The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (17 page)

“Words to live by.” Rowan gathered her strength, stepped into the pantry, and brought out the first food that came to hand: a plateful of ham slices and half a loaf of soft black bread. The bread smelled wonderful.

Steffie had found a knife; Rowan passed the bread to him. “Funny thing about Arvin,” he continued as he sliced bread. “Never much liked him.” He was rambling in exhaustion. “Seemed like, well, he’s got no prospects, and what with the children, and all, I’d like him to do better.” He passed Rowan a plate with bread. “And him always practicing with that archery; militia doesn’t pay, except for the commanders. But he’d rather shoot than do most everything else. Never could figure that out.” His puzzlement seemed weak, and childlike.

Rowan placed ham on both plates. “He does it for the joy of the skill.”

It was a simple statement, which Rowan had made without needing to think; but the phrase seemed to strike Steffie as an odd one, and new to him. “Joy of the skill?” He puzzled it over; then placed bread on the plates, still thinking. “Well,” he said vaguely, “quite like him now.”

Perhaps it was Rowan’s exhaustion, but it struck the steerswoman as inexpressibly funny that one should say of a man who had just saved one’s life: “quite like him.” And she was unable to speak further but simply sat with her arms on the table, laughing helplessly, a laugh more breath than sound. Steffie had a moment of understanding, then he laughed.

They set to their dinners; but the first bite brought another memory, and Rowan stopped short. “Dan,” she said around the mouthful. “I was supposed to have dinner with Dan tonight.” She set down the slice of ham, looked at the window to check the time. It was full night. “I suppose I ought to find him and explain . . .” She rose.

Steffie waved a hand to stop her. “Don’t need to. He was by here earlier to get you.”

“To get me?”

Steffie nodded. “Came out the back door, saw what you was up to, and bolted.” His eyes were blank a moment, as weariness overtook his thoughts. He visibly forced himself to recover. “What do we do with that thing out there, then?”

Rowan resumed eating. “Leave it for now. There’s more I need to do.” Sketches, and recording her observations.

“It’s started to smell. Better waste no time, or we’ll have the neighbors on us.”

At first light Rowan rose, dressed, and hurried downstairs.

When she opened the back door, the smell struck her, magnified by hours passed, weighted heavily with the morning dew. She paused on the stoop, gasping until she adjusted.

“Don’t half stink,” a gravelly voice commented. An old woman was seated on the back steps, viewing the weird carcass. She had a sausage in one hand and a hunk of bread in the other, and alternated bites between the two.

Rowan suppressed an urge to retch. “How can you eat with that smell about?”

“I’ve smelled worse.” It was the old healer. “Plenty of bad smells in my work.” She nodded thoughtfully, then indicated the demon with her sausage-holding hand. “No flies,” she observed.

Rowan had noted this already. “It’s from the Outskirts,” she said, taking a seat beside the healer. “For the most part, Outskirts life and Inner Lands life aren’t compatible.” In the thin morning sunlight, the carcass looked even more peculiar. Flayed flesh, a tangle of shattered limbs, organs spread out on the dirt and grass: Rowan’s careful dissection now looked more like some uncanny disaster visited upon a creature too ruined to be identifiable.

The steerswoman and the healer had never been introduced. “Jilly,” the old woman provided when Rowan asked. It seemed more a child’s name. Jilly finished her meal, brushed crumbs from her skirts, and heaved herself to her feet. “Right. How’s it burn people, then?”

Rowan led her to the carcass, indicated a dissected venom sac, then rolled the corpse with her foot to display the same on a less mutilated quarter. Jilly nodded, and became interested in the talons. “That’s what killed Gregory, see?” She pointed. “Shoved that whole paw right into him, almost clear out the back.”

Rowan recalled the pike bearer. “Yes.”

“Got Corey as well . . .”

Rowan felt herself back in the Outskirts, in the aftermath of a battle— counting, as one did at such times. “How many of the injured will live?”

Jilly shook her head, hobbled back to the steps. “Had to take off Sada’s arm,” she began. “If she lasts till tomorrow, she’ll make it. Sewed up Corey’s face, but he’s got that hole in his side, see; we have to wait a day to know. Sarton got a bad burn down his leg, but not down to the bone. He’ll limp forever, but he’ll live.” She seated herself again. “Bran, now, he died an hour or so ago— didn’t think he’d last that long.” She peered up at the cool, empty sky; birds called invisibly from the harbor. “Couldn’t do a damn thing,” she continued, “but listen to him while he went along, slowly figuring out he hadn’t got a face anymore and was going to die.”

It had been Bran’s sword Rowan had taken. “And what about Maysie?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Rowan could think of nothing to say, and stood quietly in the sunbright sour-smelling morning air. “Well.”

Jilly nodded. “Hell of a thing.”

The steerswoman turned back to the flayed creature in the yard. “This beast has traveled a long way,” she said. “I’d better finish my work. I doubt I’ll have another opportunity.”

The second demon arrived three weeks later.

10

“B
ut what did you do with it?”

“Flung it into the sea, didn’t we?” Corey was clearly exhausted, and winced periodically, although apparently more in annoyance than pain. He increased his pace along the dusty road. He had been on his feet two weeks, but dealing with the new demon the previous night had clearly worn hard on him.

Rowan fell in step beside him. “Someone ought to have called me.”

“For what? We know how to deal with them now. Get the people off the street and shoot it. This one hardly put up any fight at all.” ‘

“And putting it into the sea might not have been a good idea. If the tide doesn’t take it far enough away, it could poison the shoreline.”

“Makes no sense, that, seeing as it came from the sea in the first place, you said.”

“Demons do need a body of water nearby; but it’s not the Inland Sea. I have reason to suspect a sort of salt marsh, with a type of salt different from— ”

“Lady.” He stopped and turned on her. “All this is not so interesting to me as it is to you. I don’t care where they come from. If they come here, we kill them, and that’s all I want to know about them. Now, does this talk have any point other than you giving me a piece of your mind? Because nobody gives me my food for free, not forever, anyway. And if I want to eat, then Karin’s worms have to eat, too. It’s everybody’s worms out all at once, now, and none of us has time to waste.”

They had arrived at Karin’s mulberry groves: stunted trees, shoulder high, row upon row, their branches crowded with palm-sized leaves. There were already more than a dozen workers in place, staggered across the low hillside under an utterly cloudless sky. West, past a dividing path, Lasker’s own hirelings were hard at work, displaying, Rowan considered, admirable speed and energy.

“Actually,” she said, “there is a point. But I’ll not delay you any longer. Good day.”

She left the groves and workers behind, and went down the path back to town.

Two demons were two too many.
It takes three to know,
was the steerswomen’s saying. One might be a random event. Two could be coincidence.

But that operated for facts in isolation. What Rowan had was two creatures not normally seen in the Inner Lands, at a time when she knew that the Outskirts had already been damaged once. Considered as a whole, the information was ominous.

More creatures from the wildlands— goblins, swarmers, snip-beetles, fool-yous, even mud-lions— might be wandering into civilized country. Slado might even have struck at the Outskirters again— with Bel herself still somewhere among them.

Fletcher had given warning last time. There would be no such help next time.

Rowan wished she could take up her pack and charts and search the wilderness for Bel— or at the least, locate Kammeryn’s tribe, assure herself that the seyoh and his people had not been harmed.

She found she had stopped in the street, so great was her urge to turn around, go out, and leave Alemeth and its gossipy, mundane inhabitants behind.

Steffie had been right. She was far more comfortable among unusual people. They were easier for her to love.

She continued on her way.

But she was being unkind. Janus recognized the virtues of these people, and cared for them. Rowan loved strange people, she realized, because she loved strangeness itself, newness, and discovery. Janus had moved to the opposite extreme.

He would do well here, in Mira’s old job.

She reached the Annex, and paused outside, trying to view it as if coming across it new. It was a pleasant house, with a high ground floor and a small gabled second storey crouched under the roof. Three tall and satisfyingly clean windows of rare glass panes faced the street, the one to the right of the door affording a clear view all the way to the worktable. The other windows presented passersby with two segments of the first bookcase, volumes filling the windows completely, as if in a shop display.

She imagined a steerswoman arriving here after hard travel, finding sanctuary, a warm hearth, a welcoming and trustworthy custodian, someone who would cherish the knowledge she brought, order and protect it . . .

A pleasant thought, especially with Janus in that role— if the Prime allowed it.

It had been three weeks before a ship had been able to take the letter concerning Janus to the port city of Donner. From there, it might have been further delayed.

Still, it was possible, with enough luck and speed, and just barely possible that a reply would arrive soon.

She decided to check again at the harbor.

Alemeth during worm feeding seemed a city of ghosts and children. Old High Street was completely deserted. Someone had left a bucket of dirt and a garden fork under a window box half filled with earth. Rowan had seen the same bucket and fork in the same place the previous morning. At the bakery where she stopped to acquire rolls for her breakfast, the ovens were cold, and only a girl of about nine years old was present, nervously tending the till. Rowan selected three of the least ancient egg buns, waited patiently while the girl laboriously figured change for the coin Rowan offered. She got it wrong, and Rowan was about to demonstrate the correct sum— but the girl shied back when the steerswoman neared.

Possibly she had been one of the pranksters on the night before the first demon had come. Rowan had grown accustomed to such treatment by now; the easy attitude of the parents was not shared by the children. Rowan had sent the word around town that any child bringing the steerswoman a live specimen of the glowing moths would receive a reward, hoping that greed would break the barrier, but to no effect.

She sighed, informed the girl that a fourth bun would even the score, took it, and took herself back outside.

A woman was seated on the sturdy bench by the bakery door, in a head-dropped posture of weariness. Rowan at first took her to be a grannie not strong enough to work the groves— then realized that it was Maysie. The steerswoman sat down beside her, and wished her a good morning.

Maysie returned the greeting, with a quick sidelong glance from under her hair. She had taken to wearing it loose— not an attractive style for hair of her texture, interspersed as it was with grizzling gray. But it was clean, as was her clothing, typical home-quality Alemeth silk worn with typical Alemeth disregard for color combination.

“I suppose your ‘boys and girls’ are off to the mulberry groves.” This elicited a mute nod. “Steffie and Gwen have gone, as well. I was beginning to wonder if Alemeth worked at all, other than the shopkeepers and fishers. And now if I were to find my roof leaking, I suppose I’d have to either climb up there myself or keep a pot under the drips until the worms go up the hill.”

Maysie continued to gaze at the ground. Rowan felt sorry. She missed Maysie’s wryness, her perspective, her commonsense wisdom. She had been one of the pleasanter aspects of Alemeth, before the demon attack.

Now she sat, head down, hands on her knees, basket at her feet, toying with a handful of coins.

Abruptly, Rowan understood. “Would you like me to go into the shop for you?” I

A quick glance up, a brief, twisted smile. “Thank you.”

Rowan took the coins and basket, learned Maysie’s requirements, and startled the child by returning so inexplicably. She collected loaves of bread, a dozen biscuits, and this time did not leave until the jittering girl submitted to a forced lesson in simple math.

Back outside, she handed the goods to Maysie, then reclaimed her seat. She sat seething, and cast about for something to say to Maysie, but found difficulty broaching the subject without including a comment that might be hurtful. Unable to remain silent, she at last settled on: “That’s a remarkably stupid little girl in there.”

“I can’t blame Anna. She’s just a child.”

“She ought to be able to handle simple decimal arithmetic by now.”