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  OUTCASTE

  BOOK SIX IN THE CHRONICLES OF ALSEA

  FLETCHER DELANCEY

  HEARTSOME PUBLISHING

  For those who seek to fly.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Rise

  1. Dreams

  2. Fourteen, almost

  3. Fifteen

  4. Whitesun

  5. Freedom

  6. Outcaste

  7. Home

  8. Protector

  9. Tactics

  10. Sixteen

  11. Defense

  12. Compromise

  13. Fifteen percent

  14. The honorable option

  15. Clients

  16. Prime

  17. Faith and trust

  18. Again

  19. Gift

  20. Seventeen

  21. Drifting

  22. Stolen goods

  23. Listening to truth

  24. Merging lives

  25. Risk

  26. Caste house

  27. Promise

  28. Last clients

  29. Dark road

  30. New world

  31. Aftermath

  32. Serendipity

  33. Dreams

  34. Warrior

  35. Desert flower

  36. Rivals

  Fall

  37. Fahla’s covenant

  38. Calm before the storm

  39. Battle of Alsea

  40. Reporting in

  41. Brasalara

  42. Reunited

  43. Return

  44. Sliding

  45. Secret weapon

  46. Failure

  47. Ritual challenge of combat

  48. Solace in the storm

  49. New mission

  50. Breaking in

  Phoenix

  51. Bondlancer

  52. Eyes of Fahla

  53. Mindstorm

  54. Flight of fear

  55. No greater power

  56. The monster inside

  57. Fahla’s vessel

  58. Reasonable judgment

  59. Counselor

  60. Informal

  61. No more fighting

  62. Instinct

  63. Infected

  64. Bellbird

  65. New line

  66. Comfort giver

  67. Temple healing

  68. Projection

  69. Centering

  70. Self-inflicted

  71. Dreams

  72. Gaian

  73. An honorable warrior

  74. Farewell to Whitesun

  75. Phoenix

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by Fletcher DeLancey

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For her infinite tolerance of being a writer’s widow while I lose myself in another world, I must thank my tyree, Maria João Valente. It’s a good thing she can be obsessive about her work as well. It’s also a good thing that she loves my work, which means I can justify abandonment by occasionally surfacing and saying brightly, “I have a new chapter for you!”

  My Prime Beta, Karyn Aho, is always gifted with character psychology but proved particularly indispensable for this book’s explorations of the hidden effects of trauma. I also tapped her brain extensively for the counseling sessions. She thinks empathy and especially projection would be fabulous tools to have on hand for her own clients.

  Special thanks go to Rebecca Cheek and Rick Taylor, both of whom spoke the truth even though they knew it would cost me a lot of work. It did, but it was worth it.

  Saskia Goedhart is, as always, my go-to person for fight scenes. I must be getting better at this, because I think this is the first book where she hasn’t had to say, “No, that wouldn’t happen in a real fight.” Additional thanks go to my tolerant tyree for letting me practice a fight move on her. I envisioned it, tried it, and nearly launched her off the bed, so . . . yep, it worked.

  Dr. Ana Mozo helped with the medical realism of a scene involving emergency care, though as she assures me, realism is always a bit relative when referring to advanced alien medicine.

  I’m grateful to Jessica Gardner, my editor, who did a wonderful job of recognizing my stylistic voice and working with it. As a card-carrying descriptivist, I appreciated Jessica’s ability to glide past the instances in which I knowingly broke some rules while bringing my attention to the (rare!) occasions when I did it unknowingly.

  Cheri Fuller is such a good and careful proofreader that I brought her with me from my old publisher to my new one. I think that says it all.

  Many thanks to Dane Low, who is possessed of some sort of magic that enabled him to read my suggestions for a cover and produce almost exactly what I envisioned, except better. Thanks also to João T. Tavares of GOBIUS for the Alsean Tree illustration.

  Finally, I am grateful to the special team at Heartsome who have made the production of this book such a stress-free delight, from matching my work with an editor, to finding the right cover artist, to taking care of all the details I don’t want to think about. A. E. Radley and Emma Sterner-Radley let me just put my head down and write, confident in their professionalism, and that means more than I can say.

  RISE

  1

  DREAMS

  On her tenth birth anniversary, her parents said she was old enough to work in the family shop. She had been waiting forever for this magical moment. Much of her life had been spent running in and out of the shop, her parents’ calls of “Rahel! Slow down!” trailing behind her, but that was when she was a child. Now she was halfway to her Rite of Ascension, and that meant she was half grown up.

  Her gleeful excitement lasted less than one nineday. In that time, she had dusted every piece of art in all three rooms. No one had warned her that working would be so dull.

  Her brother laughed when she complained. “I could have told you,” he said. “But you didn’t ask.”

  She hated it when he was such a know-everything.

  For five moons, she came home from school, waved the duster around while making up war stories and adventures in her head, and ran out the back door as if her feet were on fire the moment her hantick was up. Growing up, it seemed, meant boredom and disappointment.

  At the beginning of the sixth moon, she arrived to find her father unpacking a crate. By now she understood that their shop carried the work of many different crafters in the region, people who did not sell their wares on their own and so paid her father to do it for them. He had started out by selling her mother’s metalwork, but the shop had grown since then. Her brother said theirs was the biggest shop this side of Whitesun.

  Unpacking crates meant discovering new and sometimes interesting things. She hung on the front counter, resting her chin on its edge while bouncing the toe of her shoe off the wooden base, until her father fixed her with a glare. She held herself still and focused on the crate, which contained several long, slender objects swaddled in cloth.

  “They’re from a woodworker south of Redmoon,” her father said as he lifted one out. “She’s becoming very well known for these. We’re lucky she wants to sell them with us.”

  Carefully, he unwrapped the cloth and held the object aloft.

  She sucked in her breath. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  A sword, shining with the richness of polished wood. The blade was nearly silver, while the cross guard and grip were gleaming black. Colorful carved-wood shapes flashed against the dark background like jewels.

  “Look at this,” her father said, tapping his finger on the blade.

  She hoisted herself up so her chest leaned over the top of the tall counter and she could see better.

  “See the scrollwork on the blade?” he asked. “Th
at’s inlaid cinnoralis wood. Meticulous, gorgeous crafting. If your brother can learn to craft half this well, he’ll be able to support a family.”

  She knew her brother was learning woodworking, but all he ever showed her were boring boxes. Never anything like this. She pushed herself closer to the sword, staring at it while her father pointed at the various woods and explained what they were. Molwyn for the black wood, tintinatalus for the silver, and trees she had never even heard of for the colored bits that looked like jewels.

  Her father wouldn’t let her help unpack, despite her feverish offers, but he did let her watch. As she gazed at the six swords that soon lined their front counter, she realized that she would be dusting these. Every day.

  Suddenly, dusting didn’t seem quite so bad.

  For her eleventh birth anniversary, she asked for one of the wooden swords. Her parents laughed and told her not to expect it, but she knew they were just trying to fool her so she would be surprised.

  She vowed to act very surprised when she opened her gifts and found her sword.

  When her parents brought in three gifts, none of which were large enough, she thought they must be hiding the sword and saving it for last. Of course they couldn’t bring it out right away; she would know what it was by the size alone.

  After tearing open her third gift—a bead calculator from her father, who told her proudly that she had a head for numbers and would someday take over the store from him—she looked around with a bright smile, waiting. Her little sister began playing with the bead calculator, her brother carried dishes to the kitchen, and her parents sat there expectantly, waiting for her reaction to this last gift. And to her father’s announcement, she realized. He had just told her she would join the merchant caste.

  There was no sword.

  She thanked her parents, left the bead counter in her sister’s pudgy hands, and ran upstairs to her room.

  That night, she cried herself to sleep.

  By her twelfth birth anniversary, she knew enough about sale prices and revenue versus expenses to realize that her parents were never going to give her one of those glorious wooden swords. Their sale price was five digits, more than anything else in the shop. They represented a more “upscale line,” her father said, and were the first in what he hoped would eventually be an entire room of the shop devoted to more expensive crafts. He kept them mounted on the walls in the small back room, each spotlit by a light in the ceiling, and she had to use the short ladder to reach them.

  Every day, she came home from school, dusted the shop in a whirlwind of efficiency, and saved the swords for last. Those she would dust slowly, carefully, and with the reverence of a worshipper, dragging the ladder from one to the next. They became familiar friends to her, each with its own personality, and she made up stories about who had owned them and what sorts of adventures they had seen. This one had been owned by the Wandering King when he discovered Blacksun Basin, that one was used in the murder of the Mad Queen, and the one next to it was lost at sea during a shipwreck, only to wash ashore a hundred cycles later.

  Each time a sword sold, she mourned the loss of a friend. The tragedy was only leavened by the eventual arrival of a replacement, a new sword she could dust and get to know and weave a story for.

  “It surely is beautiful crafting,” her brother said one day, staring with open envy at a sword they had just unpacked. “See how perfectly cut the inlays are? They look like they grew there. I have to use my magnifiers to see the seams. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that.”

  She thought he was missing the point. The magic of the swords wasn’t the wood they were made of. It was the stories they contained. They were the swords of warriors.

  Her brother laughed when she told him that. “These aren’t real swords, Rahel. Warriors have swords made of metal.”

  “Then why doesn’t Mother make those?” Their mother was a renowned metalworker. If she could make something like these, Rahel did not understand why she wasn’t doing it.

  He shrugged. “Crafting comes from inside. You have to want to make what you’re making, or it won’t be any good. I guess Mother doesn’t want to make swords.”

  That was unfathomable.

  For her thirteenth birth anniversary, she asked her mother to make her a real sword.

  The night of her celebration, there was no long box waiting for her. And though she was two cycles older now and much too grown to cry, her pillow was wet that night.

  When her little sister celebrated her tenth birth anniversary, she took over the dusting duties. Rahel was now expected to work more closely with her father on accounting, ordering, sales, and crafter relations, while her brother was released to work full-time on his craft. After all, he was only two cycles away from his Rite of Ascension and needed to establish his name. In celebration of his entrance into a new phase of life, he was officially inscribed into the crafter caste rolls, a family event for which they all went to Whitesun.

  Rahel was dazzled by the vast city and its gleaming buildings, less so by her father’s insistence on touring her around the merchant caste house while her mother, brother, and sister went to the crafter caste house. She would rather have been with them, watching her brother’s inscription. Or better yet, across the park at the warrior caste house, with its dark red roof. She wondered if the warriors had real swords hung on their walls.

  “This will be your home, in any town or city you travel to,” her father told her when they ended the tour in the soaring lobby. “These people will be your family.”

  She was almost fourteen cycles. Old enough to stand up for herself.

  “I don’t want to be a merchant,” she said.

  “Nonsense. You’re perfect for it. You’re doing mathematics now that I didn’t understand until I was sixteen. You already have a good grasp of the ordering system, and I watched you sell a wooden sword to a customer who didn’t know he wanted one until you made him believe it. You’re a born merchant.”

  She hadn’t meant to sell the sword. She had only been sharing her love of them with the customer, because he seemed to understand and no one else in her family did.

  “I don’t like selling things,” she said.

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll learn to enjoy it. There’s a thrill of accomplishment, like when you get a good grade in school. And there’s pleasure in helping someone find something that makes them happy. Didn’t you feel it when you sold the sword?”

  No, she had felt betrayed, as if the customer had stolen something right out of her hand. It had taken her a nineday to realize that she could be happy for the sword, because it was in a good home with someone who truly loved it. Not all of them were so fortunate.

  Not knowing how to explain, she shook her head.

  Her father sighed. “Rahel, you are not a crafter. Your brother is, your sister will be . . . but you’ve never shown any talent in that area.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you know the merchant caste is your only other option.”

  “No, it’s not.” Her heart pounded as she took her dream in both hands. “I can challenge another caste.”

  He withdrew his hand, its weight sliding away. “What? What else is there? You’re not a producer, your only interest in building was knocking your sister’s blocks down—”

  “I want to be a warrior.”

  He seemed to deflate before her eyes. “Oh, Rahel.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  A group of merchants wearing ceremonial capes of deep purple strolled by, glancing at them idly as they passed. Her father kept silent until they had moved on.

  “Those books you read,” he said quietly, “and the stories you make up . . . those are childish things. But you’re growing up. It’s time to put those behind you.”

  She pointed out the nearest window at the gleam of red visible across the park. “The warrior caste house is full of grown-ups who live those stories. They haven’t put anything behind them.”

>   “And most of them trained from a very early age. You’re already at the age when many warriors are in formal training units.”

  “If I challenge now, I can make up the time.” She knew how to do that. Last cycle, she had skipped a whole grade of math by proving to her teachers that it was too simple for her.

  “It’s not like school. Their requirements are very strict. If you want to challenge a caste, why not the scholars?”

  “Because I want to be a warrior.” Why couldn’t he understand?

  He gripped her shoulders. “You are a merchant. You’re my daughter, and my caste is already inside you. You’re too young to see it now, but you will.”

  “But—”

  “Time for the caste talk?” One of the merchants from the group with the ceremonial capes had returned and was now standing next to her father. Her cape was still in motion, liquid purple swinging gently around her legs. “I didn’t want to be a merchant, either. I wanted to be a crafter and play music all day long.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Rahel asked.

  The woman was older than her mother, her hair shining white, but her smile put Rahel at ease. “Because I wasn’t good enough,” she said. “Not to support myself or a family. But now I have a family, and my children have children, and best of all, I still play music. Almost every day. You don’t have to give up your dreams, child. Sometimes you just need to . . . rearrange them.”

  Rahel thought about that. “So I could learn to fight? And use a sword?”

  The woman glanced at her father, whose red face did not bode well for anyone. “Oh,” she said softly. “Perhaps I could speak with your father for a moment?”

  Rahel stepped away and stared through a window at the warrior caste house while her father and the woman in purple argued. Her father’s embarrassment was hot on her senses, the anger even hotter, and she could only hope he would be calm again before they left. The older woman had less of an emotional presence, but what was there felt cool and peaceful, though with an edge of warning.

  “You risk losing . . .” she heard the woman say before her voice quieted again. Her father growled something in response, and Rahel tuned him out, not wanting to hear any more.