The Outskirter's Secret (40 page)

"His words work so oddly . . ." She struggled
to express it. "They're beautiful, but so . . ." She found a word,
but it was very unsatisfactory. "So imprecise . . ."

"You're thinking like a steerswoman," he told
her. "Think with your heart."

She smiled. "People don't think with their
hearts." But it was purely to her emotions that the song spoke.
"You must have heard that song often. Do you understand it?"

He thought. "No. I can't deny it's beautiful.
But I can't deny it makes little sense. 'The secret tongue of
numbers—' " He stopped short. "Ha!"

"What is it?"

He grinned down at her. "Tongue, language.
You know the secret tongue of numbers, don't you, steerswoman?"

She was taken aback. "In fact, I do." They
resumed walking. "But Bel's home tribe says it 'the secret
tang
of numbers . . ."

"Tang, tang," he mused. "How do numbers
taste, Rowan?"

She did not hesitate. "Sharp."

They arrived at the tent. "Coming in?" he
asked.

She paused. "In a moment."

When he was gone, she reached into the pouch
at her belt and removed a small object. She stood regarding it for
a moment, then stooped to the ground once, rose again. She remained
awhile, smiling to herself, alone within the fading sweet of light,
awaiting the first cry of stars.

At breakfast, Bel's preoccupation was no
longer in evidence. "I see you've finished the new stanzas," Rowan
observed.

Bel scooped bread gruel into her mouth with a
folded slice of meat. "Done," she said around the food.

"What's in them?"

"You'll hear tonight."

Rowan spotted Fletcher, standing off to one
side of the fire pit, looking very puzzled. He caught sight of her,
glanced about, and surreptitiously gestured to her. Bel noticed his
behavior. "What's Fletcher up to?"

"I think," Rowan said, setting down her bowl,
"that he wants to speak to me, and alone." Fletcher was now
standing in pretended nonchalance, simultaneously gazing at the sky
and trying to see if the steerswoman had caught his signal.

When she reached him, he pulled her aside,
out of sight behind one of the tents. "Here, come here, take a look
at this." He showed her what he held in his hand.

A crudely carved bit of tanglebrush root.
"Where did you find it?" the steerswoman asked.

"On the ground. But look, don't you see, it's
a dolphin!"

Rowan examined it again. "It's not a very
good one . . ."

He was agitated. "Yes, but it's still a
dolphin. Rowan, there's probably not an Outskirter here who's seen
or even heard of dolphins."

"I see. And where did you find it,
again?"

"Just lying around." He seemed to consider
her altogether too slow. "Look, don't you think it's significant? A
dolphin? Out here?"

"I do indeed," she said. "And where
exactly
did you find it?"

Exasperated, he threw up his hands. "On the
ground. Outside of the tent. No one around. But where did it
come
from?"

"On the ground," she clarified innocently,
"by the entrance?"

"Yes—"

"Fletcher, in the Outskirts, there's only one
sort of thing that gets left by a tent entrance."

He dismissed the idea with a wave of one
hand. "No, I thought of that, see; but no Outskirter would know
about dolphins—" And he stopped, his mouth still open on his
uncompleted sentence.

"—and so that means that it wasn't left by an
Outskirter," Rowan finished.

"But," he began, and several varieties of
confusion and disbelief worked their way across his long face.
Rowan watched until she could stand no more, then finally burst
into laughter. "But," Fletcher said again, looking from the object
in his hand to her face, over and over.

To stop laughing was impossible, and she
laughed helplessly until she felt she needed support, found none
from the tent beside her, and had to drop to a seat on the ground.
Fletcher watched her, still gape-mouthed, and his disbelief slowly
became amazement.

"Fletcher, you fool," she said finally,
breathlessly, "you're supposed to reject the first gifts. Then they
improve. Now you're stuck with just a rather bad wooden dolphin . .
."

"But," he managed again. Half of his mouth
was shaping itself into a grin.

"Oh, no, you don't back out now! You picked
it up, and you kept it. You'll just have to face facts, and do your
duty; although, as we say in the Inner Lands, I believe you've sold
yourself cheaply . . ." She sat, hugging her knees, grinning,
looking up at him.

With a visible internal shift, he completely
recovered his balance. "Sold myself cheaply, is it?" he declared,
turning the dolphin over as if examining it for the first time,
peering at it with one squinting eye. "Well. Well, we've got a
saying in Alemeth that covers this, too, you know."

"And what's that?"

And he was down beside her, blue eyes inches
away from her own, with a wise and canny look that did not quite
cover the joy behind. In the space between their faces, he held up
the carving: a crude, inartistic trinket, hurriedly made. He said,
just before he kissed her, " 'You get what you pay for.' "

T
hat evening,
Kammeryn's entire tribe was present at the gathering for tales and
songs. Warriors, mertutials, even the children, to the smallest who
slept in its mother's arms: over one hundred and thirty people,
outnumbering all those who had chosen to attend from the other
tribes.

The others were puzzled, and there was a
certain degree of glowering disapproval from the Face People
present; but this was Rendezvous, at however unlikely a time, and
no one believed that a threat was implied. Instead, a sense of
anticipation appeared, grew, and slowly worked its way throughout
the crowd: something important was about to happen.

Kammeryn had given his people no specific
instruction, but when his tribe was called on, they passed one name
along themselves, as comment, request, announcement. The words were
like audible flickers, flashing across and around the slope: "Bel
should speak," and "Bel has a good tale," and "Let Bel
through!"

The Outskirter rose up from the seated ranks
of other Outskirters and made her way to the fire's side. She gazed
once at the sky, thoughtfully, then turned it a second, sharper
glance, as if calculating the amount of light left to the day, and
the time it would take to recite her poem. Then she shifted her
stance to that formal yet easy posture she assumed when performing,
scanned the crowd, and began.

Familiar now with the tale and the telling,
Rowan watched the people, seeing more clearly the currents of
emotion shown in their postures and their expressions. They
listened first evaluatively, withholding judgment, waiting for Bel
to earn their approval by her choice of story and her grace of
language. This she did quickly, and they became rapt in the strange
events surrounding the mysterious jewels.

When Rowan's own name was first mentioned,
Bel made a broad gesture in the steerswoman's direction; to the
other tribes, Rowan, dressed as an Outskirter, was merely another
stranger in a tribe of strangers. Fletcher was at her side,
half-reclining, his shoulder against her knee; now he sat up, and
there appeared between them a three-foot distance, leaving the
steerswoman separate and clearly identified. Rowan sat a bit
straighter herself and acknowledged with a nod the gazes turned in
her direction.

They turned to her at particular moments in
the poem: puzzled, when first she was presented and defined;
sympathetic, when the need for deceit required that Rowan resign
from the Steerswomen; approving, when Rowan decided to abandon
flight, to face and fight the wizards' men pursuing her; and full
of a strange, feral joy when Rowan, a helpless prisoner facing two
wizards in the heart of their own fortress, reassumed her order,
and from that moment on spoke only the truth, even to enemies.
Truth was the rightful possession of every steerswoman; and despite
the differences between their lives and hers, her ways and theirs,
each person present came to understand this, and approve, for the
sake of Rowan's own form of honor.

But it was Bel who won their fullest
admiration: one of their own, who had crossed a distant,
incomprehensible country, survived fantastic dangers, and returned
with a tale for her people, and a warning.

During the recitation, Rowan noted among
Kammeryn's people a number of comings and goings, certain shiftings
of position. She had attributed this to the people's familiarity
with the events being related, assumed they felt no need to remain
in place for the entire story. But halfway through the poem, Rowan
recognized what had happened.

They had shifted around her. Now, all around,
sitting closer to each other than was either casual or comfortable,
were the warriors of Kammeryn's tribe, gathered together in a
single body, with the steerswoman among them as one of their
number. And slightly in front of Rowan, to her right, there was one
empty seat in the heart of the warriors, awaiting the return of the
teller of the tale.

Bel reached the end of the poem as Rowan had
first heard it; but now came the new stanzas.

"The call will come one cruel day.

Outskirters will answer force with anger,

Meeting magic. The might of wizards

Has never faced a fighter's fury.

Wizards' words and warriors' power

Never yet stood strength to strength.

"No one knows as a warrior knows

That the heart of humankind is held

By strength, by striving, striking down

Any and all who stand against us.

Foes and force, we do not fear them.

No one knows as a warrior knows."

Bel began to move, to pace, walking slowly,
and one hand with one pointing finger swept the crowd, indicating
each and every individual Outskirter.

"Who will hear," she asked of them,

"—or have the heart

To stand beside me, to stay, and strike?

Outskirters all now understand:

War will come. With weapons wielded

All as one must answer evil."

Bel dropped her arm and ceased pacing; and
now it was only her face that challenged them.

"The call will come, and I shall call it.

The need will be known, by these three names—"

—and she stood alone before them all: small,
strong, wise, and unafraid. "I am Bel," she said, "Margasdotter,
Chanly."

"
T
he tale in
your poem has stirred the warriors' blood." The old woman shifted.
"This may not be a good thing. Now they're eager to fight, but
their seyohs have yet to decide if they may do so. You have caused
us trouble."

"I am not causing trouble," Bel replied. "I
am telling you of trouble on its way. When trouble comes, warriors
want to fight; that's the way of things."

The tent was Kammeryn's own; the persons
present were the seyohs of the six tribes at Rendezvous. Rowan and
Bel once again sat within a circle of Outskirters; but on this
occasion, none of the surrounding faces were near Rowan's age. The
youngest person was a man of late middle years, nearly bald, with a
beard braided to his waist. His right arm lay slack in his lap; at
some time in the past, it had been rendered useless. The eldest
person was a wizened woman, partially bald herself, with blind eyes
gone blue-gray with cataracts. It was she who served as the
meeting's moderator.

"If warriors look for trouble," she pointed
out, "and do not find it, they sometimes create it."

"They'll find it," Bel assured her.

The blind woman tilted her chin up.
"When?"

Bel drew a breath and released it. "That's
what we don't know."

The steerswoman spoke up. "Wizards live
longer than common folk, seem to age more slowly. The full course
of Slado's plan may span five decades, or more."

"Or a century?" someone interjected, in
annoyance.

Rowan turned to the speaker. "Possibly. But
even so, we're not now standing at the beginning of things. I
cannot yet determine with confidence when it was that Slado first
began his work; however, when I started investigating the jewels
from the Guidestar, Slado's response was quick. I don't believe he
would act so immediately if the plan's completion lay far in the
future."

"You both present all these things as truth;
but we have no way of confirming anything you say."

Kammeryn suggested to the seyohs, "You must
retrace Rowan and Bel's reasoning," and requested that the two
women recount exactly, in narrative instead of poetry, the events
they had experienced in the Inner Lands, and their analyses at each
turn. The travelers did so, in detail.

Bel's jeweled belt was examined, as evidence
of the fallen Guidestar's existence. Rowan attempted, in layman's
terms, to explain the mathematics of falling objects, the
calculations that had convinced her of the fallen Guidestar's
existence, and the path it had taken as it fell.

"Did it burn?"

Rowan and Bel both turned toward the speaker,
a small man, whose sparse fringe of hair was braided into a long,
thin queue: the seyoh of the Face People. He was toying with the
braid, weaving it through his fingers desultorily.

"While falling? I don't know," Rowan said.
"Perhaps."

"Was such a thing seen?" Bel asked him
eagerly.

He dropped his braid and adjusted his patched
tunic. The boots he wore were very long, with his legs bare between
their tops and the hem of his clothing. "It is in a poem," he said.
"A burning thing in the sky."