Outcaste

  ****

  Next in the Spaceforce series...

  DEADLINE

  He considered the risks, and then he went back anyway.

  The entrance to the tavern was at the end of an alley in a part of the city built from ancient grey metal and stone, a tangle of overhung streets and narrow walkways. This was a long was from the crystal towers and shining avenues of Zenazor Quarter. The alley seemed to burrow right underneath a huge foundry, its last few yards sloping down undercover to the door with three coins embossed on its surface.

  He had found the place a few weeks ago on one of his occasional random expeditions into the industrial districts of the city. It was important that he never visited the same place twice, and avoided drawing attention to himself.

  Four times was folly.

  The tavern was full of metalworkers who had come off from a shift at the foundry about half an hour ago; long enough to have settled to their drinks and conversation so that the room was comfortably full, but not with people clamoring to be served all at once. Jay fitted himself at a table against the wall in the far corner from the bar, where he could watch the room and the servitors.

  She did not notice him for some time. He did not draw attention to himself, since he was content to watch her as she moved amongst the customers, dipping forward over the tables to deposit their drinks and food, dispensing smiles with the berry juice and yasha.

  Eventually, she caught his eye, and her smile became direct.

  She was called back to the serving table and caught up in a flurry of orders for a few minutes longer. Jay let his gaze drift away from her and around the bar. The clientele was made up almost wholly of workers from the foundry above, and the majority of them seemed to belong to the same clan. Thought their clothing was heavy and simple, many of them wore an emerald green cloth tied around their waist or neck.

  To blend in, he was wearing a plain, old, nondescript servant’s tunic, a cloak of rough, worn fabric, and a leather apron to give the impression that he had just come from some nearby forge. It would not be a good idea to adopt the clan insignia, however. He had received some incurious glances when he had first walked in here, but on his subsequent visits nobody had appeared to notice him at all. The regulars of the Three Chakra didn’t seem completely unaccustomed to strangers.

  “Rall. Back again?”

  Jay looked round, casually. “Of course. How could I stay away?”

  “You’ve managed to stay away perfectly well for the past three weeks.”

  “You’ve been counting, then.”

  “No.” She glanced back over at the serving table, where her mother – a stout, stern, watchful woman – was filling tankards in a row. “What can I get you?”

  “What I had last time.”

  “You expect me to remember?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  This got a smile, and he watched her go back to the serving table with an intoxicating sense of danger and desire. He had no doubt, she was the kind of woman who would yield.

  His mind raced over the logistics of the operation. There was her mother at the serving table, watching the interaction while attempting to appear unobservant. The girl was likely to live under her parents’ roof, being unmarried, and the house of a Servant Caste innkeeping family would be modest – impossible to find a secure place there. Equally, it was impossible to take her back to his own apartment, since it was almost certainly under surveillance and anyway, he liked to keep some things simple. Perhaps there was a storeroom in the cellars underneath the inn where they could go after closing time, and she could invent some reason for staying behind.

  Even thinking through the possibilities was almost enough to overwhelm his reason with longing. Usually, it wasn’t worth working out how long it had been, but he knew anyway - thirteen years without a real woman, a Taysan woman. It was so close now that he could just reach out and take it, if he could create the opportunity somehow.

  When she brought back the drink – apple juice, cloudy – he asked, “Does your mother serve all evening?”

  “Yes, all evening, every evening.”

  “How about you?”

  “I’m her apprentice, so I serve when she serves.”

  “I get the feeling the duties of your apprenticeship don’t include lingering too long over any particular customer.”

  She looked conscious, and then she smiled. “Perhaps not, but after we close for the night, I’m off duty.”

  Jay leaned forward and held her gaze, and was about to reply when he spotted his personal servant Rall ducking through the entrance to the tavern. In a quick moment, he assessed whether it was worth trying to effect an escape. There was little chance of success. As soon as he moved he might draw attention to himself, and Rall was standing by the only public entrance to the room. He put his tankard down and sat back, waiting to be found.

  Rall drew more than one glance as he made his way deliberately through the crowd. In his fineweave tunic, he was dressed too much unlike the tavern’s usual customers to be anything other than conspicuous.

  Jay could do nothing but suffer under the feeling of exposure as Rall approached him.

  “Excuse me, sir. You’re wanted urgently and apparently, you forgot your communicator.”

  “I forgot my communicator because I don’t always want to be found.”

  Rall bowed, and glanced at the girl and bowed again. She hesitated, her glance flicking between them, then returned Rall’s greeting formally and moved away.

  Jay took one defiant swig of the glass of apple juice. “All right, Rall. Don’t worry. I know you’ve got orders.”

  Rall inclined his head, an abbreviated bow.

  Jay left the tavern without looking back to catch her eye. There was no point. He would never see her again.