Outcaste

by Fletcher DeLancey

  When the topic of projection came up, Rahel was startled to hear that Salomen had never learned the technique. The devastating force she had used in Pollonius was purely instinctive.

  “Instinct,” Rahel scoffed in a whisper when their tutor’s back was turned. “You can’t call that instinct. It’s divinity.”

  “It is not divinity.”

  “Well, it sure as shek isn’t instinct when you’re the only one who has it.”

  Their tutor returned before Salomen could respond, but her glare was worth a hundred words. Once, that glare would have reduced Rahel to cinders, but their relationship had changed. Improbable as it was, she had become comfortable with teasing the Bondlancer.

  Twelve days into their training, Salomen made her first attempt at projection. Though Rahel was nervous, Salomen was so frightened that it showed on her face. After a tense moment of staring across the table at Rahel, she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t. I cannot do this.”

  “Bondlancer Opah, you can,” Deme Zeras said in his soothing voice. “You have the skills. You’ve practiced the control. I’ll stop you if it goes too far, but I know that won’t happen.”

  “If you’re so confident, why aren’t you in that chair?” Salomen demanded. “Why does it have to be her?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I was instructed that Rahel should be the, ah, recipient.”

  “You mean the victim.” Salomen’s hands clenched into fists atop the table. “Who gave you that instruction?”

  “Salomen, it’s fine. I gave my permission.”

  “But who asked—” Salomen stopped, her expression darkening. “She had no right. This isn’t counseling!”

  But it was, and Lanaril had known it. This is something only you can do for her, she had said. Looking at Salomen now, Rahel understood.

  “I’m not afraid.” She reached across to cover one of Salomen’s fists. “I trust you.”

  Salomen stared at their hands, then slowly unclenched hers and turned the one beneath Rahel’s palm. “That’s nice to know, but I don’t trust myself.”

  “Maybe I’ve had more practice than you. In the last moon, I mean. I trusted you when you gave me your word in the healing center, and you haven’t broken it. You won’t now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why are you asking when we’re in skin contact?” Rahel waited a moment before pulling away. “I’m ready. Come on, it’s almost midmeal and I want to get some stave practice before then. Let’s finish your assignment.”

  Salomen gave her an uncertain look, then slid her hands off the table and straightened. “All right. But you have to tell me—”

  “Getting bored now,” Rahel interrupted. “Isn’t that the opposite of fear?”

  When Salomen’s eyes narrowed, she wondered if she had pushed too far. Then a familiar warmth flowed through her chest, expanding her lungs as she inhaled the comfort she had enjoyed so often during her sessions with Lanaril.

  “You’re doing it.” That was embarrassing; she hadn’t meant for her voice to sound so breathless.

  Salomen smiled but said nothing.

  The comfort grew, flowing through Rahel’s limbs and weighing them down. This was how she felt on the couch with Sharro: so blissful that the idea of moving from that spot was unthinkable.

  It grew even stronger. She swayed in her seat, her eyes closing of their own accord. She forgot that she was in a study room in Blacksun Temple, forgot what she was doing, forgot everything but the pleasure that filled her from top to bottom.

  Then it vanished, leaving her blinking in confusion as Salomen called out her name and her body fell through the air.

  “Hoi!” Deme Zeras caught her before she toppled from the chair and pushed her back upright. “Never saw that before.”

  Salomen rushed around the table and crouched beside her. “Fahla, I’m sorry! I don’t know what happened.”

  “Um. You, ah . . . whoo.” Rahel blew out a breath and tried to collect her senses. “If you could bottle that, you’d make a fortune.” She offered a lazy smile. “Of course, no one would get anything done.”

  As their tutor chuckled, Salomen relaxed. “It was all right?”

  “It was shekking fantastic.”

  “Bondlancer Opah,” Deme Zeras said through his laughter, “you’ve just discovered the solution to political posturing. Project a bit of that in the Council chamber, and no one will have the energy to argue.”

  Salomen looked between them. “But I don’t see this as a successful test. I couldn’t control it.”

  “Did you want me to feel comfort? The way I do when Lanaril helps with my nightmares?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That’s what I felt. You did it right. You just need to, um . . . reduce the volume.”

  Salomen was more comfortable after that, though it took another four days before she stopped asking whether Rahel was ready. In the meantime, Rahel was tasked with trying to block her projections. After pointing out that this was like asking a hungry woman to push away food, she grudgingly practiced her new blocks. But she never understood the purpose when her only chance of success was if Salomen reduced her volume to just above zero.

  “Trust me,” Salomen kept saying, so she put aside her doubts and did as she was told. After all, even pointless exercises were better than the alternative she dreaded more with each passing day. Prison hadn’t seemed that difficult when merely living hurt so much.

  Why was it, she wondered, that life so often took away one pain only to replace it with another?

  69

  CENTERING

  Salomen stood by the closed door of the temple study room, trying to tamp down the nervousness in her stomach. It wasn’t that she envisioned Rahel saying no, but it was still difficult to ask.

  Right on schedule, Rahel swung around the corner of the corridor, her emotional signature lighting up with eager welcome as she caught sight of Salomen. It happened every time.

  She still wasn’t used to it.

  “Change of plans,” she said as Rahel drew near. “We’re skipping class.”

  “Um. Am I allowed to do that?”

  “Don’t be a grainbird. You’re with me, of course you’re allowed.” Salomen stopped; her nerves were making her tongue acerbic. “I’m proposing a different sort of class. If you agree.”

  “If I agree to what?”

  “I’ve been talking with a friend about my . . . instinct. She suggested that I could access it in a more controlled fashion by centering, the way you do.”

  Rahel crossed her arms, taking an unconscious stance that all Guards seemed to adopt. “But you’re a high empath. Centering comes easy for you. I’ve seen you do it in two pipticks.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s not?”

  She shook her head. “Andira taught me how to calm my thoughts long enough to open a door to my abilities. Once that door is open, I’m through it. But you talk about aligning energies and centering for an entire hantick.”

  “Yes, but I have to do that because I can’t do what you do.”

  “What I do doesn’t align my energies. Remember when you came to class right after a centering session? I felt it. It changed your emotional signature. My friend said perhaps what I’m doing is simply a path to my destination, while what you do is the destination itself.”

  “Your friend sounds like a scholar,” Rahel noted.

  “Well guessed. You’ll meet her someday, but not today. Today I was hoping we could skip class and practice your centering instead.”

  “You want me to teach you?” Rahel dropped her arms and straightened. “I don’t—I’ve never—why me?”

  “My other options are high empaths. They do what I do.” And her schedule had been sucking the life out of her. She needed a rest from being the Bondlancer, but that was how their tutor saw her, along with almost everyone in Blacksun. It was time to go home. “Besides,” she added, “I’m tired of tutoring. I want to l
earn from a friend.”

  Rahel’s eyebrows rose. “Am I?”

  “I don’t call just anyone a grainbird. At least not affectionately.”

  She meant it as an apology for her earlier words, but it raised a pang of old grief instead.

  “Mouse would have liked you.” With a quick grin, Rahel added, “But you would have intimidated the shek out of him.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask why calling you a grainbird makes you think of him.”

  “It’s how we told each other we cared.” She looked down at her shoes, then back up. “I don’t think I can ever call you a grainbird. But that’s an issue of respect, not affection.”

  Salomen barely had time to register her meaning before Rahel continued.

  “I’d be honored to teach you. The best place would be the centering room at the warrior caste house—”

  “Not for me.”

  “—because it’s made . . . oh. Why not?”

  Salomen ticked off the points on her fingers. “I’m not a warrior, I don’t want to do this in public, and I’m told it should be done in a place where I’m comfortable or it won’t work. Are you saying yes to today?”

  “Yes, of course, but where—”

  “Good,” she interrupted, her hand already on the palm pad. As the door slid open, she leaned in. “Deme Zeras? Enjoy your afternoon.”

  Their tutor looked up from the reading card he had been perusing. “Convinced her, eh? Well done. In that case, I’ll get a head start on my next class. Good fortune, Bondlancer.” He waved her out with a smile.

  “He needs a head start on our next class?” Rahel asked as the door closed.

  “Not ours. Come on.” She set off down the corridor.

  Rahel hustled to catch up. “You’re in a hurry. Where are we going?”

  “Home. To Hol-Opah.”

  The military transport was waiting for them in an open meadow behind the temple’s residential quarters. Rahel hesitated for a piptick upon finding three Guards already seated inside. Added to the three who had escorted them through the temple, they made an intimidating show of warriors in uniform.

  “I thought the next time I stepped onto a transport with this many Guards, I’d be on my way to prison,” she said as they strapped themselves into the facing seats behind the pilot.

  “I’m doing my best to prevent that,” Salomen said.

  “I know. You’ve been my greatest ally.” Rahel glanced out the window when the transport lifted off. “I also know you’re not the law, and I haven’t seen any legal files regarding my hearing or my sentence.”

  She was right. Salomen’s unorthodox proposal hadn’t yet come to fruition, and without an adjudicator’s signature in hand, she could not make any guarantees. It was hard to watch Rahel assume the worst, but Lanaril said it was better to let her do that than to inadvertently destroy the trust they were rebuilding with such painstaking care. It was not just high empaths who had shattered her faith. It was also Shantu, who had made promises he was unable to keep. Salomen would rather put a stud through her other arm than be another trusted figure who failed Rahel.

  The flight from Blacksun to Hol-Opah was so familiar now that she could almost name the individual trees along the way. But Rahel was mesmerized, her gaze constantly flicking to the window even as she tried to stay in their conversation. There was a hunger in her emotions that made Salomen slightly ill, knowing its source. As far as Rahel knew, this might be her last flight of freedom.

  “Look at that,” Salomen said when they reached one of her favorite vistas. “Doesn’t that color make your heart beat a little faster? It’s only that shade now, when the grain is in its initial growth phase.”

  The fields they were passing over glowed a vibrant green in the sunlight. In another half moon they would darken, but for now they looked too brilliant to be real.

  “Why isn’t this your caste color?” Rahel asked. “It’s so striking.”

  “Our caste founders didn’t want their color to represent new growth. They wanted it to represent mature growth.”

  “It’s always about appearances, isn’t it?” Rahel watched avidly until the grain fields fell behind them. With a sigh, she turned back. “What did you mean about Deme Zeras teaching a different class? I thought we were his only students.”

  “No, we brought him in for multiple duties. He’s also teaching the divine tyrees.”

  Shock sparked along her senses. “There are other divine tyrees?”

  “Andira and I aren’t the only ones. We’re just the first ones. There are eight couples now. We haven’t made it public yet, because we’re still trying to understand why the bond has reappeared after a thousand cycles. But I think we’re running out of time to keep it secret.”

  “I won’t reveal it.” Rahel held a hand over her heart. “Do they have the same powers you do?”

  “No. Even Andira doesn’t, and she holds the highest empathic rating on the scale. I seem to be the only one so . . . blessed.”

  “That was sarcastic. Isn’t there a rule that says Fahla’s vessel can’t denigrate her own powers?”

  “Are you ever going to believe me when I tell you I’m not her vessel?”

  “No.”

  “It’s very annoying.”

  “I know. I like that about you.”

  A smile tugged at Salomen’s lips, though she tried to hold it back. “You like that you annoy me?”

  “I like that you’re annoyed by any sign of reverence. It just proves that Fahla knew what she was doing. Imagine if she had given those powers to someone who wanted to be revered. Like Chief Counselor Aldirk—Shantu told me stories.”

  Salomen let out a sound that was very close to a snort and quite undignified. “Goddess above, he’d be insufferable. I see your point.” She glanced out the window. “That’s the Silverrun River. As soon as we cross it, we’re over Opah land.”

  Rahel was glued to the view again as they flew over the shining ribbon of water and banked left, getting a brief view of the river’s path. “Oh,” she said in a surprised tone. “It makes a corner here.”

  “Yes, it’s both the south and the east border of our holding. We’ll be landing very close to that corner.”

  As always, Ronlin was the first out the transport door, the other Guards close behind him. Salomen hated this part and its constant reminder that she would never again be a free, private person. Today she hated it more than usual.

  While the Guards secured the area, she pulled a rolled mat from the gear net beside her seat and slung its strap over her shoulder. “You have one, too,” she said, pointing at Rahel’s seat.

  “Bondlancer.” Ronlin poked his head back in the door. “It’s safe.”

  “I’d be amazed if it weren’t,” she grumbled. “We’re five lengths from the nearest house, and that house is mine.”

  She stopped at the top of the ramp and took a deep breath. No matter how fed up she might be with Blacksun, the familiar scent of home always seemed to wipe her soul clean. Here, so close to the river, she smelled sun-warmed soil and newly planted herdgrass, tangled watervines, and above it all . . .

  “Is that cinnoralis?” Rahel asked from beside her.

  Salomen could not have stopped her smile if she tried. “Mm-hm. Have I ever mentioned that the cinnoralis is my favorite tree?”

  “No! It is?”

  “Yes, and they’re all along the river here.” She led the way down the ramp and stopped in front of Ronlin. “Thank you. As much privacy as possible, please.”

  His gaze moved from her to Rahel. “Of course,” he said, but his expression was stony.

  Rahel walked past him in silence.

  Salomen led her, Ronlin, and three more Guards through the tall grass marking the border between the planted field and the swath of trees lining the river. The last two Guards were making their way upriver to the rim of the canyon where she planned to stop.

  Her practiced eye quickly spotted the narrow trail winding through the wood
s, and she stepped onto it with a light heart. “There are nine different species of trees growing here,” she said.

  “I see the molwyns.” Rahel stopped to brush her fingers along the black trunk of an ancient specimen. “Fahla, this must be hundreds of cycles old.”

  “Over a thousand, in truth. Older than the one in Blacksun Temple.” Salomen enjoyed the awed look turned her way. She did love it when people appreciated her land.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever touched anything that old. Anything living, I mean.” Rahel rested her palm on the trunk and gazed into the branches. “It’s different from the one in the temple. Wilder, somehow.”

  “Good eye, warrior. This tree has never been pruned. Well, not by Alsean hands.” Salomen pointed to a long-sealed wound high up the trunk.

  “Huh. I guess none of us get through life without scars, do we?” Rahel turned away and stopped when she saw Salomen’s expression. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know. I just hadn’t thought about it that way.” She looked up at the scar, which had been sealed at least a hundred cycles before she was born. “A scar that size had to come from a main branch. For a tree like this to lose a main branch . . . it was probably weakened by an insect or fungal infestation, and then broken by wind. The tree gave up the limb, but it’s stronger without it.”

  They resumed their trek in silence. After a few steps, Rahel ventured, “Do you feel stronger?”

  “I feel . . . different.”

  “Me too. I told Lanaril that I wanted to get back to the way I was, but she said that wasn’t possible. She said I can heal, but who I am on the other side of the healing won’t be the same person I was before the battle.”

  “Do you want to be the same person?”

  “I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure. The things I’ve learned . . . you can’t go back after your eyes are open, can you?”

  “Not ever.” Salomen stooped to pick up a leaf and held it out.

  “Cinnoralis.” Rahel crushed it and brought it to her nose. “I’ve loved this scent since I was a child. It meant freedom to me.”