The Steerswoman's Road (13 page)

Joslyn recovered some of her composure and nervously sidled
over to deal with it.

Bel approached. “Well, I’d like to know how to address a
duke, and also, how he knew where to find us, and when.” She looked up at him.

“I came as soon as I heard there was a ship arrived from Donner,
with a steerswoman. If it was Rowan, I knew she would come here; she couldn’t
be in Wulfshaven and not visit Maranne.” He paused. “And the proper address is ‘my
lord.’”

Bel considered, then shook her head. “That won’t do.”

“Bel—” Rowan began.

“Outskirter,” the duke mused. He had finally placed the
term. “That’s a warrior, a barbarian.”

“True.”

“You’re small for a warrior.”

Bel acknowledged it. “I’m closer to the ground, and harder
to knock over.”

“That’s a large sword for so small a woman.”

“I swing it two-handed.”

He nodded, his wariness tempered by interest. He leaned back
against the table. “That’s good. But then you can’t carry a shield.”

“Ha. My sword is my shield.”

“Bel has been traveling with me,” Rowan said. “She’s an honorable
person and has given her word not to lay waste to the Inner Lands while she’s
in my company.”

The duke laughed. He had a huge laugh, as big as his person,
honest and uninhibited. “Then you’d best not separate. I believe this woman
could do more damage than her size might suggest. Let’s sit by the fire and
wait for Maranne, and you can tell me the story.” He looked around and found
Joslyn standing uncertainly by the fire. He dropped into graciousness easily. “I
hope this is no inconvenience to you. Pour some tea, and please sit with us.”

Joslyn complied, hesitantly, and pulled up a stool, but
Rowan noted that the herbalist kept a bit of distance between herself and the
visitors. Joslyn found the situation uncomfortable, and Rowan realized with
regret that at some point in the past Artos had ceased to be a frequent casual
visitor to Maranne’s house.

But Bel was completely at ease and settled into a chair,
tucking up both legs as if she were seated on the ground. “I’ve heard something
about these dukes and barons and squires you have in the Inner Lands,” she
said. “How is it that a steerswoman knows one so well? Are you all of the same
class?”

Artos gave a half smile. “They say that the steerswomen are
the only aristocracy open to the common folk.”

“That’s not true at all, and it’s a bad saying,” Rowan put
in with some vehemence. “We come from all classes before we join, and belong
to no class when we’re accepted.”

“You’re certainly well treated by the people,” the duke
pointed out. “And they defer to you, grant you certain privileges ....”

“The people treat us well of their own accord. There’s no
law that compels them.”

“Custom can have the force of a law.”

“Not at all. There’s no punishment, no soldiery involved—”

He held up a hand. “Now, let’s not get into one of our discussions.
We’ll be at it all night.”

Remembering, Rowan laughed. “Talking until dawn ...”

“Often, right by this very fire ..”

Joslyn looked about the room in wonderment. Rowan said to
Bel, “The Academy’s not a place, it’s an event, and the year I trained it was
held here in Wulfshaven. Artos was forever haunting our classes.”

“So many strange people,” he said, and his gaze turned
inward at pleasant memories. “From all the Inner Lands. Candidates from far-off
towns, teachers, experts in the most peculiar things. So much to see and hear
about. I never knew the world held so many things, such strange thoughts ...”

“He looked so fascinated, and so lonely, that I took pity on
him at last and started a conversation. It was easy to become friends. He has a
quick mind, as it turned out, and I practically recited my daily lessons to
him, most evenings ...”

“A steerswoman can take pity on a duke?” Bel was amused. “I
wasn’t a steerswoman, yet ..”

“And I wasn’t a duke,” Artos said. “But my uncle died near
the end of the training, and I”—he made a deprecating gesture—“ascended to my
position.” Then he looked a bit regretful. “I’d like to have seen it all, you
know. I learned a lot in my haunting, as Rowan calls it. I know I’m better for
it.

“Well.” He slapped one knee and leaned forward. “Now you
must tell me how our Corvus can be so far off the mark. What happened to you?”

At the duke’s insistence, Rowan began with the fire at the
inn. As it was not the true beginning of the tale, she found she had to keep
backtracking and filling in, responding to peripheral questions as they
occurred. The story wound its way through events almost haphazardly, but at
last Artos had the whole tale of her jewel, and of her suspicion about the
interest of a wizard. She showed him the glittering fragment.

He fingered it, musing. “I’ve seen this before. That
witch-woman, at the edge of town.”

“Yes, you were with me. That was the first one I’d seen.”

He nodded vaguely, his eyes on the fire. From the depth of
his concentration, Rowan suddenly realized that he was thinking in his areas of
greatest expertise: violence and defense. Her thoughts ran ahead of his. “You
can’t be serious,” she said.

He looked up. “You could always read my mind.”

“The wizard could hardly harm me at this distance.”

“How can we know? Corvus saw you all the way off in Donner.
And those dragons—that must have been done at a distance. Unless your Red
wizard followed you.” He returned the jewel.

“Or,” Bel put in, leaning forward, “unless it was done by Jannik.”

“Help a Red? Not likely. The Blues and Reds hate each other,
only the gods know why.” And with that, the duke grew silent.

Rowan watched his face, suddenly disturbed. “Something has
happened?”

He nodded. “A nasty little war, last year.” Avoiding Rowan’s
face, he addressed his explanation to Bel. “Corvus turned from Red to Blue, and
six months later someone’s trying to establish a new Red holding just northeast
of us. And our helpful Corvus requested—” He spat the word, and abruptly his
composure vanished. He slammed the arm of his chair and was on his feet, pacing
like a beast. “‘Requested!’”

“Requested how many soldiers?” Rowan asked.

He flung his arms wide. “All of them! All of my regulars,
all of my reserves, and—” His mouth twisted. “—as many impressed from the
citizenry.”

Rowan made a calculation against her estimate of the area’s
population. “And how many came back?”

“I lost twenty of my regulars. Of the rest—” He paused for effect.
“Half returned.” He watched the steerswoman’s reaction, then continued in a
flat tone. “Wizards. Sometimes I think they’re all insane.” He brought himself
back to his chair but did not sit; he gripped the back with his large hands. “Did
you know, one of them even brought a basilisk onto the battlefield? Can you
imagine it? The damned thing killed as many on their side as ours.”

Bel looked at Rowan. “What’s a basilisk?”

“A magical creature, usually disguised in some fashion.”

“That’s the thing of it,” Artos said to the Outskirter. “If
it looks at you, you die, sooner or later, and how can you tell if it’s looking
at you when you can’t recognize it? It wiped out a squadron on their side, and
one on ours. And the ones that lingered, they had it worst. We brought some of
them here, no one else wanted to help them. That Red captain, what was his
name?” he asked Joslyn.

“Penn,” she supplied quietly.

“You should have heard him curse his masters. The poor bastard
scarcely looked human at the end.”

Joslyn was sitting silent on her stool by the fire, her cup
in her lap, her head bowed.

“Your father?” Rowan asked.

The woman looked up slowly. “Tell me,” she said carefully. “Have
you seen the magic lamps by the harbor?”

Artos spoke through his teeth. “A gesture of thanks.”

Bel sipped her tea. “It’s trouble if you cross a wizard,
trouble if you help a wizard, and trouble if you don’t have a wizard, for
things like dragons and hurricanes.” She put down the cup. “That’s altogether
too much trouble.”

The duke sat down again abruptly. “Rowan, who else knows you’re
in Wulfshaven?”

“I’ve made no secret of it.”

“Of course not. But Corvus thinks you’re dead, and probably
Jannik, too. With any luck, your Red wizard does, as well.”

“So there’s no reason for him to look this way, to scry or
try to divine my fate.”

“Word may reach him. There may be spies—I’ll let it be known
that the steerswoman on the ship from Donner turned out not to be you.”

Rowan was offended. “Artos, I won’t have you lying on my
behalf.”

There was a shift in his demeanor. Suddenly he was not only
a friend, but a duke, a man who gave orders and who chose his own behavior. “I’m
no steerswoman. I’ll lie if it suits me, to protect whomever I damn well
please.” He thought briefly. “You’re going to the Archives?”

“In the morning.”

Artos stood. “Leave now.”

“We’ll have to wait. It’s a full day’s journey, and this
rain—”

“Take my horse. You’ll be there by midnight.”

“Artos—”

“No, he’s right,” Bel said. “The sooner we get to where we’re
going, the better.”

He looked around, and found Joslyn. “Pack them a meal for
the journey. And does Maranne have an extra cloak for Rowan?”

“No. Take mine.” She went to make the preparations.

“I hardly think this is necessary—” Rowan protested.

“Rowan,” Bel said. “Shut up and let your friends help you.
The duke knows more about such things than you do, and so do I.”

It was true. Rowan was familiar with violence; it was part
of the world. But the violence she had met had been random, small-scale—the
occasional road bandit, a fleeing criminal. She had defended herself and even
killed in defense.

But this—If in fact there was a pattern to the recent events,
if there was a single will behind them, then it pointed to the existence of an
enemy. She stopped to absorb the idea: I
have an
enemy.

Bel and Artos understood enemies.

Rowan awoke to find a wood gnome regarding her from the foot
f the bed. He was perched on the footboard, peering down with droll interest,
munching some bit of fruit. When he saw she was awake, he stretched out one
long arm to offer her a taste. She accepted politely but only gave the piece a
token nibble, as it seemed to have been dragged through several different kinds
of dirt. It proved to be a slice of winter apple, identifiable only by flavor.
Wood gnomes had no more than a vague recognition of cleanliness.

She looked around the room. The other four beds were empty,
but Bel’s fur cloak lay on the floor next to one. Bel herself was nowhere in
sight.

They had ridden through the long night, with storms
gathering around them, gathering, then breaking. They ran Artos’s fine warhorse
through rain along the north-going river road, a smooth clear track, until the
rising hills forced them to walk. Bel rode behind

Rowan, clutching her waist. Though the Outskirter never complained,
Rowan felt the tension in her arms at each jolting misstep. But when the sky
cracked lightning, the horse remembered battle and cried out challenge to the
sound, and Bel, in kindred spirit, sat straighter, balanced, and echoed with a
warrior’s laugh. Later they wearily dismounted and guided the horse in booming
thunder and dancing wind up the rocky, wooded path to the stables nestled under
the overhang of the Archives’ stone walls.

The wind snatched the stable door from Bel’s hand as Rowan
brought the horse in, and the slam summoned Josef, the groom, from sleep to
amazed discovery of the exhausted women. He led them upstairs to the
transients’ dormitory, lit a fire, then left them to collapse into the chilly
beds.

Now spots of sunlight climbed the far end of the room. Rowan
turned back to the wood gnome and addressed him in the language of hand signals
that his people shared with humans. “Where woman?” she gestured.

“Woman in bed,” he replied, obviously meaning Rowan.

“No. Other woman.” She pointed to the bed with Bel’s clothing.

“Fur-woman. Noisy woman, gone. Throw rock at me.” With an expression
of vast melancholy he indicated a spot on his shoulder. Rowan made sympathetic
noises. She could easily imagine the Outskirter’s reaction on waking to find a
strange creature on her bed.

She rose and rummaged through a wardrobe until she found a
clean shirt that fit her, then added her trousers. The wood gnome watched,
rocking on his perch, long toes gripping the bedstead as easily as if they
were fingers. He munched his apple. “Time for breakfast, hurry,” he advised.

“I go to find fur-woman first.”

He eyed her sadly. “Watch out for rocks.”

At the door, Rowan paused. Slanting beams of light from the
high, small windows fragmented the corridor into shapes and angles of alternating
light and dark. If Bel was wandering out of curiosity, in which direction would
she go? Right led to more residences—another transients’ dormitory and the
permanent quarters. Rowan guessed that if Bel found that those were private
rooms, she would double back. The steerswoman went to the left, retracing the
path they had taken the previous night; around a corner, then up again to the
gallery. Bel might sensibly have done the same, to impress a known route on her
memory in a strange place.

The gallery led her back to the entrance hall. A quick check
of the stables downstairs showed them to be deserted. Rowan climbed the narrow
stairs again up to a lookout room above the entrance: empty, the dusty close
air cool and motionless, windows still shuttered against the previous night’s
rain.

She descended and entered the informal hall on the left. A series
of great double doors filled the wall on the right. When open, they
communicated on a cool stone courtyard. They were closed now, and the
high-ceilinged room stood in darkness but for the far end, where a door stood
open to the next chamber; a rectangle of light, where faint voices could be
heard.