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.
Something emerged from the den entrance. Rowan stopped, then sidled to her right, seeking a clear view.
Merely a single female demon. Rowan found herself disappointed.
But the demon stood at the entrance for a long moment, motionless, while the others slowly grew equally still, and Rowan suddenly had the freakish impression that this creature was about to take a breath and declaim some great speech, and that the other demons were waiting for it to begin.
Naturally, no such thing occurred. The demon stepped away from the entrance, moved left, picked its way through the crowd, and eventually disappeared around the curve of the street.
There was no cess-garden entrance on the street around the next corner nor around the next or the next— and then Rowan was back at the crowd again on its opposite side.
For the entire block, the dens were completely contiguous. There was no access from the back.
But contiguous dens, Rowan recalled from site two, were interconnected inside. Enter one, and you enter them all.
Rowan backed away from the crowd again and around the corner.
This street was deserted. Rowan crossed and very cautiously pressed the side of her head against one den.
A hum through the bones of her skull; a demon within.
She tried the next and the next.
The fourth: no hum.
Rowan waited while two demons passed, dragging an entire mud-lion that trailed its own viscera from its slashed abdomen; waited longer while the calf that followed them snagged a loop of intestine, resulting in a brief tug-of-war; waited again as the calf, after slicing its prize free, slowly fed the entire length up, and then down into its maw; waited an eternity while the calf indulged in one of the typical, incomprehensible demon pauses; waited while it took its own time wandering down the street; waited until it was gone; waited until she was sure it was gone; and entered the den.
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And waited while her eyes adjusted.
Diffused light spilled through the entrance, casting a hazy oval on the floor; slanted slits showed on the back wall.
There were no interconnecting doors. This den was isolated.
Rowan set her talisman on the ground, slightly back of the center of the chamber. Protection spilled invisibly out the entrance, guarding her back.
The uppermost slit in the wall was just below eye level, but the aperture was too narrow to afford her any good view. Nevertheless, where there was light, there was access to the sky. An open area, perhaps, like a central air shaft or courtyard, with dens all around.
Lower down: more slits, closer together. By stooping and rocking from side to side, the steerswoman acquired an assembled image of the area beyond.
Flat, earth-floored, the backs of other dens beyond, a number of objects that seemed constructed by the same method as the dens but standing perhaps three feet tall and showing no openings.
No demons visible.
Rowan inserted the point of her sword into one of the slits, applied a slow pressure, checked the result.
A small nick. It might take an hour or more to create an opening sufficient for her pass through, even on hands and knees. And the act was surely not silent; she had felt the abrasive rasp as her weapon cut through the sandy material.
The talisman would not protect her through the wall: any demon that entered the central area would hear her sawing sword instantly. There was no chance of being overlooked by an animal with no front or back, and with “eyes” completely around its body.
But none at all on top.
How very interesting.
Picking up the talisman on her way out, she crossed the street and stood regarding the roof-line of the row of dens.
Some sort of rope seemed called for. Unfortunately, she had brought none.
Still, the den before her was only seven feet tall at the top of its dome. A handhold or foothold might help.
She used her sword to chip at the face of the den, quickly creating a two-inch-deep gouge at the height of her own head. She backed off and stationed herself at some distance, to observe the reactions of passing demons to this wanton destruction.
Four individual creatures passed down the street, showing no interest. A fifth executed the surprise motion, then crossed to inspect the niche, prying at it with its talons, paused motionless for some moments, then walked away.
The creature was apparently not instinctively directed to immediately repair the damage.
Rowan then waited, with great impatience, while some natural flow of traffic caused no less than twelve demons to pass down the street, in groups and singly. Eventually there was a pause.
She could not waste the moment. She sheathed her sword, backed against the opposite den to acquire the best amount of running room, and ran.
A jump, and up, and her toe caught in the niche, pushed her higher, and she scrambled up the slope. Finding a stable position, she turned around to sit on the curve just shy of the crest of the dome.
She waited to see if any creature had noticed her act. She thought she had been very quiet.
So far above the demon line of sight, it might be possible for her to tuck the talisman into its kerchief, freeing her other hand— and she found a dozen reasons not to take the risk. Like an awkward, three-legged, inverted spider, Rowan cautiously worked her way around the dome toward the courtyard.
She rested, gazing down. No living thing was visible.
Three dead things were, however: an entire adult goblin jack; the skull of a mud-lion; and one limb, either arm or leg, of some unidentifiable other animal. All of them stank.
To jump down would be easy; to escape the same way with less running room, and objects to dodge, more difficult.
There must be access from the courtyard into at least one of the other dens. But she might need to fight her way out; she needed to be sure it was worth it.
Her sense of smell had helped her before. Resisting the impulse to close her eyes, she breathed slowly through her nose, letting her mouth fall open, smelling and tasting the air.
There, under the other odors: Urine. Human. Male.
She jumped— and rolled, drew her sword, and moved back against the wall—
And spun away again, swinging and striking at the creature standing behind her, then retreating to give herself sword-room—
The creature, a goblin, did not advance; nor did it fall. Rowan stood waiting for it to move. It remained in place. She lowered her sword, stepped forward.
The goblin was already dead, had been so for months. It stood upright against the wall, in a pose weirdly natural, held at critical points by thick wads of sand and gum. Rowan eyed it suspiciously, then cautiously crossed the courtyard.
The enclosed area was approximately thirty feet across, with three knee-high constructions spaced across it, each some five feet long, four feet wide. Touch confirmed that they were constructed as dens were, but they seemed solid.
Atop one: the first goblin-corpse, which she had sighted from above. She had assumed it was whole, but now she saw that each joint had been cracked or severed, and the pieces laid down in their proper configuration on the raised surface. She prodded the head with her sword tip; it rolled free, fell to the ground, scattering a group of small case-objects.
The severed arm appeared to belong to some massive relative of a pincer-beetle. A number of case-objects stood beside it. The mud-lion’s skull was reduced to mere black bones, its huge jaws lying separate, displaying the fearsome triple rows of needle teeth. A single, simple case-object lay in the cracked hollow where the creature’s brain would have been.
All around: the slitted back walls of dens. Only one showed an entrance. Rowan backed away from the center of the courtyard, approached the entrance by sidestepping around the walls, needing at one point to sidle past the upright goblin corpse, its dead arms outspread as if to embrace her.
Above, a cloud obscured the weak sun; the courtyard grew gray.
Good. Her eyes would need less time to adjust.
At the entrance, she paused to listen: no demon-voice. She sent her left hand with her talisman into the opening before her, then cautiously looked inside.
Only a chamber, empty but for five distinct groups of case-objects on the floor. No exit to the street outside, but there were two apertures, to left and right. Rowan entered the chamber, checked the left exit: another chamber, with another door and case-objects but no demons. The right aperture: another chamber with a similar configuration, also abandoned.
Which way?
She followed her nose. It was not difficult. Left.
Three, four, five chambers, connecting only to each other and never the outside. Some had case-objects in neat collections about the walls. Others contained bits of trash: empty pentagonal seashells, little chitinous leg joints, the odd branch of tanglebrush or blue-leaf.
The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) Page 41
