Outcaste

by Fletcher DeLancey

  Rahel thought she could never speak of them again, not to another high empath.

  And now they were at the part she truly dreaded. “I don’t think you’ll want to be here for the rest,” she told Salomen.

  “I’ve made it this far. Let’s finish it.”

  “But this is about—”

  “Kidnapping my brother?”

  She nodded.

  “I have a few nightmares of my own,” Salomen said thoughtfully. “I’ve been watching you face the worst of yours for the past two hanticks. Perhaps you aren’t the only one who can benefit from this.”

  So she told them about her initial reservations, and how Shantu had convinced her that the future of Alsea was at stake. She described finding and preparing the house, adding that she had never known the identity of the first hostage.

  When Salomen made an inarticulate sound, Rahel glanced over and recoiled at her expression.

  “Would you like to know who that hostage was?” Salomen asked in a tight voice.

  Right at this moment, Rahel was certain she did not. A sense of impending disaster thickened the air.

  “My youngest brother, Jaros. He was nine.”

  The disaster crashed into her chest, shredding its way through her heart. She knew it had to be true, that this was why Shantu would not tell her, but she could not accept it.

  “No. No, he wouldn’t have. Not a child.” Rahel looked for hope from Lanaril and found only sympathy. “No! It can’t be true; there has to be a mistake. Who told you that?”

  “Prime Merchant Parser.”

  “Under empathic force? He could have been made to say anything.”

  “You know that’s not how it’s done,” Lanaril said gently. “Forced confessions are recorded and witnessed.”

  “That’s not when he said it the first time,” Salomen added. “He taunted Andira with it when he thought he had won.”

  “Then it could have been a lie. Something he said to twist the knife.”

  Salomen shook her head. “It was a warning. He was telling Andira that no one in my family was safe unless she did what he wanted. He repeated it under empathic force.”

  “But that was Parser,” she said, grasping for any way out. “Shantu didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  Except he did. He knew about it and hadn’t stopped it. He had facilitated the handling of the hostage; he had arranged the safe house and the transfer.

  He had made her complicit.

  She dropped her head into her good hand and tried to control the rising panic. If Shantu was capable of kidnapping and killing an innocent child . . .

  But it wouldn’t have been him doing the deed, would it?

  “I didn’t know,” she managed between too-short breaths. “I didn’t know, I swear it, I didn’t know. But oh, Fahla, I should have. He wouldn’t tell me. He told me everything else, but he didn’t tell me that. I should have known.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you?” Lanaril asked.

  “Because he knew I would have refused.” She looked up, expecting skepticism.

  Lanaril nodded. “That seems like an important piece for you to know. And perhaps for Salomen, as well.”

  “I would have taken him.” Rahel turned to Salomen. “To get him away from Parser’s mercenaries. I would have found a way to bring him to safety. I know that’s easy to say now, but it’s true. I could never . . . I . . . I wouldn’t—”

  “I believe you.”

  That trust—a trust she did not know how she had earned—overwhelmed her in an instant. She pressed the kerchief against her eyes and wept, lost in the betrayal of a man she had loved and the bewildering kindness of a woman she had betrayed.

  “May I?” Salomen’s voice was soft and very near.

  Rahel didn’t know when she had moved or what she was asking, but she nodded anyway.

  The loose sleeve of her healing center shirt was pushed down, and a warm hand wrapped around her left forearm. The understanding and sympathy flowing through that touch was more than she could bear. There was grief as well, and heavy, black guilt, though she could not imagine where it came from. Salomen had nothing to do with Shantu’s betrayal.

  She took the kerchief from her eyes to find that Salomen had shifted her chair and was now sitting right next to her. Lead Guard Ronlin must be in cardiac arrest.

  “He asked me to risk some of my honor for Alsea.” She blotted away the tears. “Some. But he knew then, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure about the chronology. He certainly knew when he told you to meet Parser’s mercenaries in Port Calerna.”

  She could not grasp the scale of it. “He was a defender of the innocent. That wasn’t a lie. I helped him get that reputation. He cared about people. When did he stop caring?”

  “I doubt he did,” Lanaril said. “You cannot rewrite your entire history with him. You can only look at this one act.”

  “Not one act. He pulled me into all of this. First a child. Then Herot. I was the one with the responsibility for it. He was in Blacksun and I was there, with a bomb and a hostage and orders to kill. And then he left me. He was supposed to instigate a caste coup, but he bet everything on a fight instead, and he left me an outcaste. He left me without a job, without honor—he left me.”

  Salomen’s sympathy poured through her skin, and Lanaril’s was written on her face. Though their understanding helped, it also served as proof that she was not misinterpreting. Shantu really had abandoned her.

  “It feels like losing him all over again, doesn’t it?” Lanaril asked.

  She nodded. “Do you know where I was when I saw him die? In a tavern in central Pallea. There were people betting on that fight. They were cheering for him to die. I wanted to ask who they were cheering for when the Voloth came. Who did they think saved them? I was so horrified and angry, and now . . .”

  “Now you’re angry for a different reason,” Lanaril said.

  “Yes! How could he do that to me? I served him for half my life!”

  “And he cared for you.”

  “He did. He let me feel him sometimes, and every time it was like . . . a blessing. I barely remember when my real father loved me, but I do remember. I know what that felt like. I felt it from Shantu. No, it was different coming from him, because he knew who I was. He loved me for who I was, not who he wanted me to be. I don’t—I don’t understand.”

  “It’s very difficult.” Lanaril’s voice was warm. “He saved you when you were seventeen. He lifted you up and gave you your dreams. He cared for you all those cycles, and he proved it to you many times.”

  “He did. Yes, all of it.”

  “So now you’re trying to reconcile who he was with who he became.”

  “But I don’t know how. Did he change? Did I change?” She thought about the many moons she had lost to nightmares, spirits, and sleep deprivation, and how she had tried to keep anyone from knowing. “I wasn’t myself after the Battle of Alsea. I lost my edge. He commented on it once, when I was trying sleep meds so I could stop drinking. The meds made me stupid, so I went back to the spirits. But maybe he always knew. Maybe I made myself expendable.”

  “You are not expendable.” Salomen’s conviction was cool salve on a burning wound, and in that moment, Rahel knew that yesterday’s terror really was a second chance. If Fahla’s vessel believed in her worth, then she could come back from this. She would rise from these ashes.

  “You said he loved you for who you were, not who he wanted you to be,” Lanaril said. “That’s not consistent with discarding you because you were having difficulties. Perhaps his decisions were based on something else. Something that had nothing to do with you.”

  Rahel clenched her hand around the kerchief while she thought. “The last time I felt him was when he convinced me to take part in that . . . mission.” She risked a glance at Salomen, who watched her steadily. “He was afraid for Alsea. So afraid that he was willing to risk his life to change the direction that Lancer Tal w
as taking us in. If he thought it was that important, maybe everything else was secondary.” Including her life and the life of a child.

  “If you dig a new furrow in a field,” Salomen said, “and sow it with seeds of dishonor and murder, how can you expect to grow a good crop?”

  “You’re saying I should have known.”

  “No, I’m saying he should have known. You were a First Guard. He was the Prime Warrior. There are legal routes to stop a Lancer from taking Alsea down the wrong path. Shantu couldn’t get them to work because he didn’t have the support. The majority of the government didn’t share his beliefs. But instead of accepting that, he decided to impose those beliefs on everyone.”

  “That’s what he accused her of. Lancer Tal, I mean. He thought she was drunk on power and overriding the Council.” Rahel shrank back from the anger coming through her skin.

  “I’m not angry with you.” Salomen tightened her grip. “I have my own reasons to be angry with Shantu. You’re just adding to them. When I first met Andira, I thought she was arrogant and had no idea how real Alseans lived. But she cares, Rahel. She cares too much sometimes. Shantu could not have been more wrong.”

  “But he was right about you,” Lanaril said. “He saw your potential and he gave you the means of realizing it. No matter what happened in the end, you will always have that. You will always know that he loved you.”

  That was too much to think about right now. “Can I . . . can we finish this?”

  “Yes.” Lanaril did not miss a beat. “You were in the safe house.”

  She could not have imagined talking about kidnapping Herot Opah while his sister listened. In all of the retelling, of the house and the sudden attack and the fight in the basement, Salomen never broke their skin contact.

  One day ago, she had viewed this woman as nothing more than a necessary sacrifice to draw in Lancer Tal. Now she could not recognize the person who had thought that way. Salomen was so much more, a vessel not just of Fahla’s power but also her compassion.

  She told them of tying off her leg wound and barely making it to the healing center in time. Then she crumpled the kerchief in her fist and talked about the inn and watching the ritual challenge. She spoke of returning to Whitesun as an outcaste once again, and falling into a hole so deep that she could not call out to her mother and Sharro despite being mere steps away.

  Finally, she told them of the storm that had mesmerized her, the way she had been drawn to join Mouse, and how Wildwind Bay had put a fish in her path and changed the course of her life.

  “Why did the fish change everything?” Lanaril asked.

  “Because I saved it.” She wasn’t sure how to explain. “I did something right. I was happy for the first time in . . . Fahla, I don’t know how long. It was only a fish, but it was a life. I helped it. And Wildwind Bay let me go. I went straight to the healing center and signed a detoxification agreement, and a moon later I was clean and almost back to normal. At my post-treatment exam, the healer said I needed a new goal, and that was when—” She stopped.

  “That was when you decided to attack me.” Salomen’s level voice belied the emotions coming through her skin. “You have no idea how much I wish you had chosen something else.”

  Rahel looked down at the hand on her wrist. “I think I do. And you know how much I wish the same.”

  “I do.” Salomen withdrew but did not move her chair. “No matter how much we both wish it, we cannot change it. But we can move forward from here and make something good out of it.”

  “How?”

  “For a start,” Lanaril said, “you and I can keep talking. Not today; we’ve done enough today. What you did here took great courage. It shouldn’t be wasted. I know the important parts now, and I can help you.”

  “You’ll come to see me in prison?”

  Lanaril and Salomen looked at each other, communicating something Rahel could not interpret.

  “For the next four days, I’ll come to see you here. We’ll deal with the rest when it happens. Rahel, you have trauma shock. The nightmares, the sense of dislocation and helplessness, the distance you’ve felt from the people you love most—those are all well-known symptoms. Trauma shock is common among battle veterans, and you’ve been fighting it much too long on your own. You’re not alone any longer. I’ll help, Salomen will help, and your mother and Sharro will help as well.”

  “They’re in Whitesun. They don’t know anything.”

  “They’re not in Whitesun.” Salomen was smiling at her. “They’re waiting in a meeting room down the corridor.”

  Had she not been sitting in a chair, she would have collapsed. “They’re . . . here?”

  “Yes, and very anxious to see you.”

  “Oh, Fahla.” She was terrified and desperate with longing at the same time. “I can’t tell them. How can I tell them? I can’t go through this again.”

  “Perhaps it would be easier if I gave them a synopsis of what you’ve told us,” Lanaril said. “I’ve already spoken with them and given them my preliminary thoughts. When you told us about the empathic rapist, I knew you had trauma shock. There was almost no possibility that you could have fought in that battle and not had it. Sharro already knew.”

  Rahel remembered her broken promise and dropped her gaze. “I told her I’d see a counselor.”

  “But most of us are high empaths, and you never wanted any of us near you. It’s a very understandable reaction. No one could help you until you were ready to ask for it. You’re ready now.”

  Lanaril understood everything, it seemed. Rahel lifted her head and straightened her shoulders. “I trust you. If you can help, then I want to work with you.”

  There was that serene smile, so reminiscent of Sharro. Who was just down the corridor.

  “I’m very glad to hear that. Would you like me to speak with them?”

  “Yes. Please. It would . . . that would help.”

  “Then I will be glad to do so.”

  It was a relief to get out of the chair, though her legs were still shaky. Lanaril left first, telling her it would be a few ticks, while Salomen stayed behind.

  “Thank you,” Salomen said.

  “For what?”

  “Giving me the truth. Allowing me to share your emotions when you have every reason to fear me. It meant a great deal that you trusted me with this.”

  “You gave me your word.”

  “Still. Thank you.”

  Salomen left her alone then, and she paced the room for an interminable period of time. She was so nervous that she felt sick.

  At last the door opened, and a wonderfully familiar presence hit her senses.

  “Rahel.” Her mother’s voice was choked.

  “Mother!” All nervousness gone, Rahel flew across the room and into her mother’s arms, getting only a brief glimpse of Sharro standing beside her. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I never meant to hurt her. Or anyone.”

  Sharro rested a hand on her back. “Well met, Rahel. Have you finally decided to stop fighting?”

  She burst into tears. “Yes. Yes. I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  Sharro wrapped her arms around both of them, sandwiching Rahel between the two most precious bodies in the world. “Then this is where we start.”

  62

  INSTINCT

  Salomen stumbled home in such a state of exhaustion that she barely managed evenmeal before falling into bed. Andira tried to ask, but gave up after a series of monosyllabic answers.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” Salomen said. “It’s that I don’t know how.”

  That did little to alleviate Andira’s concern, but she had nothing else to offer. There were no words to describe her experience. How did Lanaril do that sort of thing every day? She had said this was an extraordinary circumstance and normal counseling sessions lasted only half a hantick, but Salomen still couldn’t imagine. She had put in hard physical labor from sunrise to sunset and not been half as tired as she was from sitting on her
backside today and listening.

  Lanaril was frighteningly good at what she did. She had walked in and laid Rahel wide open within five ticks, then spent three hanticks taking her apart right down to the deepest layers of her soul. It was painful to see someone stripped so emotionally bare.

  The most surprising part was how willingly Rahel participated.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Lanaril had said as they walked downstairs to meet Ravenel and Sharro. “She thought she didn’t know anything about counseling, but she’s been doing it since the age of sixteen. Sharro is a counselor, just by a different name. She taught Rahel to look for truth no matter how obscured it might be or difficult to face.”

  “Then how did she get so far from it?”

  “I have my suspicions,” Lanaril had answered, and the rest of the afternoon bore them out. Salomen had left the healing center feeling protective of the same woman she had tried to kill, and that was a shift she could not wrap her brain around.

  She woke a hantick before dawn, her limbs sluggish and her head feeling as if someone had poured glue into it. Moving silently, she dressed and went into the kitchen, where she gave a mournful pat to the shannel dispenser before pouring herself a juice instead. Normally she enjoyed the spaciousness of their quarters, with the high domed ceiling, the unbroken sweep of glass facing northwest, and the lack of walls between the kitchen, living, and sleeping areas. The whole top floor of her family home would fit here, but back home she didn’t have to worry about noise.

  Alsea could build a space elevator but not a quiet shannel dispenser. Someone needed to rearrange their priorities.

  She curled up on the couch and stared out at the sleeping city, sipping her juice and wondering whether Fahla was indulging a twisted sense of humor. Her friend had abandoned her, but her attacker offered total trust. Ravenel Sayana had treated her like a savior, thanking her for not prosecuting the daughter she had feared was dead, and all Salomen could see were those viciously burning bonds of empathic violation.