The Steerswoman's Road (10 page)

Bel spoke quickly. “Sea woman, I beg your pardon. I come
from a far land and know nothing of the sea. If there is any ritual or
obeisance I should make, please tell me now, so I can fend off the evil of my
words. And, please, I ask you to teach me what I should know, so that I will
never offend the sea god again.”

Rowan looked at the Outskirter in admiration. A barbarian in
birth but not in attitude—or, again, there seemed to be more to the Outskirters
than rumor credited.

The sailor nodded, mollified. “That was well spoken. Aye, I’ll
teach you, if you need it. Between me and the steerswoman, we’ll see you safe.”

The boy sniffed disdainfully. Rowan looked down at him and
recognized trouble on the way. He said, “Tell me, lady, what’s a mermaid?”

The sailor made a grab for him, but Rowan stopped her with a
hand on her chest. The woman wavered, agitated, trapped between two customs of
equal force.

Rowan dropped to her knees in front of the boy and spoke eye-toeye.
“Child, I will be glad to answer your question, but first I will give you
information for which you did not ask. Sailors live on their ships, care for
their ships; a ship is a sailor’s home. The beliefs of the sailors are like a
religion. Now, when you’re in a person’s home, it is bad manners, it is
inexcusably rude, to scoff at his or her religion, whatever your own beliefs.
The person has offered you kindness and protection, and you cannot offer insult
in return. It is outrageous, uncivilized—” She thought of Bel and amended her
comments. “It is crude. It would be kinder, and inoffensive, to wait until we
reach Wulfshaven, when we are in no sailor’s home, to ask that question. So
tell me again, boy, do you have a question for me, at this time?”

The child stared at her, wide-eyed, and the sailor leaned
close to his ear. “Say that word again, and I’ll throw you overboard.”

A voice came from behind them. “What’s this?” Reeder’s boy
broke and ran, clattering down a companionway into the ship.

The crewwoman straightened, startled. “Ah. Sir. You shouldn’t
sneak up on one like that.”

It was Tyson, the navigator. “Now, Marta, I can’t help if my
boots are silent. You know I would never sneak up on you.”

“Aye, sir. Right, sir. Officers never sneak up on the crew.”
Bel spoke up. “The boy might have seen a dolphin.”

Tyson laughed and clapped his hands together. “Then that’s
good luck!” He took a few moments to make a methodical examination of the sea
off to starboard. Rowan did the same, but neither found any encouraging signs.
The sailor, Marta, peered out dubiously; then, with a noncommittal grunt, she
returned to her labors.

“Ah, well.” Tyson turned back, leaving one arm resting along
the railing. As he tilted his head back to view the new set of the ship’s
sails, Rowan discovered that she rather liked the way his auburn hair looked
against the pale sky, how his light eyes contrasted with his broad brown face.
She found herself watching herself watching him, a little amused.

Bel roused out of deep thought. “I like what you said,” she
told Rowan. “About respecting other people’s religions. That’s very sensible.”

Distracted from her distraction, Rowan considered her
answer. “I’m sorry, Bel, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t necessarily respect
other people’s religions, or any religion. But the people—I respect them, and I
give them the honor they deserve, whatever they believe.”

“And that boy—would you have answered his question?” Bel
turned to Tyson. “He was asking about ill-omened creatures,” she explained.

Rowan leaned back against the railing and studied Tyson’s
and Bel’s expressions. “Yes. I would have, had he asked again.”

Tyson nodded, with the understanding of long association
with steerswomen, but Bel shook her head ruefully. “You. I don’t understand you
at all, sometimes. Just when you finish saying a hundred things that are
incredibly wise, you turn around and act like a plain fool.”

Rowan felt a flare of anger. In all the Inner Lands, no one
spoke to a steerswoman so insultingly. She was about to retort in kind when, by
reflex, her training stepped in. Everything she knew about Bel, in all her
short experience with the Outskirter, came to her mind in ordered array: the
patterns of Bel’s behavior, what Rowan surmised about Bel’s context of
knowledge and habit, the occasional sudden swordlike thrusts of Bel’s quick
mind ...

To everyone’s surprise, including her own, Rowan replied
with a laugh. “And you,” she said to Bel. “Just when I’m convinced you’re
nothing but a plain fool, you turn around and say something incredibly wise.”

Bel wavered, uncertain of how to interpret this. At last she
said reluctantly, “Then perhaps between the two of us, we make one very clever
person.”

“Perhaps that’s the case.”

Tyson had watched the exchange with some perplexity. “You’re
an odd pair of friends,” he said. “You are friends, aren’t you? Traveling together?”

“Yes.” Rowan clapped Bel’s shoulder in a consciously overacted
gesture of hearty camaraderie. “And very advantageous it’s been, for both of
us.”

Bel caught her mood. She said to Tyson, aside, “She covers
for my ignorance, and I cover for her flaws of personality.”

Tyson smiled. “Flaws of personality?”

“She’s difficult to convince.”

“True,” Rowan admitted.

“She has no gods.”

“Also true.”

“She’s too serious.”

“A matter of opinion.”

“There’s not enough magic in her soul.”

“Well, I’m not at all certain about magic,” Rowan admitted.

Bel dropped her bantering attitude and stopped short. “What
can you possibly mean?”

Rowan regretted the change in mood; nevertheless, she considered
carefully before speaking. “The few times I’ve been faced with something
called magical, it seemed ... well, simply mysterious. As if there were merely
something about it that I didn’t know. Understand, I’m not giving you a
steerswoman’s conclusions, here. As a steerswoman, I have to withhold my
decision, out of ignorance. But the fact that I can be this unsure ... that
seems to indicate something, to me.” She shrugged roughly, uncomfortable with
her uncertainty. “Sometimes I feel people call it magic, because they want
magic.”

“Perhaps Rowan feels that way because steerswomen are immune
to some kinds of spells,” Tyson said to Bel.

She looked at him in astonishment. “Immune? Can that be
true?” Rowan made a deprecating gesture. “So it’s said. It’s supposed to be
true of sailors, as well.”

“Sailors and steerswomen.” Tyson nodded. “We’re much alike.
The sea in our blood, you see.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Bel said. “I know there’s real
magic in the world, but would it be so ... selective?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t enough information,” Rowan replied.
“But it seems unlikely.”

Tyson clapped his hands together and laughed. “Simple way to
prove it. There’s a chest in the hold; belongs to a wizard. We’re shipping it
through Wulfshaven.”

Bel was suspicious. “So?”

“It’s guarded, by a simple spell. Nothing major, so I’m
told. But we had to take precautions loading it. Come and take a look.” He
looked at Rowan, eyes crinkling in humor. “Come, lady, let’s look at a wizard’s
magic; and perhaps we can show your friend something surprising of our own.”

After pausing for Rowan to don her now-dry boots, the two
women followed him. He led them down a forward hatch to a series of narrow
companionways that carried them deep into the hold, far below the waterline.

The air acquired a contained feel, and the slap of waves
came from somewhere overhead. They went back along a cramped passage created
by the crates and bales that crowded the hold. Following last, Rowan found
herself distracted by the variety of shapes, and the odors hinting at what each
contained. There were dusty kegs of wine, others sending out a tang of brine,
chests of some sharp spice; one bale of wool exuded a cloud of fine powder when
Rowan’s hand touched it. She sneezed.

She heard another sneeze and, looking up, spotted Reeder’s
boy perched on top of the hale. His eyes were wide with distress at being
caught, his jaw slack. Rowan only smiled and waved, and he watched dumbly as
she followed Tyson and Bel.

Tyson brought them to a corner where several chests were
stacked less precisely. He leaned back against a column of crates made of some
rough pale wood. With a sweep of his hand he indicated rather vaguely the
general area of the chests. Rowan and Bel looked at them.

“Which one?” Rowan asked.

“Perhaps Bel can tell.”

“What, me?” Bel gave him a cautious, dubious look.

He spread his hands. “It’s a minor spell, I know. Won’t harm
you, it’ll just ... warn you. Rowan pointed out, when people expect magic, they
sometimes find it when it’s not there. I’d like to see if you can find it if
you don’t know where it should he.”

Bel raised her eyebrows and rocked a moment, intrigued. She
scanned the area, then cocked her eye at one chest of dark wood, ornately
carved and inlaid with a pattern of lighter wood. She approached it and,
standing at the farthest distance possible, stretched out her left hand to
touch it with index finger extended.

Rowan glanced at Tyson and found him watching Bel with controlled
amusement. He so carefully kept his gaze steady that it was obvious that he
was avoiding looking at the correct box. Rowan guessed from the stance of his
body that it was one of a pair off to the right.

Bel’s finger contacted the chest in question. She held the
pose a moment, then slapped the box disdainfully with her palm. She turned to
the others.

One in the center was unadorned, but hound about with iron
chains and padlocks. It was perched rather sloppily across two others. Bel
stepped up more confidently and rapped it with her knuckles. “Ha!” Nothing
remarkable happened, but the action caused the chest to rock hack slightly,
then forward. Bel took a step back, caught her hare heel on an uneven plank,
and threw out her right arm for balance. The back of her hand brushed one of
the chests on the right.

With a very unwarriorlike squeak she yanked the hand back
violently. The sudden change of motion caused her stance to unbalance
completely, and she landed on the deck, narrowly missing a small puddle. She
pressed the hand against her body with her left arm. “It
bit
me!”

Tyson laughed without mockery and strode over to the chest.
He stepped into a space behind it and, keeping his eyes on Bel and Rowan, laid
his hand flat upon its lid, fingers spread.

The women watched a moment. He showed no sign of discomfort.
Rowan gave Bel a hand up, and they approached.

The chest was about half as long as Rowan was tall and would
have come to her knee if stood on the deck; it was standing on a wooden
framework that raised it as high as Tyson’s waist. It was covered with
intricately tooled leather decorated with a swirling meshlike pattern of
worked-in copper. Some of the copper lines came together to consolidate into
clearly marked but unreadable runes and symbols. The whole chest was strapped
about loosely by plain leather bands with loops on the side, and the wooden
stand was padded with leather.

Bel studied Tyson, then touched the surface with one
cautious finger. She snapped it back instantly, shaking it as if from a bee
sting. Rowan thought that at the moment of contact there had been a brief,
faint noise, like an insect buzz, and a thin odor that disappeared immediately.

Rowan stepped up, seeing amusement and challenge in Tyson’s
eyes. She carefully laid her own hand next to his. The leather felt rich, the
copper discernibly cool. Automatically she ran her hand across the lid, part of
her appreciating the workmanship. She turned to Bel, speechless.

Tyson tilted his head. “Try to touch Rowan.”

Both threw him glances of surprise and suspicion. Unable to
resist the opportunity to learn, Rowan reached out with her left hand. With
vast reluctance, then forced bravery, Bel put her hand in Rowan’s.

Quickly they pulled away from each other, Bel cursing. This
time Rowan had felt it, but not from the box. It had passed between Bel’s hand
and hers, not painful, but strong and unpleasant—an eerie stinging vibration.

Rowan was suddenly reminded of the feeling one got from
gripping a mainsail sheet under a stiff wind: how the wrist-thick rope would be
rigid as iron, yet pass into one’s hand the massive tension of the fight
between wind and canvas, between sea and wood. The ship was a live thing, and
holding that rope was like holding a tensed muscle.

The magic of the chest’s guard-spell was sharper, violent
but somehow similar. Something living had seemed to pass between the hands.
Rowan had been like that rigid rope: whatever it was had passed into and
through her to reach Bel. Appalled, she stepped back from the box.

There was no apparent reason for the sensations. The power
was near-silent and invisible. For a moment her thoughts swirled, automatically
sifting, searching for any information that might connect to give hints or
theories about the effect. But when her mind came to rest, the only
possibilities that remained involved spirits and spells.

Bel was delighted. “How did you load it on the ship?”

Tyson indicated the leather straps and loops. “We had to
slip wooden poles into these, then carry it by the poles.”

“It’s not a bad spell. But even though I didn’t know which
chest had the spell, I knew that one of them must. For a real test, we ought to
try someone totally in ignorance.”

Rowan doubted that would make any difference. Although she
was immune, after a fashion, she had felt something real. She was certain she
would have felt nothing, if it had been at all possible to do so.

And what was her attitude now? She introspected and found
that she still possessed no solid opinion. That surprised her, until she realized
that she still had not enough facts to come to a conclusion. But, with the facts
and new experience she did have—all the tentative ideas and half-formed
theories had re-formed on the opposite side of the issue, pointing to exactly
opposite possibilities. She felt a mild internal vertigo.