Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (47 page)

She would think him a sailor, if not for his stride. It was
a land stride. But that would change.

She rejoined Bel, who was watching the activity inside the ropewalk.
Bel eyed the sack. “What’s that?”

“Some things he couldn’t carry without arousing suspicion.”

They turned away and proceeded up the street, back toward
the Dolphin. “Magic?” Bel asked, when no one was near. She seemed both
suspicious and interested.

“Yes. Although not of any real use to us. Still, I believe I
can get at least one of these objects to work …” She mentally inventoried the
contents. She stopped short in the street, unrolled the bundle, and reached
deep into the sack.

“Rowan,” Bel cautioned.

“I think there’s a book in here … Yes.” Her fingers
located it. She pulled it out, stuffed the sack under one arm, and examined her
find as they walked on.

It was the tiny book that protected the silvery slip. Its
thong ties were loose. Rowan opened it at random, squinted at the minuscule
writing. The letters were oddly shaped, and some recognizable only by context.

Bel watched her sidelong. “Any useful spells?”

“It seems to be poetry. Or songs … this one … it looks
like the lyrics to The Sallie Gardens’ …” Rowan chose another page ..

“Ha. Now you’re going to think that it’s the common folk who
were connected to the wizards.”

But the steerswoman had stopped walking and stood dumbfounded
in the center of the street. Bel turned back. “What’s wrong?”

Rowan read out:

“From where she stands—

—to where
I stand

Is but a hand, a link, and a lock,

But there are doors, mine poor for

Being always wide—”

“‘—I wait in stillness,’” Bel said, quiet, amazed. It was
one of the ancient songs of Einar, the first seyoh of the Outskirters. “‘I wait
in the speaking of grasses, in their voice.’” Rowan’s eyes followed on the
page, word for word. “‘I wait in the open of wander,’” Bel went on. “‘The world
holds me, its smallest stone, but for the moment she comes.’” Now Bel could not
help but sing it, if softly:

“The moment she comes to me,

The moment she comes,

Her eyes
now light in light on dark,

Her voice a silent, known and humming

In my heart only: wider, call and empty.

Her fingers pulse the edges of the
sky—”

“Not ‘edges,’” Rowan said. She could not decipher the word;
it was no word she knew. “I don’t think it says ‘edges.’ Bel, how would The
Ghost-Lover’ end up in a wizard’s book?”

Bel thought long. “One of the Krue living with the
Outskirters heard it and brought it back, and wrote it down in that book.”

“I suppose that’s likely enough …”

And they continued on up the street. But the steerswoman was
thinking:
Lock.
Link. And a voice that came
shadowing down the
sky.
She began to wonder at Einar’s ghost-lover, who seemed a woman with very
strange powers, and whom only Einar could see, only Einar could hear.

They returned to Rowan’s room, where they had stowed their
traveling gear; but when they arrived, they found that the room was not empty.
Two people waited there.

One was a young woman, dark-skinned, dark-haired. She stood
with one hand resting solicitously on the shoulder of an older woman, who sat
wearily in the room’s ancient chair.

Ona.

“Oh—” Rowan said; and a moment later found herself kneeling
on the floor at Ona’s feet, holding both the small hands in her own, looking up
into the pale face that seemed, so suddenly, very old. “I’m so sorry …” Inadequate;
but all words are inadequate, at such a time.

“It’s not your fault,” Ona said quietly.

“If, if I had known …” It was painful to speak. “Ona, I
would never have—”

“No. It’s my fault.”

“What?” Rowan could not understand this. “Ona, no.”

“I knew,” Ona said, and closed her eyes. Light from the window
behind her haloed her hair with faint blue. “When you saw those drawings, that
first night … I knew, from what you said, from what you didn’t say … I knew
there was more to it. I knew it wasn’t just old gossip. I should have said
something to Naio. But—” Her voice cracked; she bit her lips, waited, went on:
“He was having so much fun …”

Tears came; the dark woman beside Ona had a handkerchief
ready. Ona took it, and leaned against her.

Rowan looked up at the young woman and found dark eyes, a
brown face very similar to Naio’s. “Sherrie?” Rowan asked. The woman nodded:
Naio’s niece.

A period of quiet, during which Bel unobtrusively sidled
over and sat on the bed.

Ona sighed and straightened again, still wiping at her eyes,
and carefully composed herself. “He sent for her.”

“What?” Rowan was lost.

“Kieran. He sent for that steerswoman.”

She was a moment recovering the matter; it now seemed distant,
irrelevant. Then abruptly, it did not. “Latitia? Kieran sent for her?”

Ona nodded. “When you left town, yesterday, Naio and I—” She
paused again to master herself. “—we … we spent the day with old Nid. And it
did take all day, Nid rambling and losing himself, and oh!” Here she laughed,
the weak laughter of one exhausted from weeping. “You should have seen Naio,
winkling old news out of Nid! Going over and over, circling around. It was so
… so funny …” She pressed the handkerchief against her eyes again.

Rowan could only repeat, astounded: “Kieran sent for
Latitia.”

“Not by name.” Ona removed the handkerchief, sat twisting it
in her fingers. “Nid said Latitia said … There was a rider, who came across
her on the road, looking for a steerswoman, any steerswoman. When she said she
was one, he said there was a wizard who,” and it seemed now that she quoted,
“‘wanted a quiet word with a steerswoman.’”

“He was going to tell her,” Bel said.

Rowan could hardly believe it. But: “Yes …” And if he had
told Latitia, if Kieran had lived for just a little longer

Whatever a steerswoman knows is freely given to all. There
would be no secret. And all these terrible events might not have occurred.

Rowan closed her eyes, shook her head, sighed. She looked up
into Ona’s blue eyes. “Thank you.”

“Naio wanted you to know. That’s why we were here, yesterday
…”

Quiet dwelled in the room for a space of time. Then Rowan
rose, stood looking down on the silent woman, and on impulse kissed the top of
Ona’s head, gently. “We have to go.”

“So we do,” Bel said.

Rowan turned to her. “All right. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Bel said, and nodded, and did not move from the bed.
Rowan regarded her, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

“Where’s our gear?”

The steerswoman looked around. Their packs were not present.

Sherrie tilted her head. “Out back.”

The packs were in the yard, along with quite a lot of other
gear, all of it being loaded onto the back of a horse.

Ruffo bustled up; he had apparently been waiting for them.
“I was figuring,” he said, “the two of you would want to make good speed, and
that meant not stopping to look for food, or getting someone to give you some,
so, so, there’s all this. But it’s too much to carry, isn’t it, so, well …”
He faltered, then handed Rowan the leading-rein. “Anyway, she’s got no master
now.”

Bel was delighted. “Jannik’s horse!”

“But,” Rowan said, “surely you can use her yourself, to hire
out? Or sell her?”

“True, I could, but you could sell her later just as well,
and don’t tell me a steerswoman couldn’t use a little ready coin every now and
again, not to mention Bel, who nobody’s going to feed for free.”

“But—”

The steerswoman staggered at a shove from Bel. “Rowan, say
‘Thank you.’”

“Thank you,” Rowan said. She reached up to stroke the mare’s
soft nose, amazed and grateful. “I’ll make certain she ends up in a good home.”

“Good enough,” Ruffo said. “The head groom tells me her name
is Princess Alabaster of the Golden Cloud-Castle.”

The mare nuzzled Rowan’s palm, then bit her. “Ow!” The
steerswoman drew back sharply. “I believe,” she said, shaking the pain from her
hand, “that I’ll call her Sugar.”

Beck, who had been securing Willam’s bow to the side of a
loaded pannier, stepped forward and held out to Rowan one of the Dolphin’s linen
napkins, its ends knotted. Rowan took it, and found it to contain a large
number of sugar-lumps. She laughed. “Thank you,” she said.

Beck grinned his huge grin and stepped back. “Be well,” he
said. “Stay safe.” And he departed. Rowan gaped after him.

Bel, reaching for a sugar-lump, regarded her curiously.
“What?”

“I’ve … never heard him speak before,” Rowan said. “I was
beginning to wonder if he could.” The young man’s voice was lovely: deep and
resonant, seeming four sizes too large for him.

They bid Ruffo farewell, and led Sugar away, up Branner’s
Road, and left onto Iron-and-Tin. Somewhat later, they passed Joly, standing on
a street corner in quiet conversation with the proprietor of the bawdy-house,
and Marel. The three men glanced at the travelers, and Joly lifted one hand
slightly, in unobtrusive acknowledgment; then they continued their discussion.

“The cabal is already at work,” Bel noted.

When they reached the river dock, the ferry was already well
loaded, with no passengers waiting, but for no apparent reason it had not yet
departed. It did so the moment Rowan and Bel convinced Sugar to board, which
caused Bel to smile happily, throw Rowan one significant look, and thereafter
make a show of cheerful innocence. Rowan sighted the ferry captain, an immense,
gray-haired woman who caught her glance, grinned, and surreptitiously winked.
It was no one Rowan knew.

The ferry had pulled away from the shore and was halfway
across the river-branch when Rowan suddenly recalled something. She made a
sound of annoyance. “This sword isn’t mine.”

“Neither was the other one.”

“But—”

Bel spoke aggrievedly. “Rowan, if you go back and try to return
it, they’ll just tell you to keep it. You know they will. And don’t forget what
Willam gave them. Even taking the sword, and the horse, and all the supplies
into account, Donner still comes out ahead.”

“Oh, very well.”

And it was not until much later, in the shivering evening,
after a meal by the campfire, with Rowan deep into a detailed description of
all the events that had taken place in Jannik’s house; and having reached the
point in the telling when Willam used the magic voice-box; and having already
reassembled it; and being about to demonstrate its use, as an aid to the
telling, that they both heard it:

Two sounds, like distant rumbles of thunder.

They were faint, but crisp in the still, cold air. They
echoed and reechoed, across the river, against the distant hills, and farther
on, passing from point to point, moving across the land, and fading at last
beyond the limit of hearing.

This, despite the fact that the star-studded sky was
perfectly cloudless.

Rowan and Bel exchanged a long look. The sounds had come,
unmistakably, from the direction of Donner, and the dragon fields. Willam’s
charms were being put to use.

Then the steerswoman picked up from the rough, bare earth the
white card marked 1, and she carefully fed it between the little turning wheels
of the box. The wheels caught the card, and drew it forward.

From out of the paper cone, the voice of the dead wizard
said: “Access.”

About The Author

Like so many people in the twenty-first century, Rosemary
Kirstein makes her living in information technology, having served variously in
programming, user training, tech support, and technical writing. And like so many
other authors, she has also acquired a satisfyingly random array of peculiar
past jobs: field laborer among migrant workers in the tobacco fields; airport
security guard; wielder of the “green” brush in a hand-painted watercolor
factory; truck loader for UPS; dishwasher in a nursing home; and, inevitably,
waitress.