Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (43 page)

“Well, he’s fussing away like he hasn’t got a care in the
world.”

The noise rose again and the wind picked up, gusting wildly.
Bel tucked her head down from the flying leaves and dust.

White light brightened. The long shadows sharpened, then
shortened. Rowan looked up.

Low overhead, then arcing up and rising: an oval shape with
four legs, like the underbelly of a huge insect with a lantern, impossibly
brilliant, in place of its head. Smaller lights showed on either side.

The steerswoman was beyond astonishment. Like ship’s lamps,
she thought, distantly. Red for port; green for starboard.

The insect rose farther, became small, then tiny. The white
light vanished abruptly, leaving only red and green, two colored stars that
moved across the constellations, westward.

Willam reached past Rowan, tapped the Outskirter’s foot.
“Bel?”

“He’s watching it go. I can see him, there’s a red lantern
lit in the garden.” A pause. “Now he’s walking up the path to the back door …
That’s it.” Bel climbed to her knees. “He’s gone into the house.”

Willam released a shaky breath. “We should get out of here—”
He made to rise.

But Rowan put out one hand, caught his arm. He stopped.
“Willam,” she said, uncertain, then suddenly urgent, “that last spell,
that”—she recovered the term he had used—“that ‘override.’”

He was puzzled. “Yes …”

“Are you absolutely certain that it was
Jannik
who
sent it?” Will’s jaw dropped. “No …”

A soft whump; a huge
crack;
and wind, as sudden as a
blow, and as brief. A thousand tiny objects struck the wall beside Rowan in a
weird, chiming hail.

A moment of utterly empty silence, as if the world itself
were stunned. Then a hiss and a growing roar, and crackles. Shadows jumped and
writhed from flickering light.

Rowan stood slowly and backed away from the wall.

The windows of Jannik’s house had all burst outward. Smoke
streamed from them, out and then straight up, vertical rivers of smoke, thick
and black. Inside, light flailed wildly, red and yellow and white.

Willam was standing beside her, gaping at the sight. There
were shouts in the distance, more shouts nearer, then many voices in the
street.

Bel came to Rowan’s side. “Ow.” She was rubbing her face.

Will saw, grabbed and stopped her hands. “No, don’t touch
it, stay still, keep your eyes closed.” He took her by the shoulders and turned
her toward the angry light from the house. “Rowan—give me your handkerchief.”

She passed it to him, now frightened. “Will—”

“Wait, wait.” Seeming oblivious to all else, Willam brushed at
Bel’s face with infinite patience and delicacy. Each pass left threads of blood
behind. “We need water,” Will said.

They led Bel to East Well, pushing through the crowd now
growing there, people gathering safely back from the heat of the wizard’s house.
Men and women in nightclothes, or wrapped in blankets; barefoot near-naked
children; three of the city guard; and voices all around.

Their former lookout was shouting, pulling and pushing at
people, forcing them into order. A bucket line, Rowan realized.

Once again, a starry night in Donner; once again, a burning
building, and a bucket line … At least this time, only a wizard had been
harmed.

And Bel

Wiliam was patting Bel’s face with the dampened handkerchief,
rinsing, patting. Rowan said, “Will—”

“Stand by … ,” he said distractedly.

Working for
Corvus. “Wiliam!”

Bel said: “Rowan, let him be, I think he knows what he’s
doing.” The Outskirter’s aggrieved tone reassured Rowan immensely. “A lot of
debris flew in my face, but I’m not in terrible agony. And I hope that
handkerchief is clean,” she added to Wiliam.

“It’s better than glass getting in your eyes. Hold still.”

“Meaning it isn’t, I suppose.”

The bucket line had evolved into order, but the volunteers hesitated
when a voice spoke up in an authoritative tone: “Hold back. The wizard’s house
stands alone.” A blanket-wrapped figure moved through the crowd and drew near.
“Let it burn down, I say.”

It was Irina. She caught Rowan’s eye, nodded.

“I thought you were out of town,” Rowan said, confused.
“Hmph. When a wizard sends for me, I am definitely not at home.” Irina turned
away, adjusted the blanket more deco—

rously about her night shift, and stood watching the fire, reflected
flame glittering in her eyes.

But the bucket line did go to work, relaying water to the
house across from Jannik’s and another nearby, where burning debris had settled
on the roofs. The volunteers moved quickly, efficiently.

Willam intercepted one of the buckets. “Bel, keep your eyes
closed, and dunk your face in the water.” The Outskirter did so, came up
sputtering. Will inspected her face carefully. “Your eyes don’t hurt?”

“No. My face does.” Bel’s forehead and right cheek were covered
with a multitude of small cuts. Thankfully, none was large, and none seemed
deep.

“All right, then,” Willam said. Bel dried her face on her
sleeves, looked about, then at her friends, then at the wizard’s house.

Orange light, flickering and pulsing in each shattered
window. Smoke, streaming up into the night sky. Heat-shimmer, rising from the
roof, making the stars beyond seem to twist and shift.

The roof tiles were blackening. As Rowan watched, yellow
lines appeared among them, cracks, which widened. There was a pause, as if the
building were itself drawing a breath, and then the roof collapsed, down through
the third storey, and the second. A blast of wind and heat, from which everyone
present turned away; and when they turned back, the house was a brick shell,
holding only flame within.

Bel turned to Rowan and Willam. “I thought we decided not to
kill the wizard.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“We didn’t do it,” the steerswoman said.

Rowan sat with Bel on her right, Willam on her left. Across
the large table, crowding close and in some cases tucked behind each other,
were the fourteen members of Donner’s city council, and a few other trusted
citizens.

The formal dining room of the Dolphin was dark but for two
silver candelabra standing in the center of the table, and one window on the
far side of the room. It stood open on a predawn sky of a dull dusky blue, where
the last of the morning stars shone faintly.

Winter stars, Rowan noted distantly. The morning stars of autumn
are the stars of winter.

Joly traced the pattern in the linen tablecloth with one
finger. “I can’t say that I’m sorry,” he said, not looking up. “If ever a man
deserved to die, it was Jannik.” He raised his dark gaze to the apprentice and
the steerswoman. “But if you did not cause the fire, even by accident …”

From the corner of her eye, Rowan saw Wiliam shift slightly.
She ignored him; she could not bear to look at him. She said to Joly, “We
believe that was Slado’s doing.”

Bel sat up. “He saw you?” Rowan turned to her. The
Outskirter made a strange sight, cuts strewn across her face like red mud
splashes, looking as if one could simply wipe them off. Bel had a clean cloth,
and had been wiping. The marks remained, some of them still stubbornly
bleeding.

“We stayed past the updates,” Willam said, from behind Rowan’s
left shoulder. “I was so close … I thought, if I kept working for just a little
longer …”

“The updates ended, and Slado saw,” Rowan said to Bel.
“However it is that wizards see these things, he saw.” The steerswoman
addressed the gathering at large. “But Slado also saw that Jannik, in the
dragon fields, was calling magically to the house, and giving it commands from
afar.”

“Different commands,” Willam put in. “Harmless ones. But
Slado couldn’t tell that.”

“But he could recognize the spell taking place in the house
itself. It was …”

“Big,” Willam said. “Loud.”

“Bright.”
Will, you look like a
bonfire! “And its
nature could not be mistaken. So Slado sent the house a command of his own. He
told it to wait for Jannik to come home, and then destroy itself.”

There was quiet for a space, and then Irina asked the
obvious next question. “And did you find what you were seeking, you and your
runaway apprentice? Did you learn this mighty secret?”

It was Bel who answered. “No. They would have said so immediately.”
She turned to her friends, disappointed. “You failed. You didn’t find it.”

“Actually … ,” Rowan said, and for a moment she regarded
her own two hands lying on the tablecloth, locked together, fingers interlaced.
“Actually, I don’t know.” And then she did look at Willam: she turned to him
and looked directly into those familiar, beautiful, guileless copper eyes.

Working for Corvus.

The steerswoman held the wide gaze with her own, her face
expressionless. “Wiliam?”

“Rowan, I think I did find it.” He spoke as if speaking only
to her, spoke with a desperate sincerity almost painful to watch. “What we saw,
at the end—I really think that was it. But …” His hands moved vaguely, as if
trying to grasp, as they had before, insubstantial light. “But I didn’t know
what it was. I didn’t know what it meant. It was beyond me.” He dropped his
hands. “I was out of my depth.” But then, faintly hopeful: “Rowan, did
you—”

She turned away from him. “It was completely incomprehensible
to me.”

Quiet comments of disappointment among the council members;
and Joly sighed. “Then all of this was for nothing.” All the searching,
questioning; the slayings done in dark—

ness; the terror in the dragon fields; the revelations and
hopes. A friend’s betrayal. Naio’s death.

For nothing.

“That,” Irina declared, “is your opinion.” She took a moment
to adjust her blanket closer about her shoulders, managing to convey, even in
her night shift, a graceful dignity. “As I see it, ‘all this,’ as you call it,
has had a wonderful result. Donner now has no wizard.”

“They’ll send another,” Will said immediately.