Outcaste

  “You don’t think we should report it?”

  Sharro eyed the bottle, sighed, and poured another dose in her cup. “If Rahel were already a warrior, I would say yes. It’s obvious she was defending herself. She would pass any empathic scan. But she’s in the system as a . . . problem.”

  Rahel was suddenly terrified of what this would do to her appeal. “We can’t report it. We can’t.”

  “My suggestion is to wait. If the owners report it, we’ll know today. It’s sensational enough to be all over the bayfront.”

  Ravenel drummed her fingers on the table before giving a sharp nod. “All right. I’ll defer to your judgment on this. What about Mouse? We should go back to Rahel’s to check, just in case.”

  “He’s not there,” Rahel said.

  “I know you’re certain, but if we’re going to report a missing person, we have to be certain, too.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  Sharro and Ravenel looked at each other.

  “You’re welcome to stay here if you wish,” Sharro said. “I can take your mother there.”

  The only thing she dreaded more than seeing her empty home was being left alone. “No. I’ll go. I . . . I need to change clothes anyway.”

  Since Sharro’s skimmer had only two seats, they walked down the hill to the nearest magtran station and took that to the bayfront. It was quiet this early in the morning, with the revelers finally in bed while the dayworkers had not yet arrived.

  Letting Sharro into her home was just one more in a series of surreal moments. But it was easier having her there, as if her presence canceled out some of the bleak emptiness of Mouse’s absence.

  While Rahel changed clothes, her mother checked Mouse’s bedroom and the bathroom, where her footsteps paused. Rahel knew she was looking at the rain cloak hung over the shower shelf. Sharro’s voice carried in from the living room as she quietly conversed with someone on her earcuff.

  She lingered in her bedroom, which did not feel as empty as the rest of the space. Mouse had never been a presence here. By the time she emerged, Sharro had ended the call and was talking in low tones with Ravenel. They both stopped when they saw her.

  “I’ve called a friend in the Mariners,” Sharro said. “He agreed that it would be a good training exercise to send some divers under Dock One this afternoon.”

  By friend, Rahel was fairly certain she meant client. It made her wonder just how many people Sharro knew. “They’re going to look for Mouse?”

  “I think we would all rather get answers sooner than later.”

  She sat on the couch, overwhelmed by the possibility of seeing his body this afternoon.

  Ravenel sat beside her. “Let’s pack a bag for you. We’ll stay at my caste house, and I’ll look for an inn later. If the divers find him, we’ll need to make arrangements.”

  Arrangements. She had not even thought about it. She dropped her face into her hands. “The pyre,” she mumbled. “I don’t know how to do that. And I’ll have to find a new place to live.” Without Mouse’s income, she could not stay here. She wouldn’t even if she could afford it.

  “Both of those can wait until we have answers. Right now, I think you need a change of scenery.”

  “You don’t want to be waiting at the caste house for news,” Sharro said. “Why don’t you both stay with me, at least for tonight? I only have one spare room, but the couch is comfortable.”

  Rahel spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon at Sharro’s house in a state of anxious anticipation. She knew what the divers would find, yet dreaded the confirmation. It would set in motion a series of events that would change everything. These hanticks were all she had left of her old life.

  Except . . . no, they weren’t. Her old life had ended the moment Mouse had gone to Robber’s Rest.

  When Sharro received a call and stepped away to answer, Rahel set down the book she had been trying to read and went to the window overlooking the sparkling blue bay. Somewhere out there, a Mariner was standing on Dock One right now, speaking on his earcuff.

  Her mother moved next to her and slipped an arm around her waist. They stood together, staring out, and Rahel remembered the meeting in the pleasure house when they had stood just like this. It felt like a cycle ago.

  The familiar scene was completed when Sharro appeared at her other shoulder.

  “They found him.”

  31

  AFTERMATH

  Mouse was too good a swimmer to drown himself easily. He had solved the problem by cutting his wrists with what the Mariners said was a serrated blade. They had not found the blade in question, but Rahel knew which one it was. She had taken it off a bully two cycles ago and given it to Mouse for protection.

  At first she was furious with him for using that knife. Then she realized he’d had nothing else with him. He had used the only tool available.

  The fact that the Mariners could not find it meant that Mouse had thrown it afterward. He hadn’t wanted it to be found. In his last moments of life, he had tried to save her that little bit of pain.

  Fury faded to the agony of heartbreak at that realization. Her mother had to hold her up while she cried.

  She did not remember much of the rest of the day, or indeed the following nineday, other than a blur of going from one place to the next, signing forms, and agreeing to various arrangements.

  Mouse was sent to his Return on a pyre that she paid for, having refused the assistance of both Sharro and Ravenel. This was one thing she had to do for him. The ceremony took place on Whitesun’s pyre grounds, far outside the city proper. It was a beautiful location, tucked into a dip in the cliffs overlooking the bay and protected from weather by natural walls on three sides.

  As his only real family, she was given the torch by the templar conducting the ceremony. With her mother, Sharro, and Jacon as witnesses, she stepped forward and touched the torch to the base of the pyre.

  She had seen this moment on entertainment vids and read about it in books, but nothing prepared her for the rapidity with which the flames leaped upward. They went from a small flicker to a roar in less than a tick, driving home the finality of his death. She stood motionless, the heat from the flames caressing her cheeks while thunderclouds piled up over the bay, and watched her best friend leave.

  When the fire burned itself out and the embers cooled, she spread Mouse’s ashes off the end of Dock One.

  Packing up his room would have been impossible without the cheery presence of Jacon, who knew everyone on the bayfront and thus who would benefit from Mouse’s few possessions. Most of his clothes went to a poor family with a child his size. The parents were grateful, especially for the new rain cloak that Rahel had given Mouse for his last birth anniversary.

  She kept only his drawings, storing each in a transparent sleeve to protect it. There were futuristic skimmers, transports that looked like spaceships, and the house he would have built if he could. They represented Mouse as he truly was: a builder who kept his dreams where he could see them, even knowing they were forever out of reach.

  She and Ravenel stayed with Sharro for a nineday while Rahel found a smaller place to live and moved into it. They also visited the warrior caste house, checking on the status of her appeal. It had moved into the higher reaches of the caste, beyond any influence of her warrior friend.

  “I’m afraid at this point we just have to wait,” he said. “There’s a new colonel at Whitesun Base. He’s shaking up the base and the City Guard, too. Everything is getting delayed.”

  As they walked back through the central park, Rahel grumbled, “Isn’t it amazing that the warriors let an empathic rapist in but they’re keeping me out?”

  “There’s always the merchants,” her mother replied.

  Rahel thought it was a sign of their vastly improved relationship that she could find that amusing.

  The body never turned up, nor did bayfront gossip ever mention the sensational story of a high empath warrior getting bea
ten to death. After a nineday, Rahel stopped waiting. It was ironic, she thought, that the same sleazy inn the rapist had chosen to turn a blind eye to his activities had turned a blind eye to his death as well.

  Watching her mother return home was painful. Rahel had leaned heavily on her these past days, allowing herself to need a parent for the first time since running away. Ravenel had not disappointed. When Rahel returned to her light, cheery, and very lonely new apartment, she let herself cry for all the time she had missed. Then she wiped her eyes and reminded herself to look forward, not back. It was one of the many lessons Mouse had taught her.

  Looking forward meant real training classes. It meant sparring with all kinds of opponents, not just Hasil, and she found it instructive to spar against different fighting styles and techniques. The comparators also made her realize just how much she had learned from her one-on-one lessons: though her classmates had trained regularly for five or even ten cycles, she was holding her own.

  She spent time with Deme Isanelle and had midmeal almost every day at Jacon’s cart. When she wanted to see Sharro, she went to the house on the hill and visited as a friend, not a client. One day after her mother had returned home, Sharro showed up at Rahel’s door for a surprise visit and took her out for evenmeal. It would never have happened while Mouse was alive, and she felt guilty for enjoying something that had been enabled by his death.

  She felt guilty for quite a few things: escaping unscathed when he had been so hurt, having a mother who loved her, even taking her training classes when he had never been able to apprentice with a builder. Most evenings found her at the end of Dock One, telling Mouse about her day. Sometimes she told him how much she missed him and how angry she still was that he had taken himself away from her. Always she told him she loved him, in the coded language that had made him laugh: “You’re my family, you grainbird.”

  32

  SERENDIPITY

  One warm evening a moon after Mouse’s death, Rahel hustled down the bayfront road to the grocer’s shop, hoping to get there before it closed. She had lingered too long at Dock One and lost track of time.

  Living in a new part of town meant learning the best merchants all over again, and this time she didn’t have the benefit of Mouse’s previous experience. Chataran’s shop was neither the largest nor the best stocked, but he treated her with unfailing courtesy and kindness even though she paid in cash. Merchants in Whitesun, especially those on the bayfront, knew that cash customers were often outcaste workers. The cash was always welcome, the customers less so.

  She jogged to the door, relieved to find it open, and stepped inside. “Well met, Chataran. I’m glad you’re running late, too.”

  Chataran straightened from where he was rearranging a crate of starfruit. “Well met, Rahel! Yes, a shipment came late. How are you this fine summer day?”

  “Happy that it’s finally summer. I love the thunderstorms, but I get tired of wearing a rain cloak every day just in case.” She smiled at the short, round man, whose cheery demeanor reminded her of Mouse. “Probably about as tired as you get of mopping up the mud and sweeping out the dirt.”

  “Fahla, yes, it does get tedious. But mud and dirt are tracked in by customers. Better to mop a hundred times a day than to stand here staring at a clean floor and an empty shop.”

  “True words. Hard to imagine your shop ever empty, though. Except when you’re supposed to be closed.”

  “From your lips to Fahla’s ears.” He bent back over his crate of starfruit.

  “I’ll only be a few ticks,” she called as she walked to the back.

  “Take all the time you need. The fruit isn’t going anywhere.”

  Rahel passed a pleasant time in the quiet shop, filling her basket with the staples she needed. Chataran had some nice-looking fish in the cooling unit, and she chose one while smiling at the thought of Jacon’s indignation. He never bought fish anywhere but straight off the boats, and railed to anyone who would listen that shops only bought what people like him left behind.

  A pair of late customers came in and began speaking with Chataran in low tones. She paid no attention until Chataran said, “I don’t have it! You can threaten me all you want, but it won’t get her the cinteks any faster.”

  Silently, she set her basket on the floor and pulled out her stave grip. A peek around the corner of the cooling unit showed a man and a taller woman standing over Chataran, too close for courtesy.

  “Payment was due today,” the man said. “You want me to tell her you’re breaking a deal? Your shop might not survive that message.”

  Beside him, the woman extended a stave and thumped it on the tiled floor. “I could break a few things in here, just for a preview.”

  “Please,” Chataran said. “Business is good; I can make the payment next nineday. I just can’t do it today. I’ll never be able to do it if you destroy my shop.”

  “Maybe you could just destroy half of it,” the man told the woman.

  She nodded as she hefted her stave. “Be a pleasure.”

  Rahel extended her own stave as she ran for the front. By the time the woman swung hers around, Rahel was there to meet it with a clang of metal.

  “Who the shek are you?” the woman asked, pulling back her stave.

  “A customer. I like this shop. You’re not going to break it.”

  “You’re going to stop me? I can break this shop and you at the same time.”

  “You can try.” She had a shelf at her back and was not in a good position, so she took a swipe at the woman’s feet while sliding to the side, into the open area near the door.

  The woman blocked easily, then followed her with an anticipatory grin. “Haven’t had a good fight in ages.”

  Rahel had never fought another stave user anywhere but in the training house, with wooden training staves. Any missed block in this fight was going to be more than painful—it would probably put her in the healing center.

  While Chataran watched in fear and the unknown man crossed his arms with a bored look, Rahel traded blows with her opponent. They tested each other, probing defenses and weaknesses, before closing in with a flurry of strikes and blocks. The ceiling was lower than that of a training house, but she had been training with Hasil long enough to have acquired a good selection of moves to choose from.

  It helped that her opponent was equally hampered, swearing on several occasions when a move was aborted by her stave hitting the ceiling. She always recovered quickly, never letting Rahel take advantage of her momentary lapse. This woman was tough and experienced, and Rahel began to think that she might have stepped in front of the wrong bully this time.

  Then she saw a move she had practiced with Hasil a thousand times: a stave reaching for her front ankle. She put her weight on her back foot, slammed her stave end to the floor to block the sweep, and flipped it in a whistling arc around and up.

  Her opponent’s stave had rebounded off the block, and she could not bring it back in time. Rahel’s strike crashed into the side of her jaw, sending her spinning.

  It was easy after that. Rahel took her out at the legs, watched her hit the ground, and thumped her in the stomach hard enough to paralyze her diaphragm.

  As the woman lay on the floor, wheezing for air she could not take in, Rahel advanced on her companion. He looked considerably less bored now, his fearful gaze trained on the door behind her. Chataran’s expression was one of relief.

  “Nicely done,” said a deep male voice. “Though you might wish to keep track of what’s behind you as well as what’s in front.”

  Rahel made a half turn, her stave up in a defensive position.

  Two men stood in the doorway, one in a City Guard uniform while the other wore an officer’s uniform from the Alsean Defense Force, complete with red half cape. His shoulder-length black hair gleamed under the lights, his eyes were shrewd, and his bearing was straight and noble. He looked like the perfect example of a warrior at the height of power.

  “I’m Colonel Shan
tu, commander of Whitesun Base. You’re the owner of this shop?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Chataran’s voice sounded shaky.

  “Do you wish to file charges against these two?”

  Rahel’s jaw dropped when she realized he was referring to her and the woman on the floor.

  “No! Not Rahel. She was defending my shop.” Chataran turned to her with an awed smile. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for not letting the uniform take me in.”

  “Hoi!” The City Guard spoke up. “You don’t speak about Colonel Shantu like that.”

  “I’m not under your command or his. I’m not even in your caste, so don’t tell me how I can speak.” Pointing her stave at the man trying to be invisible near Chataran, she said, “That’s the other one you want. She’s just the muscle. He’s the brains. If you can call it that.”

  Colonel Shantu looked at Chataran, who nodded.

  “Take them in,” Colonel Shantu told the Guard.

  The man was restrained first, then the woman, who was still recovering her breath. As the Guard began speaking to Chataran, Colonel Shantu stepped over to Rahel.

  “Will you put that away, or should I fear for my jaw as well?”

  She retracted the stave and slipped it into her holster, then crossed her arms. This was the new commander who had thrown the Whitesun warriors into such disarray that her appeal had been delayed. She would have been irritated with him even if he hadn’t assumed she was a criminal.

  “How is it that you wield a stave so well and you’re not in our caste?”

  “Because you won’t let me in,” she said shortly. “I tried to challenge two moons ago. The warrior who started my process stopped it when he learned I’d confessed to theft.”

  “Ah. That’s an instant disqual—”

  “Except the theft report was filed by my father,” she interrupted, getting angrier with every word. “I confessed just to avoid him inscribing me in the merchant caste. My mother cancelled the report and supported my challenge. We filed an appeal at the caste house, but it’s been sitting Fahla knows where for two moons now.”