The woman’s shock faded as she stopped and stood straighter. “Not without my knife.”
“You must be joking,” Rahel scoffed. “I’m not letting you pick that up.” She cast a quick glance at the men, confirming that they were still down and out. She couldn’t feel them, but at this distance she couldn’t rely on her senses.
“It means something to me.”
“So does my envelope. Didn’t stop you from trying to steal it.”
“We need the stims.”
“The—what? You think I have stims?”
“What else would you be hiding in there?”
“Fahla, you’re as stupid as your friends. I don’t take drugs.” Stimulants were common on the docks, where schedules were tight and people worked long days. Rahel had tried them once. The extra boost had felt great, but the next day’s crash wasn’t worth it.
“You don’t have stims?” She sounded almost childish in her disappointment.
Rahel thought her brains might be scrambled. Stims weren’t supposed to be used for more than a few days in a row; this woman had probably gone well over that.
“No. You got your wrist broken for nothing. Go to the healing center and get off the stims before you lose what’s left of your mind.”
“Can’t miss the work.”
That sounded much too familiar. Suddenly feeling sorry for the bedraggled woman, Rahel lowered her stave. “You can’t work with a broken wrist anyway. You’ve already lost the job. Go to the healing center, get yourself fixed. Start over with a clear head.”
“Not without my knife.”
It was probably the only possession this woman cared about. She certainly didn’t seem to care about her friends.
“Mouse,” Rahel called.
Mouse ran up. “Nice show. Why aren’t you finishing her off?”
“She’s not a threat. Here’s what’s going to happen,” Rahel told the woman. “You’re going to step over there against the wall and watch us leave. When we’re out of the alley, you can get your knife. If you come after us again, I’ll break your other wrist and throw that knife into the bay. Got it?”
The woman nodded vigorously as she moved to the wall. “What do you have if it isn’t stims?” she asked.
“Honor.” Rahel tapped Mouse on the shoulder and led him to the mouth of the alley.
“That baffled her,” he said with a laugh. “The four brain cells she has left are going to be churning around that answer for a nineday.”
His laughter stopped when two City Guards stepped into their path. Their uniform cloaks had no hoods; they wore brimmed hats instead to keep their peripheral vision. Rahel envied them as she shook the wet hair out of her eyes again.
Their empathic ratings were obviously higher than hers. She had not sensed them from even two strides away.
“Drop the stave,” the female Guard ordered.
Rahel retracted the stave and held it on her open palm. “I’d rather not. It means something to me.” With a start, she realized that she had used the same words as the woman back in the alley.
The male Guard looked over her shoulder. “There’s a pile of bodies back there. You have anything to do with that?”
His partner took Rahel’s stave and pocketed it. “She did. Are you carrying any other weapons?”
“No.”
“No,” Mouse said without being asked.
The Guard nodded. Rahel felt nothing, but she was certain they were being skimmed to check their veracity.
“What was the fight about?”
“They’re stim addicts,” Rahel said. “They thought we had some.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The man was speaking into his earcuff, calling for a pickup of three injured people, two of whom were unconscious.
“What did you have that made them think you carried stims?” the woman asked shrewdly.
When Rahel didn’t answer, she looked at Mouse. He simply shrugged.
“Caste ID, please.” She waited expectantly, then rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought.” Stepping back, she gestured toward the skimmer parked in the road. “Why don’t we all go to the detention center and get this sorted out where it’s dry?”
Rahel had sometimes fantasized about going for a ride in a City Guard skimmer. But in her fantasies, she was driving. Not locked in the back like a criminal.
“Would have been nicer if they’d showed up before you had to go up against three muscleheads,” Mouse said. He was holding on to the armrests of his seat while the skimmer twisted through the narrow streets of the bayfront.
“First time I ever fought three at once.” Rahel remembered the sinking feeling of having her stave caught and held. “That could have been bad if the big one hadn’t been so stupid.”
Mouse snorted a short laugh. “Fahla, that was priceless. I barely know the difference between a stave and a sword, but even I know you don’t hold either one pointed at your face.”
“Not in the rain, anyway. It was like sliding into a ready—” She stopped herself before completing the graphic analogy.
“It’s cute how you’re still so modest.”
“Shut up. Have you ever been to the detention center?”
“Once, when I first got here. I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again.”
“That bad?”
“They tried very hard to find out who my parents were and send me back.”
A sudden fear gripped her. “Do you think . . . ?”
“Just don’t tell them anything. They’ll skim you for the truth, but they need a good reason to do an empathic scan. And they can’t make you talk. Not without a warrant for empathic force. Don’t worry, you’re not important enough for that.”
The rest of the trip was spent in silence, with Rahel too stressed to make conversation. How did the City Guards determine who was important enough for empathic force? She couldn’t imagine having someone take away her will. The idea of sitting in the back of her head, watching helplessly while someone else made her mouth open and speak . . .
She shook her head and pushed away the nightmarish thought.
After a pair of tight turns, the skimmer slowed and came to a stop. With the lack of windows in the back, Rahel had no idea where they were. Then the back door opened, revealing an underground parking area full of identical skimmers.
“Out,” said the male Guard. He took her upper arm in a strong grip as soon as she emerged and hustled her toward a lift. Mouse was treated more gently.
“I can walk without your help,” Rahel said.
“I’m sure you can,” he answered as he pulled her into the lift. “But I saw what you did to those dockworkers. I prefer you contained.”
“They were threatening us. Is that what you’re doing?”
Mouse made a loud coughing sound, then glared at her when she looked over.
“Your friend is smarter than you are,” the woman commented.
The lift opened onto a corridor lined with doors, all of which had windows at eye level and palm pads on the sides. Mouse and the woman vanished through one while Rahel was steered through another.
Inside were two couches, one with its back to the door and the other against the far wall. Above the second couch was a large vidscreen. A table sat off to one side, holding nothing but an empty, low-sided box.
“Sit,” the Guard said as he pushed her onto the first couch. He took a seat on the one against the wall.
“Why is it that I’m threatened with a knife and somehow I’m the criminal here? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You have no caste ID,” he said.
“That makes me a criminal?”
“That makes you suspicious. Outcastes tend to get themselves into all kinds of trouble, especially in the area you were lingering in. Most people wouldn’t go there after dark, in a rainstorm, for innocent reasons.”
“I was taking a walk.”
He rolled his eyes. “My partner was right. Your frien
d is smarter than you are.” Taking out a reader card and tapping it open, he said, “What is your name?”
“Rahel.”
“And your family name?”
She was silent.
“We’re going to be here a long time if you won’t answer even that.”
“I haven’t chosen a family name yet. Not being in a caste,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
With a long-suffering sigh, he marked something on his reader card. “Then what is the name of your birthparent?”
She stared at him.
“Address?” he asked, clearly not expecting an answer. “Com code? Employer?”
“Me.”
“Then you’re not a dockworker, and I’m fairly certain you’re not selling bracelets to the tourists.” He looked at her with a pity that made her furious. “All right, Rahel. Take off the rain cloak and empty all of your pockets into the box on the table.”
Slowly, she obeyed. Since she had returned Mouse’s wood pick and her stave had been taken from her, the only things that went into the box were her stave holster, key chip, com unit, and the waterproof envelope.
He picked up the envelope. “Who does this belong to?”
“Me.” She didn’t think a skim would reveal anything. Those daggers did belong to her, until she gave them back to her mother.
“Hm.” He hefted the envelope, looking into her eyes with an oddly intent gaze. “Not a lie, but something is off. Please open this and show me the contents.”
Her hands shook as she carefully unsealed the envelope, slid out the flat bundles of plastipaper, and unwrapped the first dagger. Fahla, it was beautiful. After two cycles, she had forgotten just how intricate the woodworking was.
“Well, that’s lovely. May I?” He took the dagger and held it over the reader card. “Let’s just check that scan against the database.”
“What database?”
“Stolen goods.”
Her heart hammered in her chest. No. No, they wouldn’t.
“Aannnd look at that. Stolen. Says here there were two taken, so I can guess what that other package is. Impressive value, too. Why did you wait a cycle to sell them?”
Her head snapped up. “A cycle?”
“One moon shy of a cycle, to be exact.”
She stumbled back to the couch on suddenly weak legs. Twelve moons ago. Her parents had reported the daggers stolen twelve moons ago. Precisely the time that her work permit had expired and not been renewed.
No, her mother wouldn’t have done this. It was her father. Revoking her right to work had been just the first attack. This was his second, a trap laid and waiting patiently. He had not reported the daggers stolen when she ran away from home. He hadn’t done it when she claimed to have already sold them. He had waited until she defied him, until he knew that she had not used her work permit to train for the merchant caste.
She could give his name right now, identify herself as his daughter, and escape detention. It was undoubtedly what he expected her to do. He would assure the City Guard that it had all been a mistake—if she would come home and inscribe into the merchant caste.
The memory hit with such a visceral impact that she had to put her head between her knees, trying to keep her stomach from ejecting its contents. She was fifteen cycles old, sitting at the table with her birth anniversary gifts, looking for the voucher for her training classes and finding instead the half cape her father had bought for her caste inscription. She had felt so trapped then, so utterly without hope.
She was trapped in exactly the same way now. It was as if the last two cycles had never happened. He still held her in his fist.
“Are you all right?”
The Guard was crouched in front of her, looking at her with a sympathy she did not understand. He knew she was a thief.
A merchant or a thief, those were her options. She let out a strangled laugh. What an irony, that she had been caught in this trap because she wanted to give the daggers back. She should have sold them two cycles ago. Or left them to shekking rot. Anything but this stupid attempt to reclaim her honor.
Mouse had been right. She owed her parents nothing.
“What’s the sentence for theft?” she asked.
He rose and sat on the other couch. “Nonviolent theft? Four moons to two cycles, depending on whether you have any prior offenses.”
Four moons. She could do four moons.
It would be worse for Mouse than for her. He would have to give up their apartment and move back into some toilet hole, and he’d be living without her protection. But only for four moons. If she took her father’s way out of the trap, she would be leaving Mouse for good.
And destroying her entire future.
She straightened, meeting the Guard’s gaze with as much calm as she could muster.
“Then I confess to taking these daggers.”
23
LISTENING TO TRUTH
To her own surprise, Rahel ended up telling the Guard the truth. She hadn’t meant to, but he knew something was off about her confession just as he had known something was off about her claim that the daggers were hers. Try as he might, though, he could not get her to formally state that the person filing the stolen property report was her father.
He did persuade her to reveal her mother’s name.
“She might come to get you out,” he said. When she rolled her eyes, he added, “If she doesn’t, you’ve lost nothing. Why not take the chance?”
That was logical, she admitted.
Later that evening, when she was locked in a holding cell, it was under her mother’s family name.
She spent a sleepless night tossing and turning on the bed, wondering if Mouse was out and what he would do if she stayed here for four moons. He was already taking risks with his clients; she hated to imagine how much worse it could get.
Then she thought about her own clients, and how much work it would be to regain the business she lost while imprisoned. Her savings plan was going to take a tremendous hit.
She imagined calling Deme Isanelle from prison and explaining why she would not be seeing her for four moons. That made her wince, as did thoughts of a similar call to Hasil. At least Sharro would understand. She understood everything.
Focusing on Sharro was far more pleasant, so she let herself drift back to memories of the day they had met, when Sharro asked how long it had been since her last warmron.
Then she laughed, the sound ringing around her small holding cell.
Four moons, she had answered. It had been four moons since her last warmron.
It would now be four moons before her next one.
“Fahla, you do have a nasty sense of humor,” she said aloud.
The next morning, the Guard who had detained her brought mornmeal.
“I thought I’d be eating in a dining area,” she said.
“If you end up staying, then yes, that’s where you’ll go. But I think you might not be here very long. Your mother is on her way.”
Rahel ignored the spark of hope. “She’s on her way to deliver an ultimatum.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He paused in the doorway. “I spoke with the dockworker. The one whose wrist you broke. She was astonished that you didn’t take her knife.”
“I’m not a thief,” Rahel answered, before realizing what she had just said.
“I know.” He gave her a kind smile before closing the door.
She finished mornmeal, set the tray on the little table, and ran through every stretch and training form she could think of that would work in such small confines. Then she folded her blanket lengthwise and laid it on the floor. It wasn’t the same as a mat, but it would do. Resting her hands on her pelvic ridges, she relaxed and let the energy flow.
Though it took longer to center herself in this unfamiliar place, without any of the usual aids, she managed after a while and passed a pleasant hantick thinking of nothing at all.
The sound of the door unlocking brought her back to full alertness. By t
he time it opened, she was on her feet, the blanket already tossed onto the bed.
The Guard stood in the doorway. “You have a visitor.”
Her mother pushed past him, preceded by a cloud of distress. She looked red-eyed and tired, and wasted no time sweeping Rahel into a warmron.
“Rahel.” Her voice cracked. “What are you doing?”
Rahel held on, feeling fifteen again. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into her neck. “I’m sorry I took them. I don’t even know why I did it. Then I thought I could use them to pay for part of my training, but I couldn’t do that anymore. I went to get them because I was going to give them back to you. I swear it. I was going to give them back.”
“She’s telling the truth,” the Guard said.
“I know. I’m holding her. I know when my daughter is telling the truth.”
Rahel nearly cried at the relief of being believed. She had not realized until this moment how much she needed it.
With a final squeeze, her mother pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. “You confessed to theft just to avoid coming home? You would really rather serve a four-moon sentence than come back to us?”
When Rahel nodded, her mother let go and turned away. “Please leave us,” she said hoarsely.
“Just tap the call pad when you’re done. Someone will come to let you out.” The Guard closed the door.
Rahel’s stomach twisted when she saw the tears. “Mother—”
“Do you hate us that much? How could I not sense it?”
“No! I don’t hate you.” Well, she did hate her father a little bit. “But he set a trap, didn’t he? You told me I was seeing things, that you and Father weren’t setting traps, but he did. He didn’t file that report when I took the daggers. He filed it after you realized I lied to you about the work permit. It was a trap.”
Her mother looked toward the ceiling but made no answer.
“He gave me a choice between prison for four moons or prison for a lifetime,” Rahel said. “I made the only choice I could.”
“Goddess above.” Her mother sat on the bed, elbows resting on her knees, and dropped her head into her hands. “Rahel, that Guard . . . he said you’re not working on the docks. He said—”