Outcaste

by Fletcher DeLancey

  Rahel finished her drink and set the empty glass on his desk. “Whatever you need from me. You know that.”

  “I know. You’re my secret weapon.”

  Seven and a half moons later, on the one-cycle anniversary of the Battle of Alsea, Ravenel and Sharro held a bonding ceremony.

  “It might be an odd choice,” Ravenel said when she told Rahel of their plans. “But we don’t want that date to mean only loss. I want to balance the memory of what I lost with a celebration of what we gained.”

  Whitesun Temple was packed for the ceremony. Sharro knew half the city, and Ravenel had found her place in the vibrant crafter community. Their distinctive tricolored capes were everywhere, but the best use of crafter colors were the blue, green, and yellow stripes Sharro had put in her hair.

  The bondmates were radiant, filling the temple with their happiness, and Rahel drank it in like a tonic. She hoped their joy might free her of nightmares while she accompanied them on their bonding break. They had chosen a little village on the east coast, scenic and untouched by the invasion.

  On the second night, she woke in a gasping panic to find Sharro sitting on her bed.

  “You’re all right,” Sharro said. “It was just a nightmare.”

  “Oh, Fahla. I thought—never mind. What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk on the beach. When I came back past your cabin, I heard you.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Would it help to talk about it?”

  “Not in the slightest.” She tensed when Sharro began brushing her hair back from her forehead. Her nightmare had been the bad one, where Sharro did exactly this and then turned into the empathic rapist. She tried to relax, telling herself that the nightmare version did not smell of sea air and floral lotion, but her body refused to listen.

  Sharro rested her hand on Rahel’s forehead. “How long have you been having these? Since the battle?”

  “Almost. They started when I went back to Blacksun.”

  “Are you getting help?”

  “You mean the special counselors?” She pushed Sharro’s hand away and sat upright. “Those are for the high empaths.”

  “They’re for everyone, Rahel. Everyone who saw things they can’t forget.”

  “What am I going to say? ‘Oh, yes, I was in the battle and barely got a scratch, while other people got their legs blown off or had to empathically break the invaders, but I’m the one who needs help.’ It’s ridiculous. I walked out of that battle with a sore rib. A sore rib! And then I went to Brasalara and saw half the town destroyed. I watched my mother light the pyres of most of her family. Other people suffered. I didn’t.”

  “You’re suffering right now.” Sharro reached out, but stopped when Rahel shifted away. “Rahel. You can’t even accept touch. Touch for you is like food and water for others.”

  Rahel stared at a loose thread on her coverlet.

  “And now you’re wishing I would leave, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, then felt guilty and looked up. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. Thank you for worrying about me. But it’s not necessary.”

  From Sharro’s expression, she did not believe that for a moment. “All right. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Will you at least promise me that when you go home, you’ll see someone about this? It’s not a weakness to get help.” She smiled, bringing out her dimple. “You don’t always have to fight.”

  Rahel could not summon up an answering smile. “I promise,” she said.

  It was the only promise she ever broke.

  45

  SECRET WEAPON

  One moon after the bonding ceremony, Lancer Tal set the world on fire with her announcement that she had accepted the challenge of a producer named Salomen Opah. She would labor on Opah’s holding for one moon as a field worker, after which Opah had agreed to spend one moon in the State House to see what the Lancer’s life was like. It was a stunning turn of events. Lancers had accepted challenges in the past, but nearly always from a warrior or scholar. Not from a producer, and certainly not to work in the fields.

  “This is it,” Shantu said. “I’m meeting with Parser this afternoon. Lancer Tal will never be more vulnerable than she is right now. This is a ridiculous stunt that tells us just how seriously she takes the job of governing Alsea, which is to say not at all. I cannot believe her poll numbers will hold.”

  But they did. In fact, the producer caste loved Lancer Tal’s “stunt,” as did many others, and her approval rating went up.

  Shantu was aghast.

  Half a moon after the Lancer’s challenge began, Shantu called Rahel into his office.

  “It’s time for my secret weapon,” he said. “I need your utmost discretion on this. Funding is no issue. I’ve already deposited enough in your action account to take care of the immediate needs. For the big items, such as a property, I have a representative who will handle the contract details and funding.”

  She accepted the glass of grain spirits he held out and sat in her usual chair on the other side of his desk. “A property? What do you need?”

  “Holding space for a hostage.”

  The glass nearly slipped through her fingers. “What?”

  “I know it’s asking a great deal—”

  “We’re the ones who put kidnappers in prison! Now you want me to be one?”

  “My hope is that it will be for a day, two days at most. My greater hope is that we won’t have to do it at all.” He sipped his drink and rolled the glass in his hand. “Tal may have overstepped with these matter printers. She’s mishandling the technology. The people are becoming very afraid. If she loses enough support, I’ll have the opening I need for a caste coup. But if she somehow overcomes that, then I’ll need something else. Some leverage to force her into making a fatal mistake.”

  “A hostage.” She could not believe it.

  “I know it’s not clean, but it’s a necessary evil to prevent a far greater evil.” With a sigh, he set down the glass and clasped his hands together on the desk. “These are unprecedented times, Rahel. What we do in the next few cycles—the way we present ourselves to these Gaians, the demands we make, the concessions we’re willing to give—those will set our path for generations. This is our one chance to establish our place correctly, but Lancer Tal is taking us into disaster.”

  “How much is that place worth if we compromise our honor to get there?”

  “We cannot hide behind honor when our world is at stake. If we’d done that with the Voloth, all of us would be dead or enslaved right now.”

  That was a difficult argument to counter.

  “I know how hard this is for you,” he said more gently. “You’re an honorable warrior. So am I. But we’re standing at a critical point. The decisions we make today will be in our history books a thousand cycles from now. Alsea needs us.”

  He slid one hand forward, palm up in invitation. When she laid hers on top, he spoke slowly, as if to give her time to memorize each word. “A warrior’s duty is to sacrifice for the protection of others. Especially for the protection of Alsea. I’m prepared to sacrifice my life for this cause. Are you prepared to sacrifice a little honor?”

  Truth and sincerity flowed through his skin. He deeply feared for Alsea, and was resolved to do what needed to be done to save them all. Even at the cost of his life.

  Could she do any less?

  “Give me the details,” she said.

  She didn’t learn the identity of her hostage until the day a producer tried to assassinate Lancer Tal.

  By that time, she had procured a house in a remote part of central Pallea and hired builders to prepare the insurance policy that Prime Merchant Parser had insisted on: a series of explosive charges set into the basement ceiling and wired to a power unit.

  Shantu assured her that the bomb was a secondary backup plan. It would only be needed if everything else failed and Lancer Tal somehow located their hostage. But if she sent her warrio
rs on an extraction attempt, Rahel’s duty was to set off the charges. The death of the hostage would close the trap and make it impossible for Lancer Tal to remain in power.

  “You didn’t say anything about killing the hostage,” Rahel protested.

  “It’s a last resort. We’ll try everything else first. But make no mistake: if it comes to that, you cannot hesitate. Alsea depends on you.”

  It has to be done, she reminded herself as she watched the workers wire in the charges. Nothing about this felt right, but it hadn’t felt right to help high empaths break the Voloth, either. One cycle later, no one questioned that it had been the only thing to do.

  While the workers were there, she also had them replace the door to the basement tunnel with one that would withstand an explosion, just in case.

  She didn’t know what the original owner of this creaky old house had been afraid of, but the rough-hewn tunnel he had dug out of his basement was the perfect escape hatch and the reason she had taken the house. Before she brought in the mercenaries who would act as guards for the hostage, she spent half a day running through the tunnel and familiarizing herself with every bump, turn, and ankle-eating hole. Lancer Tal would move mountains to find that hostage. Regardless of the mistakes she was making in her dealings with the Protectorate, she remained a formidable foe and a highly experienced warrior. Rahel would not underestimate her.

  She purchased a single-seat skimmer and parked it in the dense forest at the tunnel’s exit. Inside, she left a bag with several changes of clothing, a medical kit, cash, and her real caste ID. The ID she was using for the mission was her old standby, created at the age of twenty: Hedron Periso. It reflected the way she looked right now, with brown hair and blue eyes rather than her normal dark red hair and light brown eyes. Colorizers were the most useful things ever invented for working in the shadows.

  With everything prepared and in place, she moved into the old house and waited.

  Her faint hope that the nightmares would not trouble her in this safe, lonely place was immediately dashed. She tried to make up the lost sleep by taking naps during the day, but those were not safe, either. In the end, she turned to the only aid that had ever helped. Drinking while on a critical mission was not her first choice, but it was better than appearing weak and frightened in front of hardened mercenaries she needed to control.

  When she let herself think about it, she felt guilty about breaking her promise to Sharro. But most of those special counselors were high empaths, and there were not enough cinteks on Alsea to pay her to see one of those. She had heard they often used empathic projection or even Sharing as part of the therapy.

  She would rather die. She probably would die, of cardiac arrest brought on by pure terror. Wouldn’t that be an honorable way to go?

  Shantu called her vidcom when she had been in the house for a nineday. He and Parser were putting their plan in motion; it was time to bring in her team.

  The mercenaries were enforcers, warriors without honor who belonged in prison. She was not comfortable living or working with them, but high pay bought some loyalty, and she refused to hire honorable warriors. If she had to set off those charges, everyone in the house would die. This mission was compromising her enough as it was; she had to save her honor where she could.

  History, she told herself. This will be part of history. What you are doing now will change the future of Alsea.

  Soon after her team was in place, Shantu called again. Parser’s mercenaries would pick up the hostage in four days and bring him to Port Calerna, where he would be transferred to her care. She would then escort him to the safe house.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “You’ll be given that information when I get the details on when and where the transfer will take place.” He talked over her objection and ended the call before she could ask again.

  For three days, Rahel brooded over the identity of the hostage. It was not like Shantu to withhold information from her. What was so dangerous that she couldn’t know?

  The day before she was due to fly to Port Calerna, the news broke about the assassination attempt. Shantu called half a hantick later to say that their plan had changed. Herot Opah, the younger brother of Salomen, was good friends with the assassin and very likely had been involved in the attempt. He had run from the scene of the crime—which certainly made him guilty in Rahel’s opinion—and was being sought by the Alsean Investigative Force.

  “We’ll find him first,” Shantu said. “When we do, you will collect him and bring him to the safe house.”

  “I’m not meeting Parser’s mercenaries?”

  “They’re no longer needed.”

  “Good.”

  “One thing you should know while handling Herot. He apparently acted out of jealousy. Lancer Tal is courting his sister, Salomen.”

  That was the most startling news she had heard since the Voloth invasion. “Lancer Tal and a producer?”

  “Yes.” Shantu’s displeasure was written on his face. “A producer from a family of obviously questionable honor.”

  She still didn’t know who the original hostage had been, but Herot Opah was a choice she could live with. It didn’t take much research to learn that he was a spoiled blindworm who had been given everything at birth—yet had been involved in an attempt to kill the Lancer while she was a guest in his home.

  So: a spoiled blindworm with no honor. The code of hospitality was sacrosanct. In his spectacularly public violation of that, Herot had dragged his family name into the toilet hole.

  Parser’s vast network of informers quickly located Herot in Napoline, the southernmost port of the Argolis continent. Rahel was somewhat impressed he had made it that far.

  She and Oren, her most competent mercenary, took a hired transport to the port city and changed into counterfeit Lancer’s Guard uniforms during the flight. Upon landing, they followed the informant’s directions and pulled Herot out of a vidcom stall in the public transit station.

  Within two ticks, Rahel had revised her opinion of him. Not only was he spoiled and without honor, he was also stupid.

  “Lancer Tal sent us,” she told him. “She made a deal with the High Tribunal to save your sister’s honor. Come with us; we’ll take you to her. You won’t face charges.”

  “She did? Oh, thank Fahla!” He grinned as if the sun shone on him and him alone. “This has been such a nightmare. I’m so glad it’s over.”

  You have no idea, she thought as they escorted him out.

  The idiot didn’t suspect a thing until they put him in their hired transport. Then his few brain cells sparked and he tried to fight. Oren punched him in the face and had him under control in less than ten pipticks.

  “Where are you taking me?” he shouted as Oren cuffed him to the seat.

  Rahel touched his forearm, above the cuff. “Were you involved in the assassination attempt?”

  He refused to answer, but the guilt oozed out of his skin.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “You’re lucky we aren’t taking you to the Pit. It’s where you belong.”

  When they reached the safe house, Oren took Herot to the bedroom that would become his cell, and Rahel went to her own room. She closed her door and opened what looked like a closet door on the other side. Wooden steps led to the basement that none of her mercenaries knew about.

  She had run these steps fifty times while living alone in the house. Now she didn’t dare for fear of being heard from the corridor, or being absent from the room when someone knocked on her door.

  But part of her longed to run down them and straight out the tunnel to where her skimmer waited. She wanted to jump on that skimmer and leave all of this behind.

  History, she reminded herself. You’re making history.

  46

  FAILURE

  Shantu’s estimate of one or two days proved to be incorrect. After three days of utter boredom guarding Herot Opah around the clock and in the middle of nowhere, the mercenaries were
restless. Rahel had kept them well supplied with spirits—while drinking quite a bit herself—but not even unlimited spirits and high pay was enough to keep their grumbling down. Oren tried to keep them in line, but the others denied his authority.

  “Well, you can’t deny mine,” Rahel snapped. She was out of patience and very upset by the fact that Oren, in coming to tell her about the issue, had woken her from a nightmare.

  Now she stood before her whole disloyal crew, trying to control hardened mercenaries for whom the usual bribes had already fallen short.

  “Just because you hold the purse strings doesn’t mean you have authority.” Dalset had particular reason to be unhappy with her duties. Herot had actually shown a spark of courage and broken her nose while trying to escape the previous day. She had taken no end of teasing for that.

  “You must be joking. I don’t just hold the purse strings. I’m sworn to Prime Warrior Shantu. Is that enough authority for you?”

  “It’s enough for me,” said Oren. The others reluctantly agreed.

  It wasn’t until Rahel got back to her room that she realized what she had done. In sixteen cycles of walking in the shadows for Shantu, she had never revealed her true oath holder. That she had done it now—and not even noticed until several ticks later—spoke eloquently of just how compromised she was by the sleep deprivation and drinking.

  She needed a hantick to build up the courage to call Shantu and tell him what had happened.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “If you need to use my authority to keep those warriors in line, use it. I know I’m asking a great deal of you, but the time of secrecy is coming to an end. In a few days, everything will be out in the open.”

  Everything out in the open sounded wonderful. She could not wait to be done with this.