The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (59 page)

She awoke, and the contrast between the cacophony of her dream and the silence of her waking world shocked and confused her, and she could not place herself. She flung out her arms, striking Janus’s still form on one side, cold stone and soft, small objects on her right. Moths startled at her touch; their light and their flight showed her where she was.

Underground. The cave.

Janus had not stirred. She checked, found his heartbeat, but could not hear him breathing.

She removed the plugs from her ears. Janus’s slow, harsh breaths; her own easy ones; the stuttering rustle of moth wing; and somewhere back and to her right, the distant tapping of water falling. No demon nearby.

The green, dim light shifted and fluttered; the moths still swirled in a loose, rising column above her head. She looked up. It seemed that some of the moths were rising and not descending again. A high, narrow chimney, she surmised, with perhaps a small outlet above.

She found the water sack, tested its weight with great dissatisfaction, and wet Janus’s lips again. He stirred but did not wake.

She sat back on her heels, regarding him. He must wake at some point, eat, drink; he must regain some strength. She could not carry him back to camp.

Her ears felt almost painfully sensitive to sound after the silence of the plugs. Even the sort of false noises one’s own ears manufacture in silence seemed absent. She heard every stir of moth wing, the rustle of her own clothing, even a tiny crack and creak that might be the sound of the stones themselves.

And, distantly, outside, the single massed voice of the demon colony.

Rowan chose a far low corner of the cave in which to relieve herself, and with nothing else to do, went back to sleep.

She awoke to the feeling that someone was watching her. It turned out to be true.

Janus was awake, sitting with his body hunched over. Only his head was tilted up, the whites of his eyes pale green in moth light, the rest of his dark face visible only from reflection across the forehead, the cheekbones. Rowan felt she was looking into a mask.

She rubbed her own eyes as if the action would bring more light, or light of a different color. She found the water sack again, rose to hand it to him.

He drank thirstily, wiped his mouth. “How far are we from the city?” His voice was cracked, hoarse, hardly recognizable as his own.

Rowan retrieved the sack and set it down behind her.

“Rowan?”

She turned back to him.

“I thought I was going mad, when I saw you.” He closed his eyes, dropped his head, becoming effectively invisible. “Where is this place?”

She turned away again, looked up into the moth-still dimness. “It must be night. There’s an opening somewhere above. I believe that if it were day, we’d see some light.”

He did not speak. She turned back to find his regard upon her again, now wider eyed. “I’m dreaming,” he whispered.

“If that’s true,” she said, “you’d do us both a favor to wake up.”

He shuddered, huddled forward. He shifted his arms, elbows on knees, trying, she assumed, to find some position that did not cause him pain. He could not. He threw back his head, breathing in slow gasps. “Why are you here?” It should have been a shout; his voice was not up to it. It came out half cry, half hoarse whisper.

The remnants of her lunch were still in the kerchief at her belt. She pulled out a bit of dried meat, brought it over to him. She sat on her heels, holding it out. “Can you manage this? You must eat, if you can.” He stared at her as if she were some object, unidentifiable, terrifying.

He did not know what was happening, he could not integrate these events, and she was providing no help.

She sighed. She said, “I can’t answer your questions.”

His expression slowly became recognizable: disbelief. He made a small sound in the back of his throat and another; perhaps it was laughter. “Do you think I care about your stupid little rules
now
?”

She was a moment mastering the sudden flare of anger, and another finding a reply that did not answer the question. “Janus, it is only by thinking like a steerswoman that I managed to find you at all,” she said tightly. “And as we are not out of this yet, I plan to continue functioning as a steerswoman. Now, eat.” She took his left hand, placed the dried meat in it, closed the fingers; and noted that her own movements were harsh, abrupt. She forced her temper down. “And rest,” she added more gently. “We may need to move soon, and we may need to move quickly. And there’s still a long way to go.”

He sat looking at his own closed hand. Words came, as if against his will. “How much do you know?”

“How much do
you
know?” A flick of white as he glanced up, then down again. “It doesn’t matter,” Rowan continued. “I don’t need you to answer anything. Whatever you discovered in the demon lands, I assure you, I can discover just as well. Better.”

There was a long silence. Then: “But you haven’t yet, have you? No.” He closed his eyes. Whispering, his voice seemed his own again, remembered, familiar. “Did you ever wish,” he said, “did you ever wish that you could see ahead, to future days? Did you ever wish to be magically transported forward in time or placed in a magical sleep to wake twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, to see how we will be then, what we’ll know, what the world will become? I used to.” He opened his eyes, staring past her up into the dark. “I don’t anymore. Now I wish, oh, I wish”— and his cracked voice became like the grinding of stones— “I wish all time would freeze and hold us still forever; I wish the sun would rise on the same day, over and over, forever; I wish we could repeat and repeat, and the human race remain
stupid
, and never again learn a single new thing; and nothing,
nothing
ever change— ” He tossed his head back, threw his arms up, as if to guard his face against some sudden, intolerable brightness; but only the steerswoman was there, watching from her place in the shadows.

Then he twisted away and threw himself down on the ground, his face against his arms.

Presently, Rowan rose and placed the rest of the food by his head. He did not stir; asleep or unconscious, she could not tell which.

“I do know one thing,” she said, expecting no reply. “We were
allowed
to escape.”

40

T
hat was why she had not killed the demons in the den.

The second demon had stopped the first. It had prevented the blinded one from harming Rowan and Janus. It had secured their escape.

The animal had acted with intelligent purpose. Someone, somewhere, had directed the demon’s actions; and the demon itself was Rowan’s only link to that person.

She waited.

Eventually, in the flickering dark: demon-voice.

First one hum, then two more, frighteningly clear to her unmuffled hearing. Rowan listened closely to the sound, how it filled the space, extending, rebounding on itself, until it became itself a shape almost tangible, until she felt she herself could sense the exact size and formation of the cave and all objects in it by sound alone.

Only three. She placed herself between Janus and the voices, sword across her lap, talisman standing on the ground before her.

Rowan ought not kill them if she could avoid it, not here. The animals came to this place regularly, that much was clear; they would certainly be alarmed by corpses.

A long pause at the entrance, as the demons evidently indulged in one of their inexplicable pauses; then the sounds split. Two departed; one moved deeper into the cave.

Taking up sword and talisman, the steerswoman quietly rose. She wished she could stir up the moths, acquire more light; but if the moths took to flight, the disturbance might be noticed. But light did increase, following the location of the approaching voice. Apparently the sound itself disturbed the moths slightly.

And now she could see it, overlit and shadowy. Not the female from the den but a male, moving among the piles of case-objects, carrying something in one hand.

She waited, very still, silent. The demon came nearer. It arrived at a nearby group of case-objects and placed something on the pile. Then it paused.

Rowan shallowed her breathing. Hesitantly, the male took one step in her direction. Rowan felt as if her veins were filled with a sharp and sour fluid, and she recognized the sensation as fear only by an effort of intellect.

The demon took another step.

Was she blocking something that the demon wanted to reach? Was there something it expected to see, that was now behind her, protected, as good as invisible? But there was nothing there other than the up-slanting moth-lined shaft, and Janus.

Another step. The demon’s voice blossomed feverish overtones.

She could not move further back; she must not move to the side. She must not expose Janus.

She moved forward, one crouching step.

The male stepped back. It stepped back.

It ran.

She scrambled after it, half stooping under the uneven ceiling. The male, shorter, moved faster and freer, its wild rocking motion making its hands thrash among the sleeping moths; and then the air was filled with spinning motes of green light, and soft bodies battered against Rowan’s face. She shut her eyes, pursuing sound only, stumbling and scattering piles of case-objects; then her ears told her that the creature had found the exit and was gone.

The demon knew that something was in this cave; but she had seen a male’s primitive warning ignored once before.

No. She could not risk it. She could catch it outside, she was sure of it.

It was half stumbling down the rough slope, rattling the tanglebrush, clutching at blue-leaves as it descended to the floor of the ravine.

Humans were nimbler than demons; a far better body design for a land-dwelling creature, Rowan thought with a fierce glee. She clambered along the wall, outflanked the demon, arrived at the entrance to the ravine, showed the talisman.

The male slowed, stopped. It moved left, right, as if seeking an exit now rendered invisible.

The great hum of the demon colony poured into the ravine like water; but no other single demon seemed near.

She had this creature entirely in her power. She could kill it anytime she chose. She was invincible, invisible.

Invisible?

In the den, the second demon had not restrained the blinded one until Rowan’s talisman had been covered. Only then, she realized, had it clearly seen her.

Whatever power had been controlling that demon, it had seen her through demon senses only.

Might it also be working through other demons?

If this demon could not see her, it could still hear.

After careful thought, and with no other demons near, she decided to risk it. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, and she felt foolish for addressing an animal, “but if you can hear what I’m saying,” and the form of her statement made her feel as though she was praying; she despised the sensation, “please . . . give me a sign.”

At the first sound of her voice, the creature had stopped pacing, but had resumed immediately, even more urgently seeking escape. “Anything,” Rowan went on, “anything at all. Something this animal wouldn’t normally do.” But the animal merely ceased trying to find the exit, and moved away from her.

Perhaps the unseen intelligence could not discern her words over the hum of the demon’s own voice.

Rowan realized there was one act that would provide the proof she needed immediately. She slowly drew in her left hand, and hid the talisman against her shirt.

The demon’s arms jerked in startlement, jerked again and again. It stopped. Then it stood, knees trembling, its arms slowly rising and falling, one after the other.

It did not spray.

Rowan let out the breath she was holding, slowly. “I believe,” she said, barely audible even to herself, “that I can take that as a sign.”

It began to rain. The demon seemed indifferent to the fact, as fat drops struck its waving arms, its speckle-skinned body—

Rowan said, amazed, “I
know
you.” It was the male she had seen in the maze, collecting case-objects, snatching them up from the streets, distributing them to other males.

Perhaps she had been right from the first; she ought to have been following this creature all along.

Whatever power controlled the demon now knew where the steerswoman was hiding. Someone who helped once might help again.

It began to rain in earnest, and now the demon clearly did not like it; it quickly folded its arms in a peculiar arrangement, hands to its maw, elbows out all around, resulting in a ludicrous skeleton umbrella. Rowan huffed a laugh.

But the rattle of water would cover the approach of other demons, ones possibly less benign. The steerswoman moved aside; the speckled male swayed, hesitated, then jogged to the end of the ravine and left her.

Back in the cave, Rowan removed her shirt, which seemed less wet on the inside, used it to dry her face and hands as best she could, shook it out, and with no better way to dry it, put it back on.