The Outskirter's Secret (52 page)

Kammeryn must not do anything Fletcher
required.

"Very well." The seyoh became 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."

T
he
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?"

"Yes. I didn't think the wizard would harm
you, as he had had many opportunities before. But, in case I was
mistaken, you had one unseen protector."

Fletcher said quickly, "I could never harm
Rowan."

Kammeryn's sad gaze met his. "So you
say."

"I don't believe it," Rowan said.

Fletcher turned to her. "It's true."

"Don't talk to me of truth, damn you." Her
voice was level, her face blank with hate. "In the Inner Lands the
wizards hunted me. I come to the Outskirts, where there are no
wizards, and suddenly one of their minions is right beside me." Her
gaze narrowed. "I know that you were already in the tribe before my
troubles began in the Inner Lands. But, somehow, Slado passed a
message to you: that, being here already, you were to come after
me."

"No—"

"You somehow caused the tribe to come to
where Slado thought I would be—"

"No! I didn't know about you, or any fallen
Guidestar, or anything!"

Rowan held her breath. It was not an
admission; but there were implications in his words:

He did not know about any fallen Guidestar:
Fletcher had been in the Outskirts before Rowan began investigating
the Guidestar. Of the other wizards, only Corvus knew about it, and
only because Rowan herself had told him. If Fletcher were the mere
servant of some wizard other than Slado himself, then he would be
doubly unlikely to know.

He did not know about Rowan herself: Isolated
from the Inner Lands, he would not have heard of the events
surrounding the wizards' hunt for Rowan. And she had left that
country quietly, drawing no attention to herself. If all her care
taken had been successful, then Fletcher's own master would have
had no reason to alert him to her arrival.

"I believe you," she said to Fletcher,
studying his expression. "You didn't know. But, perhaps, you feel
you ought to have been told. Have you told your master that I'm
here?"

He stood before her like a startled animal, a
deer surprised by a hunter, too frightened to flee. "Kammeryn," he
said, and the speaking of the seyoh's name freed him to turn from
Rowan's eyes. "Kammeryn, you know I've never done you any harm.
I've
helped
the tribe." He became
again pleading, desperate. "I just want to help again. You've got
to believe me, we have to get away from here."

Kammeryn was impassive. "Answer the
steerswoman's question."

The wizard's man had three swords pointed at
his heart, a dozen warriors waiting outside, an entire camp of
fighters all around. He opened his mouth to speak, stopped, began
again, stopped again. He stood with his long arms loose at his
sides, and his gaze went far away, then returned, very slowly. He
said, "I've told no one."

Bel hissed at the confirmation. "Wizard's
man!" She spat, and her grip tightened on her sword, so that its
tip became level with Fletcher's wide blue eyes.

He stared at it, frozen; then his eyes
shifted beyond it, to Rowan's face. He spoke to her directly, as if
explanation was due only to her. "It's not a tempest," he said
levelly. "It's the heat that Efraim told us about, the one that
used to come before Rendezvous. It's coming down from the Eastern
Guidestar, it's coming here, and we need to get away."

"Can't you stop it?"

"Me?" His surprise was extreme. "No."

Rowan thought. "Then we'll wait for it to
begin, as proof of what you're saying."