Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (11 page)

Rowan closed and tied the folio, gently laid it beside her
on the small, cold, dusty cot, and returned to sifting through the other
drawings.

As she neared the last, Ona suddenly emitted a girlish
squeak, and a longer, more mature laugh. Rowan looked up to find her yanking
from the trunk one ribbon-tied stack. Ona caught Rowan’s glance, inexplicably
turned red, laughed again, and held the folder protectively behind her back,
attempting to look innocent. But she could not hold the pose, and covered her
eyes with one hand, laughing harder.

Rowan was bemused. “A collection of nude studies, I presume?”

“Oh, no—” Ona assured her; then, “no … oh!” She suddenly
recalled something, and grew even redder. “Well, but just my imagination,
really—honestly, I can’t believe I kept this …”

Rowan half smiled. “An old sweetheart, then,” she said; and
she felt the smile vanish.

She heard Ona’s reply only distantly. “Oh, no, just an
infatuation … but I was thirteen, you know how girls are. And of course I
drew all the time back then, and dreamed a lot …”

Rowan found that her hands had dropped, holding the folder
limply, elbows on knees.

She was surprised at her own tiredness; she was tired to her
soul; she had been treading a very thin line between honesty and deceit; it was
no place for a steerswoman; the strain of it suddenly exhausted her.

Rowan said: “Is it Slado?” There was an odd quaver in her
voice. She looked up at Ona.

The potter was surprised. “Do you know him?”

“No. But I’m interested in him, and his history. I’d like to
know what he looks like.”

Rowan stated these words simply; and then merely waited. She
no longer knew what expression was on her own face—hope, or hatred; anger,
weariness, or hunger—but whatever it was that the older woman saw, it made Ona
pause, made her think, made her puzzle.

Then it made her, very visibly, decide not to ask.

Instead, Ona untied the ribbon and seemingly at random
pulled out one sheet. She handed it to Rowan.

The steerswoman gazed, silent, for a long time. “How
idealized is this portrait?”

Ona stepped nearer and tilted her head. “A lot, I suppose
…”

A young man, not tall, but well formed, gazing into the distance
with a noble expression. Wind sent his long hair flowing back from his face. A
cloak was thrown over one shoulder. His left hand rested lightly on the ornate
hilt of a sword hung at his waist.

Ona searched through the other drawings, selected another.
“This one is more real.”

The same young man seated at a small table, nursing a cup of
tea. He was gazing off to his right, at something that was not depicted. His
hair was now shown with the more typical crisp auburn texture, and his face was
less perfectly symmetrical. His expression was one of cautious evaluation;
Rowan wondered what he was watching.

She studied him, feeling no sense of identification at all:
the man she had been searching for, for these last years—but nothing startling,
no sign of power.

Such a very young man. “Did you ever speak to him?”

“Only once. Right then, in fact. He saw me, and saw I was
drawing him. I started to put my things away, but he said he didn’t mind, I
should go on … But I was so flustered—” Ona slipped a third drawing over the
others.

On a page nearly blank, faint, preliminary lines: the set of
shoulders, the shape of the head, positioning marks for the features. The inner
edge of the hair was present, with one stray lock falling past the broad cheek.
The left eye had been started, the lower lid from inner to outer corner—

—and from there, a dark, slashed black line to the edge of
the page and off it, as if at a sudden jerk of the artist’s hand.

Ona said, “I just couldn’t bear him looking straight at me
… I swept up my things and ran out. He laughed.”

Ona sat down beside the steerswoman and considered the aborted
portrait. “Do you know,” she said, “I’d forgotten about this one. So long ago
… You think of the feelings of your youth with a sort of fondness, I think.
Across these years I’ve remembered only that I had a sweet infatuation with the
mysterious wizard’s apprentice. But seeing this again, it’s like I’m right back
there …” She paused. “I stopped drawing him, after this.”

Ona took the sketch from Rowan’s hand, held it at arm’s
length, regarding it as one regarded the face of a person standing nearby. She
shook her head. “The way he looked at me … I don’t know … I’d never seen
anything like that. Not like you look at a person. He looked at me like I was
… some sort of thing. Some interesting thing.” She handed it back to Rowan.

“I suspect,” Rowan said, “that the wizards hardly regard the
common folk as persons at all.”

“But Kieran wasn’t
like
that.” Ona spoke with
feeling. “I’d heard the story of Ammi, and all, but really, I thought that Nid
must have told it worse than it was, because Kieran
loved
children. And
… And he was kind, too, often, to anyone.”

Kindness, again. Always, it seemed, in his last years,
kindness from Kieran.

Rowan sighed. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to part with
these?” She held up the two drawings.

Ona winced. “You take them. Now that I’ve seen them again, I
won’t miss them. I think I’d rather remember that dreamy girl, so sweet on the
magical boy.”

Chapter Five

“And that, I suppose, is what you consider ‘discretion,’”
Reeder said bitterly.

The steerswoman did not reply. They passed one street
lantern, another, candles glowing softly behind oilpaper panels. Beyond and
around, silhouettes of dark buildings stood, with the occasional gentle light
leaking from slitted shutters.

Some explanation to Naio and Ona had been necessary. Rowan
had chosen, again, the simplest: a steerswoman’s logbook from forty-two years
ago, information from that time incomplete, and Rowan’s job being to fill the
gaps. Perfectly true, and Naio had accepted it easily, even with some interest
in how one went about solving such a problem. Ona had seen Rowan’s reactions in
the back room, and clearly knew that there was more to the matter; but she had
not pressed for details.

“If this man is as dangerous as you say—”

“You’d rather I had continued callously to manipulate your
friends, to treat them like tools?”

“Yes!” He spoke quietly, but vehemently. “They’ve had misery
enough from wizards. If you’ve placed them in any danger, I’ll—” He balked at
exactly what he might do. Really, he could do nothing, short of violence. And
the steerswoman was armed; he was not. Rowan did not bother to reply.

They walked in silence for some time. More street lamps, where
moths tapped softly against the oilpaper. Rowan recalled the magic street lamps
at Wulfshaven harborside, a gift to that city from the wizard Corvus. She
wondered briefly how he and his own young apprentice were doing.

Reeder stopped abruptly, and turned to her. “What do you
plan for this former apprentice, this most evil man in the world?” His tone was
harsh with sarcasm. “You want to find him, that much is obvious. What will you
do when you do?”

“Are you certain that you want to know? You didn’t earlier.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Very well then.” She planted herself solidly, looked up at
his shadowed face. “I do intend to find him, if I can. When I find him, I plan
to speak to him. When I speak to him, I shall require him to justify every evil
act he has undertaken; and if he cannot, if I find his reasons insufficient to
the destruction he has caused, I will see him dead.” She stood, merely waiting
for him to speak.

His pale green eyes were now dark in the darkness. “And what
evil is it that he is doing?”

“Murdering people. In very large numbers. Some quickly, by
magic directly. Others, slowly, by starvation and forced conflict. Us,
eventually.”

“‘Us’?”

“The folk of the Inner Lands. So far, only the warrior
tribes of the Outskirts have suffered.”

“Barbarians,” he said, disparaging, uncaring. “They’re all
far away.”

“As you say. But Slado’s magic will one day render the Outskirts
uninhabitable. And at that point, far away will become right here. The
Outskirters will move inward. They will be hungry. They are warriors. They’ll
take what they need. Do you think that can happen peaceably?”

“And exactly when will these great hordes of barbarians descend
upon us?”

“I don’t know. But think of what Jannik’s been doing lately,
and Olin. Watch them. I believe they are preparing for war.

“Slado is the master of all wizards,” she went on. “I don’t
know to what extent he directs their everyday actions, but I know that when he
speaks, they must obey. That being the case, I regard him as personally
responsible for their indifference to suffering, and their casual cruelty.

“The Outskirters have children, too, Reeder. I’ve seen their
children, dead. I watched one girl die, weeping from pain, because Slado had
sent magic down from the sky, and she had gotten in the way.”

“And you.” Ironic, condescending. “One steerswoman, one
wandering question asker. The judge, jury, and executioner of the master of all
wizards?”

She flared anger inside, at his tone; but she answered him
simply and directly. “If need be.” Above Reeder’s head, moths gently battered
at the light, tapping; from behind Rowan, far up the street, in the deep dark,
another tapping, faint.

The pool of lamplight did not extend far. “And I’ll continue
to ask my questions—as any steerswoman would,” Rowan said, more quietly.
“People answer steerswomen’s questions—that’s known, that’s accepted. Any blame
that falls will fall on me, the asker. And now, we ought to part, and we ought
to do so in a manner that looks both casual and friendly.” She put out her
hand, spoke louder. “Thank you for dinner, and the wine, and the company.”
Reeder ignored her hand. The tapping had ceased. Rowan noted the last location:
thirty feet away, behind her.

In full sunlight, the beggar must see through the thin cloth
over his eyes, to some degree; in lamplight, far less, unless he had removed
it. Rowan doubted he would risk compromising his disguise. He would be unable
to discern her and Reeder’s expressions.

Rowan assumed control, took Reeder’s slack hand in her own,
shook it, clapped him on the shoulder, and walked away, in no hurry.
Eventually, she heard Reeder’s steps crunch as he departed. Somewhat later, at
the limit of her hearing, the tapping resumed.

Rowan made absolutely certain that the beggar was following
her and not Reeder before altering her course to lead more directly to the
Dolphin.

The common room was crowded, despite the late hour. The caravan
would be leaving in the morning, and its captain was occupied with last-minute
details. He sat at a long table with his drivers and guards around him and a
collection of excited travelers hovering about, asking questions, checking
their arrangements. Dan sat at the end of the table, and seemed to be standing
drinks for the entire lot.

The group occupied fully half the room; the other half was
empty, but for a lone drunkard snoring by the fire. Beck, looking very sleepy,
was on his knees beside the man’s chair, mopping a spilled mug of ale.

Rowan chose a small table on the empty side of the room,
against the back wall, far from the firelight. One candle in a red glass bowl
cast a dim puddle of light, faintly pulsing, like a heartbeat, on the tabletop.
Rowan sat.

From her left: noise, laughter, some argument; the creak of
benches shifting; the thunk of mugs on tabletops; the
clink
of coins. To
her right: a cool, thick quiet, populated only by echoes. Rowan remained,
motionless, suddenly weary to the core, gazing at nothing at all.

And it seemed to her now that the world had slowed, somehow:
voices were distant, and the walls of the room dim, half seen, mere outline and
shadow …