The Outworlder

Myar Mal’s in a battle I had no hope of winning but couldn’t give up. The kar-vessár’s jaw was tight, and his eyes shone with iron resolution. In any other circumstance, the sheer strength of that stare would have paralyzed me. But the one thing capable of breaking through my anxiety was anger.
And I was angry. Angry at the situation, at Dahlsi, Tarvissi; at Myar Mal and his bloody confidence.
“You know what I’d do if I really wanted to sabotage your efforts?” I reached to my pouch and scrabbled until my fingers closed on what I was after. I raised it for all to see.
The Dahlsi around me paled; someone even took a step back. A slight tingling suggested that more than one protective spell was cast. Only Myar Mal stood immovable, never turning his eyes from me, cold and calculating as ever, and I hated him so much, it hurt. So, I opened my hand and let a red carai nut fall to the ground, where it got stuck in the damp ash, like a drop of blood.
“Put that in our water supply and take out half of Mespana in one go.”
No one said a word. They were all watching, and my anger started cracking, letting in the first pangs of anxiety. I wasn’t going to wait for it to take over. I made a stiff nod, never for a moment turning my eyes from Myar Mal. “With all due respect, Vessár-ai, I’m leaving.”
“You can’t do that!” protested one of the vessár-ai; I didn’t see—or care—who.
“You wanted to send me away yesterday.” The bitterness crept into my voice. Bile rose in my throat, and I worried that if I were to stay here much longer, I would throw up. “Should’ve just kicked me out with all the others. Though I guess that your need for me was more important at the time.”
Again, no one answered, so I turned and started walking, a jumble of thoughts and emotions boiling in my mind. I tried to push them all away and formulate a plan. I had to take my personal stuff and then, I don’t know, find Tayrel Kan and ask him to open a merge with Espa Solia. Or with whatever. The one we—no, not we, not anymore; Mespana—used to move our—their!—forces, was obviously closed.
Laik Var caught up with me. I didn’t stop—if anything, I only started taking longer steps, relishing in the way he trotted to keep up. It was childish, and I regretted it later, but at that moment, I didn’t care.
“Aldait Han, wait,” he pleaded, and following the cycles of conditioning, I obeyed.
“What for?” I growled. They should all be fucking happy to be rid of me, anyway.
“We didn’t mean it like that.”
“I can’t see what else you could mean, Laik Var,” I shot back. He didn’t deserve it; he was the only one who stood up for me from the beginning, and who bothered trying to stop me now. Still, he was also the only one here for me to lash out at.
“They’re going to check everyone in the camp. And outside, if needed. You were just first in line.”
“Because I’m Tarvissi.”
A particularly loud huff of air escaped his lips—an attempt to sigh or combat the shortness of breath, I wasn’t sure.
“Where are you gonna go anyway? To Tarviss? You think they’ll be happy to see you?”
I stopped and turned to him angrily. “It didn’t bother you when you sent my family there!”
He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “And for their sake, I ask you to stay.”
That finally gave me pause. I crossed my arms and glared, waiting for him to go on.
“Look, we made a mistake,” he started. “Deporting all Tarvissi was clearly an overreaction. We didn’t know what to do! Didn’t know who to trust. So, we decided to distrust everybody.”
“A lot of innocent people had to pay for your overreaction.”
“I know, Aldait Han. I’m sorry. But if the choice is between our people and others—”
I didn’t let him finish. “The thing is, many of those people considered themselves Dahlsi up until the point you kicked them out.”
“We were driven by fear, not malice. Look around you.” He grabbed my arm pleadingly. “We’re not an army. We have never waged a war. Fuck, we have never fought more than a dozen people at a time!”
He was right. Dahls always occupied the precious spot between two powerful worlds, Tarviss and Tayan, being too small to be worth conquering and at the same time too rich for any of their neighbors to allow the other to have them. The situation changed when advancement in magic and technology allowed the Dahlsi to open a merge to the new cluster—thousands of uninhabited worlds ripe for the taking.
But Dahls had yet to establish its own military force that others would have to reckon with. Mespana was created ten cycles ago—if it were a man, it would be just reaching adulthood—and it had less than two thousand people trained to work in duos or trios, in dozens at most. Even with the most advanced magic and technology at our disposal, both Tarviss and Tayan could crush us with sheer numbers.
Not to mention the complete lack of military experience on our side. Fuck, we weren’t even real soldiers! Our primary job was documenting new worlds. We were only called when things got violent because, well, there was no one else.
Still, we were not an army.
“Tarviss cannot wage war against you without facing retribution from Tayan,” I protested, inciting a bitter laugh from my commander.
“Unless Tarviss and Tayan band together and rip us to pieces. There are plenty of worlds for them to share,” he answered mirthlessly.
“In that case, a few hundred Tarvissi living in colonies won’t make any difference.”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “We both know it. And perhaps other people know it too, but they’re afraid. Can you blame them?”
No. For me, war was a thing from old legends. I fought almost every day, but it was