The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (55 page)

This was what she wanted, all that time in Alemeth. In the chaos of the Annex, mired in books and mundane town life— this was what she had been yearning for.

She looked about her.

Pack, bedroll, stew in the pot, pens and ink and logbook— her camp, a little miracle of comfort in the wilderness. Firelight catching the glints of yellow in the strange black dunes that rose about her. A clear and open sky above.

Insects speaking in voice and motion: some she knew, others whose names she was free to invent. The gentle grumble and hiss of a new and unexplored ocean. And the very voice of strangeness itself: the unending hum of demons, coming to her across the hills and sand.

Someday, in the Inner Lands, there would be war.

Someday, the Outskirts would no longer support its people; and they would move inward.

Someday Rowan’s people and Bel’s people must fight: either against each other or by each other’s side, against a power whose scope Rowan could not even imagine.

And so much to be done before that time; to prepare or prevent or at the very least learn the nature of the fight.

But here, now, there was only the wide, wild unknown country— and one human being with a heart hungry for wonder.

It came to Rowan that with all struggles and duties that lay before her, this might well be the last time in her life that she could be, merely and purely, a wandering steerswoman.

She would spare one more day.

Quickly she finished her meal, cleaned her utensils, stored them, rearranged her campsite, repositioned the talisman, crawled into her bedroll with her folded cloak as a pillow.

She slept soundly. She rose early.

37

R
owan took a new route into the colony: north from her camp, northeast across a huge meadow of sea blackgrass to where she knew that she would find a street leading to the eastern section. She had passed through that area quickly the previous day, while her mind had been clouded by the noise. It was worth closer examination.

In the meadow she gave wide berth to a troop of eight female demons moving off to the northwest, a hunting group, perhaps. They trotted, which action Rowan observed with amusement. The creatures seemed not designed to trot; their columnar bodies rocked wildly backward and forward, their arms whipping about loosely. On rough terrain, they would certainly fall over at this speed. Nevertheless, they trotted.

Rowan paused again at a rock pool and considered its construction in the light of her new understanding. Simple, efficient, but no more surprising now than a beaver’s dam. And the breakwater at the so-called harbor— merely another example of a similar process.

She followed the elegant, predictable street from the perimeter inward— and chided herself for continuing to refer to it as a “street.” Still, she needed some convenient term and could think of none more apt.

With no fear of being sighted by humans, she was able to concentrate on observation, and on remaining safe among demons. It was its own sort of skill, she decided, requiring great care but manageable— although the earplugs were necessary.

She passed demons cautiously but safely; they passed her, on what errands she did not know. Curious, she selected one female, followed it on its wandering route, and discovered that it was industriously collecting and swallowing feces left by other demons.

Interesting. Division of labor suggested a hive structure, like bees. Still, an unpleasant profession. At an intersection, she let the street cleaner go on without her, and looked about, attempting to acquire an overview.

There seemed to be no difference in the level of activity this morning from that of the previous afternoon. Possibly night and day had no meaning for the animals, other than difference of temperature. She wondered how their instincts reacted to the changes of season and was sorry she did not have the time to discover it. She stepped up to a den to closely examine its structure, and decided that it would stand against snow, at least for one winter.

She moved aside to allow a restless and confused female demon access to the den entrance, feeling almost apologetic.

They were, she decided, amazing animals.

Dangerous, yes, and she must remain cautious. But if she did not come near, the creatures acted exactly as if she were invisible. She wished she could move among other creatures with such freedom. What could one learn of wolves, birds, or even fish, invisibly? What volumes of knowledge would that experience speak to her?

She selected a street, followed it toward the center.

The so-called spell-objects remained a mystery— and she did need some other term for them. “Egg case” would not do; none of the ones within the colony looked like egg cases at all, nor had the same effect on demons.

Further on, she had the opportunity to observe a female demon creating one of the case-objects. The action was simple; the creature merely reached down and extracted it from a lower orifice. Rowan nodded to herself, now recognizing the purpose of the internal protrusions she had discovered during the dissection in Alemeth.

But the purpose of the act itself was not evident. Three other demons nearby grew suddenly still; although Rowan had no reliable clue as to the direction of their attention, she could not help assuming that they had noticed the object. If so, their interest was brief, as all four demons then simply wandered away.

With only a single demon remaining further down the street, Rowan went to the object and stooped down to study it, gaining no new information whatsoever. But as she rose, she noticed that the demon, a male, was pacing the street from side to side.

Odd. It was far out of her talisman’s range.

Then she recognized the stippled pattern on its skin; the male from the maze, the food distributor. Interested, she slowly backed away from the object.

When her sphere of protection moved away from the object, the male stopped, lifted its arms suddenly— but not in attack; his arms immediately dropped again. Then the male remained in place, unmoving. Rowan continued to back away.

Abruptly, the demon broke into a run. Startled, Rowan backed against a den, lifted her sword.

Not even pausing, the male snatched up the object, dropped it in its maw, passed her, turned at the next corner with its taloned feet scrabbling the earth, and was gone.

Rowan stood bemused. The case-objects were edible, obviously; perhaps fresh ones were tastier.

Still, the male had displayed rather a lot of urgency— competition within a hive? She could think of no other creatures that did that.

As she continued further into the colony, it occurred to her that it was perhaps less than useful to attempt to find analogies for demon behavior or try to identify parallel behavior in other animals. Demons were not insects, were not birds, were not reptiles or fish, and appeared not to be mammals. Perhaps their organization and behavior were unique to themselves; or perhaps they paralleled the behavior of other, unknown animals dwelling in these Demon Lands. Perhaps one day, when she or another steerswoman finally came to learn about those other animals, that person would say: See how similar to a demon they are?

The idea pleased her.

She finally did find demon calves, two of them. Both seemed to her to be female. Although one was nearly the height of a male, it was less blocky, more lithely muscular, as females were. The second calf was smaller still, but shared the same physique; and its skin was paler, almost translucent. Rowan could see its hearing organs as small, pale bubble shapes under its skin.

Both calves wandered the street, apparently at random. The passing adults seemed not to notice the calves; but there was no way to determine where any demon was directing its attention, if indeed it divided its attention at all within the circular sweep of its seeing ears. But by stance and body language, the adults seemed indifferent to the calves and largely indifferent to each other.

A passing demon immediately disproved Rowan’s assumption by pausing to hand to each calf one of a clutch of black chitinous legs that the adult was carrying atop its maw. The legs were of no creature that Rowan recognized.

The calves thrust the legs into their maws, the smaller clumsily, the elder more efficiently. The legs protruded above, waving back and forth to the action of the grinding plates within, like a rigid fifth arm engaged in some urgent, ludicrous semaphore.

The elder calf finished its meal first, paused, then snatched away the bit of leg that still stuck up from the younger’s maw. The victim of the theft quickly lifted and dropped its arms— startlement, Rowan decided. It seemed not to connect its loss with the presence of its companion, now munching away again. After chewing on empty air for a while, the younger calf took to wandering about aimlessly and was six feet away from Rowan before she realized that the little creature was absolutely unaffected by the talisman.

She backed away quickly. A mistake; the calf noticed and became interested. It followed. Rowan moved left; the motion startled the calf. It jerked its arms once in surprise, then threw them high in attack stance.

Rowan did not wait to see if its spray was as deadly as the adults’: she quickly thrust her sword into the creature, severing its central backbone. Its voice stopped abruptly, and it fell. The steerswoman backed away again.

As soon as her protection moved away from the fallen calf, the elder immediately executed the arm jerk of surprise and stepped up to the still-flopping form. It prodded at it curiously, and then with no further preliminaries picked it up and attempted to push it down into its maw.

The corpse was too large; it remained half outside the elder calf’s maw, its limp arms flopped over to one side. The grinding plates working on its lower half caused the corpse to jiggle obscenely.

Sickened, Rowan backed herself against a den, side-stepped away quickly and quietly.

But she had gained some valuable information. The avoidance instinct did not operate universally. She must keep a very sharp eye out for the youngest calves.

Two thirds of the way toward the center of the colony, Rowan noticed an unexpected break in the pattern of roofs. Somewhere ahead, no dens had been built for a considerable space. But far more interesting was the sky above that space.

A swarm of little flying things was arriving, coming from the north and descending beyond the roofs. As Rowan watched, they came in handfuls, in straggling lines, and then abruptly in a single great stream overhead and then curving sharply down.

She wove her way through street after street until she reached the gap and found herself facing the rocky lip of a little ravine. No demons were near; she side-stepped around the edge to the north side to stand just under the swarm and looked up. Insects, apparently; they continued, undisturbed. Reaching up, Rowan snagged one out of the air.

A moth.

The same as those in Alemeth and on Spider Island: four-legged, four-winged, body striped in a pale green that Rowan knew would shine in the dark. As she held the one, the rest streamed above her like bats, descending in front of her. Rowan leaned over the lip of the ravine and looked down. Below, the slanted floor was overgrown with blackgrass and scrub blue-leaves, all laced throughout with branches of something that looked like yellow, spiny coral.

The moths poured down, doubling back to apparently disappear somewhere directly under Rowan’s feet. Thousands of them; their refuge must be large.

Here was the cave she had earlier been hoping for, right in the colony proper. No matter; her camp in the dunes had served her well, and she would be leaving in the morning.

She wondered what inspired them to gather. If they were night hunters now returning home, they were rather late about it; it was midmorning.

She released her captive; it made two small, quick circles, then oriented and headed for the cave. As if at a signal, the entire overhead stream sank to the ground. The steerswoman suddenly found herself in the heart of a living current, the small bodies striking her softly, almost silently. Through the earplugs, she heard them only when they gently thumped her head, rustled her hair. They were unharmed; she was unharmed. She caught herself laughing in delight, stopped the risky noise with the greatest difficulty.

She arrived at the edge of the colony’s center and stood gazing across its sweep; then settled down to sit with her back against a den, the talisman standing guard at her feet.

More demons were present than on the previous day. Perhaps thirty were scattered about the slope, with three groups at the bottom clustered around collections of case-objects. Rowan watched for some time, but the only activity immediately identifiable below was intermittent spates of mating.

That might be the purpose of this area, despite the mating she had witnessed at the perimeter. These circumstances seemed much more formal. In fact, the setting even weirdly resembled a rough amphitheater— with the demons on the slopes as spectators? She found herself entering into a series of hilarious speculations, which she forced herself to stop for fear of laughing out loud.

But perhaps she was not far from the truth. In the Inner Lands, many animals enacted complex mating rituals. And often— and she became interested in the idea— these included offerings of gifts.