Outcaste

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “Shock bomb. She’s not injured, just stunned. She’s being used as a shield by some warrior who came out of nowhere.”

  Nobody came out of nowhere. Someone had failed, badly. But Tal’s unhealthy pallor had eased and she nodded at Micah, indicating that Salomen was back in their emotional link.

  “The warrior is demanding to speak with you,” Ronlin said after a moment. “She’s ordered me to give her my earcuff.”

  As they waited, Micah spoke softly. “How is she?”

  “Better.” Tal’s relief was evident in her voice. “And fuming.”

  “Good. If she’s angry, she’s not hurt.”

  They winced as a loud clatter rattled their ears. Another Guard came on the channel and announced, “Bondlancer Opah just threw away the earcuff.”

  Tal groaned. “Get her another one, and don’t let—” Her sentence ended on a gasp, and she seemed to go boneless. Micah lunged, catching her around the waist and holding her as she slumped over the banister.

  He listened to the report in growing horror. Salomen was in the hands of an enemy who had just sent a clear message, and Tal was shaking beneath his hands. He had no doubt that the attacker’s shot had gone through Tal’s arm as well. She might not be bleeding, but she felt the pain—and the equally painful knowledge that she couldn’t protect her tyree from it.

  Somehow, Tal kept her voice steady as she said, “Tell Salomen to do what she asks.”

  She straightened again, giving him a grateful nod, and they waited while another earcuff was delivered to the attacker.

  The warrior’s first words seemed tailored specifically to send Tal into a blind rage. Micah groaned to himself, knowing long before Tal said it that she would accept the honor challenge. She had nothing to gain by it and a good chance of being seriously injured, but she was not thinking clearly.

  And then it seemed she wasn’t thinking at all. She went stiff, staring blindly into space, her eyes dilated to the point where only a thin line of blue edged the black.

  “Tal,” he said carefully.

  She gave no sign of hearing.

  “Andira Shaldone Tal!”

  Still nothing.

  He put a gentle hand on her shoulder, hoping to connect through touch, and was unprepared for the lightning-fast punch to his jaw. It sent him stumbling down three stairs before he caught himself. He touched the side of his face and winced; that was going to hurt for a few days.

  Tal came back to life just before Ronlin said, “Situation secured. Sayana is in restraints and Vellmar is getting the healers. Bondlancer Opah is . . . shaken, but otherwise all right.”

  Tal looked at him and blanched. “Micah, you’re bleeding!” She flexed her fingers, as if only now noticing the impact, and asked, “Did I do that?”

  He wiped the corner of his mouth and nodded. “Remind me not to touch you when you’re worried about Salomen.”

  “That wasn’t—” She didn’t finish. “I need a transport. I’m taking one of the Candini fighters.”

  Rahel Sayana’s estimate of forty ticks was for Alsean transports. But since Tal had the Caphenon’s fighters rebuilt, she kept four stationed at the State House: two each of the single-seater Candinis and the two-seater Serrados. Any of those fighters could get her to Pollonius in a quarter of the time.

  “Tal,” he warned. “Don’t go without your—”

  “I don’t want to hear it! Salomen has ten Guards in Pollonius, and my Lead Guard is already there.” She pushed past him and thundered down the stairs.

  “Spawn of a fantenshekken!” He flipped his earcuff to the Lancer’s security channel. “This is Colonel Micah with a medical emergency override. All Guards, get to the Candini fighters now. Do not obey any orders from Lancer Tal without my express authorization and do not allow her to board a fighter. I repeat, medical emergency override!”

  He would never catch her in time. His only hope was that at least one Guard would be near enough to the fighters to stop her. Tal was the most brilliant tactician he knew, but whatever had made her go into that altered state had also made her brains dribble out of her ears.

  By the time he got to the landing pad, no fewer than five Guards had formed a wall preventing Tal from reaching the fighters. She was enraged, loudly ordering them to move their sorry backsides or she would do it for them.

  “Tal!” Micah shouted as he ran. “Don’t make me chase you!”

  It was disrespectful to the extreme, but it worked. She seemed to deflate, then turned around to face him as he ran the last few steps.

  “I just saw you go blank,” he said in a low tone, keeping it private. “You didn’t know where you were or who was around you. If you think I’m letting you pilot a fighter now, you’re insane. You can wait two Fahla-damned ticks for Gehrain to get here and fly you. I’ve called him and one other pilot; they’re on their way.”

  “Do you have any idea what just happened?” she demanded. “Salomen—”

  “Will be much happier if you arrive alive and in one piece, instead of in a cloud of molecules blowing in from wherever you crashed. Her injury isn’t life-threatening.”

  “It’s not her injury I’m worried about.”

  “I know. But she’s safe. Which you won’t be if you hit the ground at four times the speed of sound.” Just as she opened her mouth to respond, he added, “And I won’t be, either, if I have to tell Salomen that I let you kill yourself.”

  Her jaw clicked shut. “Gehrain had better not be longer than two ticks.”

  Fortunately for everyone, the two pilots arrived as quickly as promised. Tal took the copilot’s seat in one Serrado fighter, and Micah the other. They were decelerating into Pollonius before the rest of Tal’s Guards left Blacksun airspace.

  Ronlin called to say that Salomen was at the healing center, but refused to give his full report over the com channel. “Some things are better discussed in person,” he said mysteriously.

  Micah could guess how well Tal would take that. When the two fighters reached the healing center’s landing pad, he was not surprised to see Tal jump out of hers before it had fully settled on its landing gear.

  Lead Guard Fianna Vellmar waited for them just outside the back entrance and took them to the tiny lobby, where a nervous-looking healer stood between two of Salomen’s Guards.

  “Where is she?” Tal demanded.

  “This way.”

  As they strode across the lobby and up a flight of stairs, the healer assured them that here in Pollonius, they knew how to deal with these kinds of injuries. Salomen would be going into surgery as soon as they cleared one of their surgical suites from the operation currently taking place.

  “You’d be surprised at how often producers drive studs through the wrong things,” he said in a misplaced attempt at joviality.

  Micah winced. Healers never did know when to shut up.

  They turned a corner into a short dead-end corridor, its entrance blocked by two Guards. At the far end, two more flanked a door. One of them opened it as Tal broke into a run.

  Micah followed at a more sedate pace. This was not a meeting he needed to be present for.

  He looked through the window in the door to see Salomen sitting upright against the pillows, exhaustion showing in every line of her face. Her formal clothing had been replaced with a healing center shirt that lacked one sleeve, leaving her injured arm free. The white bandages looked terribly wrong against her skin, newly tanned from her recent ninedays in the fields.

  Her dark brown hair was out of its twist and draped around her shoulders, and the lovely smile Micah had enjoyed this morning seemed as if it might never return. She was in tears, reaching out for Tal with her good arm, and the two of them held each other as if they would never let go.

  Micah had braced himself for a difficult sight, but this was harder than he expected. He knew Salomen first as the uncompromising producer who had fought Tal to a standstill in their policy meetings, then as the indefatigable woman who defied all expectations i
n the State House. Yet now she was diminished. He could not imagine what that warrior had done to destroy Salomen’s confidence so completely. Certainly no mere physical injury could have accomplished that.

  Salomen slumped back against her pillows and said something, leading Tal to turn and wave Micah in.

  “Salomen,” he said as he approached the bed. “It’s good to see you.”

  She offered a watery smile that went nowhere near her eyes. “I can’t say this more than once. I did something terrible.”

  “Whatever you did, it’s not your fault,” Tal said soothingly.

  “It is. I knew she wasn’t going to hurt me.”

  “She did hurt you.” Micah wondered if the effects of the shock bomb hadn’t yet worn off.

  “No. In the beginning. She . . . there wasn’t any intent. Not against me. I was angry, and I didn’t want her to—” Salomen wiped her cheek. “I acted like a grainbird. I threw that earcuff and I knew it would destroy her plan, but I didn’t think about what that would mean. She didn’t want to do it. She felt sick about it.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Tal said. “She’s still going to the Pit.”

  “You don’t understand! I almost killed her! Empathically!”

  There was no sound in the room but Salomen’s labored breathing as she tried to get herself under control. Micah reeled in shock. Killing someone empathically was impossible. But something enormously powerful had happened; he had seen it in Tal’s altered state.

  Tal was the first to speak. “So that—”

  “Yes!” Salomen’s misery shone in her eyes. “Fianna’s afraid of me, and for good reason. Andira . . . what do I have inside of me?”

  55

  NO GREATER POWER

  Micah and Tal spent the duration of Salomen’s surgery in a small meeting room with Ronlin and Vellmar, listening to their report.

  “She broke your empathic shields?” Tal asked incredulously. “All of you?”

  Micah sat in the chair next to her, watching his two Lead Guards across the table. He had expected high levels of stress, but their body language spoke of something well beyond that. This latest revelation explained why.

  “Not just our shields,” Ronlin said. “She burned out our empathic senses. None of us could feel a thing. I didn’t start getting mine back for a tentick.”

  “It was like a fireball blowing through a paper door.” Vellmar still looked shaken. Her empathic rating was the highest on the scale, matched only by Tal’s, yet it sounded as if Salomen hadn’t merely breached her shields. She had destroyed them.

  “Fahla.” Tal rubbed her forehead ridges. “If I didn’t know you two so well, I’d think you were drinking. Or temporarily insane. No one can take out eight high empaths. She isn’t even trained!”

  “Eight high empaths and one mid empath,” Ronlin said. “And two of those Guards were out in the lobby. They weren’t anywhere near her, but they reported the same effects. Every one of us heard that scream, and every one of us was incapacitated.” He leaned forward. “Lancer Tal, I’m sorry to speak words you don’t want to hear. But Bondlancer Opah is my responsibility. To protect her, I have to deal in facts. The simple fact is, she has stronger empathic powers than anything in recorded history.”

  “She was never tested,” Micah reminded them. “We never knew how strong she was.”

  “I don’t think she can be tested. The protocols won’t measure her.” Ronlin hesitated. “There’s more.”

  “We know,” Tal said. “She told us she nearly killed that warrior.”

  “Vellmar was the only one close enough to see.” Ronlin looked at his fellow Lead Guard, whose posture telegraphed extreme discomfort.

  “When I could stand up again, I saw Sal—ah, Bondlancer Opah standing near the podium and Sayana on her knees. They were staring at each other. Sayana had the stud driver and . . .” Vellmar cleared her throat. “She was turning it to her own head. Even when I stopped her by putting a knife through her hand, she tried again with her other hand. It didn’t stop until Ronlin knocked her unconscious. That’s when Bondlancer Opah returned to normal.”

  Tal exhaled. “Is it possible that Sayana was suicidal?”

  “Not a chance,” Vellmar said. “I felt her before my senses were burned out. She was angry and confident, not depressed.”

  “If she wanted to commit suicide, she needed to be less competent,” Ronlin added. “She disabled three Guards and had Bondlancer Opah in a neck hold before any of us even knew she was there. That was not the behavior of someone who wanted to die.”

  Vellmar shifted in her seat. “Lancer Tal, may I speak freely?”

  “Go ahead.”

  After a pause, she crossed her hands on the table and met Tal’s gaze. “When I got to Salomen, she didn’t recognize me. Her pupils were dilated so far that if I didn’t know her eyes were brown, I couldn’t have told you.”

  Micah’s surprise did not show outwardly, but he was in a room with three high empaths. He held up a hand when they all looked at him. “Later. Finish your statement.”

  Vellmar nodded. “I threw my knife right in front of her, but she didn’t even flinch. She didn’t react to Sayana being impaled through the hand, either. But the worst of it is that she was so . . . uncaring. She was watching Sayana kill herself, and she didn’t care. That was not my friend. That was someone who holds a power no Alsean ever has or ever should have.”

  “She cared,” Ronlin said. “You weren’t with her in the skimmer afterward. She cared a great deal.”

  “And I believe the issue of whether she should have that power is beyond this discussion,” Tal said in clipped tones. “The fact is, she does.”

  Ronlin jumped into the charged silence. “Bondlancer Opah didn’t know what she was doing. I have no conflict of interest in not reporting this because there was no criminal intent.”

  “How do you know that?” Micah asked. They hadn’t gotten much more out of Salomen than her initial confession. Shock and exhaustion had made her nearly incoherent, and she had fallen asleep soon after.

  “Because she didn’t remember anything about it. My empathic senses came back before her memory did, and I would swear before a High Tribunal that she didn’t know what happened. When she did remember, she didn’t know how it happened. All she could say was that it wasn’t her.”

  Micah saw the odd expression on Tal’s face but chose not to comment. Instead he steered them toward what he felt was the critical issue. “How did it get to that point? How did a mid empath get on that stage?”

  Ronlin’s face darkened. “I’m still working on that. The two Guards she hit and sedated didn’t sense any intent. None of us sensed her presence beforehand. I walked through that entire caste house myself, twice. She wasn’t there.”

  “Obviously she was. Find that failure point, Ronlin.”

  “What does that warrior have to say for herself?” Tal asked suddenly.

  “She, er . . .” Ronlin rubbed the back of his thick neck. “She said she won’t talk to anyone but Fahla.”

  “Does she mean Fahla’s Chosen?” Micah had often teased Tal about that name. She had acquired it after killing Shantu in the ritual combat, and though she hated it, she could not deny its political power.

  “Er, no. I believe she meant Bondlancer Opah.”

  The room was silent as everyone tried not to look at Tal.

  “I understand why she’d think that,” Vellmar said. “When I heard that scream in my mind, I thought the same thing. It wasn’t Alsean.” She withstood Tal’s glare without flinching. “It didn’t sound Alsean.”

  “It didn’t.” Ronlin took the heat off Vellmar. “It sounded like Fahla had come to avenge some great wrong.”

  “Well, she’s not talking to Salomen, so she’d better give up that fantasy,” Tal snapped.

  When it was clear that his Lead Guards had shared all they knew, Micah dismissed Ronlin to resume his investigation and told Vellmar to write up her report. Then he joined Tal
at the window of the tiny meeting room.

  “Why were you so surprised when Vellmar mentioned Salomen’s eyes?” Tal asked, her gaze on the outside view.

  “Because yours looked just the same when you froze on the stairs.”

  She nodded, as if his words had only confirmed her suspicions.

  “And you?” he asked. “There was something you weren’t saying as well. When Ronlin mentioned Salomen’s temporary memory loss.”

  Tal neither moved nor spoke for several pipticks, then set her shoulders and turned to face him. “I felt it. On the stairs, I felt what Salomen was doing.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “Micah, it didn’t feel like her. Or perhaps . . . not like all of her?” She made a gesture of frustration. “She was so angry, but that isn’t the right word for it. It was homicidal rage. Take the angriest you have ever seen me and multiply it by a factor of one hundred, and you might be close. But that’s all it was.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Micah said.

  “She was nothing but pure, lethally protective instinct. The rest of her wasn’t there. It was like one dimension instead of three. I think that’s why she had temporary memory loss, because most of her was gone. When I unfroze—that’s when she came back. All the parts of her that were missing.”

  Micah frowned. “Then that leaves us with two questions. Where did she go, and what happened to send her there?”

  “And she’s the only one who can answer them.”

  They turned their attention to the other unsolved pieces of the puzzle. Of the three warriors that Sayana had neutralized, two were concussed from a hit to the temple but otherwise fine, once the sedative had been detected and countered. The third was already recovered, though he said his ears were still ringing.

  No one knew how Sayana had escaped detection until that point.

  Her bag contained a thermal scanner, two more shock bombs, a skinspray loaded with the sedative she had used on the Guards, and an electronic jammer. There was no ID or personal belongings. She had been armed only with a stave, the shock bombs, and the stud driver.

  It was a meticulously planned nonfatal attack by the same warrior who had been prepared to kill everyone in the house where Herot was held. Neither Micah nor Tal could make sense of it.