The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (26 page)

“Tell you what?” She was prying the cooked chicken apart with her hands, in a hurry to get done.

He’d brought the book with him, and he held it up. “You didn’t tell me there were stories in here.”

“I suppose there are some— ” and she licked her fingers “— but for the most part, it’s purely facts. Information.”

“No, no,” he said, “it’s
full
of stories. Look here.” He opened the book where his finger was holding the place. “Here, this woman Henra is walking along in this place and she’s thirsty and not finding any water for a long time. But there are all these big trees growing around, all green and leafy, so she thinks there’s water underground. She decides to find it. And then she finds a cave, and she wants to go in to see if it leads to a river under the ground,”— and think of that, a whole river running forever in the dark— “but a bear lives in the cave, and she has a terrible fight with it, and kills it . . .” And he looked down again at the page he had puzzled out.

Funny.

There was the description of the trees, all right, but now that he looked close again, it was all just measurements, numbers. And there . . . there were Henra’s guesses about the river, and where she figured it was and why— just a list of reasons. And then the cave and what it looked like, and then: “The bear attacked me, and I had to kill it.” And that was all she’d said about the bear.

It wasn’t laid out like a story people tell by a fireside, not step-by-step the way it happened. But you could put all the pieces together, and they went together easy, they all fit so smooth, and when you did that, it was just like you were right there in that steerswoman’s own head, doing what she did, seeing just as clear as she had done.

“It is a story,” he said again. A far, far part of the world, and struggles and danger, and winning out in the end— “It doesn’t say so, but it is really, when you put it together. It’s . . . it’s an adventure!”

She was grinning at him like he had found out a happy secret. “Are they all,” he started to ask, but then he answered himself: Yes, they were all of them, every single book, filled with adventures.

True adventures that people really lived. Think of that.

The steerswoman wiped her mouth, went to wash her hands in the kitchen basin. “Finish your food, and then let’s see if anyone’s adventure will help us with our own.”

Much later, all of a sudden, he found it; but not by the words in the books. It was a picture.

There was a leather folder, rolled and tied with ribbon, lying in a box full of blank paper. When he untied and unrolled it, loose pages popped out, jumping like little animals, rolling themselves up again, crowding around his feet on the floor. He knelt down and pushed them together, and it was the first one he picked up, the first he laid flat to see.

It wasn’t drawn by Rowan; that was the first thing that hit him. It made it seem more real, somehow, as if the monster were something he and the steerswoman had dreamed up together; but seeing it in this stranger’s hand made it all new.

The demon stood just like he’d seen the first one, arms up and ready to shoot its spray. The person who drew it was better at it than Rowan, because there was a kind of feeling to it, like something about to happen— and a kind of magic that froze that about-to-happen, so that the monster stood still for Steffie to stare and stare at. It made it look like forever, from the beginning of the world until the end, and it made him afraid.

After a while he noticed the writing.
5 feet tall
, said words running along the side of the demon. Well, that was about right. Steffie had a good feel for numbers. And two feet thick, he said to himself, and he found the words that said that right away. A line like a curved arrow pointed at the demon’s top, and words beside it said,
mouth on top
. There was another drawing next to the first, a view from the top like a bird looking down— and there was the monster’s throat, wide open, with the grinders showing inside, and Steffie saw more words, which when he sorted them out turned out to say,
grinding plates
.

A demon would never let you look down its throat; this person had seen live demons and dead ones both.

Quadrilateral
, was on the page, and so was
symmetry
.
Quadrilateral
had a line drawn under it and an exclamation mark after.

Bring it to the steerswoman, came into Steffie’s head, and he got up to do it; but then he knew what she would ask next, so he stopped to look at all the other papers in the folder and in another that lay beside it; and he riffled through the blank pages in the trunk. He found nothing else about demons.

He said nothing when he brought the drawing to Rowan, just handed it to her and waited.

She looked at it a long time. “Was there anything else?”

“Just that.” She went silent again, and as he stood looking at her looking at it, Steffie noticed that the paper was crinkled in hard ridges and splotched. Dunked in water, he thought, then remembered that the ink would go fuzzy in water, and so the drawing was made after the paper had got wet and then dried. The left edge of the paper wasn’t smooth like the others. Torn, he thought.

A steerswoman’s log, dropped in water, come apart at the seams— then the steerswoman had gathered up the insides, dried the paper, and some time after that saw the demon, and drew it.

But— “I guess it doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

Rowan said quietly, “You’re wrong.” Steffie waited. After a while, she said, “It shows me exactly how blind I have been.”

He waited some more. It took a long time.

Then: “I recognize the handwriting.”

15

J
anus was not in Lasker’s sheds nor in Karin’s. He was not at the harbor, working on his boat. Nor was he at Brewer’s nor at Maysie’s house. He was not at the Mizzen, where, she had learned, he had found employment hauling trash and tending the few horses in the stables.

She went to the cooper’s and began to climb the rickety staircase that led to Janus’s room high under the eaves. But halfway up, the height afforded her a view of the yard behind the building. Janus was down by the holding well. Rowan descended and approached.

His battered gray gloves were on the stones of the well’s edge, beside a damp, rough towel. A tangle of soiled bandages lay in a dented tin pot. Beside it, a clay jar, its lid off, held a yellowish substance smelling sweetly of herbs.

Janus was winding a fresh linen bandage onto his left hand, wrapping it down to his wrist. He stopped when he saw her, did not speak when she greeted him; then he silently returned to his work.

He fumbled tying off the bandage end one-handed, using teeth and fingers. He must have done it alone any number of times, but now he struggled, clumsy. The steerswoman watched for a time, then stepped forward and held out her own hand.

He stopped. They stood regarding each other, her face carefully neutral, his expressionless.

He held out the bandaged hand. Rowan tied it off, using an efficient slipknot that would undo with a pull on one end. When she finished, she released his hand and looked up.

He was watching her. He was thinking something— she could not tell what— but it seemed to her not to be a thought that moved. The thought stood motionless, directly behind his eyes. She could not tell what was looking at her from behind Janus’s face: Janus himself, or that thought.

They both stood so for a moment. Then Rowan picked up the second bandage and with a small lift of her chin, indicated Janus’s right hand. He looked down at it, as if it did not belong to him, then moved the fingers stiffly as if discovering that it did. Then he held it out to her.

She worked in silence, taking her cue from the bandaging on his other hand. A single strip of linen ran up the outside and down the inside of two fingers, held in place by windings. It was necessary; otherwise, raw places would adhere to each other, perhaps permanently. On the thumb and first two fingers, the nails were mere stubs that ended directly at the cuticles. The last two fingers were nearly normal.

The condition was worst on the fingertips and palm, diminishing toward the back of the hand. Healed patches of pink against the dark brown of his skin made his hands seem painted.

When she finished, he stepped back and began pulling on his gloves.

Rowan said, “That didn’t happen to me.” He stopped, looked up at her. “Nor to Steffie,” she continued. “After dissecting the demon, our hands itched the first day, peeled the second, and were healing on the third. Even people the creature wounded directly— the injuries are scarring and healing. For everyone except you.”

His head jerked back slightly, a mere tightening of muscle in his neck.

She reached into her shirt, pulled out the sketch. “Where were you when you saw this demon, Janus?”

He looked at the page, showing no recognition whatsoever.

He turned. He walked away.

Rowan stood a moment, stunned with disbelief, then hurried to catch up, stepped in front of him. “That shipwreck— where did you end up? Was it near here? Are there now demons around Alemeth, right here in the Inner Lands?” He moved to go around her; she blocked him. “The demon in Lasker’s field was not sick, was not injured, and was better fed than the others— and you killed it easily, so easily. Why didn’t it spray you or slash you? How did you know it would not?”

He began to back away; she followed him, step for step. “If you know something, Janus, you have to tell! When demons come, people
die!
” He stopped; she pushed the point. “Leonard.” Whom the first demon had sprayed to flesh and bones. “Bran.” Who had died from his injuries after the demon burnt away his face. “The smith and his girl. Young Dionne.” A militia member and, Rowan recalled, a fisher. “Janus, you know something, and if you won’t talk to me, talk to someone. Tell Corey or Arvin— gods below, Janus, tell
Brewer
if you must, but tell someone!”

But he stood before her, utterly silent, utterly still, his face utterly blank. He was not looking at her at all. His eyes were focused somewhere far, far through and past her.

Rowan stared at that empty face and wondered if he might be insane.

Then she remembered that look. She had seen it before.

Fletcher. In the Outskirts.

Fletcher, in the moments when a particular memory came to him: a memory of a sight so horrific, an event so terrible, and a guilt so great that it closed all the doors of his thought and his heart, and he could do nothing but stand motionless and merely breathe.

That look was on Janus’s face.

Rowan heard herself say quietly, “What have you done?”

He did not reply. He stepped around her. He reached the foot of the stairs, began ascending.

Rowan stood back to watch him climb. She shouted up to him, “Is it you? Did those demons come because of you?” No response. “Do you at least know why they came?” He continued up. “Will there be more?”

He stopped. She held her breath. She thought: That means
Yes
.

He said, “No.”

But was it answer or protest— truth or denial?

She could not tell.

Then he continued to his door, entered, and was gone.

16

R
owan said quietly, “I think that more demons will come.”

“Let ’em. We’re getting even better at killing them.” Corey’s voice was just audible. The continuous crunching of the worms as they fed sounded to Rowan like a thousand footsteps on fine gravel.

She leaned closer; loud voices were not welcome here. “And Janus knows more about them than he is telling.”

“Makes no sense, that.” He continued trickling chopped leaves from between his fingers. “If he did, he wouldn’t have gone running at that last one. Wouldn’t take him in the militia now, not if he begged. He’s risky.” He spared a glance at her. “Not like you. When the worms go up the hill, I want you and Arvin to show us how you did in that one you took alone.”

Their success had hinged on Arvin’s skill, and Rowan doubted that any other archer in town could equal it. “Yes, of course— ”

“And come to think of it, let’s get the whole militia— and maybe the townfolk, too— and you can lay out for everyone what you know about demons. Just in case.”

“Yes, of course,” she said again. “But you already know what I know about the demons themselves. And I don’t know the important things. I don’t know their habits, their preferences— ” Corey slotted the tray, pulled out the next. Rowan stooped to stay near him. “But listen,” she continued. “I think Janus does know more. I don’t believe he succeeded by luck. I think he knew that the demon wouldn’t injure him. Now, wouldn’t that be even more useful than anything I could show you?”

“How could he know a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”

“Huh.” He blew gently across the top of the tray; dried leaves flew. “Won’t talk to you at all, that’s what I hear. And got no good to say about you, either.” Three of the worms were shriveled and brown; he flicked them out, one by one, slanted the tray to study the living worms suspiciously.