The Steerswoman's Road (23 page)

“Ridiculous schemes? Ingrud, that’s a poor phrase—”

“This is nothing!” She held it up to Rowan and Bel, and it
flashed dimly in the starlight. “It’s a decoration, a trinket!”

Bel was studying Rowan, waiting for her response. Rowan
found herself growing angry at Ingrud’s behavior. “Then,” she said, “it’s a
decoration that can’t exist, and a trinket that comes from nowhere.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re perfectly normal.” Ingrud
handed the blue shard back to Rowan. “And I know where they come from. I’ve
been there.”

Willam sat on the edge of a stonewalled well in the little
town square, seething in fury. A promise is a promise, he thought, even for a
spy. Attise was not going to lose him so easily.

For the hundredth time Willam wished that Sala had been working
alone, or with someone other than Attise. Sala would have stood by her word, Will
was certain. Although, he realized, Attise had not actually promised to let
Will stay with them—she had promised to help him if she had a chance. What she
thought of as “a chance” she had left undefined. That was exactly the problem
when dealing with her; her words, her meanings, kept slipping around, twisting
and wriggling like tadpoles.

Of course, that was an asset for a spy, and it explained why
Attise was in charge. Sala was likely too honest and straightforward to do well
without someone like Attise directing their work. After all, spying was a
nasty business, even for a good cause.

But it had been a cruel trick. Willam had walked a full
morning with the caravan before he realized that Sala and Attise were missing.
Attise had calmly sent him to the head of the line after breakfast, supposedly
to distract Damaine while she and Sala spoke to one of the guards on some
important subject. He had not noticed that they were gone until noon, and the
thing was, they
had
been talking to the guard, and the important subject
was that they were leaving the group early. Attise had not exactly lied to him,
not this time.

“Likely you’re looking for lodging?”

Will, watching the meager traffic in the village square, had
been so lost in internal complaint that he had not noticed the villager coming
up from behind. His road-sharpened suspicion was alerted. He didn’t like people
who approached in ways designed to go unnoticed.

But it was unlikely that he would be robbed in full daylight
in the center of town. “Maybe. But there’s no inn here?”

The man made a sound of derision and made a gesture with one
hand; the other held a cloth-wrapped object, open at the top. “Town like this?
Not enough business. But I’ve got room, if you want it. Reasonable.” He lifted
his package, which was revealed to be an open jar of some sort of liquor; he
took a long draught from it.

Will was extremely reluctant to associate himself with the
man. He looked around the village square. Immediately visible along the high
street were a tannery, a bakery, a smithy—he felt a warm familiarity at
that—an unidentifiable shop whose sign was at the wrong angle to see clearly,
and a row of small dwellings. The street wound off north through what looked
like pastureland. The only cross street seemed to dead-end in both directions.

Very likely he could find someone to give him sleeping space
in return for work, or he could doss down in one of the pastures, if no one
minded. But the man before him was the only person to approach him in the hour
or so that he had been sitting on the edge of the stonewalled well.

It struck him as a little odd. Perhaps the village had had
more than its share of bandits, or perhaps the war had passed over them, and
the people were wary; but if that was so, why was this one fellow so interested?
It felt wrong.

But he had to talk to someone. He turned back to the
villager. “Do you have room for three?”

“Three?” The man’s face acquired a calculating look.

“Three people. And one donkey. I’m supposed to meet some
friends, or rather, I’m trying to. We got separated on the way. They haven’t
arrived, have they? Two women, one of them a mercenary?”

The man blinked. “Mercenary? I’d have heard.” His avaricious
expression was replaced by a thoughtful one. “There was a steerswoman came
through two weeks ago.”

That was Ingrud, Will realized. “No, that’s too long ago. My
friends might be three days ahead of me, no more.”

“No, there’s been no one.”

They had to have passed through the town, unless they had
cut across country. Perhaps they had attempted to do that, gotten lost, and had
to double back; Attise was so obviously hopeless with directions. They could
easily be behind him. “Well,” Will began to figure. “I don’t have any money
myself. One of my friends was carrying all we had.” That should keep the man on
the lookout for Attise and Sala. “I guess I’ll have to sleep in a field. Though
I wouldn’t mind spending the night indoors, for a change.” He allowed himself
to look disgruntled. “If my friends arrive tonight, we’ll be able all three to
stay with you. If you’re willing to come find me ...” The opportunity to charge
lodging for three instead of two insured that Will would be told when the two
women arrived.

The villager considered. “Rain tonight,” he observed.

Will peered at the sky as if this was news to him.

The man wavered, then said grudgingly, “Miller. Talk to the
miller. Might be there’s a shed to shelter in.”

Will beamed. “Well, thank you, friend. That’s kind of you.”

There was a shed, but there was no miller; gone for the evening,
Willam assumed. He let himself in and found a collection of empty sacks and a
pile of lumber. The sacks made good bedding, and he found himself more
comfortable than he had been for a long time.

Lying in the gathering dark, he took the opportunity to
review his plans. If he could not find Attise and Sala here or farther up the
road, he would just have to take himself to Shammer and Dhree alone. He knew
from the steerswoman that their keep was somewhere north of here. Once he got
near that lake Ingrud had mentioned, someone would know where the wizards were,
or at least in what direction to look. He wondered briefly how two wizards
could share one holding, then dismissed it as their own problem.

But that Attise. He shifted in annoyance. He kept trying to
do well by her, but she was so secretive, so deceptive, so close-mouthed. How
could you deal with someone like that? How did Sala manage it?

Likely Sala was no spy at all, but just what she seemed: a
mercenary, a hireling. But she actually seemed to like Attise, though he could
not see why. Perhaps because she, at least, knew what Attise was up to, was in
the spy’s confidence. He seethed. If he knew as much as Sala, maybe he could
get along with Attise better, but she would not give him the chance.

He hated being kept in the dark, being pushed around. It was
an easy, cheap thing, to push people around. All one needed was to be stronger,
or to be smarter, or to know something that could be used on people. But it did
not give one the right.

He knew how easy it was. He had pushed the other children
around, when he was a child. He was always bigger, always stronger than the
children his age, and some who were older. He was the leader by right of
strength, and he was never afraid of anything or anyone. He soon learned that
he could make the others do exactly as he pleased; and he had enjoyed it, he
remembered, with more than a little guilt.

But he had stopped doing that sort of thing, stopped it when
someone else bigger and stronger than him, stronger even than his own father,
had taken from him the one thing he loved the best: an innocent, helpless,
beautiful little girl. He could still hear her shrieking, still see her
struggling against the soldier as he held her before him on the great horse.
And the other soldier’s sword against his father’s chest ...

And the memory of that day had driven him, with cold hatred,
past what he had thought was possible: nurturing a tiny chance discovery,
cautiously, thoughtfully, through reason and experimentation, into an unsuspected
power.

No one had the right to use strength against the innocent.
When he was a wizard himself, he would make sure no one ever victimized anyone
again. He had to,
because
he was strong. Because he could work magic.

He reached one hand to the reassuring bulk of his pack, then
turned over and slept.

Something in the small of his back gave him a sudden shove. He
rolled, tried to get loose from the sacks, and ended up half standing, knife in
hand, back against the wall.

In the dim light from the cracks in the wall, a figure was
squatting beside his pack. “I can’t figure if you’re abysmally stupid or
abominably clever.” It was Attise, her voice heavy with weariness.

Will did not relax. It was dark in the shed, they were
alone, and for all their traveling together, he still did not know this woman. “You
tried to lose me.”

“Yes, I did, and made a poor job of it, I can see.” She
sighed in exasperation and rose. “Come on.”

He managed to stand. “Where are we going?”

“To Carroll’s house.”

“‘Carroll’?”

“Our host. Let’s see what—what Sala can make of you.”

She strode off, leaving him to scramble his possessions
together. She led him to a small cottage that seemed more a small hill of ivy than
a dwelling. The leaves pattered and trembled in the drizzling rain.

As they entered, a rotund woman looked up from setting the
table in the front room. Her black hair was pulled back severely from her face
and bound in a single greasy braid, and her shapeless clothes had seen too much
use and too few washings. “That him?”

“Our wandering lad,” Attise confirmed. Her carefully
affected voice covered her annoyance.

Sala entered from an adjoining room, carrying a kettle for
tea. “Wiliam!” She was delighted and put down the kettle to clap him on the
shoulder.

“I’m sorry I got lost,” he told her, trying to look
sheepish.

“No harm done; we’re all together again.” She beamed up at
him.

The housewife seemed satisfied. She gestured at the table. “Well,
have some breakfast, then, or maybe it’s lunch—who can tell the hour in this
weather?” she grumbled.

The travelers seated themselves and made an attempt at
casual conversation with the woman. This proved futile in the face of her
continuing diatribe against her husband, delivered in monotonic segments as
she moved to and from the kitchen. “I know he’s at Miller’s again, deny it as
much as he likes, drinking that brew old Grandfather Miller makes, coming back
at all hours. Useless he is, or next to it. No skill, no money—” She raised her
voice a bit. “And no children here either, if you haven’t noticed.” She grunted
disparagingly. “Useless.”

Attise attempted to redirect her conversation. “Well, we’re
certainly grateful for the lodging ...”

“Hmph. No skin off his bum; I do all the work, not that we
can’t use a few coppers. I tell you ...” She wandered off, still muttering, and
a long pause followed until it was clear that she intended to remain there.

Sala went to the window and peered outside. Attise passed Wiliam
a bowl of cold stew, yesterday’s by the look of it. Will set to with a wooden
spoon and a chunk of black bread, and found that his hunger made its flavor incidental.

“How did you find us?” Attise asked him.

He spoke between mouthfuls. “I knew where you were going. Ingrud
told me.”

“Ingrud?”

“That’s right. You kept me away from her after you talked, I
guess because you thought I’d ask about what you said to her. But before that,
earlier that evening, I talked with her a lot.”

Oddly, Attise looked a little regretful. “Yes, I remember.”

“Well, I asked her where Shammer and Dhree kept residence.
She didn’t really know, because all that’s new since last she was in these
parts. But from what she’d heard from the people coming back from the fighting,
most of the action was taking place near someplace called Lake Cerlew. I asked
her how to get there. It’s north, and this was the first northbound road I
found when I doubled back.”

“And you assumed we were going to Shammer and Dhree?”

He nodded, tearing off a piece of bread to soak up the last
hit of stew. “Where else would you go? But I didn’t think I’d actually catch
you up.”

Sala turned from the window, pulling the shutters against
the rain. She wiped mist from her face with one hand. “You didn’t catch up with
us,” she told him, shaking water from her fingers. “We doubled back.” She sat
down next to Attise.

“We left the road, circled the town, and entered from the
north,” Attise told him. “We wanted to prevent anyone from connecting us with
the caravan. We’re claiming to be traveling through from Morriston, between
here and Lake Cerlew.” She turned to Sala. “And now he arrives in town, coming
from the south, telling everyone he was with us.”

Wiliam stopped eating. With a strange thrill, half fear,
half excitement, he realized that this was no mere stop along the way. Attise
and Sala had intended to come here; there was some job, some mission they had
in this town; and if he could help them, somehow, their recommendation would
carry more weight with their master.

“People haven’t been very curious,” the mercenary pointed
out to Attise. “Perhaps those who spoke to him won’t be the same as those to
whom we gave our story.”

“It could be awkward.” Attise considered carefully. Watching
her face, Wiliam could sense her sifting through possible explanations, alternative
deceits.

“This wouldn’t happen, you know, if you didn’t keep me in
the dark,” he said.

Attise looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues. “What?”

Rain hissed in the dirt of the street outside. “You’re
always deciding for me. You never let me know what’s going on. If I knew, I
wouldn’t make these mistakes. I could help you.”