But she found herself standing, the guard demon supporting her with all four hands. Rowan stopped the strange sound that was coming from the back of her own throat, gasped, breathed deeply, and said, “Thank you.” Painfully, and needing great concentration to do so, she managed to turn around to face the audience.
The Thief of Words arrived at the stage. None of the demons watching approved of this, and Tan’s opponent was herself so amazed that she ceased mating, and her arms quivered anger.
The Thief’s hands were empty. Rowan was suddenly shaking and found herself pleading, so breathlessly even she could not hear, “No, no, don’t take it from your mouth …”
In the sight of fully half the city, the Thief reached up and down into his maw; not with one hand but four.
Four words. He reached again.
He did not complete the motion.
From the edge of the stage moving inward, from behind Rowan moving forward, from all about, demons converged on the Thief. They did not spray: they slashed with talons, tore with thin, strong fingers. He fell, and Rowan could see him no longer.
Then one was thrown back, violently, and another, and another. The rest, startled and panicking, retreated—
And it was Tan, alone beside the fallen Thief, holding the killers back with an attack stance so wide and high that it seemed to be directed at the entire city.
Startlement, all around, in a visual stutter, as the crowd showed surprise— showed it over and over, as if there were no way to move past an astonishment so great.
But Tan was too late; the Thief of Words lay, legs tangled, arms sprawled, a spread of bloody viscera fanning out beside him on the dirt. The words he had not spoken lay spilled between his arms, mute and meaningless.
Keeping three arms raised, Tan reached down with the fourth, twined her fingers among Thief’s limp ones, gently lifted the slack hand. She stood a moment so, with all the people watching in stuttering startlement, and slowly, eventually, in stillness.
Then she dropped the hand and stepped over the corpse. Using all four of her hands, Tan laid out the words the Thief had brought.
One long arc of nine discrete utterances. Within the curve: a second, small arc of three simple words. Tan took two steps to one side, stood quietly, passively; and even her body no longer spoke to Rowan.
But the steerswoman understood. With a sudden, glowing clarity, she knew— not the meaning of the words but the meaning of the act.
She knew exactly what to do.
Her breath was shuddering; she had not noticed. It was from pain; but pain was irrelevant. When she took a step forward, the pain flared through her, inhabited her completely, drove out thought. But that did not matter; she did not need to think to do this.
Standing free of her guard, in the center of the stage, the steerswoman threw up her arms.
She waved them, she twisted them, writhed them. She curled and uncurled her fingers, straining toward the glaring blue sky above. She swayed.
And it seemed to her that it now took no effort to do this; she could not stop if she wished. She shut her eyes; she gave herself to it. It was right, it was pure and true, and it was the one way to express this emotion.
She knew what it meant. She had seen it done twice:
For the child she had seen in the amphitheater; for Rowan herself, in the cave. She knew what it meant:
First words.
One who was silent has spoken.
One we had thought without thought, now shows us, now shares with us, the thought that is within him.
He is like us. He is one of us.
Rowan said, gasping, “Welcome,” through the pain and through the joy, “oh, welcome …”
When she opened her eyes and saw the demons again, it was through tears. When she shook the tears away, she saw, across the amphitheater, isolated spots of wild motion, waving, twisting. And when she looked again, more: every male present, and females— a few, and then more, and then more …
One who was silent has spoken. Welcome.
But on the stage, in the midst of the great and joyful motion all around, Tan herself did not join in. She merely stood beside the words quietly, and it seemed to Rowan, with immense dignity: accepting, in her husband’s place, the welcome of his people.
But not all of his people.
Demon words come too slow for a shout of warning; Rowan’s shout meant nothing to Tan; but Rowan shouted, “No!” She stepped forward; her left leg gave way; she sprawled to the ground.
Demon legs all around, flat feet shuffling, all pale in the whitened light of shock. Rowan pulled herself half up, agonizingly. She clutched at demon knees to raise herself. No one killed her for it. She was vaguely amazed.
But by the time she stood, it was over.
Before her: a guard member, dead, two other females nearby, dead— the three who had attacked Tan. Some people were already dining on them.
A cluster of demons around Tan: not striking her but supporting her, hands gripping her arms, others under her shoulders. Rowan pushed some aside; they permitted it. She reached out; she became one more among the many who held Tan, who tried to lift her up, who did not want to let her fall.
Rowan’s gloved hand was on Tan’s torso, sliding in yellowish demon blood. Rowan tried to slip a supporting arm about her; her human arms were stronger than the demons’ thin ones.
But her leg was not, and she staggered, crying out. She gripped another demon for support. Thin fingers encircled her arm, held tight.
But when she had touched Tan, she felt at once, even through the glove, that Tan’s endless voice of sight had ceased. And the demon’s wound was wide and deep.
Tan’s knees slowly folded, and she collapsed to sit in the dirt. Her arms dropped, moving vaguely, fingers trembling.
Rowan turned to the demon beside her, expecting, somehow, to find a face to speak to. But she only looked down, into the creature’s maw.
Far down. This demon was short. A male. Rowan could not tell which one.
“She can’t die,” Rowan said to him. “I’ve just met her.”
He released her arm, stepped away. Rowan fell.
Tan lay sprawled in the dirt. Rowan half crawled, half dragged herself to Tan’s side, and the people stepped back.
Tan still lived; her feet shifted, searching for the ground. Her arms tried to lift and fell.
“I’m here,” Rowan said; but voiceless, Tan could not see her. Rowan found one thin hand, held it. The fingers gripped hers; and the people moved back.
And back.
Rowan looked down.
On the ground, beside one angled, trembling knee: a truncated pyramid, swirling grooves on each side …
A talisman.
Rowan said helplessly, “Now? Why now?” Tan’s fingers released Rowan’s; and the people continued to move away.
Tan’s wound was a wide, gaping slice. With brutal casualness, a part of Rowan named the internal organs visible, learned so well from her dissection of the first demon in Alemeth.
Rowan wondered at that demon, that person, wondered what strange dangers she had faced to track a monster all the way to its distant home.
The people moved back.
She wondered at those who had followed after the one who did not return. So many miles of land and sea, and hunger …
To capture the beast— not merely kill it, but bring it back, so that the people could learn its exact nature, its mysterious power—
Never realizing that the power was their own word.
And Rowan remembered: in the dark den, how, when the blinded demon collapsed, Tan had held that one, had lowered her so gently.
A friend. That had been Tan’s own friend.
Sitting alone in the dusty air, in the bright sunlight, Rowan knew why Tan had recognized her as a person. Rowan had held Janus exactly as Tan held her own wounded friend; and Tan knew of the miles and dangers that Rowan herself had crossed, to help a friend.
And knowing both types of bei
ngs now as people— then, surely, whatever evil had been done, had been done in error. And if not all the people could understand and believe, then at the least, Tan must help the strangers escape, so that no more need die.
Rowan looked up.
Corpses strewn about the stage, some half eaten; the quiet, singing people, forced back helplessly, standing in a wide circle all around.
And nearby, alone, blinking at the sunlight, seeming stunned, blind, uncomprehending, stupid: the creature, the monster from the Inner Lands.
The amount of hatred the steerswoman felt was beyond her ability to measure. She wished him dead.
She did not have her sword. Unfortunately.
Also, she wanted to live. She needed him.
She got herself to him, dragged herself erect against him. He looked down into her face, seeming not to recognize her at all.
With Tan’s last word in one hand, Rowan put an arm around Janus’s waist, twisted her fingers into the cloth of his shirt, held tight, took three hissing breaths through teeth clenched against pain and hatred, and said, “Let’s go.”
The people parted before them. None followed.
44
She fell twice before reaching the edge of the city. Janus gave her no help, standing each time passive, blank as she pulled herself back to her feet against him, using him like an object. She was almost glad; she was free to feel no gratitude.
At a rock pool, she staggered forward, allowed herself to fall in, managed to pull herself to sit leaning back against the stones. She did not think she screamed when the water first touched the burn. But she could not be certain.
She sat, half submerged, as waves of dark and light passed behind her eyes. She did not know whether, during one of the dark waves, she had fainted; but in one wave of brightness Janus was standing, and in the next he was seated on the stones.
Tan’s word lay on the stones beside him. Janus could have taken it, left her; he had not. He merely sat, his gaze empty. Perhaps he had lost whatever sanity had remained to him. Rowan found that she did not care.
She dragged herself from the water, recovered the talisman, shoved Janus to his feet; and together they went on.
It took a very long time. They saw no demons.
At the beach, Rowan spoke three times. She said, “Go right here”; and later, “Right again”; and then, “Through there.” But by the time they reached the camp, pain so inhabited her mind that she no longer knew what she did.
She later understood that she must have done something; because, by stages, she became aware of darkness and a fire, which seemed somehow very small and far away. She was lying on her bedroll with her cloak over her.
A tiny Janus sat on the other side of the tiny fire, his face tilted up to the sharp, bright stars.
Light woke her. She found herself facing a weird, insect gaze: a hawkbug had spent the night on her chest. Her face was cold, her body hot. Her leg hurt more than she knew how to express.
She pushed off cloak and hawkbug, wondered why the whistle-spiders were silent.
She warmed her cold face against her hot hands. She gathered her thoughts. They were few and came with difficulty.
She had rinsed the burn twice; good. She must bandage it.
She did not have her pack. What did she have?
Blanket, cloak; empty water sack, still strung about her, its spout missing. Kerchief tied to her belt. Her field knife.
Her field knife. She had had it all along. She could have used it to kill Janus in the amphitheater.
He was nowhere in sight. Tan’s word—
It was on the ground, beside her, protecting her. Good. Let demons kill Janus.
He appeared; she had not heard him coming. He sat down by the embers of the fire, regarding her.
She discovered that she was carefully, rationally, weighing the satisfaction of killing him now against the impossibility of traveling back to the Dolphin Stair alone. A small, quiet, internal analysis; an interesting process, whose progress she observed with a detached and rather pleasant curiosity.
Janus was still gazing at her. Something very subtle altered in his expression; she could not identify the change. But it suddenly came to her that, right now, her mind was functioning in exactly the same fashion that his did— and he knew it.
The shock of the fact brought her back to her senses. She pushed herself up, sat hugging her right knee, studying the damage to her left leg. “You might lend a hand here,” she said, and her own voice was oddly loud, thick, the only sound in existence.
She pulled out her earplugs, flung them on the ground. Whistle-spiders were racketing. A tanglebrush clattered. The hum of the demon city was steady in the windless air. Waves, past the dunes, were distant but deep-throated.
Janus did not answer her. “Very well,” Rowan said. With shaking hands she pulled off her gloves and took her field knife.
The burn was an inch-wide line, seven inches long, a curving diagonal starting at the outside of her upper thigh, ending lower at the front. Redness all around, blisters across the length, and in two small areas, appalling glimpses of her own muscle tissue. She shut her eyes and lay back again.
A burn; unfortunate that it was a burn; burns were very different from incised wounds. She had been trained for such situations; the training came to her, but distantly, dwarfed against the overpowering presence of the pain.
But still, the information was there and more: it moved. Smoothly, like a tiny run of clear water. She followed it.
Bread-mold would help reduce the infection; there was no bread at this cache. She must drink a great deal of water, with salt; her salt was in her pack, gone.
Her trouser leg was already partly severed; she could use her knife to complete the process. It was the largest piece of cloth that she could spare, but it was not clean. Janus in his present state was probably unable to undertake a task as complicated as boiling water without a cook pot. And Rowan was not up to the task herself.
She had no salve, and no way to make any. Once in place, the bandage would adhere. It would be impossible to change it. Whatever she did right now must last until she reached the ship.
Presently, shuddering, clenching her teeth so hard she thought they might crack, she forced herself to sit up, wrestled the water sack up and off, and flung it at Janus. It struck him in the chest, hard, fell to his lap. He looked mildly startled. “Get water,” she told him. After a moment, he rose and left.
Rowan rested her head against her knee. She felt as if her entire body were trying to twist to the left, to draw itself toward and completely into the pain in her leg. She thought that if she did not force herself still, it would do so, and she would vanish, utterly.
When Janus returned Rowan drank half the water, was immediately gripped by agonizing stomach cramps, and, reasoning that she could not possibly hurt any worse, poured the rest of the water on the burn.
When she regained consciousness, the sun was in her eyes, directly overhead. She was nauseated and thirsty. She tried to remember what food she had left at the campsite, tried to match it against the food that the Thief of Words had brought, tried to guess how much was left, and found the analysis completely beyond her.
But the thought of the Thief, and of Tan, tore the curtain of Rowan’s physical shock; and for a space of time she lay with her eyes closed, seeing only the slow-speaking, singing people, hearing their distant song, and feeling only sorrow and anger.
Anger. She must live. She must live to tell the steerswomen.
She must act.
She sat up again. Her knife, cloth, and water sack were exactly where she had dropped them. Her cloak was not; it was at some distance, and Janus was on it, asleep. In the warm sunshine he lay curled tightly, as if against cold.
In small stages, with many pauses between, Rowan completed her arrangements as best she could. She sacrificed the sleeves of her blouse to lay against the wound, covered that with the trouser cloth, tied all in place with strips cut from her other
trouser leg. It would have been best to allow the burn to heal in open air, but she would be traveling across sand, and she expected to fall down many times.
Janus still had not moved. Rowan flung the water sack at him again, finding immense satisfaction in the fierceness of the motion and disappointment that he did not startle or cry out. Perhaps he had already been awake. He seemed to know what was expected of him, and left again.
Rowan began to feel more herself; but she knew well that this would not last. She must take advantage of what strength she now had, as soon as possible.
She managed, on hands and one foot, to get to where her tarp lay folded square and weighted down with stones. She opened it, refolded it long, tied the ends together to form a loop.
When Janus returned, she drank; and seeing his blank regard, she told him to do the same, which he did, after a pause that contained no visible thought.
She gave him the tarp, told him to loop it around himself; he did not seem to understand, so she pulled herself erect against him and pulled it over him herself. Her bedroll, with a slit made in the center, went over his head as a makeshift cloak, which he seemed to understand better. She tied off the mouth of the water sack with a loop of its strap, and slung it about herself, not trusting him to tend it. Then, balanced on one foot, she swung her cloak about her, which oddly, she managed to do smoothly and easily; it was that familiar a motion to her body.
She tied the talisman in the kerchief at her belt, put Janus’s left arm across her shoulder, which he allowed; it lay loosely across her.
He stank. He had been unwashed for weeks. She put her arm about his waist and held tightly.
“Let’s go,” she said. More because she took one shuffling step herself, and they both would have fallen if he did not move, he walked.
And when he did, Rowan realized that even injured, she was, at the present, much stronger than he was. But that would change.
She did fall; and she soon lost count of how many times it happened. It began to be routine.
She found herself making various small noises, intermittently, which first vaguely annoyed her, then began to seem merely a part of the environment.
Presently she noticed that it was sometimes better to let herself fall rather than to force herself forward when her energy was spent. It allowed her to recover a bit quicker, or so it seemed. Possibly the phenomenon was entirely illusory.
The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) Page 47
