The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Eventually, she stayed down for a long time, during which Janus first merely stood by and then finally sat in the sand.

  She realized that the growing darkness was outside herself, not inside. On hands and one foot, she got herself up to the dunes and wrapped herself in her cloak. The instant she decided to sleep, she did so; it was like a door closing.

  When she woke, it was night. Starlight lit the foam edges of small breakers; they seemed to move according to some formula with which she was familiar, but could not be bothered to solve at the moment. The entire sky lay before her, each star voicelessly speaking its own name; the ocean past the breakers seemed another sky, starless. She was very cold.

  When she woke again, she was not cold, and there was shuddering yellow light: a fire nearby, and Janus beside it. She was sorry for the fire; it made the stars less bright.

  A number of little creatures were moving at the edge of the waves. She could not see them, but she heard clicking and chitinous creaks.

  She thought there was a small, hot animal under her cloak with her; and only by an act of concentration so intense it seemed physical did she recognize it as the pain in her left leg. It seemed to have acquired a spherical boundary and its own identity, separate from her own. She could not recall whether this was good or bad. For no reason she could think of, the left side of her nose hurt, and there was a line of pins and needles along the left side of her jaw.

  And Janus was looking at her. It startled her. She did not know why, until she saw that his face showed some dim expression, where before there had been none. She began to wonder if she were in danger.

  The expression was one of mild and distant speculation. Then, equally faintly, he seemed to reach some conclusion, and turned away to regard the sea.

  She realized that she could still hear the demon city. They had traveled less than four miles; perhaps as little as one.

  She suddenly felt very hot, but knew it would be foolish to toss off her cloak. She found the water sack, and drank, and slept.

  When she woke, she was drenched in sweat and hot, except for her fingers. The bandage on her left leg showed a wide dark line where the burn lay underneath, damp in the center, stiff at the edges. When she attempted to shift her leg, the cloth lifted free, and she made an unpleasant noise that she did not like to hear and wished would stop.

  When it did, her mind was unnaturally clear.

  She realized that she had not relieved herself for a long time and did not need to. At the least, that was convenient.

  When she attempted to stand, she found she was too weak; and then, she was standing. She discovered, startled, that Janus had helped her up.

  They regarded each other, he with the same mildly speculative expression; she did not know what her own face showed. Then he looked west down the beach, looked back at her, and moved to her right side.

  After a moment, and because there was simply nothing else to do, she put her arm about his waist; he put his arm about her shoulder, and they made their clumsy way down the beach, her dragging one leg, half stumbling against him with each step.

  She fell even more often, but not always to the ground; sometimes he held her as she regained her balance.

  She thought they were walking in the dark; she wondered if this were true. She became interested in the sound of their steps. It was a remarkably curious pattern: crunches, hisses, and a long hiss separate from the others.

  She could not hear the demon city. She said, “I can’t hear the demon city.”

  She stopped walking. It was hard to do.

  She wondered why she had stopped.

  She opened her eyes. Light hurt. The view was flat, without depth. The only colors were yellow, white, blue, black.

  Something in her mind shifted, matched, shouted.

  Pattern. The landscape.

  “I think I left some food around here,” she said and fainted.

  It was still daylight, but she lay in shade. Long shadows pointed east. A whistle-spider attempted a tune, found itself alone, and went silent. High above, a hawkbug climbed the wind like a kite, pink wings glittering.

  Every part of her was cold; every part of her was damp with sweat.

  She turned her head; she could not integrate what she saw. The world was sideways. She closed her eyes, felt them flick back and forth behind her lids. When she moved her head back, the sensation subsided. She lay watching the hawkbug.

  She attempted to speak, but made no sound. She tried harder and said, quite clearly but distantly, “I know I left some food near here.”

  His voice came: “Probably.”

  “You should look for it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  With very great effort, she turned her head again.

  He had built another fire, and was feeding it with sections of tanglebrush. He had, she noted, the sense to strip the leaves off first.

  “I don’t,” she said, then forgot what she intended to say. “I think,” she began again; then felt a rush of heat through her body, and could do nothing but lie still under it.

  Janus said, “Take your time.”

  She did. “I think”— but she could not finish the statement.

  “Yes,” he said, “your leg is infected. Inevitable, really.”

  “Why are you speaking? ”

  He took his time replying. He continued to feed the fire slowly, using sections unnecessarily small. His image wavered in her sight; but she saw him shrug. “No reason not to anymore.”

  Was there before? she asked, then realized she had not asked it but only thought it. She decided to speak again, gave the matter careful attention, prepared exactly what she was going to say, drew several breaths. “You really should look for that food, Janus, I don’t feel particularly hungry, but I know I need to eat, and you do, too, I marked the cache with some stones— it’s just past the dune line and a little west.” Many more words came out than she had planned. But when she breathed again, more came. “You’re not in your right mind. I know you can’t see it, but you’re not, and you really do need to do what I say— ” She was abruptly exhausted and nauseous, and she lay with her eyes closed until it passed. “You should look for that food,” she said.

  “There’s no point.”

  “I have no intention of dying!”

  His voice was quiet, mild. “I really don’t see how you can avoid it.”

  Somewhat later, he said, “There’s water, if you want it.”

  She had to think long to find the word. “Yes.”

  He held her head while she drank, lowered it gently when she was done. She looked up at him; he was studying her with, it seemed, kindly interest.

  She said, “Why?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  Why everything? “Why water but not food?”

  “Because you don’t feel hungry, but you feel thirsty. No reason to suffer more than necessary.” He rose, stood above her, gazing out at some distance invisible to her. “I think that when you’re gone,” he said, “I’ll just walk into the sea. Yes.” He nodded to himself. “Perhaps something will eat me, eventually.”

  “If it does, it will die.”

  “All the better.”

  Then it was dark, and it occurred to her that she ought to simply go and get the food herself; so she rose and walked, and found it exactly where she had left it. She brought it back to camp, having no difficulty at all walking in the night; and this was because there was a strange, cool, beautiful light in the sky high above her.

  When she arrived at the camp, she discovered that she had dreamed the entire event.

  But she was sitting up, her left leg stretched before her, visibly swollen beneath the bandages, and her right knee drawn up.

  Janus was by the fire. He seemed always to be beside the fire. He watched the flames.

  She said, “Murderer.”

  He looked up. “I used to think that. Now I think I’m a soldier.”

  “There is no war.�
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  He turned back to the fire. “Yet.”

  “Soldiers only fight in war.”

  “Well, then, I am a murderer after all.” He seemed indifferent to the matter. “Although,” he went on, “if you kill the child that will later become the enemy soldier, what is that?”

  “Arrogance.”

  He made a noise, a small laugh; and he spoke again, but she was suddenly weary and let her head drop.

  Somewhat later, by the change in stars, he was either speaking again or still speaking. “Shut up,” she said.

  She thought he turned to her, but could only see a dark shape where he sat. The fire was too bright, leaving blue spots and streaks on her vision. He said something, something about the future.

  “What?”

  “It’s not a good thing to know the future.”

  “Change,” she said; the future can be changed.

  He seemed to understand her. “You can’t change the whole world, Rowan.”

  “All the time.” The world was changing all the time, was supposed to change all the time. That was important; why was that so important?

  “Look around you.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “Then remember,” he said, but she was suddenly thirsty, not for water but for air; and she leaned her head back and drank the cold night into her lungs.

  “They can’t go further south,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The people in Southport. I never got there. It was supposed to be my route. I read everything about it.”

  Tanglebrush, she remembered reading at the Annex: tanglebrush in Southport. Outskirts life. Demon Lands life.

  It would stop them. No redgrass. No goats.

  The world is supposed to change, all the time.

  The stars were going out; no— clouds. “Rain.”

  He glanced up. “Not for a while, yet.”

  “Put up,” she said, “the tarp.”

  He turned to study her. “Let’s wait,” he said. “By the time the rain comes … I think you won’t need shelter any longer.”

  After a long silence, she said something. She could not hear what it was. She wondered, and so she said it again. “No trees.” What an odd thing to say … and then she remembered.

  Wulfshaven, market day, a tinker’s fortune-telling booth. She and a friend, Artos, laughing, having their fortunes told. “You will die far from your home,” the tinker had told her, “and someone will plant a tree on your grave.” And Artos, first amused, then intrigued. But Rowan was from the north; she had the manners and accent of the north; and in the north, one did that. One planted trees on graves. The tinker knew this; he was playing them. No mystical ability.

  North. The cold, hard desert.

  She was not aware she had spoken; but Janus replied, “Yes, and west.”

  Mountains. Impassable.

  East: the Outskirts. Beyond: blackgrass prairie and no life that would support humans.

  North, where the only life that grew was life brought by humans; where the funeral groves were planted as far out as possible, and the farms, carefully fertilized, cultivated, slowly grew out to embrace and overtake them. And beyond the desert?

  “The same,” she said.

  “What?”

  She found she was looking at stars again; the ground was hard against her back. “South,” she said. The same.

  He was beside her. “Beyond,” she asked him, “beyond the mountains?”

  He smiled down at her with, it seemed, pride. “There, you see? Now you understand. We’re surrounded.” He looked out at the dark land. “They fit, here. We don’t. And all the way around the Inner Lands— oh, if not demons, something else or someone else. Life that fits.

  “But we grow, we’re made to grow. And some day we’ll come up against them. And we’ll fight. And they’ll win. Because they fit, and we don’t. It’s their world, Rowan. It’s a Demon World.”

  She said, “Routine Bioform Clearance.”

  “What?”

  She could see the Eastern Guidestar through the clouds past his shoulder. It was different from the other stars; she could not remember why. It seemed to her like a person, a strange person who could kill or help, and was supposed to help. A person who did not feel or think as she did.

  Everything should be bright, she thought, because it was so very hot. Heat should glow, and this heat, this heat should blaze.

  “Heat,” she said. “Heat. From the sky.”

  A sound from him; if it was a word, she did not understand it. Perhaps it was no word.

  He moved but not far, shifted, she could not see how; but her hand was cool now, and she thought it was because he was holding it, and she hated his touch, she wanted to pull away, but she did not, because his hand was so very cool. She held on to it as a cold person holds on to a warm stone. “That’s what it’s for,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Heat. From the sky. From the Eastern Guidestar.” But she could not see the Guidestar anymore. Then, suddenly, she saw everything, briefly but with perfect clarity, and she thought that the cold light from her dream had arrived; but seconds later, there was a distant rumble. “It kills everything. Everything that’s there. Then we go there.”

  His beautiful cold hand was on her forehead. She closed her eyes. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Routine Bioform Clearance. Every twenty years. Kills everything. Clears the way. Then we go. But it stopped.”

  “Heat … from a Guidestar?”

  “Yes.” Something was wrong, something was very wrong. What? She could not identify it.

  “Why have I never heard of this?”

  “Outskirts. Over and over.” What happened over and over? She could not remember. But she said it again. “Over and over …”

  “How can heat come from a Guidestar?”

  “Magic …”

  “Magic,” he said quietly. Then, more quietly, and after a very long time: “The wizards …”

  Magic to save us, Rowan thought; magic to kill us.

  Magic to kill demons.

  Something struck her face: small, and it burned, not with heat but with cold. She made a small sound of gratitude. Another came and another; she loved them. She counted them, because it seemed the correct thing to do.

  His hand moved away from her face; she opened her eyes.

  He rose and stood gazing up at the sky. “I think,” he said, “that I will put that tarp up after all.”

  45

  She thought she was back in the Outskirts. She heard rattling, like redgrass, endless in the wind.

  She thought she was under the tarp, and there was a sick person there with her— that would be Averryl; she and Bel were caring for him; he had been injured by a goblin; she remembered now. He had a fever, that was why it was so very warm here. But it should not be this warm. That was wrong. She tried to tell Bel, call Bel’s name. She managed to do so, but the name stood all alone in the air, and the rattling continued.

  She thought she was running. Then she was not; someone was stopping her, pressing her to the earth. But she had to run, run from the killing heat from the sky. She fought.

  Then she did not, but her body moved nevertheless, and the motions made no sense and she could not stop.

  “Be still,” a voice said.

  There was brightness, and she was thirsty and very cold. She drank but not water— something warm and salty and musty and somehow brown-smelling.

  After that, she drank water.

  After that, she slept.

  She lay watching him for a long time before he noticed. He faced away from her, sitting by the fire, working with something she could not see. He glanced back, as if he had been doing so regularly, and noticed her regard. “I see you’re awake. Good.” He put aside his work, picked up something, brought it to her. “Can you manage more of this?”

  It was a cup of sorts: a little framework of twigs, holding a scrap of cloth in a pocket. There was liquid in
side.

  She did not reply, but he helped her to sit, held the cup to her lips: broth, with tiny shreds of what had once been dried beef. When he let her down again, she saw that the cloth that had bound his ruined right hand was gone. He noted her glance, inspected the hand himself. “Not very pretty. I’ll have to cover it later, but for the moment, I think the air will do it good.” He studied her. “Rowan, you’re coherent at the moment, or I think you are, but you know that won’t last. And there’s not enough food here to allow us to wait to see if you’re going to live or die. So we’re going to have to move soon.”

  She heard a high hum, realized she had been hearing it for some time. She groped at her belt, at the ground around her. “What do you want?” Janus asked her. She found it behind her head, wrapped in a kerchief: Tan’s last word. Rowan managed to take it out, set it down beside her, and lay back.

  Janus puzzled, looked about, looked at her again, huffed a small laugh. “Your ears are ringing. From the fever. There are no demons here.”

  He returned to the fire, brought something back. “Here.” A square scrap of cloth— cut from the tarp, she saw— and on it, a baked potato, smashed into pulp. “Try this, if you can.” She did not respond; but when he took a bit onto his fingers to bring to her lips, she managed to turn on one side and pull the makeshift plate closer herself. When she finished, he took the cloth scrap, cleaned it with sand, set it and the cup into the center of the tarp. A small packet joined it: the rest of the food she had cached. After a pause, he took the kerchief and talisman and tied them to his waistband. Then he rolled the tarp, tied the ends, slung it across his body. He came to her, handed her something. “Here.” A length of tanglebrush taproot, trimmed to a thick stick. He held out his hand to her.

  She stared at the hand for a long time; then she gripped it, rose, and fell immediately. He caught her, nearly fell himself. She cried out at the sudden increase of pain. “Careful,” he said. Her leg had been splinted with strips of tanglebrush root and straps of cloth. “Take this.” He picked up the stick, put it in her hand as a cane. He stepped away from her experimentally; she did not fall but stood weaving dangerously. He took the moment to quickly pull on the bedroll and put her own cloak about her. The weight of it nearly felled her again.