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  Too soon, his thudding tread came up behind her. “Smug, interfering . . .” He grabbed Rahel by the upper arm and yanked her toward the exit. “We’re leaving.”

  His grip hurt, but she would not admit it. She barely kept up as they went through the arched doorway, and nearly stumbled when her father hurried them down the stone steps. Not until they were on the path that led to the crafter caste house did he let go.

  “You are a merchant,” he said. “That’s the end of it.”

  His anger was still too frightening for her to say anything.

  But he was wrong. This was not the end of it.

  2

  FOURTEEN, ALMOST

  Even after her father calmed, he would not hear of fighting lessons.

  Rahel found a training house on the other side of town that offered them in the late afternoons and evenings, and presented the idea along with her promise that it would not interfere with school or her work in the shop.

  “It’s too expensive,” her father said shortly.

  “I can work it off.”

  “When? During the school day? You don’t have time. I need you in the shop.”

  “Father—”

  “Enough,” he growled.

  She asked her mother next. That was more promising, until her father found out she had gone around him. His anger was so hot that she cringed and turned away, afraid for the first time in her life that he might strike her. When he told her to get out, she went.

  All the way across town.

  For the better part of the afternoon, she stood outside the training house with her nose pressed to the large front window, watching luckier girls and boys do what she yearned to do. They were dressed in some kind of uniform—dark blue fitted pants and sleeveless shirts with white geometric designs—and ranged from a little older than her age to younger than her sister. She imagined herself wearing those clothes, listening to the instructor, learning how to use her body . . .

  “Would you like to come in?” asked a male voice behind her. Curiosity and kindness wafted onto her senses, one mildly spicy and the other softly comforting. She turned to find a very large man behind her, standing at ease but looking as if he could lift a four-seater skimmer with one hand.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  He tilted his head to one side. “Your legs don’t work?”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean, my father won’t let me.” Cursing her stumbling tongue, she added, “He says it’s too expensive.”

  “Ah. But going inside is free.”

  She could find no fault in that logic, and when he held up a hand, she met it in a palm touch. The strand of kindness became a thick blanket, accompanied by the sort of mental stillness that she had previously sensed only from her mother when she was immersed in her metalwork.

  “My name is Brasdo,” he said. “I teach here.”

  “Rahel.”

  “An honorable name. Do you know what it means?”

  She shook her head and stuffed her hands in her trouser pockets.

  “It means explorer. And here you are, exploring.” He walked to the door, opened it, and stood aside.

  She looked up at him, gauging his sincerity, because it made no sense that a grown-up would be so kind to a girl who couldn’t pay. But he stood patiently, emanating that mental stillness, and she moved past him to stand in a wood-floored corridor.

  A woman’s voice filled the space. “Step. Twist. Elbows up! Stop. Are your upper arms level with the floor?”

  The air was warm and scented. She had expected stuffiness and the smell of sweat, but instead there was a faint hint of . . .

  “Is that cinnoralis?” she whispered as the woman continued her instruction.

  “Yes. We use different scents to evoke different mental states. Cinnoralis helps in relaxation. Winterbloom helps focus the mind.”

  He cited a few more, but she was thinking of her swords and the beautiful golden wood that was used for the scrolling on the blades. Cinnoralis.

  Surely it was a sign.

  He led her into the large room she had been watching, taking her past the group of uniformed children to stand near the back wall. A bench ran the length of it, with shoes of all types tucked beneath. Most were sandals, like hers. A row of hooks above the bench was festooned with packs and bags, some gaping open with hastily stuffed clothing spilling out.

  “This is a beginning class,” he murmured. “They’re learning the forms.”

  She watched, mesmerized by this new view and the children’s synchronized movements. “When do they fight? The class before this one, they were fighting.”

  “Is that what you think we teach?”

  The question meant she had somehow gotten it wrong. She shrugged.

  “We teach students to understand their bodies,” he said. “To learn how to channel their mental energy. Later, we teach the dance of combat, but it’s not fighting. Fighting is about anger. It usually involves a loss of control. That is not what we want.”

  She remembered her father’s anger, and the way he had growled at her to get out. No, that was not what she wanted. She wanted to be calm and tranquil, like Brasdo. Like her mother when she was lost inside her craft. Like the woman at the front of the room, radiating stillness as she led fifteen children with nothing more than her voice.

  Brasdo touched her sleeve and brought her through a door in the back wall. Now speaking in a normal tone, he showed her the changing room, the showers, the office, and an airy, well-lit room with no furnishings other than enormous potted plants. It was called the centering room, she learned. He pulled a rolled-up mat from a grid of cubbyholes built into one wall, laid it on the floor beneath a plant with broad leaves as long as her leg, and showed her several different positions used to center mind and body.

  “When your mind is a still pool, you can see beneath its surface,” he said.

  None of this was what she had expected when she watched the earlier class. She didn’t understand all of it, but she liked the way Brasdo made her feel. She liked this space, and the calm drone of the woman teaching in the front room.

  “We sometimes give scholarships,” Brasdo said when they stood once more in the doorway between the training room and the corridor. “They’re worth a cycle of classes.”

  The class had ended, and the children were noisily gathering their packs and filing through to the changing room. Their shoes remained behind, still tucked beneath the bench.

  Rahel imagined herself among them, laughing and chattering as she changed her clothes.

  “How do I qualify?”

  “You already did.”

  “I did?” She had missed something important.

  “You listen. You pay attention. You ask thoughtful questions. That’s what we want in our students.” He pulled a reader card from the pouch at his belt, tapped it open, and offered it. “Fill out your name and address here. Do you have a com code yet?”

  She nearly fumbled it, unable to believe he was just handing over her dream. “No, but I can give you the code for our shop.”

  “That will do.”

  He rolled up the reader card when she finished and fixed her with a serious look. “We need one more thing before you can start. Permission from your parents.”

  Her heart sank, but before she could respond, he bent closer to her and said softly, “It’s free. If your father’s only objection was the expense, then we’ve just taken care of that.”

  Was it his only objection? Or was it just the first?

  When she returned home, her father berated her for being absent from the shop. Her comment that she had only done what he wanted was not well received, but something had changed while she’d toured the training house. The anger that had frightened her earlier held no power now.

  Once his lecture ran out, he pushed a duster in her hand and ordered her to clean all three rooms.

  Dusting was a child’s job. It was a punishment intended to shame, but she refused to allow that. Instead, she lost
herself in the mindless activity, imagining her mind as a still pool, just as Brasdo had said.

  As always, she left her beloved wooden swords for last. They had recently been joined by a pair of ceremonial daggers made by the same artist, but she didn’t think the daggers held the same majesty as the swords.

  “Someday,” she whispered to the last sword.

  3

  FIFTEEN

  Having learned from her earlier mistake, Rahel went to her mother first and emphasized the class’s focus on mental training.

  “Will it interfere with your schoolwork?” her mother asked.

  “No.”

  “Shop work?”

  “No.”

  “Then I see no reason why you shouldn’t go.”

  She threw herself into her mother’s arms. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

  Her mother squeezed tightly, then pulled back and brushed Rahel’s hair away from her face. “Remember your place,” she said. “It’s good to try new things, but you must always remember your place.”

  “I will.” She didn’t understand, but she would have promised anything.

  The next half cycle was the best of her life. The training house became her second home, its students her friends, its instructors her second set of parents. In the deep, dark, secretive part of her heart, she thought she loved Brasdo more than her real father. He was unfailingly kind, even when she made mistakes, and never insisted that she give up her dreams. He taught her to understand her body in a way she had never even considered. She reveled in the power that came from controlling both it and her mind, and spent as much time as she could in the centering room. Her home held five people, including a noisy younger sister, and the shop was never a place where she could be still. Here, on a mat beneath the spreading leaves of a tropical plant, she found comfort and a sense of peace that became addictive.

  She read every book on warriors, strategy, behavioral manipulation, and the Truth and the Path that she could get her hands on. The books showed many ways a warrior could live besides serving in the Guards, and the role that captured her attention above all others was that of explorer. It was her name, after all. She had not realized that Whitesun, the big harbor city west of her village, was the embarkation point for all of Alsea’s most famous voyages of exploration.

  Fantasies of swinging a sword in combat shifted to fantasies of standing on the deck of a pitching ship, riding the waves and mapping the coastlines of the two continents. Instead of an impractical sword, her imaginary self now wore a pair of daggers sheathed at her belt. She would use them to sever tangled knots of rigging and save a Mariner from drowning, or drive one into the top of a sail and use it to slow her descent all the way to the deck while fighting off pirates.

  Following this new line of study, she learned that warriors were still exploring, though the coastlines had long since been mapped and pirates were mostly a thing of the past. Now, the explorers mapped the ocean floor, dived the depths in ever more dangerous feats of daring, found new fishing grounds, and helped catalogue the strange animals that inhabited the islands scattered across Alsea’s vast ocean. They acted as guides and protectors for the scholars who also pursued exploration but lacked the ability to save themselves when things turned bad.

  She envisioned herself using a dagger to hold off one of the aggressive island predators she had read about, saving a scholar who looked at her with admiring eyes afterward. She would be both explorer and protector.

  The next time her father wasn’t looking, she went into the shop’s back room and examined the current set of inlaid wooden daggers with newly appreciative eyes. The swords were still her greatest love, so majestic and beautiful, but these daggers had a different sort of beauty. She tucked one into her waistband and felt the length of it along her skin. Yes, this was what she would have on her ship. Easy to pack, easy to carry, and much easier to learn to use. The best sword-masters began their training when they were younger than her sister. She was already too old.

  When she went upstairs at the end of the work shift, her father stood in her bedroom doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Did you forget about the shop vidcams?” he asked.

  Her stomach turned to stone. She had only worried about him catching her in person.

  “Those daggers are worth almost as much as the swords. And you shove them in your pants like they’re toys?” He uncrossed his arms and took a step forward. “Your obsession is getting out of hand. You need to remember who you are. Since you seem to be having a hard time with that, I’ve helped you by getting rid of those books.”

  Horrified, she pushed past him into her room and found empty space where her exploration books had been. “Those came from the library!”

  “Then you’d better work harder so you can pay the library back.”

  “Why?” she shouted. “Why is it only my dreams you have to crush? Why do you hate me that much?”

  His brief flicker of sorrow stung her senses, but was quickly swallowed by the too-familiar anger. “I would eagerly support your dreams if you would get your head out of the clouds and be realistic. There are dreams, and then there are fantasies. Children get them confused, but you’re old enough to know better.” As he walked away, he threw one parting order over his shoulder. “Grow up!”

  “I am growing up,” she whispered.

  And he had not denied her accusation.

  She threw herself on the bed and wept in a storm of despair, remembering a time when she had never doubted her father’s love. It had been a constant warmth to her senses, accompanied by his smiles and his quiet lessons in the shop, but that had been before. Before she had dreams he didn’t agree with. Before she stopped being the perfect child. Before she developed a mind of her own.

  Brasdo liked her the way she was. He didn’t expect her to be different, didn’t put a price tag on his affection. Even when she wasn’t perfect, he didn’t shout at her. He would never throw away her library books and tell her to pay for them.

  “Why can’t he be my father?” she cried into her pillow.

  Home was never the same after that. She felt like a stranger in the family. Her brother thought she was being ridiculous, and her sister didn’t understand any of it. Sometimes Rahel envied her—she had shown a talent for fine metalwork at an early age, and was already producing wares that her father proudly sold. Everyone knew what they wanted to be; everyone was doing what they were meant to.

  Everyone but her.

  The training house became her true home, and she spent as much time there as she dared. She even volunteered to sweep the floors and clean the mats, just to have an excuse to stay longer. But she was careful to never impinge on her duties in the shop. She was determined to do exactly what her father asked of her, so he would have no excuse not to continue her classes when her scholarship ran out. The shop was doing well, and the classes weren’t that expensive. To make it certain, she told her mother that she wanted only one thing for her fifteenth birth anniversary. Just one thing.

  On the night of her celebration, she opened the last gift and found a purple half cape instead of the class vouchers she had expected.

  “It’s for your inscription,” her father said. “We’re going to Whitesun next moon.”

  All skill at controlling her mind slipped away as if the past cycle had never been. “Why didn’t you give me what I asked for? All I wanted was to keep going!”

  “I’m sorry, Rahel,” her mother said. “But you did the one thing we were most afraid of. You forgot your place.”

  “I did not!”

  “Which caste do you want to be in?” her father asked.

  She knew the answer they wanted, but she could not give it.

  He nodded. “That’s what we thought.”

  She sat stunned, staring at the strangers who had been her parents. They were going to inscribe her in the merchant caste at the age of fifteen, three cycles earlier than her brother’s inscription as a crafter. It was
a cruel trap, snapping shut on her leg and holding her in place forevermore. Castes could not easily be changed. An appeal required parental support, and her parents would not support it. Once she was inscribed, she could never be anything else.

  Without another word, she shoved back her chair, fled upstairs, and slammed her bedroom door shut.

  No one came to comfort her, not even her mother.

  That night, two hanticks before dawn, she crept out of her room with a packed bag and noiselessly descended the stairs to the shop. Though the door to the outside was always locked when the shop was closed, the door from the inside rooms was not. She let herself in, walked behind the front counter, and emptied out the cashbox. The amount would have been much greater had she been able to access it at the end of the day, before they’d done their accounting and taken the day’s profit upstairs, but that was not an option. It was still a good number. The shop was carrying more expensive items these days, and their opening cash reserve was higher than it used to be.

  She replaced the empty box and walked into the back room. The shop’s night lighting was more than enough to illuminate the swords and daggers mounted on the walls. Her hand hovered over her favorite sword, but then she turned and took the pair of ceremonial daggers instead. They had arrived two moons ago, and she had created a wonderful story for them. These daggers had been given by the First Lancer as a prize for the one warrior who could complete a set of impossible challenges. Thereafter, any warrior who held them would be imbued with the courage, strength, and cunning of their original owner.

  She lifted her head, facing the vidcam in the corner, and deliberately shoved both daggers into her waistband. Then she raised two fingers in a rude salute, held it for several pipticks, and waved good-bye.

  4

  WHITESUN

  Whitesun was larger and more intimidating than Rahel remembered. The last time she had been here, her parents had led them from one place to another and she hadn’t paid much attention. Now, she stood in front of the magtran map for nearly a quarter hantick, memorizing the lines and stations. It wasn’t enough to know how to get to the central park. She was going to live here; she needed to understand how the city was laid out.