The Outskirter's Secret (22 page)

" 'The people then said: "We will stay here.
This will be our home." And every eye turned to Einar.

" 'Einar took up his weapon and flung it down
onto the ground. Spreading his arms wide, he cried out to his
people in a voice of anger: "This is not your home, and this is not
your home, and this is not your home!"

" 'And the people understood that he answered
them for the future; that they were never to have a home; and that,
being answered, they must never ask again.' "

The steerswoman heard him turn to her,
invisible in darkness, and she could not tell if he still spoke
from the tale, or was now using his own words: "We are the
wanderers on the edge of the world. We are the warriors of the
land. We are the destroyers, and the seed." He turned away. "You
may stay with us, both of you, for seven days, by my word. In seven
days I will give that word again, for another seven days, and again
after that; and I will continue for as long as I choose. If ever I
tell you to go, you will go immediately. If you ever betray my
tribe, you will die."

Rowan held her breath, then nodded at the
dark, and the stars, and the wind from the veldt. "Thank you," she
said.

I
n the
morning, there was rain again. A velvet mist hovered close to the
ground, ghosting up the sides of the tents in the gray light, and
the soft pattering reminded Rowan of redgrass.

As she emerged from the tent, Rowan
discovered a curious object lying on the ground before the tent
flap, half-buried in the dirt, as if a passing foot had crushed it,
casually or maliciously: a tangle of bright yarn, blue, green, and
white, looped about a pair of broken tanglebrush twigs. She nudged
it with the scarred toe of one boot and reconstructed it in her
imagination. It resembled the sort of hanging decoration called a
"god's eye" in the Inner Lands, favored in poorer households. What
its Outskirts significance might be, Rowan had no clue; it might
have been a child's lost toy, a lucky fetish, or, more
disturbingly, a curse-object. Choosing the route of caution, she
left it undisturbed and went about her day.

As she was returning from the cessfield, a
little girl came dashing by. She stopped short at seeing Rowan, ran
up to her, all thrill and urgency, stopped again at the prospect of
addressing a stranger, and finally lingered in shy indecision,
studying her toes.

"Yes?" Rowan prompted her.

The child replied with her chin tucked tight
to her chest. "Kree," she began.

"What about her?"

"Looking for Kree" was the muffled reply.

"I haven't seen her," Rowan answered. And the
girl was gone.

At the edge of camp, Rowan found a little
crowd of some dozen people: warriors, mertutials, and children, all
chattering excitedly. Among them, Rowan spotted a pair of long arms
gesturing, heard a voice exclaiming cheerfully, "Come on, back off,
wait, I have to report to Kree first."

Rowan joined the small crowd and asked a male
warrior, "What's happening?"

He was more interested in the focus of the
crowd's attention. "We figured you dead," he called out.

The warrior addressed caught the man's eye
with a gaze of deep disappointment. Then, with a preliminary
outfling of arms, he assumed a broad, theatrical, clasp-handed pose
of gratitude, a pained expression of piety, and directed both at
the sky above, as if this constituted reply. The man beside Rowan
snorted in derision, but more others laughed, and some clapped the
newcomer on the back. He pretended to stagger from the force of the
blows. "So, do I have to wade through you to get to my chief, or is
someone going to fetch her?"

"I sent Sith with a message," a mertutial
told him.

"Ah. Wonderful. And by now Sithy's at the
cessfield, torturing a tumblebug." He was a long man, with long
bones in a long body, less muscular than the average warrior; his
piebald cloak flapped to the action of angular elbows, an effect
faintly ridiculous. His dank hair was decidedly yellow, his beard
woefully sparse, and his long face showed his emotions clearly,
emphatically, so that as he winced in indecision the expression was
so extreme as to become the very archetype of indecisiveness. He
visibly rocked, as if brains and gawky body were at odds with each
other. This was Fletcher, Rowan realized. The missing warrior.

"Well," he said, "well . . ." He kicked a
knotted bundle that lay at his feet. "Take a look at this." He
dropped to the ground, folding his legs beneath him like a nesting
crane, opened the bundle, and spread it and its contents for
display:

A number of crusted, uncured goatskins; a
tangle of knotted strips of the same material; an oddly chipped
stone the size and approximate shape of a flattened hand; and two
lengths of tanglebrush root, apparently split from one piece,
showing a number of gouges along their lengths . . .

Rowan came closer, maneuvering around others
who were now stooping or sitting beside the items. One woman held
up the collection of skins, revealing them to be attached to each
other clumsily with thongs, to form an object like an irregular
gappy blanket, singed and blackened down one edge. The steerswoman
reached between two observers and came back with one of the root
segments. It was nicked and chipped along one side only, and the
splintered end began at a particularly deep cut.

"It makes a poor weapon," she remarked.

Fletcher nodded appreciatively to the crowd
at large. "And that"—he pointed—"makes a poor party suit." The
woman had slipped the skins over her head, and the whole
arrangement flopped ludicrously about her body as she undertook a
series of poses, as if displaying finery.

"Someone wore that?" Rowan asked.

"Wore it to his own funeral," Fletcher
replied, catching Rowan's eye; and abruptly, he stopped short, his
mobile features stilled in amazement.

To Rowan's own surprise, his gaze quickly
tracked a route familiar to her in the Inner Lands, never seen yet
in the Outskirts: from her face to the gold chain at her throat, to
the silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand, and back to
her face. "A steerswoman."

Rowan was bemused. "That's right."

Sky-blue eyes stared at her dumbly; then
suddenly he snatched the chipped stone from the hand of a man who
was examining it and thrust it at Rowan, all excitement. "What do
you make of this?"

She took it; and seemingly of itself, it
shifted in her grip into a comfortable, balanced position. "A
hand-axe."

He watched her face, fascinated, then made a
wide, questioning gesture that included all of the
accoutrements.

Rowan added them together in her mind. "One
of the Face People."

" 'Face People'?"

"Primitive people, living on the eastern edge
of the inhabited Outskirts," she provided. "They're not normally
seen this far in."

He nodded, slowly, and seemed to lose himself
to thought for a long moment. Then he broke his trance and threw up
his arms. "A steerswoman said it, it must be true," he declared,
then addressed the crowd. "Did you catch that? Primitive people.
Not normally seen this far in." He turned back to Rowan. "And you
can add to your information that they're nasty little fighters,
slick as a snake, quick as a weasel. I'd rather face a troop of
goblins."

"You nearly did." It was Kree, approaching
with the girl Sithy in tow.

Fletcher rose to his feet to meet his chief.
"How's that?" he asked.

"Averryl was caught by a mating mob."

And all the wild energy vanished from his
body, all the life faded from his face, until only blank shock
remained. He stood, head tipped back as if from a blow, wry mouth
slack, long hands dropped, his stance so limp that Rowan feared he
might fall.

He drew a shallow breath as if to speak, but
then did not. Kree watched him, saying nothing more, permitting him
to suffer. He waited, helplessly silent, acknowledging her right to
do so.

At last she answered the unspoken question,
and the jerk of her chin gave both direction and dismissal. "He's
alive. Mander has him." And Fletcher sped away, damp cloak flapping
wildly about him.

Rowan watched him depart. "So that's the
missing Fletcher," she commented.

"Yes," Kree said, looking after him. "And
he'd better have a good reason for having been out of his assigned
position."

Rowan looked down. The chipped stone was
still in one hand, the broken club in the other. "I think he does,"
she said, and passed them to Kree.

Later, as she was dragging a trainful of
waterskins up from the creek, Rowan encountered Bel, returning from
a stroll among the flocks. The Outskirter fell in beside her,
amused. "Have you decided to be a mertutial?"

"I must do something," Rowan said. "I can't
simply lounge about like a guest." She had received her assignment
from the cook, wanting some simple physical activity, something
that would occupy her body while leaving her mind free. But she had
overestimated her strength and made the train too heavy;
furthermore, the wheel tended to stick unexpectedly, and her
absorbing analysis of Inner Lands regional accents was constantly
interrupted.

Bel, rather pointedly, did not offer to help,
but ambled along companionably. "I wanted to ask Kree if she'd
decided to use me, but she's busy with debriefing."

"With what?" The wheel froze again, and Rowan
dragged the dead train fully five feet before it loosened.

"It needs grease," Bel commented.
"Debriefing. Someone is reporting to her, formally. A scout will
debrief, or a war band back from sortie. Or anyone who's had
something happen to him that's particularly important."

"That would be Fletcher," Rowan told her. "He
killed a Face Person."

Bell was taken aback. "This far west?"

"Apparently. And it occurs to me: If a Face
Person had come this far west, perhaps he'd been even farther west,
and was just now returning. We almost met a solitary traveler
ourselves."

"You think it was the Face Person following
us?"

"What do you think?"

Bel considered. "Whoever it was, he moved
well, very crafty. If it was a Face Person, and the rumors about
them are true, he could easily have been following us for days
before I noticed him."

"Could he have been following us again later,
at enough distance that he crossed Fletcher's position and was
caught unawares?"

"Perhaps," Bel said. "Yes."

The train wheel emitted an evil squeal. Bel
stepped back and gave it a shove with her boot.

Rowan changed the subject. "What have you
heard about Fletcher?"

"Next to nothing; I haven't bothered to ask.
Jann and Jaffry have some grudge against him, but Kree must like
him, or she wouldn't keep him in her band. And Averryl defended him
to Jann, if you remember."

"Fletcher and Averryl are close friends."
Rowan pulled, and Bel walked, for a few quiet minutes. "Fletcher is
an Inner Lander."

Bel's surprise was extreme. "Out here? And in
a war band? Impossible. Who told you that?"

"No one, at first. I heard him speak. He
doesn't have an Outskirter's accent. And he knew me as a
steerswoman without being told. Later I asked Chess, the head cook,
and she confirmed it. She said he's been here over a year."

Bel considered. "Good," she said. She was
following the same reasoning that Rowan had. An Inner Lander among
Outskirters was a circumstance strange enough to inspire suspicion;
but if Fletcher had been in the Outskirts for over a year, he could
not be connected to the wizards' recent hunt for Rowan.

"But it's odd. I'd like to talk to him."

"Ha. You're just tired of the Outskirts, and
want to hear some Inner Lands gossip."

Rowan laughed. "Perhaps that's the case."

They arrived at the camp, where Chess clearly
wished to berate Rowan for slowness but wavered, still uncertain of
the steerswoman's proper status. She finally relieved her ire with
a generalized grumbling tirade, largely unintelligible, delivered
at the threshold of hearing.

Bel waited in the lee of the cook tent as the
two women unloaded the train, after which Chess hesitated, unable
to decide whether she ought to find Rowan another assignment or
free her to converse with the warrior. Bel ostentatiously gave no
clue as to preference, loitering nearby, humming a little tune as
she watched the fire tenders at work. Rowan played along, waiting
by the cook's elbow, wearing a smile so patient that it could not
help but irritate.

The cook's discomfort was ended by the
arrival of Eden, a mertutial whose chief work seemed to consist of
relaying Kammeryn's requests. "He wants to see you, both. And Rowan
should bring her maps." Rowan and Bel followed her, leaving Chess
to her muttering.

The sky flaps of Kammeryn's tent were closed
against the intermittent rain, but one wall had been raised to
admit light. The open wall faced away from the camp's center,
indicating a desire for privacy.

Kree was present, and Fletcher, with the Face
Person's possessions gathered tidily beside him. Dignified,
Kammeryn performed introductions. Line names were handed down
through the female side; Rowan noted without surprise that the
transplanted Inner Lander possessed only two names, and that his
matronymic was an un-Outskirterly "Susannason."

"Fletcher tells me that you recognized these
objects as belonging to folk called the Face People," the seyoh
said to Rowan. "I would like to know more about them."

"I didn't recognize the equipment," Rowan
replied, "I reasoned its origins. What I know about the Face People
I learned from Bel."

Bel regarded the objects with her head
tilted, then leaned slightly left, then right, as she often did
when organizing her thoughts. "The Face People," she began, "live
far to the east. The Face is their name for that part of the
Outskirts. I've never seen them myself, but I've heard of them from
older members of my home tribe. They're primitive. They don't have
very many handicrafts, and not very good ones; they don't make
metal, and will steal any metal they can find. At Rendezvous, if
they're called on to sing, or tell a tale, they never do.