“Sorry for the wait. Took a little longer to stop the bleeding. Great view, isn’t it? And no, I’m not a high empath. If I were, I wouldn’t be living in this toilet hole.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Oh, sister. How could I not? Nobody walks into a fight like that but a warrior. And nobody else has moves like that.”
Something was not adding up. He didn’t speak like a child, nor act like one. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“You are not!” She had thought he was three cycles younger than her, with his small stature and the faint cheekbone ridges of a child. Thinking of him as two cycles older made her head swim.
He nodded. “Whatever erased my center forehead ridge also affected my growth. I’ll never be any bigger than this. But it has its advantages. Clients pay a lot for this body.”
Her legs gave out and she thumped onto the couch. “No. No, you can’t.” He looked so innocent, with those big eyes and long eyelashes.
He gestured around him. “How do you think I can afford two rooms? I sure as shek don’t work the docks.”
It had taken her a moon to even begin to get used to the harsh physical labor of loading cargo. And she’d had a cycle of training to strengthen her body beforehand. No, Mouse would never make it through a single workday. It hurt to think about him trying. But it hurt more to think about what he did instead.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. “I made my own choices. Just like you’re making yours. You have a home to go to if you wanted.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him about not being a high empath. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re sleeping on a cargo ship like a newbie who just came to town. You talk about being kicked out of the assistance agencies, but nobody uses those except people passing through or people who don’t know any better. Your clothes still look relatively new. You haven’t been here long, and you haven’t been anywhere else, either. So you only left home a little while ago. Which means you could probably still go back. It’s not too late for you.”
“Yes, it is.”
He sat next to her. “Parents beat you?”
“No . . .”
“Dirty family member look at you funny?”
“Fahla, no!”
“They make you sleep outside?”
She frowned at him. “You’re making fun of me.”
“You think people don’t do that? Why do you suppose I left home?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have your ability to see through people.”
“All three. Though they only made me sleep outside once. In the winter. That’s when I left.”
“Because of that?” she asked, touching her central forehead ridge.
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“I can’t . . . I really don’t understand that.”
He studied her. “I think I’m going to like you.”
7
HOME
Mouse’s couch was far more comfortable than a stack of crates on a cargo ship. Rahel did not have to worry about tiptoeing in the dark past his bed to the bathroom, because he slept like the tree stump he claimed to be.
After her work shift the next day, she retrieved her bag from its hiding place and met Mouse outside his building. He conjured up an evenmeal with fresh fish and some ingredients she didn’t recognize, and they ate it sitting on the couch with their plates balanced on their thighs. It was one of the best meals she could ever remember eating.
She went out with him the following night to collect some of those ingredients. To her surprise, many of them came from trash bins behind grocer’s shops.
“Aren’t those bad to eat?” she asked.
“Did you have any problems after evenmeal last night?”
“No.”
“I got most of that meal from here, and another place about a length that way.” He pointed down the alley. “They cater to rich people who live on the yachts over at Star Dock. Those people don’t like their food looking less than perfect. Anything gets broken or just a little off . . .” He held up a forefinger and let it bend slightly. “They put their noses in the air and won’t buy it. So the shops throw it away.”
“But that’s a waste! Can’t they give the food to people who need it?”
“They do.” He pulled out a small crate of panfruit and began sorting through it for the best ones, setting them in the basket he had given her to carry. “Here we are, needing it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“They could lock the bins. A lot of shops do.”
Rahel had done the accounting for her father’s shop. She knew how much they paid for waste removal. “They’re not doing that for us. They’re letting us take half their trash so they don’t have to pay as often to get it removed.”
Mouse shrugged. “Don’t really care why they do it, just that they do.”
When they returned to his rooms a hantick later, basket loaded with food, he said, “Stay.”
“For how long?”
He began stacking the produce in the tiny cooling unit. “Do you know how often I go out to check the bins?”
“Twice per nineday?” she guessed.
“About every three days. Do you know how often I worry about getting jumped when I’m in those alleys, bent over a bin or loaded down with a heavy basket?”
“Um . . .”
“Every single time. It doesn’t always happen, but I always worry. Do you know how much I worried tonight?” He shut the cooling unit and turned to face her. “I didn’t. Because you were there. That’s worth a lot to me. So stay.”
She had planned to be an explorer and a protector. And though it wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind, here she was, exploring Whitesun’s docks and bayfront alleys, and being asked to protect a kind but stunted young man.
“I will,” she said.
8
PROTECTOR
Rahel took her new duties seriously. Almost every day, after her long shift of loading cargo, she accompanied Mouse while he bought fish off the boats, scavenged produce and staples from the shop bins, and collected any needed odds and ends. On a free day between jobs, he took her around and introduced her to the people she could trust. One of them, she was amused to learn, was a rotund boy of seventeen who came from two warrior fathers but wanted to be a merchant.
“I’ll trade you,” she said.
His whole body shook when he laughed, and his front hid almost nothing, marking him as a low empath. “Wouldn’t that be a blessing of Fahla? If we could all just trade. It would solve a lot of problems.”
His name was Jacon, and he operated a food cart on Dock Thirty-One that offered mouthwatering salterins for prices even underage dockworkers could afford. They came in all shapes: cylinders, triangles, squares, rectangles, half circles, even parallelograms. Each shape indicated the specific filling, and they included every kind of fish Rahel had heard of and several she hadn’t, as well as roasted vegetables and sauces that made her mouth sing.
“The secret is freshness,” he confided. “I get my ingredients right off the boats. Every morning, I’m the first in line. A hantick after dawn, all the good catch is gone.”
“Where do you sleep?” she asked between bites.
“At home.”
She nearly choked. “What?”
“My fathers want me to be a warrior, and they think merchants are all corrupt—” He stopped, smiling when she covered her mouth and laughed. “I know! But that doesn’t mean they’ll throw me out if I don’t agree.”
Her laughter stalled. “You’re lucky.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, glancing at Mouse. “I think it’s just that some people are unlucky. The friends I grew up with—not all of them want the castes their parents want. But they still get the choice, or at least they get to try. I didn’t know parents ever did anything else until I came down here with my cart and started meeting outcastes.”
“But yo
ur fathers still haven’t supported you.”
“They made me a deal. They invested in my cart and got my temporary merchant’s permit. If I can show a profit after one cycle, they’ll help me challenge into the merchant caste.”
“And he’ll have an easy challenge,” Mouse added. “After running his own cart for a cycle. He’ll show a profit, believe me.”
Jacon grinned. “Because you keep sending me business. Thanks, brother.”
Rahel silently finished her salterin and tried not to envy Jacon for his parents. When they had bid him farewell and were walking back up the dock, Mouse said, “People like you and me, we make our own luck.”
She took a deep breath of sea-scented air, looked around her at the bustling, thriving life of the docks, and nodded. “We do.”
Mouse had been here for three cycles, and what he didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. He shared his knowledge freely, giving Rahel an education far more valuable in its way than anything she could have learned in school. Sometimes she thought about her schoolmates sitting in their classrooms, memorizing historical dates while complaining about the chores they had to do at home. It seemed like a different world now, as strange and distant as the farthest moon.
They were accosted twice in the first two ninedays. The first assailant was an underweight and unkempt woman who sneered loudly at them, calling down the wrath of Fahla on the “abomination.” Rahel walked right into her personal space and said, “Shut your mouth or I’ll break it.”
Something about her attitude must have been convincing, because the woman backed away, muttering curses as she left.
“Believe it or not, that’s an improvement over her usual behavior,” Mouse said as they watched her leave. “At least she’s not shouting.”
“She’s still a rude, slimy blindworm.”
“True, but she’s never tried to hurt me. Even if she did try, she’s so slow I could outrun her on one leg. But I get tired of hearing that Fahla hates me, and that kind of thing draws attention. If there’s one thing you don’t want here, it’s attention.”
The second time was not as easy. Three boys Rahel’s age or older surrounded them at the grocer’s bin, accusing them of stealing their property. Rahel didn’t understand what they were talking about, but Mouse did.
“Nobody owns the trash,” he said. “The first open hand is the first one filled. That’s how it’s always been.”
“Not anymore,” the largest boy said. “It’s ours now.” He was a head taller than Rahel and considerably heavier, and all she sensed from him was confidence.
“Yeah, so give us the basket and get out,” said one of the thinner boys.
Rahel was sure she could dispatch him and his friend, but the big one worried her.
“What do you think?” Mouse asked quietly.
“I think if we walk away, I’m no good to you.” She had been on the docks long enough to understand how reputations worked. Without taking her eyes off the boys, she bent to put the basket on the ground.
“Are you deaf?” the thin one demanded.
“No, just tired of listening to your whiny voice,” Rahel said. “Go home, little dokker.”
He laughed. “Look at the moonbird spreading her feathers!” Stepping forward, he made a grab for the basket.
It was exactly what she had expected him to do, and a very foolish move: he was leaning forward with his elbow locked. She seized his wrist and slammed the heel of her other hand into the back of his elbow, dislocating the joint. The force twisted his torso away from her, and he barely got out a scream before she wrapped a hand around the side of his head and banged it against the trash bin. He slid to the ground, unconscious.
Rahel stepped away from him, wanting room to maneuver. “Anybody else that stupid?”
“Oh, you’re paste,” the biggest boy growled as he dived at her. She sidestepped and pushed him into the bin, but he rebounded and came back more quickly than she expected. She blocked one strike and then staggered as he landed a punch to her jaw. What he lacked in finesse, he made up in muscle. Before she could recover, he took her down to the ground, bouncing her head off the unforgiving bricks.
She was too dazed to block the punch that slammed into her eye, or the next one to her jaw. He was astride her pelvis, pinning her legs, and showed no sign of stopping.
Outcastes can be hurt or even killed and nobody notices, the warrior had said. Though she had not truly understood then, she did now. Unless she gained the upper hand soon, she might never leave this alley.
Her head cleared just enough for her to grab his wrist on the next punch and redirect his swing. Yanking his arm across her chest pulled him off balance and lifted his weight off her opposite thigh, which she brought up sharply into his backside. A thrust of her hips toppled him, and without an arm to stop his fall, his chin smashed into the bricks by her head.
Freed of his weight, she scrabbled out from under him and rolled away. Adrenaline and panic rocketed her to her feet so quickly that he was still on his hands and knees when she turned. She wasted no time taking two steps and kicking him in the face as hard as she could.
He crashed onto his back, and she kicked him again, this time in the temple. Even that didn’t stop him from trying to get up, so she did it once more.
He went still.
Panting and spitting blood, she looked for the third boy. He was too near Mouse, holding a knife and trying to look intimidating despite the shock and fear he could not front.
Disarming an opponent was something she hadn’t yet learned, but she was buzzing with the power and exhilaration of beating an impossible foe. When she stalked toward him, he backed away, the knife wavering as he held it out almost like an offering.
“Drop it,” she snarled.
She hadn’t expected that he would actually do it. But the knife clinked on the bricks and he ran as fast as his feet could carry him.
“Damn, Rahel. I thought he was going to kill you.” Mouse was staring at the prone body of the biggest attacker.
“Me too.” She picked up the knife and examined it. Polished molwyn handle, serrated blade nearly as long as her hand. “Huh. This is pretty nice.” Experimentally, she folded it shut and thumbed the catch to flip it open.
“Play with it at home. Come on.” He retrieved the basket and tugged her arm.
She flipped the knife open again and thought about how she could have used it a few ticks ago.
“Rahel! Come on.”
This time she let him pull her along. As they hurried down the alley, he said, “City Guards have a way of showing up at fights after they’re over. You don’t want to be there when that happens.”
“They don’t want to get in a fight?” That didn’t sound like the kind of warrior who would serve in the city’s protective forces.
“No, people hear the fight and call them. By the time they show up, it’s over. The last ones standing usually get taken to the detention center.”
“Even if they’re innocent?”
He let out an inelegant snort as they turned onto the main street fronting the bay. “Sister, you are a newborn winden. If you’re standing over two bodies lying on the ground, that means you put them there. That’s assault.”
“It was self-defense!”
“Says every person ever taken into detention.”
She remembered how quickly she had been thrown out of the second assistance center, despite being the one assaulted. No, they didn’t care, did they?
“A warrior at the caste house told me that outcastes have no protections,” she said. “I didn’t realize that meant we don’t have any justice, either.”
“It does get sorted out. They skim you, or do empathic scans and figure out who’s telling the truth. But I hear those scans hurt. And by the time you get out, you’ve lost a day of work or a night of sleep. If you miss a day of work loading cargo, you lose that job. It’s just better to be gone before any City Guards arrive.”
A wave of dizziness stopped her
in her tracks. “Mouse?”
He turned around. “What?”
“I don’t think I can make it home.” She put a hand on the wall of the shop they were passing—a flower shop, she noted idly. What a nice place to stop. If only it weren’t closed for the night.
“No, no, no—Rahel!” He put his free arm around her waist and kept her from tilting forward. “Shek. You hit your head too hard. You need to go to the healing center.”
“I can’t. I’m an outcaste. They won’t treat me.”
“Yes, they will. Healers don’t ask which caste you’re in. All the castes pay the same amount to run the healing centers, though if you ask me, the warriors should pay more.”
“Ha. Warriors should have all the other castes paying for their treatment. That’s how we get in trouble, protecting you.”
“So you’re a warrior.”
“I’m—” An outcaste, she was going to say, but she liked being a warrior better. Who cared if it wasn’t official? “Yes.”
“Then, warrior, you need to start walking again. And don’t fall over. It’s four blocks to the next magtran station.”
Those four blocks were the longest she had ever walked. Besides the dizziness, her face hurt so much that she could feel the blood pounding in her veins, pushing against the skin around her eye and jaw. Every muscle in her body was protesting, especially those in her back.
At the training house, she had been taken down to the mat more times than she could count. She had become familiar with the motion, and learned to see it not as the end of a bout but as another—though far less advantageous—position to work from.
Brasdo had never warned them how it felt to experience a takedown on a brick street, with all the weight of a much larger opponent crashing on top. Loading cargo tomorrow was going to be Fahla’s own nightmare.
At long last, they made it to the station and then to the right capsule, where she ignored the stares her face attracted and fell into a seat with a groan of appreciation. “I’m never standing up again.”
“You won’t have to for another twenty ticks,” Mouse assured her.
Outcaste: Book Six in the Chronicles of Alsea Page 5
