Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (15 page)

“Yes,” Will said, immediately, definitely.

“Not merely—” She did not say:
Not merely a few simple
tricks to keep his pet amused?

“Rowan,” he said seriously, “I know a
lot
now. Not
everything. You can’t learn it all in six years. But no wizard knows
everything
about magic. Some of it is still beyond me—but there are certain parts of
it that already I know
better
than most wizards. And a lot better than
most of the Krue.”

“How is that possible?” She discovered the comb still in her
hand, and handed it to him.

He looked at it blankly a moment, then began using it. “The
Krue take magic for granted,” he said. “Some spells are always there, always
operating, and people just call on them without thinking about it. But usually
they don’t know a thing about how the spells really work, on the inside …” He
paused to clear the comb’s teeth of debris, then plied it again. “And because
it’s all so familiar, when they do start to learn, they have to … to unlearn
things first, and throw off old attitudes. A lot of them can’t manage to do
that at all.”

She considered this. “But you started fresh?”

“More or less. I had what I’d figured out on my own. And
that’s really what convinced Corvus to take me on. Ow.” This as the comb met a
knot behind one ear. He used his fingers to work it apart. “It takes a certain
kind of mind to make magic work from scratch,” he went on, “and you can’t
always find it, even among the Krue.”

Rowan found that odd; but whatever talent might be required,
Will certainly did have it. She had seen it demonstrated. Six years ago young
Willam, entirely untrained, had shattered and partly destroyed the great
fortress of the sibling wizards Shammer and Dhree.

She noticed that Will was growing uneasy under her scrutiny.
It came to her that it must be obvious that she was now considering him in the
light of the potential power he represented, and not as simply a friend.

“Have I mentioned,” she said, “how happy I am to see you
again?”

He grinned, set down the comb, and pushed his ragged hair
back with his fingers. “Not yet.”

“Well, I am. And I’m also glad to have another intelligent
mind working on this problem.” He acknowledged the compliment with a tilt of
his head, a small shrug. “But you: you came here all alone,” Rowan said, “with
whatever magic you do know … what exactly are you planning to do?”

He became serious. “Find out why the Guidestar was brought
down out of the sky,” he said. “Whatever else Slado may be up to now, that’s
where it all started.”

She leaned back against the wall and crossed her legs on the
bed. “Assuming that it was brought down intentionally.”

Proper Steerswomen’s precision impelled her to state all the
possibilities. “It may be that the Guidestar’s fall could not be prevented.”

“No. The Guidestar,” Willam said, definitely, “was brought
down on purpose.”

“How do you know that?”

She waited as Willam took the time to think very carefully before
speaking; and as Rowan watched him, it slowly dawned on her that he was
organizing and preparing to communicate ideas that he believed were beyond her
comprehension.

It was something the steerswoman had done herself, many
times, when answering questions posed by simpler members of the common folk.
She found it very strange to suddenly be on this side of such a conversation,
and stranger still that it was Willam on the other.

“Well,” he began, “first off, the place where the Guidestars
are—that part of the sky—if you can put something up there, it tends to just
stay. Once it’s there, you don’t need magic to keep it up.”

“Motion,” Rowan said. “Mass. The Guidestars are constantly
falling, but in such a wide arc that they miss the world completely, and moving
at exactly the speed that keeps them in lockstep with the world’s turning. With
nothing impeding their fall, they should continue indefinitely.”

He smiled as if relieved. “That’s right. So, they’ll stay,
unless something else up there hits them—or if they’re told to move out of the
stable place.”

Rowan found her thoughts stumbling, then halting, at the
idea of “something else up there.” Then she recovered. Something, she decided,
like a shooting star.

“But,” he went on, “if one of those things did hit a
Guidestar, it would be accidental.”

The Guidestars watched, and made records of what they saw,
Rowan knew. “There would be records from the other Guidestars. A wizard would
be able to review the records.”

“Yes, that’s the thing.” He relaxed further. “The relay
would be interrupted, there’d be queries and warnings all over, and requests
for commands—someone would have to answer. All that ought to be in the records.
And the falling Guidestar itself—unless it was completely disabled, it would be
asking for help. And there’d be a record of that, too. But there just isn’t.”

Rowan was completely lost, left only with the image of the
huge, jeweled Guidestar crying out silently and piteously for help as it fell
across the sky, burning. She wondered if it felt pain.

She struggled back. “But … a Guidestar can be told to move
out of its position.” Told, in effect, to die.

He nodded. “And if someone did that, they’d be sure to cover
their tracks.”

“They’d erase the record.” She knew from conversation with
Fletcher that this was the correct phrase.

“Or prevent it being recorded in the first place, if they
were clever enough, and had the right clearance.”

“Clearance?” She puzzled. “Routine Bioform Clearance?”

“No, not that. It’s something different …” Will showed a
trace of disappointment. He said with such careful patience that she felt
abashed: “There are some spells that are so powerful that only a few people are
allowed to use them. And other spells that recognize who you are, and know
whether or not you’re allowed to use the most powerful ones. And secret words
you have to speak, even before trying.”

And it seemed to her that this must be a very simple idea;
but she felt that she could not hold on to it. Some part of her was rejecting
this.

Recognition: that was it. The idea of a spell that saw—but
what
was doing the seeing ?—and recognized a face—but with what eyes, or by what
means? Something that listened, for secret words, like a soldier on guard,
challenging intruders.
Who goes there?

And it was the thought of soldiers that settled her: a
hierarchy, a graduated scale of authority. A sergeant could order a soldier to
scrub the pots, but only a general could send the army into war.

“Clearance
means authority,” she said to Willam.

He seemed a bit bemused. “Yes …”

“You might have said so immediately.” He was using the terms
to which he was accustomed. “Forty-two years ago, Slado was an apprentice.
Would he have had that much authority?”

“No. But Kieran had top clearance, the highest there is.
Slado might have stolen the words from him, and somehow fooled the recognition
process.”

She stumbled again at that last phrase; she could not help
it. Will had spoken almost as if the very process of recognizing someone was
something that could operate by itself, could exist and act independently,
entirely unsupported.

A soldier, she told herself. Think of a soldier, and an
intruder with a clever disguise and all the right passwords.

“Then the Guidestar was brought down intentionally. But we
still don’t know why. What can you do here that you cannot do elsewhere ?”

“Find the records.”

He was contradicting himself. She was lost again. She found
it exhausting. She shut her eyes. “But,” she said, and rubbed her forehead,
“the records were erased.”

“The records that the
Guidestars
made were erased.”
She looked at him, now speculatively. “Some records,” he said, “are records
that are shared, that all the wizards can look at, if they want to … as if
they were written down, say, in a book, and put on a shelf for anyone to pick
up and read. The Guidestars make that kind of record, and those were erased.
But there are other records that a person can keep to himself, as if … as if
that book were hidden away, in a drawer.”

And because he was stating it as a metaphor, Rowan realized,
for the first time, that the records of which they had been speaking were not
words on a page, not written down at all; that there existed some other way to
record events; that she had been understanding even less of this conversation
than she had assumed; and that even the familiar words that Willam used so
casually represented concepts outside her own understanding.

Willam had not only grown up, he had grown beyond her. She
wondered how great a distance now lay between them; and how hard she would have
to work to cross it; and whether it were even possible to do so.

And then, quite abruptly, she realized exactly what this
entire discussion had been leading toward.

She said, with no regard for the inaccuracy of metaphor:
“Records in a book, the book in a drawer, the drawer in—”

“Yes.” And he leaned back, soft candlelight falling full on
the serious face, the copper gaze; and Rowan saw in the man the same grim
certainty, the same unwavering determination that she had seen so often in the
boy.

Willam said: “I have to break into Jannik’s house.”

Rowan found Bel in the formal dining room upstairs from the
glass-windowed parlor, seated alone at a small table by an open window. There
were no other diners, but a few servers moved about quietly, clearing tables of
the remnants of many early breakfasts. Rowan pulled out the chair opposite Bel,
and sat.

The Outskirter glanced up from her meal. “Have you decided
to let everyone know that you know me?”

“Since no one was following me after all, yes. Jannik
himself won’t return for several days, I’ve teamed.”

“That’s good. You weren’t very happy, sneaking around your
steerswoman’s morals.”

“I never am. That smells good.” The dish before Bel held a
trio of artfully circular fried eggs, each with a sprig of dried rosemary and a
dollop of blood-red sauce on its center; a single huge, fat sausage, still
hissing steam, and seeming about to burst its skin from sheer enthusiasm; and a
crisp triangle of cheese bread. Another small and elegant plate held an apple,
rendered into slices that were half tilted into a red-and-white spiral pattern
around the upright and perfectly cylindrical core. The core’s stem held a single
leaf, dry but gay.

“Dan’s gone,” Bel said around a mouthful of egg. “He’s paid
for my room through the week. You can move in, if you like. The bed is huge.”

Rowan helped herself to a slice of apple. “Well. Even with
no one actually hunting us, it still might be convenient to have a room so
close to the back door. I think I’ll keep it.” Her wave caught the attention of
one of the servers, who nodded and slipped down the service stairs leading to
the kitchen.

Bel continued to eat. She was pale, her eyes were too
bright, her movements a shade too controlled. A long night, with no sleep,
Rowan surmised.

Bel’s responsibilities must have lain very heavily upon her
at the moment: responsibility, but no immediate recourse to action. And the one
thing Bel could not abide, Rowan knew, was inaction.

In the two years that Rowan and Bel had spent apart, Bel had
established herself as the leader of the Outskirterspossibly the first single
leader of them all ever to exist. And while Bel now traveled in the Inner Lands
as apparently merely Rowan’s aide and companion, in a way the reverse was true.
However strong and deep their friendship, Bel was here now, with Rowan, because
it was the steerswoman who stood the best chance of learning how to save Bel’s
people.

Bel’s people, and Rowan’s own as well. But to the
Outskirters, the danger was far more immediate.

But now, in this quiet dining room, bright with morning
light and filled with every accoutrement of civilization, there were only the
two individuals, regardless of their larger roles. Rowan wished, simply, that
she could say or do something to help her friend.

No help was possible. The event had occurred: huge, bizarre,
distant, magical. People had suffered and died. Nothing could change it.

Rowan said only: “I’m sorry.”

Bel glanced up once, nodded, looked away, out the window.

It was a warm day, unseasonably so. And a few days ago, a
blizzard had kept
Graceful Days
from unloading …

Rendezvous weather, as the Outskirters called it: one of the
signs of recent use of Routine Bioform Clearance. Really, Rowan ought to have
suspected. “Do you know where Kammeryn’s tribe was, last summer?” Rowan did
care about the Outskirters as a whole, but among the warrior tribes, only
Kammeryn’s people possessed, for her, faces.

“South,” Bel said, regarding the empty air outside the
window. “And I’m glad Willam’s left Corvus.” She turned back. “The wizards are
too evil. I’d hate it if Will became like them.”

Rowan sighed. “Yes.” She folded her hands before her on the
table, sat gazing at them a moment. “But.” She looked up at the Outskirter.
“Bel, no matter how clever we are, no matter how much we can discover, I
believe that the common folk will, at the end of this, need magic. Even if we
defeat Slado, or kill him, Routine Bioform Clearance will have to be
reestablished according to its proper use, and maintained, and intelligently
so. And who knows what other damage exists, somewhere out in the world”—here
she gestured toward the window—“and still unknown to us.” Outside, a dog
barked; a girl’s voice replied, in an aggrieved tone, exactly as if the animal
had admonished her. A flock of pigeons, startled from the ground below,
appeared briefly, vanished upward, and the window was empty again.