The Outskirter's Secret (36 page)

As she watched, the earth's shadow overtook
the Guidestar, and it vanished from sight.

Between two tents, in a patch of sky toward
the edge of camp, five little stars, a canted parallelogram with a
dipped tail: the tiny constellation of the Dolphin, caught in a
joyous leap from the horizon into the sky. And because it was a
dolphin, because it was of the sea that she loved, and because it
named itself to her without her asking, she walked toward it.

From the edge of camp to the hills in the
distance, the redgrass, bleached silver-gray by darkness, wavered
and rippled like a sea that reflected more starlight than shone
upon it. The night rattled sweetly with the voices of the grass.
Stretched along the horizon, the Milky Way was a cold and glorious
banner of light. Rowan rested her eyes on the sight.

During a lull in the light breeze, another
sound came to her; not far to her left, someone was weeping, alone.
Rowan turned to walk away, then turned back, because the voice was
a child's.

Rowan found the child crouched among a stack
of trains: a small form, ghost-pale in starlight. "Who is that?" A
tangle of dark hair above a blurred, shadowy face. "Sithy?" The
girl tried to compose her sobs into words, but failed.

The steerswoman came closer, hesitant. She
had never learned how to comfort the sorrows of children. Stooping
down, she put one hand on the small shoulder, then withdrew it
instantly. The touch was faintly shocking; the child had seemed
insubstantial before, only her voice real.

Sithy was clutching something to her chest:
large, square, its woven pattern visible despite the dimness. It
was a box, such as Outskirters kept by their beds to store small
possessions, but too large to belong to a child. "Sithy," Rowan
said again.

The girl's voice resolved into a word; but it
was only her own name. "Sith . . ." Inside the box, something
shifted quietly from a high corner to a low one.

With nothing else to say, Rowan said, "Yes .
. ."

The sobbing ceased, held back for a long
moment by sheer force of will; then words came from the girl,
half-choked, half-shouted. "Sith, Maudsdotter, Haviva!"

Solitary Maud had had one small connection
with the living tribe.

The weeping resumed, but silent, Sithy's
little body shuddering violently. Rowan raised her head and looked
past the child, at nothing. "I see," she said at last. And she sat
down in the star-shadows beside the child, and remained until the
sun rose.

"
Z
o gives it
as a brook with a sharp bend around a big rock at four, a field of
tanglebrush at twelve, three big hills in a line at seven, and the
tribe back somewhere at nine."

"This with Zo facing north?"

"So she says."

"Good." Rowan took a sip of broth, blew on
her chilled fingers, and took up her pen and calipers.

The tribe had been ten days on the move
again, in the routine with which Rowan had become so familiar. By
day: hours of travel, carrying packs, dragging trains, the changing
of guard on the circles, the voices of the flock rising over the
hiss and rattle of the veldt. By night: close quarters, in the
warmth of buried coals rising from below the carpet. With the
weather growing colder, Rowan had become an accepted fixture at
each evening's fireside, using its warmth to offset the chill of
sitting still, updating her logbook, amending her charts from the
information relayed from the wide-ranging scouts.

She found the landmarks mentioned,
triangulated from them, and noted Zo's position. "And Quinnan?"

The second relay squinted in thought, his old
face becoming a wild mass of wrinkled skin, bright eyes glinting.
"Facing east, he's got the land growing flat to the horizon at two,
a brook running straight at his feet from ten to four, and at
eight, three hills in a line."

The steerswoman repeated the procedure and
found the second scout's location. From both sets of information,
she calculated the location of the tribe itself, considered the
significance of her results, then leaned back in deep satisfaction.
"That's it then." She began to organize her materials. "Thank you
both, and send my thanks to Zo and Quinnan at the next report. Is
Kammeryn in his tent, do you know?"

"Consulting with the flockmasters, yes."

"And Bel?"

"Helping Jaffry guard the children; they're
clearing lichen-towers."

"I'll tell her first, then."

Both relays were interested. "Tell what?"

Rowan slipped her charts into their case and
capped the end. "It's time we were leaving the tribe."

"At its next move," Rowan told Bel as they
watched the four children destroying lichen-towers, "the tribe will
swing northeast. We should start moving southeast from this point.
Now, or within the next few days."

"We'll need to prepare our supplies. Dried
food, light, and probably as much as we can carry. How many days to
the Guidestar?"

Hearing it said in words, Rowan felt her
happiness transform into a thrill of anticipation. The fallen
Guidestar was near; this would be the last leg of the travelers'
journey. "Traveling hard, three weeks at the best. But we can't
count on that; we have to skirt that swamp. And there's at least
one large river to cross. If we can't find a ford, we'll need to
build a raft." Rowan had tested and found that tanglewood did
float. "And Outskirts weather isn't trustworthy. Call it five
weeks."

Bel winced. "Short rations. Hardbread. Dried
meat."

"A small price to pay."

The eldest child, Dane, emitted a warning
cry. Creaking and crackling, a fifteen-foot lichen-tower arced
across the sky. The wind of its approach blew the redgrass flat
beneath it as it fell, changing the grass's constant rattle into a
sudden roar, then into abrupt silence an instant before the crash.
The tower settled, twice: once as its outer surface touched the
ground, again when that surface collapsed to the accompaniment of a
thousand tiny inner snaps. The breeze became damp and faintly
sweet.

"What's that word Dane is shouting?"

" 'Timber.' It's what you say when you knock
down something tall."

"I've never heard it used in that way."

Two people approached from camp, one of them
dragging an empty train: Fletcher, easily identifiable from a
distance by his height and his lope. When they arrived, the second
person proved to be Parandys, come to collect lichen-tower pulp to
make blue dye. "I hear you'll be leaving us," he commented, as the
children attacked a fallen tower with their knives, competing to
excavate the largest spine-free lump.

"The news has traveled fast," Rowan replied.
"I was hoping to tell Kammeryn first."

"Well, he already knows. He's set Chess to
making your travel provisions." Parandys examined one of Hari's
offerings, chided the boy for leaving a spine in place, and stumped
over to study the tower himself.

Fletcher cleared his throat tentatively. "I
asked Kree if I could go along with you."

Bel was less than pleased. "Why? I thought
you didn't believe in the fallen Guidestar."

"Maybe that's why. If I saw it, I'd have to
believe." He gave a shrug, a gesture atypically small. "Kree said
no."

"I think that's for the best," Rowan said,
and on Fletcher's long face disappointment became so evident that
she continued, apologetically, "because Bel and I are used to
traveling together. We understand each other's limitations, and our
natural paces are well matched. It's going to be hard travel, and
we'll do it faster with only the two of us."

"I know," he admitted. "I just wish I could
help somehow. But Kree said you don't need any help. She's right, I
expect." He quietly watched the children at work for some moments.
"But, look," he began, then seemed to think better of speaking,
then decided to speak after all. "But look, Rowan, when you come
back, Bel's going to leave you, isn't she? To talk to the other
tribes?"

Bel replied before the steerswoman could.
"That's right." She studied Fletcher. "But I'll bring her to a
place she can reach her home from, first."

"Well . . ." He spread his hands, but without
his usual flamboyance. "Suppose I do that?"

Bel did not quite approve. "You?"

"Well, me and Averryl, if you like. That way
he and I would have each other for company, coming back to the
tribe."

Rowan disliked the idea of parting with Bel
at all, but recognized its necessity. She had hoped to delay their
farewells as long as possible. However, she had come to respect
Fletcher's skills, as unlikely and unexpected they might seem. "You
would be free to begin spreading your message sooner," she pointed
out to Bel.

"I was going to tell it to any tribe we meet,
on our way to the Inner Lands. It won't delay anything if I go with
you. And Jaffry wants to learn the poem, as well. He'll try to tell
it to any tribe Kammeryn's meets. Word will be moving in two
directions."

Fletcher's astonishment was extreme, and he
became more natural. "Jaffry? On the other hand, what a good idea.
It'll train him to say more than one sentence in a day." Then he
thought. "Teach it to Averryl, as well. He'll do anything you or
Rowan ask of him. Jaffry will spread the story east, Averryl and I
will take it west on our way out, and you can go north."

Rowan became impressed. "That will cover a
lot of territory."

Bel was still reluctant, but began to find
the idea interesting. She looked up at Rowan. "You decide."

Rowan preferred not to. "No, you. I don't
want to lose you; but it's to your own mission that this will make
a difference."

Bel knit her brows, annoyed. "Not very
much."

Exasperated, Fletcher threw up his hands.
"Will one of you please decide to decide?"

Both women laughed; but afterward, Bel
continued to wait.

"I decide," Rowan finally announced, "to
think more about it. I'll tell you after we see the Guidestar. I
don't yet know what I'll learn there; perhaps it will change my
plans altogether."

Fletcher was satisfied. "Can't say
fairer."

But as the group walked back to camp, with
Fletcher trailing behind, cheerfully dragging the train and playing
hilarious rhyming games with the children, it occurred to Rowan
that as much as she might miss Bel, if she traveled with Fletcher
she would be given, every day, reason for laughter. And she found
that she liked that idea very much.

T
he dangers of
the Outskirts did not merely inhabit the Outskirts; they
constituted it.

Blackgrass grew in puddles beneath the
redgrass: wiry tangles to trap the feet and send the traveler
sprawling. Flesh termites scouted the tops of the grass, hunting
the heat of breathing. Solitary goblin jills, exhausted and at the
end of their lives after laying their last eggs, lay prone and
half-hidden, to rise up suddenly in a last instinctive attack.

Even the damp redgrass itself snagged and
sliced at the passerby. The surface of Rowan's gum-soled
steerswoman's boots had become scarred to a fine network of white
on gray and were now covered, thanks to the help of an inventive
mertutial, with a pair of thong-tied gaiters of shaggy goatskin.
Her trousers, torn with innumerable small cuts, were covered by
rough leather leggings, and her gray felt cloak, its leading edges
worn to the underbinding, had been left in the dubious care of
Hari, who fancied it as a blanket. Rowan's new cloak, piebald in
patches of brown and gray, was one discarded by Chess in favor of
the appropriated courting gift.

As a result, the casual eye spying on the
travelers would see not a warrior leading an Inner Lander, but two
Outskirters, wading down the hills through rain-soaked redgrass
toward the misty lowlands.

There were no casual eyes. There were only a
convoy of harvesters, trooping along below the grass cover; a fleet
of shoots sweeping the sky for gnats, bobbing behind slowly pacing
trawlers; and a slugsnake, which had insinuated itself between
Rowan's boot and gaiter, there to travel unnoticed for hours,
comfortably coiled about her ankle.

There were also, somewhere in the nearby
swamp, one or more mud-lions-and, quite possibly, demons.

"Fletcher never saw demons here," Bel replied
to Rowan's speculation.

"I know. But Shammer said that demons need
salt water." Rowan crumbled dirt onto her boot, covering the slime
left by the evicted slugsnake. "And that the Inland Sea was the
wrong sort of salt." She replaced the gaiters, knotting the thongs
behind heel, ankle, and calf. "I was near the salt bog in the Inner
Lands years ago, just after Academy. I'd like to taste the water
here to see if it's the same."

Bel looked down at her sidelong. "You'd like
to, but you won't."

Rowan sighed and straightened. "No. It
wouldn't be wise." She had a sudden, vivid vision of the girl Mai
being clutched by rough-scaled arms and torn by needle-studded
jaws. In Rowan's mind, Mai was a younger, female version of her
brother, so that it was calm Jaffry's familiar face that Rowan saw
twisting in pain and terror.

"Good."

They skirted the marshier ground, keeping a
course due east before swinging southeast past the swamp. Rowan
found Fletcher's observations and landmarks invaluable. The weather
had become uniformly gray and drizzling, the sun's direction
difficult to discern even in full day, and the Guidestars remained
invisible for long damp nights. Without Fletcher's information,
Rowan would have had little idea of her true direction. She found
reason, again and again, to bless Fletcher for his sharp
observations; and a few moments, to her surprise, to miss him.