With a sigh, she pushed herself upright and resumed her stance, stave at the ready.
“I miss your presence here as well,” he said, still in a relaxed pose. “My new assistant is not half as competent. It is difficult not to feel sorry for myself that I have lost such an excellent employee for such a stupid reason.”
She looked down to hide her smile. “Self-pity?”
“Mm. On occasion. Never while sparring.” His eyes were crinkled when she looked up again. “You have a gift, and you are not wasting it. You are exactly where and when you should be. I feared for you earlier, when you rarely came and were falling asleep on your feet. Now you are here, strong and alert. You are not behind.”
He settled into the ready stance. “Put your weight on the front foot, shift it to the back for the block, and remember that the stave must guard the light foot. Always guard the light foot. Your weight guards the other.”
With a single nod for warning, he attacked. Left, right, left, up, and back—the rhythm of the wooden staves hitting each other was soothing to her ears. Every clunk was a successful block. The sound of wood impacting flesh was very different.
Hasil’s stave reached for her front ankle.
Clunk.
They stopped with his stave resting against hers, which was planted firmly into the mat beside her foot. Her ankle was protected behind it.
He pulled back. “Good. You’re done feeling sorry for yourself.”
Swelling with the pleasure of accomplishment, she said, “Yes. Are you?”
“No. I still lack my best assistant. But life moves on.” He lifted his stave. “Again.”
He dumped her on her back twice more that evening. But she stopped him every other time.
19
GIFT
Like Hasil, Deme Isanelle had noticed the difference in Rahel’s availability and energy levels when she stopped loading cargo. Unlike Hasil, she asked about it immediately.
“There are only a few jobs I can think of that would leave you free during the day. One of them is not what I would wish for you,” she said. “Are you safe?”
At the time, Rahel was servicing her first clients and feeling, though not particularly endangered, not very secure, either. “I think so.”
Deme Isanelle was silent for a long moment before pulling a small card from her desk. “This is my personal com code. I want you to call me anytime, day or night, if you don’t feel safe.”
The caring gesture might have made Rahel cry if she hadn’t already had one breakdown in this office. She was not about to do it again.
A moon later, after she met Sharro and shifted her client type, Deme Isanelle ended a discussion on the first unified government with the same question.
“Are you safe?”
This time the answer was unequivocal. “Yes.”
“Thank Fahla. You had me worried. You’re not doing the same work, then?”
She couldn’t lie. Besides the fact that she would not be so disrespectful to her mentor, Deme Isanelle was a high empath. She would sense a lie in a heartbeat.
“It’s . . . related work,” she said. “But safe. And better for me.”
That earned her a frown and a shake of the head. “Not the answer I was hoping for, but at least you’ve taken care of the most important part.”
Three moons later, Rahel was making enough income that she needed a safer place for her savings than the small wooden box in her bedroom. But just as the warrior in the caste house had warned, no bank would open an account for her without caste ID.
She briefly considered asking Sharro for the necessary favor, but did not want to mix that relationship with finances. It was enough that she paid for Sharro’s services; she would not let it go further than that.
Though Deme Isanelle was surprised to be asked, she quickly agreed. “The more you save, the sooner you’re out of that job,” she said.
After that, Rahel brought her cash every nineday, receiving a handwritten receipt in exchange. Every moon, she received a bank report as well.
The day before her seventeenth birth anniversary, and a nineday after she had finally learned to stop Hasil from sweeping her foot out from under her, Rahel was finishing an intriguing math problem in Deme Isanelle’s office. One advantage of having Whitesun’s Head Librarian as an academic mentor: she did not have boring homework. This was a calculation of the amount of fuel necessary to launch an observational satellite into low orbit. To find the right constants and variables, she had spent several hanticks in the library stacks, reading up on orbital heights and speeds and getting sidetracked left and right. Had she limited herself to the problem at hand, she could have finished her research in half a hantick, but Deme Isanelle never imposed a time limit and always encouraged her to let her mind “journey where it would,” as she put it.
She made a small hum of triumph when her double-check revealed no errors.
“Is that the sound of a completed problem?” Deme Isanelle asked from her side of the desk.
In answer, Rahel handed over her reader card. She had purchased it two moons ago, and it had swiftly become her most cherished possession next to her collapsible stave.
Deme Isanelle checked the work, smiled, and handed it back. “Well done. Which means it matches the answer I have, though to be honest I’m not entirely certain how either you or the author of this book arrived at it. You’re running past the limits of what I can teach you in some areas.”
“That’s all right. I have an entire library to teach me.”
“A good thing, too. That may be what it takes.” Deme Isanelle looked down at her desk and fidgeted with a book in an entirely uncharacteristic manner. “I, ah . . . I have something for you. For your birth anniversary. I hope you won’t be upset with me.”
Rahel could not imagine why she would ever be upset with her. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“Well, I didn’t actually make a purchase.” After a bit more fidgeting, Deme Isanelle opened her desk drawer and drew out a bank report. “Or perhaps I did. A little piece of your future.”
She gave the report to Rahel, who ran her gaze over the familiar numbers with a slight frown. She didn’t understand what this had to do with—
“Oh,” she whispered. “Deme Isanelle.”
“Don’t tell me you won’t accept it. I won’t accept that for an answer.”
“This is . . .” A very substantial deposit that she had not made. “It’s too much. I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” Having gotten past the giving part, Deme Isanelle had recovered her normal confidence. “You haven’t told me about your family, and I may be treading on uneven ground, but I have two children of my own. If either of them were forced to buy their future by selling themselves, I would think I had failed at being a parent. I’ve kept quiet for most of a cycle, but I can’t any longer.”
“They don’t know.” Rahel felt compelled to defend her mother, at least. “I haven’t told them.”
“How can they not know? What do they think you’re doing to support yourself?”
“Working on the docks.”
Deme Isanelle sighed. “They don’t know anything about Whitesun, do they?”
Rahel knew what she meant. No one who knew the realities of dock work would want their child in that environment. “No, but it sounds better than the truth.”
“I hate that truth,” Deme Isanelle said flatly. “I understand why you’re doing it, but if I had my way, every one of your clients would be in prison right now.”
“And then I’d be back on the docks, working ten times harder for one-tenth the wages. The docks almost killed me. No, they did,” she insisted when Deme Isanelle opened her mouth to interrupt. “Remember that crew chief who washed ashore about eight moons ago? Right after the cargo ship burned at the pier?”
“Yes, he jumped to escape the fire. What does that . . . ?” Deme Isanelle trailed off with a look of trepidation. “What happened?”
“He didn’t
jump. He tried to kill me by throwing me off the top deck, and I took him down with me. I hit the water at the right angle. He didn’t.”
“Great Mother of us all.”
“I couldn’t go back to the docks after that. The job I’m doing now . . . I can’t tell my mother because she would never understand. But I want you to. It was exactly what you thought when I started, but I’m not selling myself now. I’m selling—” She had to smile at the word that came to mind. “Safety. I’m selling safety. I create a space where my clients can admit their needs without being afraid of them.”
It took Deme Isanelle some time to find her voice. “I’m a librarian, Rahel. You can talk around that all you want, but I do know what you mean. There’s an entire shelf of books devoted to it. I never saw you take any of them home.”
“Because I read them here. I wasn’t about to put those on my library record.”
Her expression evened out. “I probably would have worried less if you had.”
“Thank you for worrying about me. It meant a lot when you gave me your com code. And thank you for this.” Rahel lifted the bank report. “I’ll understand if you want to take it back, now that you know I’m not doing what you thought.”
“You must be joking. You tell me you survived a murder attempt and think I’ll take back my investment in your future? Whatever entrance requirements the warriors have for their caste, you’ve surely already passed them. I want to see you become the remarkable woman you’re making yourself into.”
Rahel was dismayed to feel tears pricking the backs of her eyes. She didn’t dare use her voice, so she nodded instead.
“Thank you,” Deme Isanelle added in a quieter tone. “For trusting me with the truth.”
20
SEVENTEEN
Rahel, Mouse, and Jacon had developed a tradition for celebrating birth anniversaries. Jacon would bring food and drink, Mouse and Rahel would decorate their apartment for the event, and after evenmeal they would walk down to the end of Dock One, pass a bottle of summer cider back and forth, and watch the sun go down.
There was a slight mist in the west this evening, leading to a fiery orange sunset that took Rahel’s breath away. She listened to Jacon’s funny stories about customers, sipped the summer cider when the bottle was pressed into her hand, and thought about how much had changed since her last birth anniversary. She was free now, self-sufficient and learning more every day. Her father had done his best to drag her down, and her mother hadn’t helped, but she had survived the nightmare they’d pushed her into and come out better than ever.
But she kept thinking about yesterday’s conversation with Deme Isanelle, who had thanked her for the truth. Who had given her a considerable sum because she believed in her. Who broke a library rule for her one cycle ago and spent untold amounts of time discussing books and ideas and problems with her.
She thought about Hasil, who had stayed after closing time just so he could spar with her. She knew little about his family life, but now she wondered. How many evenmeals had he missed? If he had children, they were surely grown, but what was he giving up to help her? At the very least, he was delaying his own relaxation at home after a long day at work.
Then there was Sharro. They had two separate relationships, only one of which was bought and paid for. Given Rahel’s own rates for priming, she had some idea of the financial value of her training, yet Sharro asked nothing in return. Her generosity was paying back a favor someone else had done, probably before Rahel was born.
All three were extraordinary, accomplished people. All of them were well established, respected in their careers, and had no obligation to help a scruffy street child who had landed in their laps through pure chance. No one would have faulted them for brushing her off with kind words of regret.
She owed them so much. And they all saw her as a warrior in training, acting with honor.
Yet she had started her journey with an act of dishonor. She had stolen from her parents. At the time, she thought they owed it to her. But now she had an account at the bank with a decent sum in it, and the value of those wooden daggers no longer looked so irreplaceable. It looked even less so next to the sum Deme Isanelle had given her.
An investment in her future, she had called it.
Would she have invested in a thief?
“And then he said, ‘No, not those. The ones with the purple tentacles.’ As if I would ever use purple tentacles in my salterins. Everyone knows I prefer pink aliens.”
Rahel looked over at Jacon. “What?”
He and Mouse burst into laughter. “Finally!” Mouse said. “He’s been talking gibberish for the last five ticks, trying to get you out of your head. Where were you?”
She managed a smile. “Just . . . thinking about the last cycle. Where I’ve been. Where I want to go now.”
“Well, now that you’re finally listening, I have an announcement to make.” Jacon lifted the bottle of summer cider. “You’re looking at the full owner of Jacon’s Salterins! I bought out my fathers and it’s all mine!”
They nearly knocked him off the dock in their enthusiasm.
“So that’s why you expanded into evenmeal!” Rahel smacked his shoulder again. “Why didn’t you say anything when I asked?”
“I didn’t want to put a cloud of bad luck over it.”
“As if you could,” Mouse said. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
“Hard work did,” Rahel added. She had wondered why, after passing the test his warrior fathers had set for him and successfully challenging into the merchant caste, Jacon had worked even harder. She had told him he had nothing left to prove, but all he would say was that it wasn’t about proof any longer. It was about a plan.
“I was saving,” he explained now. “My fathers never interfered with the business. They probably never would. But as long as their names were on that owner slip, it wasn’t mine. I wanted it all.” With an enormous grin, he added, “I told them I’m a merchant now. Can’t be seen having lowly warriors investing in my business.”
They laughed and drained the bottle drinking to his success. A second bottle generated more laughter, and by the time they split up to make their way to their respective homes, Rahel had to hold Mouse upright as they walked along the bayfront road. His small body did not handle spirits well, a fact he sometimes forgot.
She steadied him as he stumbled over a misaligned brick, and he leaned back against her with a lopsided grin.
“Good thing I have my own warrior,” he said. “Glad I caught you when you were little. You’d never look at me twice now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He waved his hands. “Look at you. You’re, what, twice the size you were when I met you? And three times more beautiful.”
“I’m not either of those things.” Though it was true that she had grown another handspan. Hasil had commented on it, telling her that with the height she was gaining, and the arm length that came with it, her capability with a stave had the potential to be decisive in a fight.
“Yes, you are. And you’re leaving. Jacon is leaving, you’re leaving—”
“I’m not leaving. We’re going home right now.”
“Don’t be so literal, sister.” He walked ahead, stepping with determination, only a slight scraping of his feet giving away his inebriation. “Jacon’s got his own business now. He’ll end up with a real restaurant in two cycles, you’ll see. Ten cycles more and he’ll have a chain of them all over Whitesun. And you’ll be some big-name warrior, Lead Guard for the Lancer, and I’ll still be here.”
She caught his hand, feeling ill for a moment at just how small it was in hers now. “I won’t leave without you. You’re coming with me.”
He yanked his hand away, his large brown eyes full of the hurt and anger hitting her senses. “So you admit it! You’re leaving!”
“Fahla’s farts and fantasies! I just said I wouldn’t go without you! What is wrong with you tonight?”
“What’s
wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? You can’t even touch me without . . . without . . .” He waved a hand in dismissal and walked away.
Shekking Mother, he had felt it. She hurried after him, catching up in three strides. “You’re misinterpreting.”
He gave a dismissive snort. “Can’t misinterpret skin to skin.”
“Well, you just did, so obviously that’s not true.” With a quick sidestep, she forced him to stop and grabbed both of his hands in hers. “What are you feeling now? Besides the fact that I’m frustrated and annoyed and I think you’re a grainbird?”
He stared at their hands, baffled. “But . . .”
“Maybe you shouldn’t jump to conclusions when you’re drunk.”
“Then what was that?”
She had no idea how to explain it, much less how to do it without hurting him further. “Regret,” she said. “Because you’ve done so much for me and I can’t do the same for you.”
Abruptly, his confusion dissolved into despair. “It’s never going to happen again, is it?”
“What won’t?”
“Us. If I’d known it would only happen once, I’d have paid closer attention. Memorized everything. You were so . . .” With a pinched face, he pulled his hands away.
“Mouse,” she said helplessly. “I told you I didn’t feel that way. About anyone.”
“You do now.”
Her anger rose. “You’d better be joking.”
“You’d shek Sharro in a piptick—”
“Shut up right now! Not another word.”
“Does she know? She must, she knows everything.”
“Yes, she knows everything. Including the fact that shekking isn’t—you know what? I’m done with this.” She turned on her heel and strode down the street as fast as her legs would take her.
Her sudden fury was startling. In all the time she had known Mouse, she had never been this angry at him. Where had it come from?
Two blocks later, the nagging voice that worried about him walking home alone and drunk had overcome her anger. She slowed down, then ducked into a dark doorway and waited. The street was mostly empty, with no vehicle traffic and only a few people out walking this late at night. Across the road, the waters of Wildwind Bay surged up and down, breathing against the docks and seawall.
Outcaste: Book Six in the Chronicles of Alsea Page 13
