The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (56 page)

And case-objects were edible. Of course.

If demon behaviors did parallel that of Inner Lands animals after all, one might, by studying two so different kinds of life, actually distill a set of behaviors universal to all animals. An exciting prospect. The steerswoman leaned a bit forward, hugging her knees, grinning as she watched the scene below.

Some of the case-objects, here and elsewhere, were quite large; obviously, she now realized, made of several smaller ones joined together. Less easy to eat, but as a prelude to mating, quite attention-getting. Certain birds in the Inner Lands constructed huge, complex, and purely decorative bowers solely for the purpose of catching a lady’s eye.

Apparently demons reversed the Inner Lands protocol; only females could create case-objects.

And the spectators were certainly an interesting innovation. Rowan recalled her evaluation of the inhabitants of site two: a sociable people after all.

Two of the spectators, both female, were seated twenty feet away from Rowan, with half a mud-lion carcass on the ground between them. They alternated tearing off oozing chunks, stuffing them down their maws, in a weird parody of a picnic.

Lunchtime in the demon lands. And what a good idea. Rowan laid her sword across her knees and extracted from a second kerchief tied at her belt a cold baked potato. It was one of several small items she had carefully selected as being very silent food.

From across the way, she could see motion in one of the groups below, as one demon seemed to touch a tall case-object with one hand. Improving on it, likely. While she finished her lunch, the steerswoman studied the arrangement of demons on the slope around her and decided that with enough care, she could manage to get closer.

She could not avoid passing quite near the dining females; when she was twelve feet away, both abandoned their meal to wander away, in no apparent distress and in no great hurry.

When she was past the carcass and some ten feet beyond it, a male seated nearby gave the quick arm-lift of surprise, then rose, hurried over to the mud-lion, and rapidly tore off gobbets of meat to push down its throat. Rowan continued; and when she was far enough away, both the females displayed the same sharp arm lift and drop, and jogged back to chase the male away from their meal.

The males were on the low end of some demon pecking order, Rowan decided. Size alone could account for the fact.

But as she neared the bottom of the slope, Rowan grew more and more nervous. At the moment, she could keep herself positioned so that her own body did not block the talisman from any demon’s hearing sight, but soon that would be difficult.

And there seemed little to see at the bottom of the amphitheater. The demons merely stood, for the most part, apparently admiring their constructions. Occasionally, some would copulate— and not always in mere pairs, Rowan noted. At long intervals, one or another female demon would produce a case-object and either set it on the ground by itself or attach it to one of the larger constructions. The other demons in the group would grow still, then return to a more natural stance, raising and lowering their arms slightly, gently.

A number of calves were scattered about, either wandering aimlessly or sitting on the ground, four knees high, four arms tucked above their maws. Rowan became distracted by the need to watch their movements closely and stay far from the youngest.

One calf, considerably larger than the others, stayed long at one particular group, seeming to take part in the pause that the others were presently enjoying. Eventually, possibly bored with inaction, it began vigorously scratching itself. The slightest lift in the arms of the adults revealed that the action was not lost on them. The calf was concentrating its activity on its lower orifices; perhaps it would produce its own case-object, or perhaps it was mature enough to be viewed as a new sexual rival by the others. This could be interesting.

An adult standing near the calf reached down one of its own hands, and Rowan discovered that she could clearly tell, from the stance and arm position of the other demons, that they were paying close attention to the act.

The demon, casually and smoothly, reached into its own case orifice and pulled something out: a small column, six inches high, four down-looping branches above, four flat-footed supports below.

Rowan’s first stunned thought was that, bizarrely, the creature had given birth— but no, demons were egg-layers. Nevertheless, she saw, with an inexplicable twist in her stomach, that the object resembled a tiny demon.

Rowan could find no explanation for this, none at all. She moved closer, but demons all along the slope were now shifting position, and the steerswoman suddenly found that she must move to protect her undefended back. She sidestepped, then backed off into a clearer area.

More motion in the demon group, from the calf. It must have produced a case-object. Rowan could not see the result, but reaction from the demons was immediate.

They threw up their arms— every demon present.

Rowan scanned wildly, found a clear route, and fled up the slope.

She was out of the amphitheater and halfway up a street before she realized she was not being pursued; nor had she been sprayed.

She stopped and waited, heart pounding; a close call. She had not been the target.

Eventually, with the greatest caution, she returned to the end of the street and looked down.

Below, and all around the center, demon arms were raised up high, waving, writhing, long fingers curling and uncurling. Demon bodies rocked, swayed. The animals were like trees in a sudden wild wind; and only the calf, entirely unharmed, stood quietly, its arms gently lifting and falling, one by one, all around its body.

The steerswoman attempted explanation and failed. She attempted hypothesis and finally wild speculation; nothing satisfied.

But as she turned to leave, she concluded, at the least, that it would be wise to stay very far from the center of a demon colony.

Throughout the morning, the sky had been developing a high, thin haze; now it thickened, lowered. The sun, a pale lemon yellow, acquired faint sun dogs on either side.

Just past noon, but rain would come by evening, Rowan thought. She still had a good part of the day left, but her close call at the center left her jumpy and deeply unsettled.

Up the curve of the street, motion. Rowan backed herself against a den. Two female demons were approaching, dragging something behind, something that struggled.

Rowan thought for one wild moment that it was a human child— then relaxed when she recognized it as a young goblin jack, perhaps a year old.

One of the demons was also carrying above its maw a round object: the goblin’s severed head. Goblins were so stupid it took them many hours to realize they were dead.

Rowan stood quietly, permitted the demons to pass her. They dragged the jerking corpse into a nearby den, and a moment later, flung the head into the street.

A calf, one within the safe age range, stood by the next intersection; it jerked its arms in surprise. Then it ambled over to the head, picked it up, and stood turning it over and over in its clever fingers, prying at it with its talons. Goblin heads had no convenient access to their contents, as Rowan well knew. But the calf, doggedly probing and poking, finally managed at last to extract a fingerful of blue-white paste from the place where the neck had connected.

As Rowan sidled past the persistent creature, the thought came to her that perhaps she ought to take the skull herself and make a mandolin from it, as the Outskirters did. The idea amused her.

The instant she had that thought, she felt as if they were near: not only Bel but the entire, marvelous, wandering village that constituted Kammeryn’s warrior tribe.

But then she passed the corner, where a cross street brought a breeze that smelled of blackgrass, crushed blue-leaves, the strange, musky taste of the great ocean— and all thoughts of humans vanished. Beyond that intersection and along the street with dens all around, she smelled only the sandy dust and oil of the dens, the salt and musk of innumerable demons.

Rowan’s steps slowed, then stopped. She stood, vaguely puzzled. She looked back.

Only the calf, now attempting to crack the skull by stamping on it.

Rowan turned back, walked back past the calf again.

And stopped.

Outskirters; why was she now thinking of Outskirters?

And what was that smell?

She pictured the Outskirts in her mind, the rolling, rattling red and brown—

Ghost-grass. No, not quite; and there was no redgrass here to rot into ghost-grass at the touch of decaying corpses or Inner Lands animal or human excrement. But something associated with ghost-grass . . .

Cessfields. Outskirters were profligate with their wastes, and not only redgrass died from it. Blackgrass, tanglebrush, mudwort, lichen-towers: any native Outskirts life within the perimeter of a cessfield would die and then smell exactly like this—

But only under that precise circumstance.

There was an alleyway between two dens. With a glance at the calf, Rowan crossed the street and entered. The alley wound around behind the dens. A left-hand jog, and then a right, and she found herself in a little pocket garden.

Blue-leafs, tanglebrush, broad-leaf, blackgrass. But the blue-leafs had turned dusty orange, branches on the ground crumbling amid now-brown leaves; the blackgrass had gone stiff and shriveled; half the tanglebrush had dropped their leaves and stood as mazy skeletons. The scent was strong, the particular smell of plants not of the Inner Lands decaying.

She had found one of the places where the street cleaner demon deposited its loads. Waste lay across the entire floor of the area, in an arrangement so weirdly tidy that it seemed inspired by some obscure mathematical formula.

The demon waste was nearly odorless; this close, the human waste was not. It was not difficult to locate.

It was three days old. And Rowan had herself arrived only yesterday.

The steerswoman rose. Surrounded by the backs of demon dens, in the midst of the dying plants with the darkening sky above her, she felt herself crowded by theories, hypotheses, wild speculations— and hopes.

No. Look at what
is.

She forced aside all preconceptions; the result left her weirdly blank and pure.

And she turned, in the end, to pure workmanship.

She searched the colony. She was systematic.

In short order: three more cess gardens. And from the evidence at hand, Rowan knew another human was in the colony and that person was alive as of yesterday. And that was all she knew.

How do you find a man?

Animals live by pattern. Human presence would disrupt the patterns. Look for the break, for the unexpected, the unnatural.

She found it. It was a crowd.

Twenty-four female demons and half as many males were gathered together, nearly filling the street from one intersection to the next.

Halfway along the street, case-objects were grouped haphazardly about the entrance of one den. None were large, and some seemed remarkably similar; the first time Rowan had seen any such close resemblance. As she watched from her safe distance, one demon stirred and removed a new case-object from one of its lower orifices, placing it among the others. The others stilled, then stirred, arms slowly raising and lowering.

She could not pass among so many demons so close to one another. She could not protect her back in the crowd.

The males seemed to be keeping to the fringes; but one male entering the street from the opposite end trod in a straight line directly through the thick of it. Nearby demons shifted, arms jerking, fingers splaying. Agitation? Annoyance? When the male reached the den entrance and the thickest grouping of case-objects it halted. All demons present became quiveringly attentive.

The male stretched out its four arms wide all around, then high, stood in that pose for a long moment; then jerkily reached down into its maw and extracted one, two, three small case-objects. These it placed on the ground, then took two steps away.

The other demons killed it.

The act seemed entirely passionless. The creatures simply closed in on the male and methodically tore its arms and its legs from its body, thrust taloned fingers into its torso and pulled out fistfuls of viscera. Their victim showed no resistance and only flailed once and collapsed when one deep-thrust hand reached and severed some vital core.

The corpse was rendered into convenient pieces and eaten. Those who had participated in the killing jostled for the best segments, but once satisfied generously stepped aside to allow others to dine. One male took three pieces and carried them to the edge of the crowd not far from Rowan, where it handed two to a male and a female. All three sat down in the dirt and shoved the pieces into their maws and remained at their ease, chewing.

The steerswoman stood watching, understanding nothing, knowing only one thing:

She must get into that den.

All dens had ventilation slits. Some dens had pocket gardens behind them.

She began carefully to back off; but the demons became attentive again. Even the happy trio nearby ceased their chewing and rose, arms weaving as they watched.