Outcaste

decided to extend his stay a while longer. A servant brought Jay the message at dinner, and then repeated it to Dazil at the other end of the table. Jay did not move his head, but he was aware of her rising and leaving her place immediately. He took his time over finishing his meal, had some of the baked fruits on offer afterwards, then excused himself on the grounds of firestaff practice.

  She was where he expected to find her, in the outer chamber of the suite of rooms she shared with Carral. When he knocked, there was a pause from within as she deactivated the lock. On the window seat was a small silver gun.

  “Bad mistake,” he said, snatching it up and pointing it at her for a moment, before twirling it in his hand and tossing it to her. “Always keep your weapon on you.”

  She fumbled to catch it, missed, and half-sank onto the floor, sobbing.

  He had to deal with this now, before she got them both into trouble. He lifted her bodily off the floor, set her on her feet, and held her upright by force. “Stop crying,” he said firmly.

  She gasped for breath.

  “I said stop. Be quiet.” He gave her one small shake, and her shoulders subsided. Her face, eyes downcast, set. “All right. Now listen to me, Dazil. If Saghat was going to kill you, he wouldn’t shoot you. Nor would he attack you face to face. So locking yourself in your room, arming yourself, that achieves nothing. People are going to start noticing that you’re behaving oddly. He might notice, Carral might notice. That could be dangerous.”

  “You – you believe me?”

  “I know there’s something odd about Saghat. What I find hard to believe is that Carral would think it worthwhile looking for another wife, when he’s had no children with you, either. The problem’s likely to be his.”

  “Do you think he would ever admit that, even to himself?”

  That was a fair point. Carefully, Jay let go of her and was relieved to find that she stayed up on her own. “Possibly I could get Saghat removed somehow. He would be no great loss as a swordbearer.”

  “That will never happen. I am absolutely certain Carral colluded with him over the first murder – possible the second too. Don’t you understand, they’re in each other’s power. Saghat is supposed not to have Carral’s favour, but he’s bloodsworn to him – did you know that?”

  He did not and if it were true, the fact that such an important allegiance had been kept secret was significant in itself. Jay was mortified by the realisation that much more had been happening on Car’a’vil – and right in front of him - than he had even begun to suspect.

  “All right,” he said. “Then you need to get out of here. Leave him, go and discover a calling to the temple or something.”

  “How would that keep me safe? Carral still wouldn’t be free to marry again. I would be pursued.”

  “You could disappear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you could leave in secret, and take on a new identity that Carral or Saghat would never know. You could put on a servant’s cloak and walk out of here, nobody would notice. Get off Car’a’vil, I could arrange it somehow. Change your name, turn up in a camp on the other side of the world, say commander so-and-so sent you. I’ll give you some basic combat training so that you seem convincing. But say that you’re a healer, nobody asks too many questions of healers, they’re always needed, they’ll probably never even ask you to swing a sword.”

  Even as he finished speaking, he knew that he had made a deadly mistake. She was too damned clever, and he had known that perfectly well. Her face changed to an expression of astonished understanding. “As you did,” she said, crisply and clearly. Suddenly, the hysteria was gone.

  He did not even attempt to bluff or backtrack. He did not want to appear to have lost control. Let her think that he had given himself away quite deliberately. But ice was freezing in his chest, and he could feel the ground of his life cracking under his feet.

  “Who are you? What did you do?”

  “I am whoever I say I am. I am whoever you think I am. And I did nothing.”

  “No. No. You must have done something. It was a woman, wasn’t it.”

  “In a way.”

  “No. Because you said you’d always been careful.” She drew in her breath sharply. “You’re not a swordbearer at all. Saghat said so. You’re not a priest or a scholar or a noble either. You’re a servant. A servant, masquerading as Commander in Chief of Car’a’vil. By the Empress – if only Carral knew.”

  He seized hold of her. “There are a lot of things Carral doesn’t know. Understand this, Dazil - we are criminals. We put ourselves in each other’s power the first time you came to my bed. Whatever the truth about Saghat, whatever he did or might do, this is one danger you can be sure is real.”

  “I know.”

  “Then think about what I suggested. I’ll help you. In the meantime, I’ll look out for Saghat and try not to let him push you over any battlements. Now, are we going to waste any more of the time we have to ourselves?”

  She relaxed under his grip, and shook her head with the beginnings of a slight smile.

  Her fear made it impossible for him to leave her that night, and his made it impossible for him to sleep. For the first time ever he lay awake all the long dark minutes until dawn, wondering if he would get away from here with his life intact.

  Eight

  Carral returned, and nothing happened to Dazil, and as the days slipped by Jay began to think that the whole thing was the dark fantasy of an unhappy wife. Dazil had paid no attention to his suggestion that it was in her best interest to continue to behave normally. She was silent and tense, pale and haunted. She appeared at every gathering, staying visible in company until the very end, and she said nothing to anyone. At her side, Carral was hearty and gruff as ever and appeared not to have noticed any change in his wife.

  It was difficult to believe that he could be so blind, and Jay wondered what in the name of the Empress they said to each other when they were alone. He had tried to ask Dazil whether she thought there was any change in Carral – whether, on his return, her suspicions were reinforced or not – but she had merely shaken her head faintly and said nothing. Her lack of response, and her inertia, irritated him. If she thought her husband was plotting to murder her with the connivance of his psychopathic bloodsworn servant, she should at least take advantage of the fact that she shared his bed every night to assess the danger more accurately. Moping around, silent and scared, was not the way to self-preservation. He was keeping an eye on Saghat but Saghat had done nothing remotely suspicious. That was as much as he could do by himself.

  He was in the courtyard giving Mareil a firestaff lesson when the message came that there was a call for him on the satellite link.

  “Selier has asked to see you,” said General Neveth. “Star Rider headquarters, on Zahual, four days’ time. I hope you meant it when you said you wanted to serve on a ship, because if she likes you, she won’t take kindly to being turned down.”

  “I meant it, sir. Thank you.”

  He strode out onto the battlements and swallowed the mild evening air, looking at the bleak horizon where a few stars twinkled in the dusk, euphoric. It was the excitement of escape – the exhilaration of relief – as much as the prospect of being selected to serve on board a ship. He did not know Selier of Ali but he was sure that once in front of her he could convince her that he was the swordbearer she wanted, and at the moment he was prepared to charm for his life anyone with the power to lift him clean out of this whole nasty situation.

  He sought Carral out immediately and asked permission to take leave of absence.

  “Neveth’s been talking to me too,” said Carral abruptly, not looking at him. “I wish you wouldn’t do this, Jhaval. I need you here.”

  “Commander Selier has only asked to see me, sir.”

  “But you want to go, eh?”

  “I’ve always felt a calling to serve amongst the stars.”

  “Like any wet-eared green cadet. I thought you ha
d your feet on the ground.” He sighed, though it was more like a snort. “You were never going to stick around here. I knew that. Just passing through – you might as well have it written on your forehead, eh? Talented, high-flying, full of ideas, energy – just like Naril. But you don’t owe me anything, so off you go. We’ll survive.”

  Jay bowed and made his exit smartly. It was possible that he could have handled that more diplomatically but at the moment he was not concerned about leaving bruised feelings behind him on Car’a’vil, just in effecting a clean and rapid departure. The corvette would be arrive for him in the morning and he was going to pack most of his few possessions with a view not to returning at all, if possible. He could spend a day or two on Antra renewing contacts before travelling on to Zahual.

  When he returned to his quarters to pack, he found Dazil waiting for him in the corridor outside. She might have been emerging from her own room at the end of the passage, but she had an air of lurking in the shadows.

  Jay gave her a formal, silent bow and carried on into his room without looking back; she followed him in anyway.

  “I hope you looked to make sure that there was nobody out there,” said Jay coldly, locking the door and getting his case out from the bottom of the store cupboard. He did not want to encourage another hysterical conversation.

  “Of course I did. I had to talk to you.”

  “Well?”

  “What do you mean, well?