“I want to see how it works,” Rowan said. She grasped the ankle of one undamaged leg and pulled. The leg extended. “Look at this— it seems to be a natural move.” She tapped the dissected leg with her knife. “It looks like the animal is designed to jump; but none of the muscles seem to be large enough to make that possible. And it never did so while we were watching …”
The bang of the door told her that the woman had departed, quickly.
Rowan considered the severed arm again, then moved to the top of the carcass to see how the shoulder joint worked— and to her amazement discovered the creature’s mouth, at the top of its body, nestled among the bases of the arms. “That’s interesting …” No one replied; she was alone.
Mouth in the center, arms growing out from around it. Rowan took the sword and slid it down the creature’s throat, hearing a brittle rasping within. She levered the blade, flat up, and peered beneath it into the maw; the cross slashes inflicted during the fight made the mouth gape obscenely wide. Inside: a series of serrated, overlapping plates that ringed the throat down its length.
Rowan removed the blade and stood regarding the animal, thinking.
She set down the sword and rearranged the demon’s two attached arms, extending them over the demon’s top, then bending the elbows. The double joints easily brought the hands to the mouth. “It works, but it’s not very efficient …”
Under what altered circumstances would it be efficient?
In eating, the demon must first pick up its food, then lift it toward its mouth. But it would be best for any animal’s mouth to be at the front of the body, so that the animal might move toward its food to eat it.
With an abrupt change of mental perspective, Rowan saw the demon’s mouth as being at the front of its body; its arms efficiently gathering in food; its legs, kicking, thrusting behind, propelling it.
“Water,” the steerswoman said.
“Right here,” Steffie said. He was seated at the bottom of the back steps, a full bucket at his feet, two full pots on the steps behind him. He picked one up. “Where do you want it?”
She gestured him near. “Pour it over my hands.” He did so, and with the remainder and the contents of the bucket, they rinsed the demon from top to bottom.
Rowan took up the knife again. “I don’t suppose there are any gloves about?”
“No gloves. Mira liked mittens.”
Rowan knelt by the carcass. Remembering the woman who had fled into the house, she said, “I hope you’re not squeamish.” She began slicing down the body.
“No.” He had returned to his seat. “I like watching,” he said. “Sort of a shame the thing’s not alive while you’re doing that.”
Rowan paused and looked up. Steffie was sitting more quietly, more subdued than was usual for him. His face was still, his eyes dark.
Rowan said, “How well did you know the people who died?”
“Knew them all,” he said softly, “since I was a tyke.”
Silence.
“Would you like to help me?”
They found two sticks among the rubbish in the yard; Steffie used them to hold the skin open as Rowan sliced down the center of one of the demon’s quarters.
Rowan had expected to find muscle directly beneath the skin; instead, from just below the spray vent to just above another pair of orifices between the hips, there was a fine membrane, turgid from fluid within. “Stand back.” Using the sword, Rowan cautiously punctured the membrane. It emitted a quiet, sick pop.
An oval depression, about six inches long, appeared around the puncture. The rest of the membrane remained taut. Rowan made another puncture, creating another depression. Both leaked a colorless fluid. The steerswoman became methodical, and soon the entire area was honeycombed with depressions. She carefully peeled the membrane from one depression, revealing a little chamber, its back surface striated blue, its edges weirdly yellow-veined.
Rowan rested on her heels, elbows on her knees, hands loose in front of her. She said, “I have no idea what that is.”
Steffie tilted his head. “People don’t have that?”
“No. People don’t have that. Nor do animals.”
“Buy my meat from the butcher. Never seen inside a person. Until today.” The memory brought shock to his face. He paled, rose, turned away, and succumbed to a fit of dry retching. Rowan watched silently.
When it was over he rinsed his hands, wiped his mouth, refilled the bucket and pots from the rain barrel, and brought them over. “What next?”
“We see what’s under this.”
They sluiced the corpse again, the knife, and their hands. Rowan cut in at the bottom edge of the lowest chambers, along the edges toward the demon’s top, and she and Steffie began pulling the entire area away.
It was difficult. Hundreds of tiny fibrous strands, wound into dozens of slim cables, led from the chambers into the demon’s body, passing through cartilaginous openings between adjacent muscle groups. Eventually, Steffie was using both hands to pull the chamber mass away and upward, as Rowan followed with the knife, cutting strands and cables as she went.
It was a long job, and they grew hot. Rowan wiped her forehead on her shoulder, not wishing to bring her gory hands close to her face. Movement at the edge of her vision caught her attention.
A half dozen persons were standing by the corner of the Annex, in the building’s shadow. “May I help you?” she called. They left, one by one, some quickly, some reluctantly. None spoke.
“They’re wondering,” Steffie said, shifting his grip on the oozy flesh. “Heard the story by now, see. Curious.”
“So am I,” Rowan said distractedly. In the heat and sunlight, the corpse was emitting a rank stench, like rotted fish and spoiled eggs, with a heavy coppery tang that hung cloying in the back of Rowan’s throat. “That’s enough— leave the top.” Rowan examined the muscles on the newly revealed surface.
“Ribs.” She pointed. “See how the muscles angle?” There were a lot of them. With the sword, she split the rib cage, and she and Steffie gripped opposite edges and pulled.
Inside, nothing that Rowan could immediately recognize.
She located the cut ends of the chamber cables and followed them inward to where they terminated at a large bluish mass, its surface striated and deeply creviced, shot through with veins. The substance seemed to comprise a central inner cylinder, running nearly the length of the demon’s body. Rowan’s knife entered it with eerie ease, segments of the matter splitting off, fracturing wetly away from the blade. At the very center, she found a backbone of gnarled black cylinders.
Rowan sat back on her heels again; Steffie waited, silent beside her, puzzled and grim.
Even the smallest animals possessed, after some fashion, ears, eyes, a brain; but Rowan could find nothing resembling these in the demon.
She sighed, washed her hands again, and continued her work.
By sheer logic she identified what must be four lungs, four hearts, and the complicated digestive tract, which she laboriously followed to a single eliminative orifice.
Between each hip joint she found four more orifices. She dissected one, discovering its inner surface completely covered by a multitude of short, muscular tendrils. “I cannot even guess what these are for.”
Tracing inward from this, she located a large sac whose contents shifted under her probings. She slit it open. Within: a multitude of gelatinous nodes, each with a tiny, twisted, translucent object at its center.
Rowan’s interest became intense. “These are eggs.”
She maneuvered a few onto the flat of her knife, angled it to the sun, and used a grass reed to probe one egg. Tiny arms uncurled at one end of the embryo, four frail fins spread at the other. A white line defined the future backbone.
“So, that’s a lady demon,” Steffie said.
“Female, yes …”
Rowan knew nothing of the life cycle of demons. But she was certain that special conditions were needed for the creature to
survive— conditions found in the Outskirts and the lands beyond.
Of all animals that might wander far from their natural environment, a female carrying fertile eggs seemed the least likely.
Something had driven this demon far from its home. If Rowan could not determine what, she must at least learn all she could about the nature of demons.
She rose. “Ready for more?”
“I am.”
“Good. Help me turn this thing …”
It was darkness that finally forced them to stop.
When Rowan entered the Annex, the day’s work, and the previous night’s, suddenly caught up with her. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, stupid with exhaustion.
The battle with the monster now seemed distant, and possibly imaginary. The day that had followed seemed wholly abstract, devoted entirely to thought. It seemed odd to Rowan, at that moment, that so intellectual an exercise could have such an effect on her body.
Steffie had lit a lamp and now stood leaning against the kitchen table, apparently unable or unwilling to move. They both remained still for some time.
“We should eat,” Rowan managed to say.
“Right.”
Neither stirred.
Standing in the homely kitchen, surrounded by the accoutrements of human life, Rowan recalled that there had been other humans about during the day; many had come and gone while she and Steffie worked. She could clearly remember the first few; the rest existed in her mind as brief, vague presences.
Rowan also recalled, now quite clearly, that the first person who had arrived that morning had been Arvin, the archer; that the woman who arrived somewhat later, with dark eyes and wild-curled hair, had strongly resembled Steffie; and that the two little girls had resembled both the woman and Arvin.
The steerswoman said, “I hope you were able to reassure your family.”
Steffie’s mouth twitched once. “Sort of,” he said heavily, then stirred himself to speak further. “Gwen and Alyssa joined up to ride me. They do that.” He looked up at the cupboard before him as if it were an unknown object. He opened it, removed two plates, and set them on the table. “Ends up, I’m to stay away from monsters from now on. Like I don’t plan to.”
“Words to live by.” Rowan gathered her strength, stepped into the pantry, and brought out the first food that came to hand: a plateful of ham slices and half a loaf of soft black bread. The bread smelled wonderful.
Steffie had found a knife; Rowan passed the bread to him. “Funny thing about Arvin,” he continued as he sliced bread. “Never much liked him.” He was rambling in exhaustion. “Seemed like, well, he’s got no prospects, and what with the children, and all, I’d like him to do better.” He passed Rowan a plate with bread. “And him always practicing with that archery; militia doesn’t pay, except for the commanders. But he’d rather shoot than do most everything else. Never could figure that out.” His puzzlement seemed weak, and childlike.
Rowan placed ham on both plates. “He does it for the joy of the skill.”
It was a simple statement, which Rowan had made without needing to think; but the phrase seemed to strike Steffie as an odd one, and new to him. “Joy of the skill?” He puzzled it over; then placed bread on the plates, still thinking. “Well,” he said vaguely, “quite like him now.”
Perhaps it was Rowan’s exhaustion, but it struck the steerswoman as inexpressibly funny that one should say of a man who had just saved one’s life: “quite like him.” And she was unable to speak further but simply sat with her arms on the table, laughing helplessly, a laugh more breath than sound. Steffie had a moment of understanding, then he laughed.
They set to their dinners; but the first bite brought another memory, and Rowan stopped short. “Dan,” she said around the mouthful. “I was supposed to have dinner with Dan tonight.” She set down the slice of ham, looked at the window to check the time. It was full night. “I suppose I ought to find him and explain …” She rose.
Steffie waved a hand to stop her. “Don’t need to. He was by here earlier to get you.”
“To get me?”
Steffie nodded. “Came out the back door, saw what you was up to, and bolted.” His eyes were blank a moment, as weariness overtook his thoughts. He visibly forced himself to recover. “What do we do with that thing out there, then?”
Rowan resumed eating. “Leave it for now. There’s more I need to do.” Sketches, and recording her observations.
“It’s started to smell. Better waste no time, or we’ll have the neighbors on us.”
At first light Rowan rose, dressed, and hurried downstairs.
When she opened the back door, the smell struck her, magnified by hours passed, weighted heavily with the morning dew. She paused on the stoop, gasping until she adjusted.
“Don’t half stink,” a gravelly voice commented. An old woman was seated on the back steps, viewing the weird carcass. She had a sausage in one hand and a hunk of bread in the other, and alternated bites between the two.
Rowan suppressed an urge to retch. “How can you eat with that smell about?”
“I’ve smelled worse.” It was the old healer. “Plenty of bad smells in my work.” She nodded thoughtfully, then indicated the demon with her sausage-holding hand. “No flies,” she observed.
Rowan had noted this already. “It’s from the Outskirts,” she said, taking a seat beside the healer. “For the most part, Outskirts life and Inner Lands life aren’t compatible.” In the thin morning sunlight, the carcass looked even more peculiar. Flayed flesh, a tangle of shattered limbs, organs spread out on the dirt and grass: Rowan’s careful dissection now looked more like some uncanny disaster visited upon a creature too ruined to be identifiable.
The steerswoman and the healer had never been introduced. “Jilly,” the old woman provided when Rowan asked. It seemed more a child’s name. Jilly finished her meal, brushed crumbs from her skirts, and heaved herself to her feet. “Right. How’s it burn people, then?”
Rowan led her to the carcass, indicated a dissected venom sac, then rolled the corpse with her foot to display the same on a less mutilated quarter. Jilly nodded, and became interested in the talons. “That’s what killed Gregory, see?” She pointed. “Shoved that whole paw right into him, almost clear out the back.”
Rowan recalled the pike bearer. “Yes.”
“Got Corey as well …”
Rowan felt herself back in the Outskirts, in the aftermath of a battle— counting, as one did at such times. “How many of the injured will live?”
Jilly shook her head, hobbled back to the steps. “Had to take off Sada’s arm,” she began. “If she lasts till tomorrow, she’ll make it. Sewed up Corey’s face, but he’s got that hole in his side, see; we have to wait a day to know. Sarton got a bad burn down his leg, but not down to the bone. He’ll limp forever, but he’ll live.” She seated herself again. “Bran, now, he died an hour or so ago— didn’t think he’d last that long.” She peered up at the cool, empty sky; birds called invisibly from the harbor. “Couldn’t do a damn thing,” she continued, “but listen to him while he went along, slowly figuring out he hadn’t got a face anymore and was going to die.”
It had been Bran’s sword Rowan had taken. “And what about Maysie?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Rowan could think of nothing to say, and stood quietly in the sunbright sour-smelling morning air. “Well.”
Jilly nodded. “Hell of a thing.”
The steerswoman turned back to the flayed creature in the yard. “This beast has traveled a long way,” she said. “I’d better finish my work. I doubt I’ll have another opportunity.”
The second demon arrived three weeks later.
10
“But what did you do with it?”
“Flung it into the sea, didn’t we?” Corey was clearly exhausted, and winced periodically, although apparently more in annoyance than pain. He increased his pace along the dusty road. He had been on his feet two weeks, but dealing
with the new demon the previous night had clearly worn hard on him.
Rowan fell in step beside him. “Someone ought to have called me.”
“For what? We know how to deal with them now. Get the people off the street and shoot it. This one hardly put up any fight at all.” ‘
“And putting it into the sea might not have been a good idea. If the tide doesn’t take it far enough away, it could poison the shoreline.”
“Makes no sense, that, seeing as it came from the sea in the first place, you said.”
“Demons do need a body of water nearby; but it’s not the Inland Sea. I have reason to suspect a sort of salt marsh, with a type of salt different from— ”
“Lady.” He stopped and turned on her. “All this is not so interesting to me as it is to you. I don’t care where they come from. If they come here, we kill them, and that’s all I want to know about them. Now, does this talk have any point other than you giving me a piece of your mind? Because nobody gives me my food for free, not forever, anyway. And if I want to eat, then Karin’s worms have to eat, too. It’s everybody’s worms out all at once, now, and none of us has time to waste.”
They had arrived at Karin’s mulberry groves: stunted trees, shoulder high, row upon row, their branches crowded with palm-sized leaves. There were already more than a dozen workers in place, staggered across the low hillside under an utterly cloudless sky. West, past a dividing path, Lasker’s own hirelings were hard at work, displaying, Rowan considered, admirable speed and energy.
“Actually,” she said, “there is a point. But I’ll not delay you any longer. Good day.”
She left the groves and workers behind, and went down the path back to town.
Two demons were two too many. It takes three to know, was the steerswomen’s saying. One might be a random event. Two could be coincidence.
But that operated for facts in isolation. What Rowan had was two creatures not normally seen in the Inner Lands, at a time when she knew that the Outskirts had already been damaged once. Considered as a whole, the information was ominous.
The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) Page 12
