Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (35 page)

“See?” someone said, one of the people standing. “See, that
was all a lie, what the wizard said.”

Someone was behind Rowan, had been all along, supporting her
where she sat. She looked up and back, and found a pale, dark-haired person
whose name she could not retrieve.

Bel took Rowan’s face in her hands, turned the
steerswoman’s head back, looked closely at her eyes. “Do you know where you
are?”

Rowan was breathing more smoothly, now; but the act was
sweet, and precious, and she would not burden it with words. She shook her
head.

“Do you know who you are?”

Rowan nodded in Bel’s hands. She felt cold, and damp, and
suddenly wanted fresh air on her body, directly on her skin. The idea was
irresistible. She tried to stand.

They helped her, as far up as the chair, and she sat, unable
to rise further. She groped awkwardly at the buttons on her vest. Bel pushed
her hands aside, and undid them, and removed the vest.

The steerswoman shivered, chilled by her sweat-drenched blouse.
She wished she could remove it. Bel untied the lacings at Rowan’s throat,
opened the collar wide; it helped.

Bel stopped short and muttered something. Rowan looked down.

On the skin of her chest, red marks of broken surface blood
vessels: five lines, in a fan shape.

“Bel,” Rowan said, only because she was able to, only
because the Outskirter was the one known familiar thing here, and it seemed to
her important that she put names to things.

Bel looked up, grinned weakly. “That’s right. How do you
feel?”

The answer took some time. “Slow. Empty.” She looked at her
hands, then tried to push her sleeves up to her elbows. She could not do it.

Bel did it for her; the cold air was sharp on her forearms,
but welcome. “Will thinks you’ll be all right,” Bel said.

Rowan nodded, distantly. “He was here …”

Bel looked right; Rowan followed her gaze, finding that her
head moved in a wide, dizzying arc, and she struggled to orient correctly to
vertical.

She could make no sense of what she saw. She identified,
slowly, elements: tables, chairs, people, some standing, some kneeling or
crouched on the floor. Some action was taking place

The action had sense, order. Abruptly, as if with a snap,
she recognized it.

Willam was kneeling on the floor beside a still figure, his
hands, one atop the other, pushing down on the center of the man’s chest,
rhythmically. The man’s head had been pulled back, and someone was breathing
into his mouth

It was the drill known well to every sailor, the actions to
take to foil death itself, to pull back into the arms of life a person dead
from drowning.

“He needs air,” Rowan said, stupidly.

“Yes … ,” Bel said. And his heart, too, Rowan thought: his
heart must remember what to do.

She realized that Bel’s fingers were tight on her wrist,
counting Rowan’s pulse. At that thought, Rowan’s heartbeat became discernible
to herself, and she realized that it had been all along. But it seemed to be
everywhere, in every part of her body. It was too forceful, and it was far too
slow.

As Rowan watched, the man at the victim’s head stopped,
looked up, put his hand gently on Willam’s shoulder.

Will twisted, shaking it off. “No. It’s like drowning, but
it’s not
exactly
like. He could still come back.”

If too much time had not passed, Rowan thought; but Will—and
she remembered this, oddly, since she remembered nothing else—Will had been
counting.

The man helping Willam gave up his place to a woman, a woman
bleached and browned by sun. The man leaned back, watching Willam and the woman
at work, then looked across at Rowan.

Salt-and-pepper hair, weather-darkened face. “Gregori,” Rowan
said. Identify, identify: match words to reality. The woman was—“Enid.” The man
on the floor: “Naio.”

Gregori lifted Naio’s hand, felt for the pulse, then studied
the fingertips. He touched Enid’s arm, once, and the woman stopped and sat
back.

Will said again, immediately: “No.”

“Lad …”

“No.”

Gregori held up Naio’s hand for Willam to see, then
displayed the other. Rowan did not know why; from where she sat she could only
see that the fingernails were black.

Willam stopped. His head dropped. Then he sat back as if falling
back, and covered his face in his hands.

Enid moved away. Someone replaced her, but not to breathe for
Naio; this woman laid one hand on Naio’s cheek, and with the other gently
stroked his long hair.

“Ona,” Rowan said.

Movement behind her, then beside her, then passing her; but
the man did not get far. Someone stood in his way, reached out gently to stop
him.

An old man, and a younger one.

Marel, and Reeder.

“No,” Marel said.

“Let me—”

“No …” Marel held Reeder by the arms, looked into his
eyes, bright green to pale green. The two men were exactly the same height;
Rowan was faintly surprised by this.

Marel said, quietly but distinctly: “Son … that’s his
wife.”

The pale green eyes were blank with pain. Then Reeder closed
them. Marel pulled a chair near, and Reeder folded down into it, and sat still
and slack. Marel put one hand on his shoulder; and after a moment Reeder half
turned, leaned, lay his face against his father. The old man held his son.

“You survived,” someone said: a deep voice.

Rowan turned to see, but there were many eyes on her, and
she could not tell who had spoken.

But a different voice spoke. “Because she’s a steerswoman,
she truly is. Steerswomen and sailors, so they say.” A small man, in a shirt so
yellow it burned Rowan’s eyes.

What was it about steerswomen and sailors? “But,” Rowan
said, “the boots.” She looked down. She was in her stocking feet.

Bel, kneeling before her, glanced back over her shoulder,
and Rowan saw the boots standing behind the Outskirter. Their high shanks were
flopped over.

Bel half turned, reached out, and tugged at one. It did not
move. Rowan looked more carefully, concentrating. The gum soles had melted to
the floor.

Incredibly, someone laughed; laughed and kept laughing, utterly
unrestrained.

The deep voice said: “She’s mad!”

“No.” Willam, now standing beside her, wiping his eyes with
the heels of his hands. “That’s normal. She’ll be giddy, she can’t help it.” He
stooped to her level. “Rowan,” he said, “can you hear me?”

“Demons!” she declared, and that, too, was inexpressibly funny.
“I hear Demons!”

Willam considered. “No, your ears are just ringing,” he told
her, as if speaking to a child. “That might take a while to go away. You were
very lucky. You could have ended up deaf.”

“Lucky,” she confirmed, laughing happily, freely: lucky for
the sweet air, that moved in her so easily now; for her body, which felt loose
and weak, but present in every particular; lucky for the light she could see,
the sounds she could hear

Abruptly, she remembered: fire in every nerve, each muscle
clenched and knotted as if tearing from her bones, a blow, like a sledgehammer
to her chest, and pain

Bel was seated on the floor before her, holding her hand,
counting her pulse. Willam was stooped beside her, serious, but showing a
growing relief.

Above her, looking down: Joly, with Ruffo dithering beside
him. “Gum-soled boots,” Rowan said.

“You’re the steerswoman,” Joly said. “You’re the one he
wanted.”

“But she is a steerswoman,” Ruffo put in, “because, she survived,
and that proves it. Jannik was lying to us all.”

“No,” Rowan said. She shut her eyes. Her wits were still scattered,
like startled birds. She tried to retrieve them, coax them back, pluck them
from the rafters and corners of the room

Room. She was in a room. “I’m in the Dolphin,” Rowan said.

“That’s right,” Willam told her. “Do you remember what happened?”

She remembered pain clearly, but was unable to recover what
immediately preceded it. She puzzled.

“What did you mean by ‘no’?” Joly asked her.

Will said, without looking up, “Give her some time. She’s
not all here yet.” Beck appeared, with a small glass; Bel reached to take it,
but Willam stopped her. “No. No alcohol. She could still stop breathing.
Water.”

“How do you know that?” Joly asked. He came nearer. “And how
did you know what to do, what to try to do, for Naio?”

Then Willam did look up, his copper eyes unreadable. “Something
like it happened to me, once,” he said simply. “By accident.”

Joly’s gaze narrowed, and he glanced down, at Will’s feet.
Rowan wondered why, and she leaned forward to look down over Will’s shoulder.
Her movements were wide, clumsy, weirdly loose.

Gum-soled boots. Oh, clever. Good boy. “Everyone,” she said
cheerfully, “everyone should wear them.”

“Happened to you? How?” Joly asked. Willam said nothing.
“Meddling with magic?” Joly speculated. His eyes grew hard. “Then you’re the
one, the minion of Olin—”

“No one here,” Bel said, “is a minion of anyone.” She rose.
“And when Rowan said no, she meant,
No,
Jannik
wasn’t
lying—because
he probably believes what he said. But it isn’t

“But if she’s the one he wanted …” His voice trailed off.

“You think you should just give her to him? Whether it’s
justified or not?” Bel moved, planting herself between Joly and Rowan. Seeing
this, Willam rose, too, and placed himself solidly behind the steerswoman,
resting his hands on her shoulders.

And despite the fact that the world consisted only of
now,
with memory before but shadows and
mist—despite this, the steerswoman knew with perfect certainty that never
before in her life had she felt so completely protected.

Violence before her, and magic behind her. With these,
nothing could harm her.

“Right now,” Bel said to Joly, “Jannik thinks Rowan has left
town. There’s no reason for him to know different.”

“The only way he’d find out,” Willam said, “would be from
someone in this room. And you all know exactly what he’d do to her.”

“But,” someone said, “she’d live. The wizard can’t hurt her,
we just saw that.”

“He can hurt her!” Willam said to the speaker. “If he had noticed
she was wearing gum-soled boots, he would have just used more power. She would
be just as dead as Naio.” He turned back to Joly. “Although,” Willam said, “if
you handed Rowan over, I don’t think Jannik would kill her quickly. No. I’m
fairly certain he wouldn’t.”

Joly was a long time replying. “I have no intention of
handing her over to the wizard.” And he looked down at Rowan. “But she’s very
lucky that I didn’t know, before all this, that Jannik was looking for her.”

Rowan could not see Bel’s face, but she saw when the Outskirter
tilted her head slightly, heard the change in Bel’s voice. “I like you,” she
said to Joly; this took him by surprise. “You remind me of myself. You’d
protect your people. That’s proper. But Jannik didn’t give you the chance, did
he, to protect your people? He killed first, talked later. That’s what you’re
living with in Donner.”

Joly considered these statements. Then he sighed, and pulled
out a nearby chair, and began to sit.

Something he saw interrupted him. “Marlee,” he called,
across the room, “please stay here for the moment. Until this is resolved.” He
looked around; Rowan realized that the room was nearly empty. “Who has left?” A
few names were mentioned, then more. “Are any of those people who know you by
sight?” Joly asked Rowan.

In her mind, Rowan clutched at birds that were not there.
She gave up. “Mayor,” she said, honestly, “I’m not quite myself.”

“Is she going to stay addlepated?” Joly asked Willam.

“I didn’t. Rowan.” She looked up at him: directly up, which
made his face upside down in her view. “What’s the square root of four thousand
and ninety-six?”

It had to be an integer; he was not likely to ask for a
fraction. And 4,096 was not so very large a number. It was not worth working
out the square root: she merely scanned squares of numbers below one hundred.
“Sixty-four,” she said.

“And the square root of that?”

Ridiculous: this took no thought at all. “Eight.”

“She already has her wits,” Willam said. “She’s just still a
bit stunned.”

“How soon can she travel?” Will glared at Joly: a sudden,
sharp anger. The mayor did not waver. “I want her away from the city. As soon
as possible.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Bel said.

“No sooner than that?”

“We have business in town tonight.”

Rowan felt Will’s hands tighten on her shoulders.

Bel turned to Willam: “Will she be herself by twenty-three
hundred?”

“Bel—” he protested.

“Their seyoh is working in the dark. That’s wrong. He needs
to know what’s going on, in order to do what’s right.” Seyoh, Rowan thought:
the leader of an Outskirter tribe. Joly, suddenly, did remind her very much of
Kammeryn.

At this, the steerswoman realized that all her memory was in
place. “I feel better,” she told everyone. Although, apparently, she had not
yet recovered her social graces; she had announced the fact as cheerfully and
artlessly as a child.

“Good,” Bel said. “Now, everyone listen.” She glanced about,
securing the people’s full attention. Then she turned back to Rowan, and spoke
in the formal mode. “Tell me, lady: why are you here in Donner?”

And at this cue, Rowan’s mind, seemingly of itself, composed
the information to answer. For a moment Rowan observed the process as if from
afar; and then she entered it fully:

Kieran. Latitia. Unexpectedly, Slado.

One man turning good; another becoming evil.

An occurrence, one event happening on one specific night;
and everything afterward falling from that, all the world shifting on that
point.