The Outworlder Page 5

  Jared leaned across her and said, “Why don’t you let her eat what’s already in front of her before you start pushing seconds?”

  So he is listening, Sahara thought with the tiniest thrill of triumph.

  She ignored Kirin’s questions and tasted some of the bread. It was delicate and slightly sweet, filled with dried fruits and nuts. There was cold water in her mug, and she drank gratefully. A small pot of something squatted beside her plate, its tiny spoon next to it.

  “What’s this?” she asked, turning to Jared.

  “It’s honey,” Kirin answered quickly.

  He leaned over and put the spoon in the pot, twirling some of the golden liquid around the bowl and then lifting it out again. The honey slid back into the pot in a thick, slow stream.

  Sahara looked at him blankly. “Honey? What’s that?”

  Kirin gaped at her. “You’ve never had honey before? How remarkably strange! You mean —”

  “It’s not nearly as strange as answering questions meant for someone else,” she retorted.

  Kirin’s face flushed, then paled, and then he grinned. “Would you like to taste this?”

  Sahara frowned at him and tried to turn her head away, but he moved too quickly. He shoved the spoon laden with the golden liquid between her lips.

  Something snapped inside her.

  Before she even recognized what she was doing, Sahara had him out of his chair and against the wall, a dagger at his throat. There were gasps and the noise of chairs clattering to the floor as the men jumped to their feet and drew their weapons. Jared was beside her in a moment, his hand locked around the wrist of her knife-hand.

  “Let him go,” he murmured in her ear.

  Sahara hesitated. A drop of sweat trembled on the end of Kirin’s nose, his eyes half-shut with fear. His fear roused her to loathing. He was weak and stupid. She gave him another shove and his head knocked against the wall.

  “Touch me again and you die,” she gritted through clenched teeth. “Understand?”

  “Sahara.” Jared’s voice was in her ear, his grip on her wrist tightening ever so slightly.

  Sahara released Kirin like a piece of dung, jerked her hand out of Jared’s grasp, and slid the knife back into its sheath at the small of her back. Jared propelled her back to her seat as Kirin stalked out of the hall, viciously kicking a chair that lay across his path.

  Gradually, but with murmurs of discontent, the men set their chairs upright and took their seats again. Everyone was watching her warily now, and talk was tense.

  Jared laid his arm across the back of her chair and leaned in to whisper in her ear, “That probably wasn’t the wisest thing you could have done, but I guess he deserved it.” He paused, and then added, “Where did you find that knife?”

  “In the drawer,” she whispered back. She hazarded a glance around the table, meeting frowns and furrowed brows everywhere.

  “Perhaps the stranger would like to introduce herself and offer this hall some explanation for her extraordinary conduct,” a clear voice rang out from the head of the table. “Now.”

  Jared’s arm slid off the back of her chair and Sahara stood, feeling suddenly alone. All her anxieties and fears about this moment returned, but then she felt an upsurge of resentment toward Jared for bringing her into this situation in the first place. She’d tried to tell him this was a bad idea. He just hadn’t listened to her.

  Anger made her bold, freezing out fear and every other emotion.

  She raised her head and searched out the man who had spoken. He was the one who had been standing with Aliya and Jared in the courtyard last night. Arnauld. That was his name. This was his hall, then—these his subjects. And she had just made him an enemy.

  So be it.

  “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  A gasp rippled around the table, and everyone turned to see what Arnauld would do. His face was a blank mask, but his eyes widened.

  “Did you just say no?”

  “I said no.”

  Arnauld chuckled, but there was no gentle indulgence in it. “You mistake my meaning, I think, stranger. It’s not really a question. It’s an order.”

  “Order all you like. I owe you no allegiance. And I will not speak.”

  Jared made a warning noise in his throat, but Sahara ignored him.

  “You are a guest in my house,” the man continued, the heat rising in his voice. “And without our hospitality, dare I remind you, you would be dead. It is on that debt that I charge you to speak your name and explain why you have abused one of my men and disrupted our meal.”

  “I never asked for your hospitality. You gave it to me freely. I owe you nothing.”

  Another noise from Jared, but Sahara was thoroughly angry now.

  “Do not provoke us to compel your answer, stranger.”

  Sahara’s knife flashed in her hand, and then suddenly became two knives. The blades caught the light as she twirled them in her hands, finding the grip.

  “I’d like to see you, or anyone else in this hall, try to compel anything from me.”

  Before she could react, someone seized her around the waist from behind, pinioning both her arms to her sides. Her captor placed a blade against her throat, forcing her head back onto his shoulder. She glanced up.

  “Jared!” she gasped.

  “My lord Arnauld,” said Jared, “perhaps she’ll show a bit more courtesy now.” Sahara struggled, but she couldn’t wrestle herself out of his grasp. Jared murmured in her ear, “Stop fighting me. I’m just trying to teach you some manners.”

  “Since Jared can be persuasive when he needs to be,” Arnauld said, “perhaps now you’d like to tell us who you are and how you came to be among us. And why you treated Kirin with such disrespect.”

  “As for that boy who ran off to nurse his wounded pride,” Sahara fired back, “why don’t you teach it in your hall that men shouldn’t force themselves on women? If that’s what I should expect from your hospitality—” she struggled against Jared’s arm again, her breast heaving—“then please take me back into the desert and leave me there to rot.”

  Arnauld inclined his head slightly, his eyes never leaving her face. “I grant you that, stranger. He was out of line. It won’t happen again. But that doesn’t excuse the violence of your response.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.” She bucked suddenly, hoping to take Jared by surprise. His grip around her only tightened.

  “Calm down,” Jared murmured. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know. Your heart is racing as if you were afraid I’d actually slit your throat!”

  She glared up at him wordlessly. Just you wait until we’re out of here! she thought.

  Jared’s eyes suddenly widened, and his grip around her waist slackened for an instant. His mouth opened as if he had something to say, but Arnauld spoke first.

  “Who are you, and why are you here?”

  Sahara lifted her chin and pressed her lips together. She had no intention of telling this man anything. Jared’s hold on her tightened.

  “Tell him,” Jared whispered. “I don’t want to have to hurt you. But if he gives the order, I will.”

  Sahara’s gut seethed with the hot coils of helpless anger. “My name is Sahara. Sahara Acwellan. As for why I’m here, why don’t you ask him? He’s the one who found me and dragged me here.”

  “What you were doing out that far in the desert? None of our people ever venture beyond the dunes, and it’s been many months since we’ve seen anyone from the southern settlements.”

  “My ship crashed,” she answered.

  Bodies all around her…the smell of blood and burned flesh…the flames…

  She struggled against Jared, feeling panic begin to pool in her stomach. “Please,” she whispered to him, “please, I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe…”

  His arm relaxed a little, but he kept the dagger at her throat.

  “What ship?” demanded Arnauld.

  “The pri
son ship.”

  Impact…the cage was coming down…it would crush her….

  “What prison ship, if you please?”

  She barely heard him. Her breathing was ragged, her mouth parched.

  “From K’ilenfir.” She slammed her elbow into Jared’s side. He grunted and staggered back a step, losing his hold on her. “I was sentenced to life in the prison-camp of the Dragon-Lords, all right? But the crew abandoned us. The ship crashed. Everyone died. Everyone except me.” She stood panting, both knives at the ready again. “And that’s all you need to know about me.”

  “Jared…” began Arnauld, a warning in his voice.

  Jared moved to take hold of her again, but she was ready for him this time. She ducked under his grasp, jabbed him in the stomach with her elbow and then spun and kicked the knife out of his hand. As she came around, she drove her weight into him, propelling him back against the wall. She pressed the edge of her dagger against his throat.

  “How do you like it?” she hissed. “Do you like this feeling? The feeling that I might just decide to slit your throat?”

  “Put it away, Sahara,” Jared murmured, his eyes locked with hers. “Just put it away.”

  “Sahara!” Arnauld shouted. “Release him!”

  Sahara dropped her hand and stepped away from Jared. Then she turned to face the horrified stares of the people in the hall.

  “I’m a convict,” she told them with a lift of her chin, “and you better believe that I earned it. So just stay away from me, all of you, if you know what’s best for you.”

  She stalked out of the hall, replacing the knives in their sheath as she went.

  *****

  By the time Jared found her again, the sun was already low on the horizon. She was sitting in the orchard near the river, her back against a tree. She was scowling fiercely at the dancing water.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Jared said, crouching next to her.

  Her knife, a single blade once more, was buried up to the hilt in the turf, and he jerked it free.

  She didn’t even glance at him. “And?”

  “And I wanted to talk to you. About this morning.”

  “Why? What’s done is done. Leave me alone.”

  “Yes, the past is in the past, but if you want to avoid making a similar mistake in the future, it helps to reflect on things, don’t you think?”

  At last she looked at him, a languid, annoyed roll of her eyes in his direction. “Who taught you this stuff? I’m not a child, and I don’t need your preaching. Go back to playing castle with your friends and leave me the hell alone.”

  Jared shrugged. “At least I was taught. Is that part of what’s the matter here? You never had any education?”

  Sahara rolled her gaze back to the river, where the ripples blazed in the dancing light. “Oh, I had an education all right. Or didn’t you notice that earlier?”

  Jared sighed and settled himself more comfortably on the grass.

  “Look, Sahara,” he said at last. “If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to learn some things. Your display of martial skills this morning did not impress. Well, it impressed, but not in the right way. I don’t think you want to be an outcast.”

  “I’m a convict, Jared. I’m not fit to be anything else.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You keep saying that. You’re not a convict any longer, you realize. If you were, you’d be in prison.”

  “I’m an escaped convict. I should be in prison. The fact that I’m sitting here and not in some cell doesn’t change who I am, Jared.”

  “And who are you, exactly? What did you ever do to land you on that ship in the first place?”

  Sahara’s eyes snapped to him, and for a moment he thought she’d tell him. But she just shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It might help you if you did.”

  “What is with you and your crusade to save me?” she snapped. “I never asked for your help out there in the desert, and I’m not asking for it now!”

  “Well, if I hadn’t helped you in spite of your attitude, you’d be dead. A desiccated skeleton buried under heaps of sand.”

  “And maybe it would have been better that way.”

  “Oh, I forgot. You have a death wish. Does that explain your behavior this morning?”

  “No. That was instinct. I didn’t even think about it. That man touched me, and that was it. I couldn’t control it.”

  “And what about me? Was that controlled?”

  A smile flickered on her lips for an instant. “Yes. That was a little payback.” She turned back to the river and added, “I don’t like having a knife held to my throat, Jared. No one takes me down without a fight.”

  “So you wanted to prove you could handle me, is that it? That no one can hold you, at least not for long?”

  “That’s right.” She fixed her eyes on his. “If you don’t kill me the first time, I will come after you. That’s the message.”

  Jared never blinked. “That’s not very congenial. How do you expect to live in a civilized society with a wild animal attitude like that?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, what do you plan to do, then? Live in the trees out here? In the desert? Like it or not, Sahara, you’ve got to tame yourself. You aren’t in prison where you have to fight for your survival at every moment, where it’s either kill or be killed. You have to learn how to live.”

  His breath caught in his throat when her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  “Tell me how I’m supposed to do that,” she spat. “How am I supposed to just let go of what has been part of me since…” Her voice died, and he watched her wrestle with her emotions. When she gained enough control, she added, “How do I do that without utterly losing myself?”

  Jared picked up a stick and began to shave the bark from the smooth yellow wood inside with her knife. “You have to realize that there’s more to you than the killer-convict,” he said. “And there is, Sahara, much more to you than that. It’s just that you’re afraid to let it show.”

  “It makes me weak.”

  “No. It makes you human.” His eyes never left the wood in his hands. “Like this stick, you see? The bark is rough, hard, and protects the tree from damage. But on the inside is the living wood—soft, beautiful, malleable. I can take this stick, without the bark, and make it into anything I like. It’s like you. Shed the bark and you can become anything you want.”

  “Don’t you mean anything you want?”

  He studied her, his fingers still working deftly with the knife. “Why do you ask like that?”

  “Well, your analogy seems to head that way, right? I’m like the stick you think you can peel and shape into whatever you want.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “I just want to be clear. Anyway, the only thing I know how to do with a knife is kill people.”

  Jared planted the knife in the ground beside her and handed her the carefully whittled stick, now carved into the shape of a curious bird. “Then perhaps it’s time to learn a new skill.”

  “Is this for me?” She gaped at it, rubbing her thumb over the intricate etchings.

  He rose. “Think about it,” he said. “You’ve got a second chance. A new life. So who will you choose to be?”

  Chapter 6

  It took her three months, but Sahara had finally found a way to participate, if still awkwardly, in the civilized life of Albadir. She took her meals with the other lords and ladies of the Great House without assaulting anyone, much to Jared’s relief. But as hard as she tried to fit in, she still felt like there was an invisible but impossible barrier between her and Jared’s world. The women seemed to never quite forget that she had a killer side lurking somewhere under her slowly improving manners. And the men usually patronized her—she was “Jared’s girl” or “Jared’s outworlder”, and they treated her accordingly.

  Her first few weeks in Albadir, Sahara had spent much of
her time in Jared’s company, but she soon tired of feeling like a tag-a-long kid sister. His days were filled with training and meetings and councils and sometimes he would disappear for days without telling anyone where he was going.

  One day, two months after Jared had carried her out of the desert, she was prowling around the training grounds looking for Jared. A few men were setting up for target practice, and she stopped to watch. They each took a handgun and a single magazine, and that was it. Fifteen shots.

  Sahara stepped forward as they began cleaning the weapons.

  “That’s it?” she said to the man closest to her. “That’s all you’re going to do?”

  She glanced downrange at the targets. The edges were shredded, but very few bullets had actually found their mark. The man didn’t even look at her, so she touched his shoulder.

  “I asked you a—“

  “Get lost,” the man growled, shaking her hand off his arm. “Jared’s not here.”

  “I’m not looking for Jared right now,” Sahara said, her temper flaring. “I’m trying to talk to you about your pathetic aim.”

  They all stopped their work and stared at her. Sahara folded her arms across her chest as the man beside her finally raised his head to meet her gaze.

  “We all hit the targets,” he said. “We hit the targets, that’s it. We don’t get more ammo.”

  Sahara glanced downrange again and pointed. “Only one of those is a kill shot,” she said. “You can’t be serious…you can’t be done. You’ve got to do better than that!”

  “Orders are orders. We’re supposed to hit the targets. And we get fifteen rounds. That’s it.”

  “You’re just wasting your ammo,” she said. “And your time. Who’s in charge of these drills?”

  “Captain Armon Heger,” said one of the men further down the line. “Take it up with him if you’ve got a problem.”

  “Get lost,” said the first man again. “Last time I’m asking nicely.”

  Sahara held up her hands and backed away. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” she said.