The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (30 page)

“Well, go ahead and do that. I’m in no particular hurry.”

His head moved as if he were literally adding figures. “No,” he said at last. “No, they wouldn’t. They’d have to be all thinking the same wrong thing, all at the same time. See, one by one, none of them’s smart as a steerswoman; but if you put them all together, then the really stupid ideas sort of fall out the bottom, and the ideas that make sense sort of clump in the middle where everyone can look at ’em. So, the wrong thing would have to look like the right thing to most of the people doing the looking, and it can’t, because it’s the wrong thing. So, they wouldn’t. Run you out of town. Unless more things happened to make the wrong thing look right. To most of the people. Or if the people with the stupid ideas made a lot of noise and kept putting the stupid ideas back at the top, ’cause it takes a while for them to fall out the bottom— it doesn’t happen straight off, and in the meantime . . .” He stopped, a pained look on his face. “That’s as far as I can go with that. Right there in the middle of me talking, the whole thing fell right apart. I guess it didn’t make any sense . . .”

“On the contrary,” Rowan said, bemused. “It made perfect sense. I’m very impressed.”

“Well . . .” They continued down the path. “It’s a good thing I stopped when I did. My head was going to bust like a chestnut.”

“We wouldn’t want that to happen. I’d hate to have your demise on my hands. It might be the very thing that tips the scales.”

“Oh, sure,” He scuffed the dirt a bit as he walked. “Everybody loves Steffie.”

As they were about to part ways, she to the Annex and he to his home, he spoke again.

“That Outskirter friend of yours . . . if you know she’s coming, and she’s not too far away, maybe it’d make sense for you to go out and meet her halfway? Bring her right into town yourself?”

She recalled that not so long ago, this was exactly what she had most wanted to do. “And while I’m gone, all the stupid ideas would have time to fall out of the bottom?”

It embarrassed him to be seen through so easily. “Well, yes.”

“No, Steffie, I won’t run away.”

He nodded. “Right. Didn’t really think so.”

18

Searching for information on demons was far easier than searching for clues of Slado’s whereabouts. With
quadrilateral
,
demon
, and
monster
held in her mind, the steerswoman moved through volume after volume, in whatever order they came to her hand, stopping only when her eyes and mind required rest from the dizzying speed at which she scanned.

She soon found an entry, from over six hundred years earlier: a steerswoman, recording the experiences of two women who hunted in an area east of Lake Cerlew. The hunters had been keeping a sharp eye out for goblins, which were not uncommon in that area in those days, had from a distance sighted a goblin jack guarding an egg cache, and had watched from hiding while the jack was attacked and consumed by a group of eight creatures: headless, eyeless, and quadrilaterally symmetrical.

From this, Rowan learned that demons, which the Outskirters knew as solitary animals, could move in packs. She wondered if Janus knew this.

When she heard the door open, she recognized Steffie immediately by the sound of the latch. She did not turn. “I’m beginning to think you’re using me as an excuse to avoid the worms.”

“Not expecting another package, are you?”

Then she did turn. He stood holding the door ajar behind him. “No,” she said. He opened the door wide.

A brown and gray bundle lay on the doorstep. “What is that?” She approached, book still in her hand.

“Not
what
, I reckon, but
who
?”

It was a child: ragged, filthy, damp with dew, and fast asleep. “Do you recognize-” Rowan could not determine the gender— “it?”

Steffie pursed his lips, shook his head. “New to me.”

Rowan thought to wake it, but found herself reluctant to approach close enough to do so, due to a truly astonishing stench that surroundedthe child. Wrinkling his nose, Steffie stretched one leg to cautiously prod the ragged backside with his foot.

The child stirred in annoyance, mumbled a series of syllables consisting largely of “yar,” “gar,” and “er,” pulled into a tight knot, continued to sleep.

“What’s that it’s got, then?”

“It looks like a jar.” Plain brown fired clay with a lid; the child lay curled around it.

Holding her breath, Rowan leaned down to shake the child’s shoulder, eliciting the same response as Steffie’s attempt. Noting the position in which the child slept, the steerswoman gently nudged the jar.

“Gerroff!” The child came instantly awake, snarling, arms and knees wrapped protectively around the object; then glared up at Rowan and Steffie in turn, settled on Rowan. “Where’s the money?”

Rowan lifted her brows. “Excuse me?”

“You that one, that steerswoman?”

Yes . . .

The child raised the jar at her. “I heard. You said. It’s alive and all. I want my money.”

Rowan searched her memory, and eventually recovered the information. “Of course!” It had been so long ago, and the event so minor, with too much else occupying her attention since. “You have one of those green moths!” Steffie’s face was a knot of confusion. “I promised a coin to whichever child brought me one first, alive,” Rowan reminded him. She turned back to the child. “Thank you. I’ll just take it and fetch you that coin . . .” She reached out for the jar.

It was snatched back, and its owner turned a squinting glare on her. “I want the pot back.”

“Very well.” And because she could see no way around it: “Come inside.”

The child followed them in, carrying its remarkable odor with it. Steffie glanced about the room with a pained expression, as if fearing that the smell would leave a visible coating on the walls and furniture.

Rowan took a coin from the dwindling supply in Mira’s money jar, and hesitated before handing it over, eyeing the child.

Far too thin. “Would you like some food?”

Hope, and suspicion. “I still need the pot back.”

“Of course.”

Rowan passed the coin over, then brought smoked eel and bread from the pantry. The child set on the food with speed and concentration, as if expecting it to be snatched away again. “I assume you have a name,” Rowan said.

“Gebby.” Spoken through a greasy mouthful.

No clue there as to gender. Steffie was less tactful. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“Girl.” Gebby grinned gappy eel-flecked teeth at him. “Wanna try me?” The idea set Steffie sputtering incoherently, causing the girl to emit a series of harsh, barking laughs.

The sound was both unpleasant and oddly familiar; Rowan puzzled. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” A glower. “I’m scrawny.”

Rowan was taken aback. “So you are.” A more accurate term would have been
stunted
: Rowan had assumed her to be around nine. “Try not to choke on a bone, please.” Gebby apparently intended to let not a scrap of food escape her, and was already sucking industriously at a segment of backbone.

“Nar,” she said. Although decipherable in context, this was not a negative that Rowan had ever heard used in actual conversation.

The steerswoman picked up the jar, inspiring a quick glance of suspicion. “I’ll just take this outside for a moment,” Rowan said. “I’ll bring it back.”

A grunt, and increased concentration on the food.

Rowan carried the jar out the back door, leaving Steffie torn between following to watch or remaining to guard the Annex against their unpleasant visitor. The steerswoman assisted him by leaving the door open. She sat down on the steps, studied the heft and size of the jar; then, holding the lid in place with one hand, she inverted it.

Steffie came to stand just inside the door. “You going to take it apart, like the demon?”

“I’d like to examine it alive first.” Rowan shook the jar vigorously, then let the lid drop into her lap, swiftly replacing it with her left hand. She inverted the jar again, her hand now on top, covering the opening.

“Now, it should come up . . .” The light leaking between her fingers would attract it. Rowan waited, and presently felt tickling grips on her palm. “Good.” With one hand on top and the other on the bottom, she began moving the jar in tight, quick circles.

Steffie’s expression at this peculiar behavior made her laugh out loud. “I’m making it dizzy,” she explained.

“Dizzy?”

“Yes.” She continued the circling. “If you were dizzy, what would you do?”

“Nothing much. Until I stopped being dizzy.” He caught the idea, was impressed. “Steerswomen teach you that?”

“Actually,” Rowan said, remembering a moment of youthful pride, “I taught it to them. Apparently, in eight hundred years of recorded history, no one else had ever thought of it.” After sufficient time, she inverted the whole arrangement once again, her left hand on the bottom, and smoothly lifted the jar with her right.

“Oh . . .”

The little creature stood desperately clutching her fingers, showing no interest whatsoever in escape. Tall wings were held vertically in a curious crossing configuration; slowly and experimentally, the insect spread them flat.

But all anticipation of pleasant study had already vanished from Rowan’s thoughts. “I don’t like this . . .”

“But it’s so beautiful!”

It certainly was. Wingspan was nearly four inches across; wings and body were both a vivid, rich green, veined with blue. The abdomen featured horizontal stripes, of a green so pale as to be translucent. Two rows of eyes glittered ruby red.

“Have you never seen one before?”

“No. Not close up.”

“You never painted yourself with moth juice when you were young?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t have ’em back then.”

“They’re recent? That is very interesting.” The steerswoman raised her hand to peer under the wings. “Four legs.”

“Lost a couple?”

“No.” Most insects had six legs attached to the thorax; this one’s thorax was in two distinct segments, two legs and two wing sections to each.

The moth began to roam, and Rowan turned her hand to watch its progress, noting the jointing and the action of its legs. When it clambered over her fingertips, she was suddenly face-to-face with it, some five inches apart.

Six eyes in a double row down its head; mouth at the end of a pointed chin, with four tiny rasps at each corner— the face of a goblin, in miniature, so nearly perfect that Rowan jerked back reflexively. At the action the moth sprang away from her hand, fluttered about her head three times, then flew away over the roof.

Rowan watched it go, deeply disturbed. Then she gathered up jar and lid, rose, and quickly brushed past a startled Steffie and back into the Annex.

Gebby was using her teeth to scrape the fat from the inside of the eel skin. Rowan slowly sat down across from her and watched.

Small stature; dull, rough skin; brittle-looking hair; so thin and wiry as to seem almost wizened. Gebby noticed her scrutiny, spared her a sneer. Rowan said, “Do this,” and bared her teeth at the girl. Gebby did so, with a will. Rowan noted the spacing, the unevenness.

“Guess you’ll rec’nize me next time,” the girl grumbled, tearing fistfuls of bread to sop up the grease on her plate.

Rowan leaned back. “I believe I recognize you already.”

“Never seen you before.”

“Nor I you. But I think I know your type. Where did you come from?”

“Har. Out a’ the dark, same’s you. Out a’ the dark, inta the dark; here we come, there we go.”

“Very colorful. I mean, where did you come from recently? Where do you live?”

The girl stopped short, eyes wide. “I gotta go.” She stuffed the heel of the bread down her shirt, rose, reached. “Gimme the pot.” When Rowan did not relinquish it immediately, she became outraged. “You said!”

“It’s a very simple question.”

“That’s a steerswoman,” Steffie said sternly. “You should answer a steerswoman. Or she won’t ever answer your own questions.”

“Only question I got, if I bring another them bugs, I get more money?”

“No. But I’m very interested in other information that I think you have.”

“Bet you are. Be my hide if I tell.”

“Really? Merely for telling me where you live? And who exactly is it who would take it out of your hide?”

“My boss. Pro’ly kill me straight off. Easier.”

“Well.” Rowan folded her hands. “We certainly wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

“Har. No skin off your arse. Keep the pot.” Gebby made for the door, but Steffie was faster. Finding her escape blocked, the girl spun, threw a wild glance at the back door, seemed to decide it was too far to make a break, and turned back to the steerswoman with a face of such absolute terror that Rowan was instantly, deeply regretful.

“No one here is going to hurt you,” Rowan said, shocked.