Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (12 page)

Something waved for her attention: she brought her gaze back
with difficulty, and found Beck signaling with a cupped hand to his lips, and a
questioning expression.

He seemed unreal; she found she could not reply. Beck hesitated,
studying her face, then he carried his rag and the empty mug into the kitchen.
Rowan returned to staring at emptiness.

Eventually she pulled her logbook from her satchel, opened
it, and removed Ona’s drawings.

On the page before her, the vague shape, the empty face, the
slashed line of the artist’s panicked flight.

Despite its emptiness, Rowan thought: Slado, exactly as I
know him. All guess, blankness, and fear. She sat gazing for a long time.

Somewhat later, a presence at her side. Rowan was several
moments recognizing Beck.

He placed something on the table before her, not wine, not
ale

A delicate tea cup and saucer, decorated with tiny purple
irises; an odd, fat, round, yellow tea pot; and a scent, warm and welcoming,
bright with mint, rich with honey.

Rowan breathed in deeply, and felt a sudden sweet rush of gratitude.
She grinned up at Beck, and said, almost inaudibly: “Perfect.”

He tilted his head, eyes half closed, basking in her
approval, then gracefully eased himself away again.

Rowan poured, tasted, sighed.

A latecomer entered the tavern, made for the fireplace,
discovered the sleeping drunkard, and instead chose a long table to the fire’s
right, in the empty side of the room. He studied the crowd around the caravan
captain, glanced in Rowan’s direction, glanced away again.

She recognized his face from her catalog of people outside
the pawnshop. The possible third watcher.

Bel entered by the street door and scanned the room, ostentatiously
searching for someone, and equally ostentatiously discovering him: Dan. They
greeted each other with glee, and Bel settled cozily into his lap, allowing one
quick glance to tell Rowan that she had sighted her in the dim corner.

Two serving girls and Beck brought three more pitchers of
ale to the caravan crowd. Young Beck noticed the lone man at the long table by
the fire, and nudged one of the girls, who hurried to take the man’s order.

Rowan turned back to the sketches, covered the shadow of her
enemy with the second drawing.

There the apprentice sat, much as Rowan sat, both hands
around a tea cup, exactly as if he occupied another table in this very room.

It occurred to Rowan that this might actually have been the
case—and that she and he were separated not by space, but by time.

She wondered if this was what magic felt like. The young man
with his tea cup could not see her, but she saw him, and more: she, like some
tinker fortune-teller, knew his future.

So young.

He was watching something off to his right. Feeling herself
to be facing him, Rowan involuntarily looked to her own left—

—and observed the entrance of the stocky, gray-haired woman,
overdressed in a heavy green cloak that might or might not conceal any number
of weapons. The woman swept the room with a quick gaze, completely failed to notice
Rowan, and approached, stepping sideways, her attention on the cara—

van crowd, only turning back when she was a mere five feet
from the table.

She startled immensely at finding Rowan occupying her own
usual seat. The steerswoman sat regarding her expressionlessly.

The woman was a moment finding words. “Hai, what a shock!
Sorry I am, lady, not seeing you there, sitting so quiet like that.” She
laughed, one hand on her chest as if quieting a fluttering heart; it was a very
good performance. “I’ll just be leaving, no need to disturb you. You want your
peace, I can see it.” And she glanced about the room, her gaze pausing almost
imperceptibly on the lone man at the long table, then settling on the
fireplace. She sidled away around the smaller tables and sat in a chair next to
the snoring drunkard.

A very distinctive accent: The Crags, held by Abremio. Among
those wizards known to the common folk, Abremio was considered the most
powerful.

Across the room, Bel laughed, overloud. Rowan looked, and
Bel’s eyes caught hers briefly, as behind Dan’s back, shielded from onlookers,
the Outskirter flashed three fingers.

But the steerswoman already knew: the solitary man, the
stocky woman, and the beggar, now certainly waiting outside. All three
watchers, all close by.

Time to go. For safety’s sake, she must abandon this
mission. But she was so close.

The steerswoman turned back to the drawings, pulled the
first sheet from behind the other. And it seemed different to her now, no
longer fraught with dark meaning. Merely lines on a page, drawn by a girl,
decades ago. Merely a quick attempt at capture, failed.

The steerswoman needed more information.

And there was more than one way to get it.

Rowan replaced the pages into her logbook, returned the logbook
to its satchel, slung it over her shoulder. She checked to see that the lone
man and the gray-haired woman were not currently looking at her, then turned to
watch Bel.

When the Outskirter glanced in her direction, she noticed Rowan’s
attention.

When Bel looked back a moment later, Rowan was still regarding
her, steadily.

When Bel managed to look again, she gazed longer. As she
watched, Rowan glanced: at the woman by the fireplace, the man alone at his
table, and at the door. Then Rowan waited.

Bel knew the steerswoman very well indeed. The Outskirter’s
eyes acquired a brief, hard glitter, her mouth a quick, small smile. Her chin
lifted once, almost imperceptibly, in Rowan’s direction; then she turned her
attentions back to Dan.

Slowly, Rowan drained her tea cup, rose, swung on her cloak,
picked up her cane, crossed the room, and left through the front door.

She paused under the carved dolphin. Against a wall, under
the ledge of the tall windows of the formal parlor, the beggar lay curled up,
apparently fast asleep. Only his smell distinguished him from a pile of rags.

Ruffo kept lamps lit through the night, all around his inn.
Beyond, only growing dimness, then near-dark.

Rowan arranged in her mind a diagram of the surrounding
streets and selected a straight route toward a wide intersection, which she and
Bel had both passed many times in the last two days and knew to be surrounded
only by business and warehouses. At this late hour, all would be shut.

The steerswoman breathed the night air, looked up to the
Western Guidestar, just above the rooftops, and walked out into the night.

At the intersection Rowan turned right, then flattened
herself against a stone warehouse wall and waited, listening.

Distant laughter from the direction of the Dolphin.
Somewhere far to Rowan’s right, the clop of horse hooves. A small clack from
high up—a cat on loose roof tiles, perhaps.

Nothing else.

The steerswoman unclasped her cloak, shrugged it to the
ground, drew her sword. With her other hand she tested the heft and balance of
her cane.

Above, between the rooftops, stars: the Hunter, the Hound,
and the Western Guidestar. Rowan wondered who among the wizards might now be
watching through that high eye.

She waited.

Minutes later, she was still waiting.

More minutes later, footsteps. But Rowan recognized them,
and when Bel emerged from the street, the steerswoman waved her over. The
Outskirter tucked herself beside Rowan, leaned close. “No one.”

Rowan whispered back: “What?”

“No one’s interested at all. The man and the woman are still
ignoring each other. The beggar looks asleep.”

Rowan digested this information, confused. “Can we have been
completely wrong?”

Bel was definite. “No. The man and the woman are working
together. I saw them speaking to each other when they thought no one was
looking. The beggar … he just seems to be underfoot too often. And whenever I
see him, either the man or the woman seems to be nearby.”

The steerswoman and the Outskirter both waited, listening.
Under the roof eave above, a flutter and scrabble as some bird adjusted its
perch. The horse hooves were somewhat nearer, and the creak of a cart wheel
could be heard.

Nothing else.

Bel made a quiet noise of amusement; with her face so close,
Rowan could feel the huff of her breath. “Maybe they think you’ve just gone to
the outhouse, and they’re all waiting for you to come back.”

“Why would I take my cloak to visit the outhouse, on a fine
night like this?”

They listened some more: still nothing. “Then,” Bel said,
“they’re lazy. They’re comfortable, they’re enjoying their ale, and they don’t
want to stir. They think they’ll catch up with you in the morning.”

“That beggar can’t possibly be comfortable.”

“Then they know it’s a trap.”

Rowan shut her eyes and listened even more intently. She
stepped slightly away from the wall, clearing a path for the sound from up the
street.

Steps, distant, approaching.

Rowan moved quickly back, tapped Bel on the arm, and indicated
the opposite corner. The Outskirter slipped past Rowan, peered around the edge
of the building, then jogged across the intersection and took her post.

The steps paused at the point where the light from the Dolphin’s
lamps grew dim; then began again, now accompanied by a faint scratch-and-tap.

The Outskirter and the steerswoman waited.

The steps continued, slowly—and then there were more, two
more sets, and they were running.

Rowan heard a startled cry; something clattered to the
ground. Feet scuffled on cobbles. A series of thumps; a choked sound of anger;
the flutter of cloth.

Rowan stood listening, utterly confused, so completely so
that she said out loud, “What?” as if Bel were beside her and able to reply.
But Bel was invisible, at her post in the dark at the opposite corner.

The sounds continued; sounds of a struggle, which now seemed
to include blows. Rowan peered around the corner but saw only a vague knot of
twisting shadows halfway up the street.

Then someone grunted, hard, and the sounds became quieter.
“There, like that,” a woman’s voice said; “No, wait—” a man replied, and the
struggle suddenly renewed, wilder, more desperate.

Rowan found that she had stepped completely away from the
corner and now stood in the center of the street, watching. Only two followers,
after all? she speculated; and … one simple confidence artist

Who happened to get in the way.

And from up the street: the unmistakable hiss of a sword
being drawn.

Aghast, Rowan said, “No—” Then she ran, toward the fight,
calling to Bel, “Come on!”

Then Bel was beside her, and then she was not: the
Outskirter swiftly outpaced Rowan. A moment later there came a clash of swords,
and a silver flicker in the starlight. Beyond, the other two figures were a
tangle of shadows.

The ringing became rhythmic; Bel had one attacker occupied.
Rowan reached them, passed them by, reached the oth—

ers, rounded on them, struck overhand, not with her sword
but with her cane.

Two male voices cried out in pain; one figure fell sprawling,
then scrambling away. The other man acquired a small silver flash: a knife.

Rowan swung her sword at a point just behind it, connected.
A hiss of pain; but the flash arced up and over, came at her from the other
hand. She backstepped, swung at the flash; it dipped, came again from below.
She slashed, down, and across. A weird, quiet wail, and the clatter of metal
falling on stone. Rowan stepped back.

Wet noises; the smell of blood, and offal. The figure
collapsed. And because, by the signs, the wound could not be survived, Rowan
quickly finished the man.

Ringing sounds behind her; she turned. Bel was still
engaged, her opponent’s back to Rowan. Rowan moved to assist.

But the beggar had regained his feet; he was in Rowan’s way;
he made some movement with his arms, she could not see what. Then he took three
steps forward, slapped Bel’s opponent on the back, and, stepping away quickly,
cried out:
“Bel, get back!”

A soft thump, a
hiss,
a sudden wild flare of
brilliant white light. The woman’s shadow was huge, flailing against the stone
walls. The white light on her back was small, sharp, almost too intense to look
at. Rowan squinted in pain, half shielded her eyes with her arm, backed away.

The woman dropped her sword, convulsed, fell, taking the
light to the ground with her. She thrashed, once, and was still.

The hiss continued. Other than this, only silence.

The beggar was beside Rowan, breathing hard. He turned to
her, looked at her once, his eyes uncovered now, and wide. He seemed as
horrified as Rowan felt. Then he turned back and watched as the white light
slowly dimmed to blue.

Beyond the fallen woman Bel stood frozen, her face pale, her
dark eyes huge, her sword, loose in her hand, reflecting blue light. Then blue
jumped as her grip tightened; she closed her mouth, made a strangled sound of
fury. She leapt over and past the corpse and came on the attack, her sword
ready for a backhand slash

Rowan interposed herself. “Bel, no!”

Another sound from Bel, a choked sound of pure hatred. And
because it was the only way to stop her sword, Rowan raised her own, met Bel’s
stroke, and hoped that sheer surprise would halt the Outskirter’s attack.

It did: Bel took a step back, her guard completely dropped.
She let out one shriek: “Rowan!” Then, quieter, between clenched teeth: “He’s a
wizard!” She made to attack again.

From behind Rowan: “No, Bel, please—”

Rowan flung out both arms, protectively. “Bel—wait!” The
blue light hissed on, down to dimness, down to darkness.

But Rowan had seen, clearly, in the white light of magic:
the eyes, the unmistakable wide, copper gaze