The Outskirter's Secret

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Rowan found Jann and sidled over to her unobtrusively. “What’s going on?”

  But it was another warrior who replied. “Fletcher says he saw someone, hiding. He says”—the woman was dubious—“that the stranger is inside the inner circle.”

  Now Jann spoke. “I don’t believe it. Our people are too good for that. It can’t happen.” Her eyes were not on her chief, or on her seyoh; she watched Fletcher.

  Orranyn thumped her on the arm. “Pay attention, you!” Rowan knew from the tone it was not a sudden anger but exasperation of long standing.

  “Orranyn, it can’t happen—”

  “Fletcher’s been too right too often for us to ignore him. If you can’t bear to lose a little sleep for safety’s sake, then think about crossing over.” The war band stood shocked by the statement. Orranyn pretended indifference to their reaction; he was reaching the limit of his indulgence of Jann’s obsession.

  But Jann was not the only person watching Kree’s band. “Where’s Bel?” Jaffry asked, and as he spoke, Rowan watched Kree, across the fire pit, put the same question to each of her warriors. When the question reached Fletcher, he reacted with surprise so extreme that he seemed to have been struck. Then he spoke to Kree, pleadingly; she interrupted him, sternly, clearly indicating that he should be most concerned with the duties immediately at hand. When Kree turned away, Fletcher’s eyes sought and found Rowan, and he looked at her in seeming distress, spreading his hands in a gesture intended to communicate helplessness. It was very eloquent, and very clever, and Rowan hated him far worse than she ever had yet.

  Rowan might easily have been too conservative in her estimation of Fletcher’s power. Bel might already be dead, by magic; she might be cast to sleep forever under an evil spell; she might have been transformed into some strange creature; she might be crouched in hiding out in the pastures, unable to move for fear of attracting attack, with all Kammeryn’s tribe convinced that she was an enemy, and Fletcher’s magic insuring that all eyes would see her as one.

  “What’s happening?”

  The steerswoman spun, dropped her weapon, and threw her arms about Bel, pulling the small woman completely off the ground in an embrace of utter relief.

  The Outskirter pretended amazement at the reception, extracted herself, and repeated the question.

  “Where were you?” Jaffry demanded.

  Bel regarded him with fists on hips. “Can’t a warrior visit the cessfield without the tribe falling apart behind her back?”

  But as she left to join her war band, she quickly pulled Rowan aside and forced the steerswoman down to hiss in her ear, “I’m never doing that again!”

  It was not until much later, after the guards had determined that Fletcher had been mistaken, after Kree’s band had served their rotation on the outer circle, after evening meal, that the two women could meet, alone at the edge of camp.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I did see something,” Bel said.

  Rowan found herself almost indifferent; it was far more important that Bel was unharmed. “What was it?” she managed to ask.

  Bel thought, then shook her head in confusion. “I’m not sure … perhaps you can make sense of it.

  “When he settled down, he had his back to me. I was disappointed, because I thought I might not see anything … I shouldn’t have worried. Because, all of a sudden, there were things in the air.”

  Rowan was taken aback. “Overhead? Someone would have seen them.”

  “No, not up. Just in front of him. Floating things, like they were trapped in a trawler’s shoot—but flat.” She held her hands before her, delimiting an invisible vertical surface. “They went no higher than the grass tops, and all the way down to the ground. The things were small, like insects, bright colors. But they didn’t move, they just hung. And they glowed.”

  Rowan had not expected anything quite so dramatic. “Glowed? Like fire? Was there any heat?” There could not have been, or the grass would have caught—

  “No. More like stars: cold light. Blue, red, yellow, all colors. It was strange. The colors were bright, but the light didn’t seem to be … It’s hard to describe.”

  “Just spots of light, hanging in the air in front of him?” Rowan tried to imagine it, but failed. “Not … scenes from far away, or writing, or a pentagram?”

  “Some of them might have been arranged in something like a pentagram … it’s hard to say, I didn’t get to look for long. Fletcher sat down, the lights appeared; then he shouted, the lights vanished, he jumped up, drew his sword and turned around—” Bel leaned closer, spoke more quietly and more intensely. “—and he came straight at me!”

  “He knew you were there.”

  “He knew exactly where I was.”

  The magic lights had somehow told him. “What did you do?” Rowan was aghast.

  The Outskirter leaned back, tilting her head. “I moved. And he went for exactly where I used to be.”

  Fletcher’s magical perceptions were limited to the moments when the spell itself was active.

  “I tried to stay put after that,” Bel continued, “but he started flailing around in the grass, at random, and I had to dodge. Then he stopped and signaled to six; a reply, I think. He must have been seen carrying on. He told six that there was an intruder in the inner circle, and then he took to his heels, back to camp.”

  “Was there any indication that he knew it was you?”

  Bel shook her head broadly. “But I don’t dare try it again. So that’s all we’re going to learn about Fletcher’s prayers.”

  Rowan’s mouth twitched in dissatisfaction. “We have to wait,” she said grimly, “for him to do something more obvious.”

  They did not wait long.

  It happened over breakfast. Fletcher was late from his prayers.

  And then Rowan heard someone calling his name, wondered why, then saw him enter the center of the camp at a flat run, ignoring the voices that asked why he ran.

  Bel’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he up to?”

  Rowan rose slowly. “I don’t know.”

  Fletcher stopped and stood by the fire, arms splayed out as if he had forgotten them. He was glancing about, wide-eyed, as though desperate, and blind to everything but what he sought. “Where’s Kammeryn?” he called out.

  All were now watching his performance. “In his tent,” someone supplied. Fletcher rushed to Kammeryn’s tent as the seyoh was emerging. “Seyoh, the tribe has to move.”

  Kammeryn was bemused. “What?”

  “We have to move,” Fletcher insisted. “We have to go east. We need to do it now!”

  Kammeryn put a hand on his shoulder and studied his wild eyes. “Calm down. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I had—” Fletcher drew a great breath. “I had a vision. We have to move. We have to go east.”

  Someone had fetched Kree; she came up to them, all confusion. “Fletcher, what is wrong?”

  He turned to her, saw her, dismissed her. “A vision,” he repeated to Kammeryn.

  “What sort of vision?”

  The wizard’s man seemed to find no appropriate words, settled for vague ones. “Something terrible is going to happen. It’s coming here. I don’t know what, a tempest, a monster—something. We have to go away.”

  Kree made to protest; but Kammeryn gestured her silent. He paused long. “Perhaps …” he began, and he was watching Fletcher’s pleading face closely. “Perhaps we ought to do it. But I’ll send scouts around first, have them report what they find—”

  “No! We won’t have the time.” In his urgent act, Fletcher dropped all form, all deference to the seyoh. “Send a scout ahead of us if you like, but let’s start moving now.”

  The Outskirters were stirring with discomfort at hearing their seyoh spoken to in this fashion by a mere warrior. Rowan and Bel stood among them, quiet, intent.

  Kammeryn must not do anything Fletcher required.

  “Very well.” The seyoh bec
ame decisive. “Karel, relay to Zo and Quinnan that I’ll shortly have new directions for them. Everyone, prepare to pull out. Fletcher, come with me and tell exactly where the tribe is to move. Kree, with us.” He walked to his tent and entered, with Fletcher hurrying behind. Kree watched an instant, amazed, then rushed to join them.

  Dumbfounded, the watching warriors and mertutials stood speechless until someone broke the spell with an outraged, inarticulate, disbelieving cry. The yard became a chaos of arguing voices. Rowan and Bel looked to each other silently, and silently agreed. As one, they turned and walked, passing through the yard as if it were empty.

  They entered the tent without ceremony. Kree broke off some comment to Kammeryn; Fletcher startled, the panic he had painted on his face now overlaid with confusion and annoyance. Only Kammeryn remained undisturbed.

  “Do you two have something to add?” the seyoh asked. The sunlit sky flaps threw rectangles of light at his feet.

  “Yes,” Bel said. She was standing with feet apart, a pose of challenge. “Whatever Fletcher says, don’t do it. Whatever he wants, it’s the very thing you mustn’t do.”

  Rowan said, “Fletcher is a wizard’s man.”

  Kree spun to Fletcher. “What?”

  Fletcher stood as if alone, looking at Rowan from the light-split shadows. “No.” He mouthed the word, too shocked for speech.

  She held his gaze, impassive. “Or a wizard himself.”

  He found his voice. “I’m not a wizard!”

  “One or the other,” Bel said.

  “It’s not true!” Fletcher tore himself from the accusing eyes and turned to Kammeryn, throwing his arms wide, speaking quickly. “Seyoh, I don’t know why they’re saying this—I don’t know, and I don’t care. Rowan has some grudge against me, I don’t know why. Now she’s gotten Bel into it, but for Christ’s sake—” His body twisted as he beat one fist on his thigh, his voice risen to a desperate-sounding cry. “—for Christ’s sake none of that matters! This is what matters, this is what I know: There’s something terrible coming, it’s coming here, and you’ve got to get the tribe away!”

  Rowan could almost believe him, so expressive, so seemingly urgent and intense was he. “It seems to me,” she said, her voice quiet and reasonable, “that if a wizard sends you away from a place, then there’s something going to happen that he doesn’t want you to see.”

  Bel grinned tightly. “Let’s stay and find out what, shall we?”

  Fletcher ignored them and spoke to Kammeryn alone. “Seyoh, I know you don’t believe in my god, but you do believe in gods. I saw this thing, and if my god didn’t send me the vision, then some other did. What can it hurt, to go? If I’m mad, if I’ve dreamed the whole thing, then I’m a fool and more than a fool, but what can it hurt, to go? Seyoh, take us away from here!”

  “I have never met any Christer,” Rowan observed, “who would admit even the possibility of other gods than his existing. You’re not even a Christer, are you, Fletcher?”

  Kree spoke up at last. “Rowan and Bel,” she said, and her small, diamond-sharp eyes were steady on them, “Fletcher is my man, one of my warriors. Anything you say against him, you had better have good reasons to say. Or it’s me and my people who you’ll have to face.”

  “Fletcher carried a wizard’s sword,” Bel told her, “until Jaffry took it from him.”

  “A sword of wizard’s make,” Rowan clarified.

  “How can you know?”

  “Because I carry one myself. His is like it. I realized that when I saw him fight Jaffry, and confirmed it when I fought Jaffry myself.” She turned to Kammeryn. “Perhaps you think we ought to have told you immediately, and perhaps you’re correct; but it seemed to us that if you knew, you’d make some move against him. We didn’t want that, not at that time. We thought more could be learned by seeing how he behaved, while he thought his deceit was still intact. We’ve been watching him.”

  It was Kammeryn’s composure, his dignity, his calm demeanor, that held Kree and Fletcher silent as he considered Rowan’s statements. Then he nodded minutely. “I know,” the seyoh said. “I’ve been doing the same.”

  45

  The steerswoman was speechless; but Bel spoke, eyes narrowed n suspicion. “You knew he was a wizard?”

  “I’ve known since Rendezvous.”

  “I’m no wizard!”

  Bel spun on Fletcher. “Minion, then,” she spat. “Servant. Property. Slado’s hands and eyes in the Outskirts.”

  “No— “

  “Be silent, both of you.”

  Bel subsided; Fletcher did the same, assuming the appearance of the dutiful warrior, waiting for his seyoh to command.

  Kammeryn gazed at him, and more than anything else, his expression was one of deep disappointment. He spoke to the three women. “Please draw your weapons. Now that he is revealed, we cannot predict his behavior.”

  Bel did so instantly, and Rowan, surprised by the force and speed of her own motion. It was a relief to draw a weapon on this creature.

  Kree hesitated. “Kammeryn—”

  “Do it.”

  Kree complied, slowly. She drew a breath. “Fletcher, give me your sword.”

  He looked at his chief, shocked. “It isn’t true.” His voice was small, his body inexpressive. Her response was a jerk of the chin; he did as ordered, drawing and passing the wood-and-metal sword slowly, as if the weight of it was too great for his hand.

  “And your knife,” Kree said.

  “It’s not enough,” Rowan said. Her grip on her sword tightened, and its point rose. “We don’t know what magic he can call down on us.”

  “Fletcher,” the seyoh said, “you must make no sudden moves, speak no magical words, or you will die instantly.”

  Fletcher looked at his two empty hands. “Seyoh, I can’t do any magic …”

  But Kammeryn had turned away, and he stepped around Rowan and Bel, to the tent entrance. He spoke quietly to his aide outside. “I want Orranyn’s entire band posted around this tent. At any disturbance, they are to come in, fighting.” And he closed the flap on the astonished face.

  Fletcher attempted his arguments again. “Seyoh, please, we’re wasting time. The only thing that matters is that we get away from here, now.”

  Kammeryn made a show of puzzlement, faintly mocking. “Must we?”

  “I am not a wizard.”

  “Aren’t you?” He walked calmly back to his position. “Then listen to this:

  “At Rendezvous,” the seyoh began, addressing the women, “I met Ella again. When I saw her, I took a moment to congratulate her for her tribe’s destruction of the Face People’s camp.

  “She had been about to say the same thing to me. It was not her people who destroyed the camp. Someone else did it. I wondered who that might be.

  “No third tribe could have been near without my scouts or those of Ella’s tribe seeing signs of them. It was just possible that one very skillful person might be nearby, in hiding, but no single person could possibly destroy an entire camp—”

  Rowan had a sudden memory of the boy Willam, standing in the shifting light of fire with a mighty fortress blasted to ruins behind him.

  “—unless that person possessed powers beyond those of other human beings,” Kammeryn said.

  “Because of Rowan and Bel’s missions,” he continued, “I had wizards on my mind. Perhaps a wizard, I thought, might easily destroy an entire tribe, by magic.

  “But why that tribe, and no other? The wizard, if he indeed existed, had harmed neither my tribe, nor Ella’s. He had acted to our benefit. “But suppose …” The seyoh began to pace the length of the tent slowly, long strides, like a soldier on guard. “Suppose the wizard were hidden, not out on the veldt, but within one or the other tribe? Then, to defend that tribe would be to defend himself. And he would steal away to do it in secret, because he would wish his power to remain hidden. Neither Ella’s people nor mine would know he had done this thing.

  �
�I asked Ella about the movements of her people during that time; but even as she answered, I was asking the same of myself, and finding my own answers.”

  He stopped and faced the listeners: Rowan, fascinated; Bel, suspicious; Kree, confused and disbelieving; and Fletcher.

  “The smoke from the Face People’s camp,” Kammeryn said, “was first sighted by Fletcher, who had gone out early to say his daily prayer—and had gone out, as ever, alone.

  “When Bodo discovered the broken demon egg, and Rowan wished to know more, it was Fletcher who, the very next morning, discovered another, intact—and did it alone. And it was Fletcher, with his small skill at arms, who had survived the stealthy attack of a skillful Face Person raider—alone; and Fletcher who sighted the approach of another Face People tribe, before even the outer circle saw them—and did it while alone.

  “Fletcher, who, when he meets the unexpected, can always deal with it—alone. Fletcher, who looks and speaks like a fool, but who always seems to see more than better warriors—

  “Fletcher, who always, somehow, survives.

  “But I could not judge against a man simply because he possessed skills useful to my tribe. I began to watch him. I saw only what I always saw: an odd man, a cheerful and friendly Inner Lander who for some reason chose to live out his life in the Outskirts. I doubted myself.

  “When Rendezvous had begun and the tribe stopped moving, I had ordered volunteers to the positions where Rowan and Bel might expect to find the tribe. They would meet these scouts only if some problem forced them to return before the end of Rendezvous. I did not know of any problem they might encounter. The order was a precaution only.

  “But one day Fletcher, who had shown no previous interest in the duty, volunteered to go out. And I thought: He has some foreknowledge.

  “I permitted him to select his own position to cover. I ordered Zo to feign a headache and follow him in hiding, lest he have some plan to injure you. And I told myself: If Fletcher, of all the ones I sent out, is the one to meet Rowan and Bel as they return unexpected, then I will know.”

  Rowan recalled the unseen follower in the night, and that she had thought the person smaller than the average man. “We knew we were being followed. It was Zo?”