The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

“I,” she said out loud, “have misled myself at every turn!”

  She was indifferent to the noise she made. Should a demon approach, she need merely become silent, show it the egg case. It would go away.

  Her stew was burning. She muttered a curse, snagged it out of the fire with a bit of tanglebrush driftwood, set it on the sand to cool.

  And now what?

  Janus had inspired someone to cause him to be captured. The only unusual thing that he had been doing: wandering in the demon lands.

  Wandering and charting, as any good steerswoman would. A difficult and dangerous task— but if he had resigned from the order, why bother?

  Why does anyone do anything?

  The answer from her early training spoke itself. “To make one’s life better; to prevent one’s life from becoming worse.” Neither alternative seemed to apply.

  Leaving her— and she pulled the tin pot closer to her, began to attack her dinner with unnecessary viciousness— leaving her wandering the demon lands herself.

  Accomplishing nothing. She ought to leave in the morning. She ought to be hunting Slado, sifting for clues; she could be reunited with Bel, they could be working together again. Instead—

  She stopped short, a spoonful of stew suspended halfway to her mouth.

  Instead, she was in a new and unknown country, seeing new, strange, and wonderful things.

  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

  Rowan 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, sidestepped 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 sidestepped 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.

  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. Wh
ile 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.