The Outskirter's Secret (18 page)

"It seems like Averryl told you a lot."

"Does it matter? If we're to be given
shelter, as you say?"

Bel was drawing concentric circles among the
torn grass roots. "He told me more after Rowan left." She pointed
to her sketch. "Garvin at three, Averryl at four-thirty, and
Fletcher trailing at six."

Jaffry grumbled near-inaudibly. "Best place
for him." The trailing position was considered safest for warriors
of below-standard skill.

Jann ignored him, studying the circles on the
ground. "Garvin could have been driven north and outward. That
doesn't explain Fletcher."

"He might have seen the fire," Bel hazarded,
"tried to approach, and was felled himself before he could get
close enough to Averryl."

"Maybe," Jann allowed with great
reluctance.

"Or been driven back," Rowan suggested.

"Or run," muttered Jaffry.

"Enough," Jann told him without heat. "We're
not trying to prove cowardice."

Rowan considered. "What are you trying to
prove?" she wondered.

It was Bel who answered, head tilted and eyes
narrowed speculatively at Jann. "Incompetence."

"Perhaps." Jann leaned back again, arms
crossed on her breast. She seemed to be following some inner
thought, and her face lost its animation in the motionless pursuit,
her dark brows a straight black line across her face, black eyes
turning dull as chips of cold coal. The contrast disturbed Rowan;
something alive in this woman had drifted to icy stillness. Jann
looked, in her quietude, more remarkably like her son.

Bel watched in puzzlement, but did not
interrupt, and Rowan followed her example.

The silence seemed to settle and spread, and
the hot east wind faded, leaving the air cooler, but dull and heavy
as iron. The cook-fire snapped as bits of blackgrass in the peat
flared minutely, and a tiny rustling betrayed the presence of a
ground bug, scavenging nearby. Far above, a hawkbug dipped, rose,
and hovered, its wings a blur of pale translucent pink against
massing clouds to the east.

The land to the east sloped and settled to a
broad flat plain, brown with redgrass cropped too close to survive.
In the distance, lichen-towers marked the banks of an unseen brook,
and beyond them the piled clouds grew grayer to the horizon. There,
lightning flashed. Rowan counted the seconds for the sound to reach
her.

Eventually Jann remembered the travelers'
presence and roused herself, with some difficulty. "No offense
meant to you two," she began, then roused further, becoming
herself, sounding cheerfully nonchalant. "But let's not talk of it.
It wouldn't help, and it might affect your opinions . . ."

"Our opinions will matter," Bel told Rowan,
"if the tribe accepts us for more than a short time."

"Matter how?"

"If this Fletcher person is alive," Bel said,
"it sounds as if you and I might help decide that he should
die."

"
Y
ou kill
incompetents?"

"If enough people die from their
incompetence."

They were making their way slowly across the
land, moving northeast to intersect with the tribe's presumed
course. Bel continued. "You can't keep an incompetent person in the
tribe. And if he's too stupid to see that he's incompetent as a
warrior and chooses to cross the line by himself, then he's a
danger."

"Fletcher's not incompetent." Averryl spoke
between steps; his left arm was strapped close against his body,
and a stiffness seemed to have spread down his entire left side. He
limped heavily, moved slowly. "He's different." Another step. "Not
a crime." Step. "If he could help . . . he would have . . . so he
couldn't."

"You shouldn't talk," Rowan advised. "You
need your breath for walking."

"Distracts me."

Jaffry signaled back, and Jann and Averryl
stopped in response, Rowan and Bel following suit. The young man
continued forward, then stopped and made broad gestures with his
arms to the distance. Far off, Rowan could discern a tiny,
gesturing figure. "Can you tell what he's saying" she asked
Bel.

The Outskirter shook her head. "It's
different for each tribe."

"It's a scout," Averryl said. "Maud. Sent
back to us." A pause as more signals were exchanged. "She has
supplies, if we need them." More gestures. "Jaffry's saying that we
don't." The communications ended, and the figure angled away.
Jaffry beckoned, and the travel resumed.

Night fell none too soon, and dinner
consisted of breadsticks and slices of smoked meat. They soaked
Averryl's bread in water to soften it, and he consumed only a
little meat, lying down to eat.

He watched the darkening skies with eyes too
bright. "Rain," he said. "The weather's been strange, but I'm
learning it. Heat lightning in the east, that means rain."

This was against Rowan's native logic, but
contradicted nothing she had seen since entering the Outskirts.
Jann was dubious, but to reassure Averryl she permitted Rowan and
Bel to pull their canvas rain fly from Bel's pack. Averryl was
bedded down beneath the slanting fly, the others on bedrolls
nearby.

When the rain came at midnight, they gathered
around the open sides of the shelter. There was no room for all of
them inside; instead they sat on their folded bedrolls, facing
inward. Cloaks were arranged so that the hoods lay across the top
of the canvas to seal out the rain, the rest of the material
draping to the ground down their backs. Averryl slept on, heavily;
neither the rain nor the maneuvering woke him.

Soon it was discovered that Rowan's cloak
repelled water best, and was sufficiently wide to close the entire
tall end of the shelter. They used it for that purpose, and Rowan,
cloakless, bedded down in the cramped space next to Averryl's
sprawled form.

Bel and Jann sat in the two remaining open
sides. Jaffry found the remnants of a nearby tussock outside and,
seating himself on it, transformed himself into a one-man vertical
tent by swaddling his cloak about him and pulling the hood down
across his chest.

Outside, chill rain came down in fine,
hissing drops. Inside, the air was warm with the heat of four
bodies, one fevered. Rowan curled on her bedroll and felt a bit
guilty of her comfort. "I suppose," she said, "you Outskirters can
sleep sitting up." The sound of her voice seemed not to disturb the
injured man.

The darkness was absolute, and when Jann
indicated the invisible Jaffry with a jerk of her head, Rowan
understood it only by its sound and her knowledge of Jann's habits
of movement. "On nights like this, away from the tribe, we all
sleep sitting up." She provided the information grudgingly, as if
she felt any person ought to know this.

Bel sounded half-asleep already. "If I didn't
know better," she murmured, "I'd say it was Rendezvous
weather."

Jann was annoyed. "We had Rendezvous eight
years ago."

"Mmn. But the weather . . ." Bel sighed a
sleepy sigh.

Rowan couldn't resist. "What's
Rendezvous?"

Bel stirred, then forced herself to
wakefulness. "Rowan, must you ask me now? I don't mind your being a
steerswoman, but must you make me one, too?"

"What's this?" Jann asked.

"She asked a question. By Inner Lands custom,
you have to answer a steerswoman's questions. Otherwise, they won't
answer you when you ask, and you might need to know."

Rowan laughed quietly. "I'm sorry, Bel. Yes,
I want an answer, but no, it doesn't have to be right now."

Jann was quiet a moment, then answered,
puzzlement in her voice. "Rendezvous is when we meet," she supplied
hesitantly. Bel made a sound of extreme disgruntlement, then
noisily adjusted herself into a more comfortable position.

Having found another source of information,
Rowan decided to bother Bel no more, and shifted closer to Jann,
talking quietly so that her friend might sleep. "By 'we,' you mean
Outskirters? More than one tribe?"

"Yes." Jann paused again. "Was Averryl right,
do you actually have to answer every question?"

"Yes."

"From anyone at all?"

"Yes. Unless they refuse my questions, or lie
to me."

"Then," Jann said, "what are you doing
here?"

Rowan smiled in the dark. "We're chasing a
fallen star." The full explanation could well occupy her until
daybreak. "But information is best passed by finishing one subject
before moving to another. I'll tell all you want, but if you don't
mind, can you tell me about the Rendezvous first?"

Jann considered, possibly gauging the
importance of the information against a theoretical betrayal of her
tribe's interests. Then she shrugged. "Every twenty years, all the
tribes that can find each other gather together. Nobody fights, and
nobody steals. We meet, share food and stories, dance . . ."

"A celebration?"

"Yes. Sometimes people will change their
tribe at that time, usually because they fall in love; Rendezvous
is a good time to do that. Or a person with an unusual skill might
join a new tribe, if he thinks he'll do better there."

"Why every twenty years?"

"It's always been done that way."

"What did Bel mean about the weather?"

Jann was dubious. "In songs and stories about
the events of different Rendezvous, the weather is strange.
Whenever it's mentioned at all."

"Strange in what way?"

From the sound, Rowan assumed that Jann had
made a descriptive gesture. "It changes, suddenly. Rain, and then a
clear sky. Lightning when you don't expect it, tempests . . . But
you can't take that as a fact, it's just an artistic
consideration."

Rowan's reaction was delayed by her being
taken aback by the phrase. "Artistic consideration," she
repeated.

"That's right. It's symbolic, or a dramatic
effect, or a contrast to the events. It serves the meaning of the
story, the truth inside it. You can't assume it really
happened."

Rowan was accustomed to Bel's conversation
revealing unexpected flashes of intellectual complexity. But it was
against common Inner Lands appraisal of the barbaric tribes to the
east, and without being aware of it, Rowan had come to believe that
Bel's more sophisticated traits were unique to herself, and not
held by Outskirters in general.

The steerswoman had fallen back on the easier
explanation. She was very surprised to discover, first, that she
had made such an assumption, and second, that it was wrong.

Bel heaved an ostentatious sigh and resigned
herself to joining the conversation. "It's not symbolic, it's true.
My grandmother told me that in her time, you could tell when to
Rendezvous just by the weather."

"But you only need to count. Twenty
years."

"That works, too."

"But the weather doesn't work at all. I've
been to two Rendezvous, and the weather was dry."

"It used to work. Now it doesn't."

Rowan spoke up. "Bel, weather can't be that
regular. If Rendezvous happens every twenty years, one couldn't
possibly count on bad weather each time. Unless bad weather is
normal for the time of year, every year."

"No," Jann said. "Rendezvous comes at the
vernal equinox." Rowan was again surprised by her choice of words:
this time, a technical term used most often by sailors. "We have
rain then, but not like this, and not hail and snow, as it says in
the songs."

"It's in all the songs," Bel emphasized. "The
weather used to be peculiar during Rendezvous, and then it
changed."

"Suddenly, or slowly?" Rowan asked. A
suspicion began to form in her mind.

Bel thought. "I don't know. But no one
minded. It's much nicer to Rendezvous in fair weather. And the Face
People stopped coming, too, which nobody regrets."

Jann asked, "Who are the Face People?"

Rowan knew the answer from earlier
conversations with Bel. "The Face People are the last Outskirters,
living far in the east. To the best of anyone's knowledge, beyond
the Face People there are no more human beings at all."

"Why are they called the Face People?"

"The Face is their name for the part of the
Outskirts they live in," Bel told Jann. "You're too far west for
them to Rendezvous with you, but my tribe was farther out, and the
Face People used to come. They're primitive. And nasty. And they
eat their dead." Bel adjusted her cloak across her back again,
letting in a brief gust of cold air. She pulled her bedroll around
her legs. "I'm going to sleep now, so if you must talk, do it
quietly."

But Rowan had one more question. "Why did
they stop coming?"

"Perhaps they can't count to twenty."

Bel slept, and while she slept, in whispers,
Rowan told Jann the tale of the fallen Guidestar.

R
ain concealed
the dawn.

Rowan was awakened by Averryl. He was
attempting to rise, and had managed to push himself up to knees and
one hand, then remained so, muttering unintelligibly, weaving as he
shifted weight onto and off of his left leg, which seemed to pain
him. Bel and Jann were no longer at their posts, and light from the
open edges of the shelter was dim and tinged with brown.

Averryl was barely visible in the gloom. "Lie
down." Rowan wrapped one arm beneath his chest and laid one hand
against the small of his back, urging him down. "Come on, rest.
It's too early." Against his skin, her hand and arm were
immediately hot and wet.

He seemed not to hear her, but understood her
hands. He collapsed, with something like relief, spoke in a loud,
slurred voice that Rowan could not understand, and abruptly became
completely still. Shocked, Rowan checked his pulse. It seemed too
slow, and too forceful.

Through the open shelter sides, Bel and the
others were nowhere in sight. Rowan took her sword and clambered
outside—to be startled by a strange man, who was striding up
quickly.