The Outskirter's Secret (49 page)

Fletcher's fine steel blade. Jaffry looked at
it. "It's yours," Jann said to him.

He seemed not to want it; then he took it
from her hand, and tossed aside his own weapon.

It fell three paces in front of Rowan's feet.
It lay in the trod mud, its edging battered, its wood face nicked
and gouged, its leather-wrapped hilt worn black from use. Amid the
noise of the Outskirters, Rowan stood as if in a small, silent
room, gazing at the weapon, not seeing it.

There was argument: Garris, declaring that
the sword challenge had been improperly conducted, that Jaffry's
victory was void; Jann, disagreeing, calling for someone to bring
Kammeryn to decide.

The steerswoman did not wait. Within her
perfect, emotionless isolation, she had discovered a requirement,
clear, airy, intellectual: a mathematician's need for
completion.

She stepped over Jaffry's discarded sword,
unbuckling her own weapon, unsheathing it, and dropping the sheath
to the ground. "Jaffry," she said.

Discussion ceased. The young man turned.
Rowan said, "That's a fine weapon you have. I'd like to see how you
use it." She stood with her sword point-down, waiting.

Garris looked from one to the other. "Rowan,
you should wait; Kammeryn will be here soon—"

"No."

Catching her empty expression, he ceased to
protest, and stood watching her, with a warrior's respect.

Bel came to her side. "Rowan, are you sure of
this?"

"Yes." The crowd was silent. Jaffry
hesitated, confused; Jann was aghast, and then anger slowly
reshaped itself on her face.

"Is it against custom," Rowan asked Bel, "to
challenge him so soon after another fight?" She did not look at her
friend, nor at her opponent; she could not move her eyes from the
steel sword in Jaffry's hand.

Bel glanced back once, to where Fletcher had
been taken, then took a step away from the steerswoman, studying
her. "No," she said slowly. "Not unless Jaffry were wounded, or
exhausted." He was neither. "But you're using the wrong words. For
revenge, for a blood duel, you should say, 'Stand and die,' or
'Face me, if you dare,' or something of that sort."

Rowan's face was unchanged. "No blood duel.
Call it another sword challenge." The spectators became perplexed,
disbelieving. She ignored them. "Jaffry," Rowan said. She did not
shout; her voice was mild, empty of emotion. "Use your sword, or
I'll take it from your hand." She took five steps forward, leaving
Bel behind.

Jaffry looked at his new weapon, then at the
steerswoman. Jann's expression was narrow, suspicious.

"She's a fool," Jann said. "Her sword is as
good as Fletcher's. There's no point to this." She slapped her
son's shoulder, to urge him forward. "Go ahead. It hardly matters
who wins."

They assumed their positions and waited for
the signal. Then they began.

It was no contest.

They fought at first wide, Rowan striking at
Jaffry's sword between its midsection and point, over and over,
backing and circling to maintain her chosen strategy. She saw
Jaffry's surprise at the first blow, saw him falter at the next,
try to recover at the third. It was no use. He could not send his
strength down into his new blade: its flex dissipated his power,
its faintly vibrating recovery confused him. He began backing
himself and twice lost his rhythm. Rowan used the advantage to
press him.

She entered a drill, like a dance to the
singing and hissing music of the steel. Jaffry knew the steps with
his body; but his sword wanted other steps.

He had practiced before with borrowed steel
swords; he knew how to change strategy from that required by
wood-and-metal. Rowan watched him using exactly the correct
maneuvers for fighting with a metal blade, and against metal. Again
and again, he tried to unify his actions to his familiar
perfection. He failed. He worked wildly, but he was divided: his
body constantly seeking balance, his blade constantly refusing
it.

Jaffry's grace of violence had vanished.

The steerswoman needed neither grace nor
violence. There was nothing in her but intellect, mathematics,
logic, proof—and memory. She recalled the moves Fletcher had made
in panic and reflex, the moves that had failed him. At the right
time, in a moment of close fighting, she used one, copied exactly
from Fletcher's final, losing maneuver. At that close instant, she
stepped closer still—into a space that should not have existed.

She found it: exactly twice as much free room
as the flex in her own sword would have provided.

The blade seemed to leap from Jaffry's hand,
of its own accord. It spun away, toward one side of the crowd; the
spectators on that side scattered.

Jaffry stood looking at his own left hand. He
made a single sound, the closest to a full laugh that Rowan had
ever heard from him. He gestured at the weapon. "It's yours."
Someone near it picked it up, to pass to her.

Rowan found it difficult to speak; her proof
was achieved, further action meaningless. She forced a word from
her lips. "No."

"What?" Jaffry was puzzled. The man who had
retrieved the fallen weapon paused with it half held out.

"The winner," Rowan said with painful
slowness, "gets the choice of weapons." She reversed her grip on
her own sword and held it up, hilt first. "I choose this one." She
turned and walked away.

The shocked crowd was disinclined to part
before her. She shouldered her way through.

Someone put a hand on her arm as she passed—a
member of Kree's band. "Rowan . . ."

"Let her alone," Bel said, close behind.
Rowan ignored both. The hand vanished. She continued walking
away.

But the next touch was a grip of iron that
clutched and spun her around. She was face-to-face with Jann. The
warrior's eyes were small with fury, her brows a straight black
slash. She spoke through her teeth. "If your intention was to
dishonor my son, you've done it."

That had not been the intention; but Rowan
could not reply. She was empty. Words had fled; there were none
left in her. The steerswoman stood silent, looking out through her
eyes, from behind her face.

Jann's grip faded, and her expression
altered. She read something in Rowan's eyes—what, Rowan had no
idea. The warrior grew puzzled. She looked as though she felt she
ought to pity Rowan, without knowing why; she became confused and
dropped her hand.

Rowan turned and walked away.

Reaching the edge of camp, Rowan wished not
to stop, wished to continue out onto the veldt. She was moving, and
there was relief in motion. She was walking away from something,
something better abandoned. There was no place to go, and nothing
ahead; and she liked that very much indeed.

Her body was wiser than her heart; she
stopped at the edge of camp.

She heard Bel following behind, pausing as
she paused. Rowan remained, looking at nothing. Eventually, after
some minutes had passed, she heard Bel drop to a seat on the
ground.

An uncounted measure of time later, Rowan did
so herself.

Much later, Rowan decided to speak. She drew
a breath and turned to Bel.

The Outskirter was seated on redgrass
stubble, a mottled gray-and-brown tent rising at her back. There
was anger on her face, but not anger at Rowan; it was a fury
deferred, a waiting hatred.

Rowan released the breath and did not speak
after all. Bel's mind was as quick as her own. Bel did not need to
be told.

The Outskirter said, "Fletcher is a wizard's
man."

"Yes."

"
I
didn't see
it when you did," Bel continued, "when he was fighting Jaffry; but
when you used your sword against his, then I saw . . ."

"Yes."

"That's a wizard-made sword Fletcher was
carrying."

"Yes." Rowan's own sword was of wizard make.
When Fletcher fought well during the duel, he used the same
techniques that Rowan would have used. But more than that:

When a fighter became panicked and desperate,
when he lost the ability to think clearly, he would most often
revert to instinctive maneuvers, imbedded in him from his earliest
training. When Fletcher had reached that point, he used, again and
again, moves that assumed his opponent possessed a weapon with the
same virtues as his own.

Not only was his sword of wizard's make; all
of Fletcher's training in swordsmanship, before entering the
Outskirts, had been against a sword of the same type.

It was Fletcher's undoing. The moves he had
used were not suited to fighting against an Outskirter weapon.

And that was the test Rowan had made, the
equation of action that had provided her final proof: when Rowan
fought Jaffry, when it was wizard blade against wizard blade, those
same maneuvers succeeded.

Fletcher was a wizard's man.

"He told me," Rowan managed to say, "that he
had had the sword constructed for him, by a swordsmith in
Alemeth."

"That's a lie."

"Yes." If, by some miracle, the swordsmith
had known and used wizards' methods, Fletcher would have learned
his skills against a common blade only. He would not have been
betrayed by his training. Fletcher had acquired his weapon by no
such innocent means.

"What's he doing here?"

What would a wizard or wizard's minion be
doing in the Outskirts? "He was sent."

Bel nodded, fractionally. "By Slado
himself."

"Quite likely."

"What do you think his plan is?"

"Plan?" Rowan had not thought so far.

"He's here in the Outskirts. And you show up,
the very steerswoman that Slado tried to kill. He gains your
confidence—"

No emotion reached Rowan's awareness; but of
itself, her body shuddered, and her arms wrapped themselves tightly
about her, and she doubled over where she sat, shaking in unfelt
hatred. Lies, she thought. She had been fed lies, had trusted lies,
had built a world of joy on lies.

She was a steerswoman; Fletcher, who had
known this, and claimed to care for her, had given her lies.
Fletcher himself was a lie. She had given every part of herself to
a lie. No part of her body or spirit was untouched by the lie.

Eventually, she stilled. She sat up and drew
a breath of cold air—and cold air pressed like ice everywhere upon
her.

Bel eyed her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes."

The Outskirter nodded. "Then, what's his
plan?"

"Not to kill me. He's had endless
opportunity." They had been alone together often: out on the veldt;
among the flocks; in Kree's tent, under the most intimate of
circumstances.

Bel was considering the same events. She
said, hesitantly, "Perhaps he really cares about you."

"No." Rowan gave a short, harsh laugh.
"Wandering in the Outskirts, I happen, by purest coincidence, to
bump into a wizard's man—no. He knew I was coming. This was
intended. We should tell Kammeryn—"

"No."

"Why not? This concerns him, and the
tribe—"

"But what is Fletcher doing here at all?"

Rowan forced herself to think, rubbing her
forehead with her fingers. "He's been here for over a year."

"That's right. He wasn't sent here after you.
But once you were here, he found you."

"How?" She was still rubbing her forehead;
she took her hands from her face and interlaced the fingers in her
lap to keep them still. "How could he find me? How would he know I
was here at all?"

The Outskirter threw out her arms. "He's a
wizard! Wizards can see things far away, sometimes; Corvus told
people that he saw us die in Donner."

And Corvus's information had been only
slightly inaccurate. "It's called scrying," Rowan began
inanely.

"But why is he here?" Bel was urgent,
insistent—and was repeating herself. From this, Rowan understood
that her own mental processes were slowed, stalled.

She was behaving like a person who had
witnessed the shocking, gruesome death of a loved one. And she
understood that, in a manner of speaking, she had.

She separated her hands carefully and placed
one on each knee. She sat up straight, only now realizing that she
had not been doing so before. "Very well. What is this wizard, or
wizard's minion, doing in the Outskirts?"

Bel did not reply, but only watched her.

"He can't have caused the famine on the
Face," Rowan began, "that's been building for years. Perhaps he
caused the return of the killing heat to the Face; that's more
recent."

Bel continued to wait.

"But there's no way for us to know that, for
certain. Other factors may be at work."

Bel said nothing.

Rowan sighed. "We need more information."

"Exactly. How do we get it?"

"Certainly not by asking him. Nor by telling
the tribe that there's a wizard's man in their midst. They might
act against him. He might be forced to strike back at them . . . At
the least, he would flee, and we'd learn nothing."

"We watch him," Bel told her. "Now that we
know, we have the advantage. We keep our eyes on him; sooner or
later, he'll do something that will only be explainable in one
way—and that'll give us our clue. Enough clues, and we'll know
something of what Slado is up to."

Rowan did not reply. Bel, aggravated, rose
and came to her side. "Rowan, this is a chance to find things out.
Don't you want that?"

Rowan looked up at her. "How bad is his
wound?"

"I don't know," Bel said. Her mouth twisted.
"Let's go and see."

"You go."

"Rowan—"

"Do you think he'll die?" Rowan asked mildly.
"I rather hope that he does."

Bel stood silent a moment, studying her
friend's face. "I can't say I blame you. In your place, I might
kill him myself. But what's important now is that he doesn't
suspect we know what he is."