The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (13 page)

But the steerswoman was still after them, each one of them like a shining lamp showing the way. She made no sound now, she was silent as death, and that
sword
, she had that sword held up over her head—

And then she’d caught up to the slowest two, and Steffie yelled again, “
No!
”

And he was right next to her, somehow. He threw both his arms around the one she held high; he pulled back with everything he’d got. “No! Let them go!”

She’d swung half around. “What are you doing?”

“Leave them! Let them go!”

“Those creatures— ” But they were gone now, just wails far off. “That light— ”

“It’s moths!”

The stars made her eyes hard and bright, like her sword. “Moths? Those things? So huge? No— ”

Steffie yanked again, talked fast. “No, not moths— it was moth-stuff. The children, they catch the moths, see, and squash them; then they paint themselves with the stuff, and run around at night, scaring people. It’s a joke, it’s fun!”

“Paint themselves . . .” It was like the words made no sense to her.

“Because it glows.”

“Glows . . .”

“The moths,” he said, “the moth stuff, it glows!”

She looked at him like he’d just now showed up. “Why?”

“I don’t know, it just
does!
” He was still holding on to her sword arm. It was loose now, but it wasn’t a moment ago; it had been all tense, and ready to kill. He was terrified by the picture in his head. He let go and stepped back fast. “Damn it, woman, you can’t swing at everything you see!”

She drew herself up. “I do not swing at everything I see.” She sheathed her sword. “But when apparently monstrous creatures seem to attack me, I do make an attempt to defend myself.”

“You fool, they were children,” he said, and damn all proper form and respect to steerswomen.

All of a sudden she was dead quiet in the dark; and then it was her grabbing at his arm. “Steffie— ”

“Too bloody right!”

“If you hadn’t been here— ”

“Good thing I was!”

They stood there in the dark, her looking off into the brush where the children had run. “I’ll . . .” She gathered herself together. “I’ll have to do something, explain to the children somehow, apologize . . .”

He started to pull back roughly, then didn’t. “Well . . .” She was sorry, and frightened at herself. She was used to danger, and she thought she’d seen it.

Steffie softened. “No likely chance at that, I expect,” he told her. “Story’ll be all over town in a minute. No child will come within a mile of you.”

She dropped her hand. “Then I’ll have to explain to the parents . . .”

“Right.” Then he remembered where they were on the way to. “Half the town’s at the dell now. Good a time as any.”

She didn’t seem like she much wanted to go, anymore, not that he could blame her. But she drew a big breath and let it out slow. “You’re right.” And she turned to go on, but then stopped herself. Very slowly, like it was a hard thing to do, she unstrapped her sword belt and stood with the sheathed weapon in her hands. “You go ahead,” she told Steffie. “I’ll join you shortly.” And she began to walk back toward the Annex.

Steffie fell in beside her. “No. I’m going with you.”

“Really, it’s not necessary . . .”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “You’re not safe out alone.”

She stopped short and looked up at him. “Do you know,” she said, “I’ve been told that before.” And she looked down at her sword again. “But never for this reason.”

8

W
oman,” Dan declared, “you couldn’t dance to save your life.”

“I,” the steerswoman said with cautiously precise enunciation, “sincerely hope it never comes to that.”

She wasn’t exactly drunk, merely unmoored, drifting a bit. Objects seemed to exist separately from any previous context. The dim dawn light painting the houses seemed to come from inside the surface of the walls, very pale and inexplicable: a pretty sight.

She had thought it would be impossible to make it up to the townspeople after what she had done, or nearly done, to the children; instead, she discovered herself to be the center of a new and treasured anecdote.

She only needed to tell the tale once; after that, it told itself, all around the party. She found she could trace its route by the pockets of laughter bursting out here and there. Apparently, the scare the children received was regarded as their just desserts by many. Rowan had stopped reminding them that the danger had been real, after being cheerfully told, again and again, that no one had been hurt, that all came out well in the end, and why in the world wasn’t she dancing?

Everyone asked her to dance, even people she had never met; and it came to her that she had turned some corner in the town’s attitude. She was no stranger anymore. She was a local figure with a place and a history, someone at whom, and with whom, one could laugh.

And so she had danced, not caring how foolish she might look. The dances of Alemeth were not the careful, ordered patterns of her home village so far away; and that, she decided, was a virtue. One made it all up as one went along, depending purely upon inspiration.

Unfortunately, she and her various partners had acquired their inspirations from incompatible sources. Toes had suffered.

“Almost as bad as Mira,” Gwen declared muzzily. She was walking with Steffie’s arm about her, her unbalanced steps now shoving all her weight left against his shoulder, now dragging his weight with her to the right, resulting in a rather interesting two-person stagger. Dan and Rowan walked on either side of the couple, bracketing them to fend off imminent collisions, which somehow never quite occurred.

“I’m not Mira,” Rowan said with dignity, “and I shall prove it if I have to become the best dancer in Alemeth.”

“I’d teach you,” Dan began, “but . . .”

“But he’s not much better,” Steffie finished.

“True, true.” Sadly.

They ambled on through the close, mazy streets. All the houses were quiet, their occupants either home abed, dancing in the dewy dell, or on their way between the two, in either direction. As the group passed the baker’s, a sleepy-eyed little girl wandered out, hair in a tangle, bucket in hand. Dan sang at her in a surprisingly tuneful voice: a nursery rhyme about the man in the missing moon. She grinned shyly, and watched the group out of sight.

“Well, ho, here’s my turn,” Dan said. They paused. “Can you handle those two?”

Steffie and Gwen were practicing coordinating their steps, using the nursery rhyme as a guide. “I think so,” Rowan said. “They seem to do remarkably well. The gods protect fools and drunkards, people say.”

“Looks like you’ve got one of each there.” And he executed a deep bow. “Good morning to you, lady; and if your head ever recovers, perhaps I’ll get you that dinner after all.”

She nodded, gracious. “Good morning to you, Dan; and I think that it will, by dinnertime.”

He raised a brow. “Dinnertime tonight, that is?”

“I’d expect so.”

“Even if,” and here he looked at the sky innocently, “your friend Janus should show up?”

“I assure you, it will take a great deal more than Janus to keep me from dinner.”

And Dan wandered off around the corner, striding with his hands behind him, a smile on his face.

Rowan turned back to the couple. They had dropped the rhyme as being too complex and were now counting, “One, two, one, two,” under their breaths.

“Come on, you two,” Rowan said.

Her “two” had come at the wrong point. “There, now, I’ve lost my count,” Gwen protested.

“It’s one, and then it’s two,” Steffie told her.

“One and two. Right.” They set off.

Rowan was a moment finding her bearings. Silly, silly; she knew these streets by now. She could draw a map of them. She immediately did so, in her head. But where were they on it? Coming from the southeast . . . ah, there. “Left here,” she called out.

“Left here.”

“Left, one and two.” They moved between close-set houses, dirt instead of cobbles underfoot.

Rowan kept being distracted. Strange; her mind felt reasonably clear. Perhaps she had had a bit too much to drink; her ears were ringing faintly.

Steffie was humming again, now tonelessly, to himself. Gwen thumped him on the stomach. “Change the note.”

“ ’S not me,” he said. “That’s the tune.
Hmm, hmm, hmm.
”

“It’s boring.”

“
Hmm, hmm
, ” Rowan went, idly. Odd . . . “Steffie are your ears ringing?”

“
Hmm, hmm
. ” The same note that Rowan heard.

Her steps slowed, halted. “Wait, be quiet a bit.” She blocked her ears; the hum vanished. Unblocked, and—

Steffie had taken it up again; standing still he had more breath and was holding each note as long as he could. “Be quiet.” Rowan said to him. He complied.

A faint, low humming. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Gwen asked.

“
Hmm,
” went Steffie, once. When he stopped, the tone continued independently, steady, uninterrupted by any human singer’s breath.

Suddenly, starkly sober, Rowan remembered where she had heard that exact sound before.

Steffie and Gwen were joking at each other, some coy, boozy quarrel. Rowan turned to them. “You have to be quiet.”

“Have to be quiet,” Steffie pronounced solemnly; then poked Gwen in the side. She squealed and grabbed at his hand. “Come off it, then,” she protested.

“No— ” Rowan said.

“Quiet,” Steffie told Gwen. “Mustn’t wake the sleepies.” He made another grab.

“Hey, now!”

Rowan clutched at their shoulders, trying to separate them, trying to shout in a whisper, urgent. “Quiet, be still! It’s a creature, a creature from the Outskirts.” And Rowan remembered, in the Outskirts: Bel, wordlessly urging her silent; Bel, ever brave, now terrified; then both of them waiting, motionless, for hours, as something distantly heard passed them by.

“Creature? Outskirts?” Steffie disentangled himself, gathered himself up to speak paternally. “Now, lady, now Rowan, can’t always be jumping at things— ”

“Creatures?” Gwen was uncomprehending.

“They’re attracted by sound, by noise; you have to be quiet.”

“What, wild animals, right here in town— ”

“Stop it!” Rowan hissed through clenched teeth. “Stop it now, or it will find us!” It would follow their sound, would come for them, would kill them.

The hum grew louder.

“ ’S a drunkard,” Steffie told her, and his perfectly normal tone of voice terrified her. “Singing along, stumbling home, just like us.”

“Stumbling home,” Gwen sang, like a line from a song.

“Watch you don’t stumble,” Steffie told her. “I’ll just have to . . .
catch
you!”

“Hey, stop, you! Off, then!”

“No!” Rowan shouted; but she mustn’t shout; she mustn’t speak. She tugged at them again. The hum could be heard over their voices.

“Hah, stop, you say
now
— ”

“No poking!”

“No poking, you say
now
—

“Nasty man! But I know your weak spot . . .

“Hey, no! Hey, come off it— ”

They would not listen. They were not going to be silent. They were going to die.

The steerswoman could do nothing but save herself.

Her gaze helplessly locked on the couple, Rowan began to back away, slowly, carefully, silently.

In the midst of playing at Gwen, Steffie glanced up once at Rowan; looked up again, in surprise that she was so far away; looked up again, puzzled, then caught her expression.

What he saw on her face made him freeze.

The hum continued, louder.

“Aha!” Finding that Steffie had ceased to defend himself, Gwen attacked. He clutched her arms roughly, no game now. “Hey!” He pulled her to the wall, turned her, pinned her against himself, gripped one hand across her mouth. She struggled, her cries muffled. He shook her viciously once, and his eyes never left Rowan’s face.

Now frightened, Gwen subsided. Rowan ceased backing away.

They stood motionless. Overhead, a flood of bats streamed home from the sea marshes, northward.

Rowan could not place the hum’s direction. The walls of the houses, whitewashed wood on one hand, stone on the other, confused it. The wood seemed to suck in the sound, the stone echo it back. Rowan tilted and wove her head slowly, trying to find a focus.

Across the street, his back against a shuttered window, Steffie silently mouthed at her,
What do I do?

Rowan gestured slowly, both hands up, forbidding:
Stay perfectly still
. Steffie nodded minutely.