“There’s nothing they can’t—” Hunter began, but she stopped. “This way.”
The daylight was bright after the dim cave. Hunter’s eyes watered. She wiped an angry hand across them. Lia studied the sand. “There’s something wrong inside his belly. Probably something is twisted. I’ve seen it often enough. Sometimes it gets better by itself. Sometimes it stays that way. Then it begins to swell, to cause pressure. When that happens, the bloo
d doesn’t flow properly. Things begin to die inside.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“I’m sorry, Echo.”
The sun was squarely in Hunter’s eyes, blinding her. “All right. Go home.”
“What?”
“You, girl!” The child came running, but stopped dead at the sight of Hunter’s face. “Take Lia back.”
The girl shook her head violently. She looked back into the cave, took a step that direction. Hunter grabbed her by the arm, hard. “Do as I say.”
“Echo,” Lia started.
“Do you hear me? Take her back, right now.”
“Echo.”
A hand closed on Hunter’s shoulder. She dropped the girl’s arm and spun, clamping her palm atop the hand. A twist, a little push, and her assailant was on her knees, wrist locked at an angle where the slightest resistance would snap tendon and bone.
“Echo, please! You’re hurting me.”
Rage boiled down her nerves, rendering away reason like scraps of fat off dead bones. Her arms trembled with the effort not to make the next, fatal move.
She let go all at once. Lia knelt before her, rubbing her wrist, face twisted in pain. The girl pressed up against a slab, safely out of reach, tensed to leap further if Hunter made the slightest advance.
“Saints.” Hunter pressed both hands to her pounding temples. Her shoulder was on fire. Every heartbeat throbbed red against the back of her eyes. She spoke in the general direction of the girl. “Take Lia back to where she can find her way home. She’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Lia made her way to her feet. Her voice trembled with tears though her face was dry. “Echo—”
Hunter shook her head. “I can’t go with you. I have to take care of him.”
The look Lia gave her was sharp, full of frightened suspicion. Hunter closed her eyes against it. She could not stop her ears against the accusation spiraling up in Lia’s voice. “What are you going to do?”
