“There are no demons, no magic,” I say, but only weakly. The two women regard me as though I’m supposed to do a trick now, pull an animal out of my ear, guess the number they’re thinking of.
Worst of both worlds, really. I’ve just had a bit of a meltdown, to be honest. The DCS was already fragile, and when Lyn was making all those promises in my name, to all those wretched, filthy, desperate people, there was a moment of utter synchronicity between the buried feelings it was keeping down and my higher brain, all of me thinking, This is wrong, and so when we got back here I let it all off the leash and railed at them, as profoundly unprofessional as you can get, not a note taken, not a folkway recorded for posterity. I told them their culture is bunk, based on ludicrous fabrications about how things are and how it’ll all work out, just the way an anthropologist should never do. And then, with my professional integrity in tatters, they didn’t actually understand what I was saying. Somehow I told them something else instead.
I reboot the DCS and feel a great deal better, while knowing that such feeling is itself illusory, and in reality I feel very bad indeed.
“So, we’ll go and find where this demon is, then,” I say calmly. And perhaps it will be interesting. Perhaps it will make a nice footnote to one of my reports, that I can send off into the void in the general manner of a man hurling curses at the thunder. Doubtless, despite the prolonged lack of any contact from Earth, they’re all eagerly awaiting my next bulletin.
“Thank you, Nyrgoth Elder. Nyr.”
I blink. Lyn is kneeling in front of me, almost touching my knee but pulling back, that reluctance they have towards any physical intimacy. Something of my puzzlement must have shown on my face, because she draws back and stands up hurriedly, just before I think about reaching forward myself, closing that circuit between us. Most likely for the best.
“Our ship was very small, that carried us here,” I tell her, speaking as precisely as I can. For some reason it is important that I make her understand this one thing. “When my fellow scientists and I travelled from Earth to your world, we were all at each other’s elbows and knees, like too many eating at a small table. Unlike your ancestors, we had star drives that were very small even though they harnessed powers that were very mighty.” And who knows what she makes of any of that, given the approximations and guesses I have to make, in the translation. “Back in the world I came from, too, those parts of it that are habitable are crowded, all of us living in each other’s pockets, on all sides, above and below. For someone to lay their hand on your shoulder or move you to one side or clasp your arm in greeting, that happened a hundred times in a day. Even out in the camp beyond these walls, they have more room each than any of us dreamt of. And it was the same for your ancestors before they set off, or why else travel so far to find a new home?”
Lyn regards me, and I know I have got it wrong again. She is trying to hide it, but I can see she has heard something else. Perhaps I have told her of the conditions of damned souls in hell. Behind the gates of the DCS my mood sinks even further, but on the surface I am sanguine. I make another note for the study.
*
In the morning we are joined by the one-handed man, Allwerith. From past observation I am aware that his mutilation was part of the judicial process he described, and that under other circumstances such a man would be driven from the sight of Watacha’s walls, or any civilized place, given no option but to be a wildman or a brigand. However, Lyn looks him up and down as he stands there in his ragged clothes, and greets him with a wary respect, using a register that signifies higher speaking to lower, but not highest to lowest as she would be entitled to use. I have heard her discussing the man with Esha, and his presence here, rather than, say, on the roads preying on the refugees, has impressed her.
“What was your crime?” she asks.
Allwerith flinches but faces up to her. “Theft, more than once. And I won’t tell you of starving children or the like. I stole precious things because I didn’t have them and others did. I won’t make it out to be a noble business.”
“Will you take us towards Farbourand and the demon?”
A muscle tics in his jaw. “Lynesse Fourth Daughter of Lannesite, you ask much of a poor man.”
“I ask much of a bold man, even if he was once a thief. Did you steal in Farbourand?”
“Less than most.”
“Then serve me in this, and I shall vouch for you, and so shall Jerevesse Third Daughter. You shall have a pardon and a station.”
I consider that he will not get his fingers back, and for a moment I almost promise him that as well, because if I can get him back to the outpost then the medical facilities there could grow fresh tissue from the stumps. I have been sufficiently unprofessional already, and I cannot face the looks on their faces as they mouth Magic to each other, and so I say nothing.
But fingers or not, there are tears in Allwerith’s eyes. The very permanency of his punishment shows that men such as he are condemned forever without any prospect of rehabilitation. What Lyn has promised him is more than he could ever have hoped for.
I speak with him later. He is plainly in awe of me, even though I am doing absolutely nothing to foster anybody’s delusions. The horns, alas, do not help. I ask him about this “demon” and how it manifests. Has he ever seen the thing itself? He saw something, his cords and circles and whatnot, but he thought perhaps it was the demon’s house, or a gate to the world where demons dwell. He saw neither man nor monster that might have been the demon in the flesh, only those unfortunates turned into its servants. How did he know those servants? The mark of the demon was on them, eyes and crystals and stuff like rot on a tree—which in this world means scaly growths like flaking eczema or peeling sunburn. He claimed they acted all together, people and animals, in attacking settlements, so he knew that a demon moved them all.