The question did not inspire immediate protest; but his face scrunched into an immense wince, and he stood shifting his shoulders in frustration. “Rowan, I don’t know. Everyone’s different. I’d have to add up everybody in town, and everything I know about every one of them …”
“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 o
pen. 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.
Barely audible: “Says you.” Gebby stood huddled into herself.
Steffie’s puzzled glance requested instruction. Rowan indicated that he should stay in place; then she returned to the pantry, found some scraps of smoked beef, the last of the bread, nearly stale, some butter and jam. She brought all out and laid them on the table.
Gebby watched, her expression altering only subtly; but she swallowed several times.
While not stupid, the girl was certainly deeply ignorant, despite the age she claimed. Rowan was convinced that she did not properly understand the nature of the steerswomen’s ban. The principles allowed leeway in such situations, and Rowan declined to apply the ban for Gebby’s earlier refusal to answer.
Instead, she sat down, cut a slice of bread, began buttering it. “I definitely do not want to get you in trouble with your boss.” Especially as Gebby’s appearance and behavior implied harsh treatment in the past. “So I’m going to ask my questions very carefully.” She added a thick layer of raspberry jam to the bread. “When I think that what I’m about to ask is something you won’t want to answer, I’ll say it differently or try a different question.”
Whether Gebby followed the logic of this was unclear, but she watched each of Rowan’s actions with a deepening interest, swallowing more and more frequently. “But you still won’t let me go …”
“On the contrary.” Rowan waved one hand; Steffie stepped away from the door. “You’re perfectly free to leave any time you like.” She crunched into the bread. Jam dripped on her fingers; she licked it off.
Gebby was instantly back at the table; Rowan passed her the bread. “I think you don’t get enough to eat,” she commented.
“Never.”
The slice was gone. Rowan prepared another. “And I’ll bet the food isn’t very good, either. And no fresh vegetables.”
“Nothing’s fresh. Dried and smoked. Gotta last.”
Rowan handed over the slice. “And rationed.” Gebby’s glance told that the word was not familiar to her. “Counted out, bit by bit.”
“Got to. Run out if I don’t.” But this would only account for Gebby’s thinness and not the other signs Rowan noted.
The steerswoman found paper and charcoal, brought them over, began sketching. Steffie came near to watch. “If I were to ask you if you’ve ever seen this plant, would you worry about answering me?”
The girl looked, shook her head. “Never seen it.”
Rowan tried again. “This?”
“That’s twister-grass. Can I have more?” Steffie took over the
serving duties.
“We call it blackgrass,” Rowan told the girl. She drew another. “And this? It’s blue.”
“Grows along under the twister-grass.”
Interesting. “All along or just here and there?”
“All under. Dig a hole, find even more, deep down.”
Another sketch. “What about this?”
“Huh. That’s a rock.”
“With this inside it …”
Recognition. “Them’s bad. Step on ’em, they break and slice you up. See?” She thumped her right foot up onto the table top; caked grime crumbled. Steffie huffed a stifled protest and stepped back, driven by outrage and stink.
The steerswoman found the smell irrelevant. She leaned forward to examine the instep, which was the cleanest part of the foot; then she nodded slowly and laid her own left hand beside it. Foot and hand bore nearly identical collections of small, white scars.
Gebby gaped a mouthful of half-chewed bread and jam. “You been there!”
“I believe I’ve been some place very much like it.” Rowan sat back. “Steffie, you were interested in my Outskirts tales. Well, take a good look. We’re talking to a Face Person.”
Gebby did not recognize the term; Steffie had to think long to recover it. “Face People … Those ones that live far out, way past the Outskirters?”
“That’s right. Most of the plant life out on the Face is poisonous to humans. Not immediately but cumulatively. Daily contact, year after year”— and she gestured at Gebby— “results in this.”
Steffie stared at the girl in frank amazement. “How’d she come so far by herself?” Gebby returned his regard with squinting hostility.
“Unfortunately, I suspect she did not have to travel far at all.” The girl’s pronunciation and speech patterns were degenerated alterations on the typical Alemeth accent. “She’s lived nearby for most of her life.”
Plant life native to the Outskirts and the Face was more vigorous and aggressive than Inner Lands forms, and typically would overcome it; but Gebby’s condition spoke of years of contact. If Outskirts lifeforms did exist so near Alemeth, all green life should have been completely driven out by now, unless— “An island,” Rowan said. Gebby stopped chewing. “Off the shipping lanes,” or it would have been sighted and charted long ago, “due south or southeast of Alemeth. And probably quite small,” or passing fishing boats would have come across it at some point, and Gebby’s concern about protecting the location would be meaningless.
The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) Page 22
