The Steerswoman's Road (32 page)

The two women walked away purposefully and presently found
themselves in a small interior courtyard with passages in three directions.
Pausing, Rowan carefully placed its size, shape, and orientation within the
blank hexagon that was her mental floor plan for the fortress.

“Now where?” Bel wondered.

“I don’t know.” Rowan’s mouth twitched with amusement. “Do
you think we should try to report to Druin for assignment?”

“He’d just put us to work.”

“True.” Rowan examined the courtyard, trying to relate the angles
of the exits to the shape of the rooftops she had viewed from the cliffs. “That
man’s shift has four hours to go.” She knew that from her earlier
observations. “He’ll probably go for his dinner after that, and he may or may
not meet Druin in the mess and mention us. We have about four hours before we’re
suspected.”

“That’s not a lot of time.” Bel tilted her head. “If we did
report to Druin, and he took us in, then we’d have as much time as we want, and
good excuses to be wherever we are.”

Rowan turned back to her friend, amazed and delighted. She
laughed, quietly. “Bel, that’s—that’s
audacious!”

The Outskirter acknowledged Rowan’s reaction with a little
self-satisfied smile.

“I would be expected to have some familiarity with the fortress.”

“We’ll scout around a bit before we show up,” Bel supplied.

“That’s the answer.” Rowan scanned the three passages, then
chose one that seemed likely to keep close to the outer wall. “This way.” It
was large and wide and showed signs of the previous passage of horses. They
followed it cautiously through a series of interlinked courtyards, each with
side doors; it was likely a delivery route for supplies.

The critical question was: How did the fortress guards normally
behave when off-duty? Were their movements circumscribed, and to what degree?
Certainly they could not have the free run of the entire keep, but just as
certainly they were not simply confined to barracks. Such an existence would be
too grim and limited, and the life of the resident guards would be too
unpleasant to attract a sizable loyal corps.

There had to be compensations for the work. The only analogy
Rowan had was Artos’s regulars and the house guards at his mansion. The house
guards had an easy job with a certain amount of prestige and were an affable
lot, as a rule. The regulars were natural soldiers and enjoyed their
alternately ordered and chaotic existence. Gratitude from the townspeople, a
romantic image, steady employment, and in many cases a general improvement over
their previous existence attracted people to the ranks. The pay was not great,
but Artos had more volunteers than he could use.

The house guards were on a wry, friendly basis with the servants
and workers, and from that relationship Rowan took her cue. In one courtyard
they came across a wagon laden with small oddsized wooden crates, where a
burly, disheveled man and a slim, pockmarked woman of middle age were occupied
with tediously bringing the cargo into a side door. Rowan paused and turned
back. “Need some help?”

Possibilities were three: servants were considered of
superior rank and would refuse to associate with guardswomen; servants were of
inferior rank and would be amazed, possibly frightened, at Rowan’s offer; or,
questions of rank were inapplicable between the two groups, and the response
would be based purely on the freedom of action normal to off-duty guards.

The man ignored Rowan, but the woman looked up with mild
surprise, then smiled. “Thanks.” She tapped her assistant on the shoulder as he
made to unload another crate. Pausing in his work, he watched intently as she
indicated Bel and Rowan and pointed from the boxes to the door; then he nodded
pleasantly at the pair. He was deaf.

Rowan pulled down one of the crates and hoisted it to her
shoulder. It proved to be lighter than it looked. “Where do these go?” she
asked. Bel followed her example with an obviously heavier box, behaving as if
she considered the work nothing unusual.

The woman indicated. “Through that door, through the room,
up the stairs.” She paused and winced. “No further, I guess. Wouldn’t look
good.” Attracting the disheveled man’s attention again, she attempted to give
him a more difficult, complicated instruction. Eventually comprehending, he
led the way.

The room was large and long, lined with cupboards and
shelves, apparently to store certain nonperishable items, but the crates they
were carrying had a different destination. Rowan and Bel were led through a
door in the back and up a set of narrow stairs with a landing halfway up,
where the direction reversed. At the top was a second landing, and there the
man put down his crate, indicated those carried by the women, then indicated
the floor. When they complied, he pointed at Rowan and Bel, back down the
stairs, pointed at himself, and made a motion toward a short corridor behind
him.

Without thinking, Rowan replied in the wood-gnome language
of gestures. “I understand. We go down now.”

Those particular phrases were simple and obvious, easily comprehensible
to an intelligent person; but the formality of the gestures, and the fluid
naturalness of their use, surprised him. It was more than pantomime, it was language,
and he seemed to recognize something of this.

With a look of surprise and concentration, he repeated a
phrase, pointing at himself, then extending his index finger near his right
temple. “I understand.” He said it twice, testing the moves.

When they reached the lower room again Rowan and Bel found
that the pockmarked woman had not been idle. She had carried a number of crates
from the wagon to the side door; a simple division of labor was implied that
would prevent the workers from jostling each other and speed up the task.

“I’ll take the stairs,” Rowan volunteered. Bel set herself
to shifting crates from the front door and passing them to Rowan at the stairs’
foot.

When the steerswoman delivered each crate to the top
landing, sometimes the deaf man was there, studying her with shy friendliness.
Sometimes he was absent, and she began to catch the rhythm of his work and
understand how much time had to pass while he brought each crate down the
corridor.

After transferring one crate to his care and pausing until
he was out of sight, she dashed down the stairs as quickly as possible. Meeting
Bel in the middle of the storeroom, she took the burden from her there. “Try to
work a little faster. I need you to be three boxes ahead of me. And see if you
can make them light ones.”

With Rowan and the man working at one pace, and Bel and the
woman outside working at another, it did not take many trips before three boxes
sat waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Rowan chose the smallest, hurried up
to the first landing, and placed the crate in a spot invisible from above.
Returning below, she took a second and managed to reach the top with it in
time to hand it to the man above.

Back at the lower landing, she used her knife to pry up the
lid of the first crate. The thin wood was held by tacks and offered little resistance.
She was able to detach it easily, but temporarily abandoned it to run down for
the third box.

Just as the deaf man came into sight, she placed the third
crate on the top landing, waved at him, and turned back down.

The box she had opened contained a dozen wooden spools,
similar in type to those used for thread, but much larger. Wound around each
was a strand of some substance as thick as heavy yarn, in bizarre colors,
garishly brilliant. Loosening the end of one strand, she found it strangely
stiff. She pulled out a foot-long length and tried to cut it. She was briefly
shocked when the knife failed to cut completely through; if she rewound it, the
mark would be visible, and suspicious. But a second panicked attempt detached
the segment, and she wound it into a tight coil and slipped it into the pocket
with her amulet.

Pounding the lid closed caused a din that prompted Bel to
peer up the stairs in surprise. Rowan ignored her, finished the job, and
brought the box to the top landing to find the deaf man waiting.

Back at the bottom, Bel passed along a somewhat heavier
crate. “This is the last.” When Rowan delivered it, she could not help speaking
to the man again. “Work finished.” Those signals were more abstract, and she
amplified them with gestures including the stairs, the box, herself, and the
man, and a negative shake of her head.

He watched in fascination. Then, with the crate precariously
tucked under one arm, he replied. “I understand.” He paused, thinking, then
hesitantly added, “You go down now.”

She grinned at him, charmed by his intelligence, and waved a
farewell.

As they left the storeroom behind, Bel asked, “What did you
do?”

“I made a friend and acquired a souvenir.”

Reassured by their casual acceptance by the woman and her assistant,
Bel and Rowan continued their explorations. They encountered storerooms,
stables, a smithy, and a woodshop, but no residences. The people they met,
though sometimes surprised, never raised protest.

For this first reconnaissance, the steerswoman selected
routes that kept them close to the outside wall, in order to gain a sense of
the overall shape and limits of the keep, and seek future options for discreet
departure. Of those, they found two.

The first was nothing more than a low window in the wall itself,
but by leaning over the edge, one could see that the cliffs below were a trifle
less sheer than elsewhere, with rocky projections down to the surface of the
lake. Conceivably, a person with a rope could lower herself down the face of
the wall and scramble laboriously to the water. Unfortunately, the window was
in a busy area, and an observer standing nearby would have a clear view of the
entire descent; further, the escapee would have to swim to the shore. Rowan was
not surprised to learn that Bel lacked that skill.

The second exit was a small gate on the north side, facing
the body of the lake. Stone stairs led down the cliffs to a wharf, where a
jolly gaff-rigged sailing dinghy bobbed, a pleasure boat. The gate was closed
by an iron grille, locked, and equipped with the same brass box found at the
end of the front causeway. Possibly their amulets would open it, but she dared
not try, remembering what the guard had said about a “tally.”

The women peered through the grille.

“That’s our best chance, if we need to leave quickly,” Rowan
said. “Can you handle that boat?”

“A simple matter.”

They retraced their steps to the first courtyard they had found
and took a different exit. By asking a passing washwoman, they found the
barracks and training area of the resident guard and presented themselves to
DruM.

Rowan repeated their story to him, filling it with many
details of the action during the war, altered from the point of view of the observers
who had reported it to Hugo, to the point of view of a soldier in its midst.
She included a certain number of likely soldierly complaints, including
invective at the insanity of using a basilisk in close combat. Long before she
had finished, she saw Druin’s gaze wandering in boredom and knew that she had
convinced him of their authenticity.

It took him a moment to realize that she had stopped
speaking. “Yes. Well.” He regathered himself, attempting to look official, and
succeeding in looking harried. “Of course we can use you. Mustering people out,
everybody coming and going—confuses things. And this new business; just makes
it all worse.”

Rowan remembered that he was new at his job. “What happened
to Clara?” The guard at the gate had mentioned her as someone Rowan might be
expected to know, and so it was desperately necessary to avoid her.

Wincing, Druin looked off to one side and scratched his
beard vigorously. Rowan decided that he had fleas. “Not a good story. Had a
little run-in with Themselves.” He gave the word a capitalizing stress. “Lay
low when they’re around, that’s all. Don’t attract attention.”

“Can’t you be more specific? So we won’t do the same thing
Clara did?”

Glancing around as if his comments might be overheard, he
said,

“Could, but I won’t. No good chewing it over. Best
forgotten.” He eyed Bel, with evident approval. “Where’d you get her again?”

“Logan Falls. She did well in the fighting.”

“I expect so—you’re both here. Shame about Penn. How’d you
escape that basilisk?”

Rowan shrugged. “Can’t imagine. I expect it didn’t notice
us, personally, in the confusion. Just lucky.”

“Mph. Well ...” He scratched his left thigh absently,
musing, then called out across the yard. “Ellen! These two are yours.”

The woman came over, leaving behind a trio of men whom she
had been berating for sloppy behavior. At her departure they slinked away
unobtrusively. “Good. I’m trying to get another squad together to go after that
steerswoman.”

Hiding a thrill of fear, Rowan knit her brows as if puzzled.
Bel managed to appear innocently delighted at the prospect of a hunt.

Druin was outraged. “What, more? We’re too shorthanded already.”

“What’s this?” Rowan interjected. “We’re after a steerswoman?
Is she some kind of criminal?”

“Don’t know,” Ellen said indifferently. “We’re supposed to
stay clear of them, generally. Always liked them myself. But there’s something
about this one that’s got Themselves all in a bother, and touchy, as well.”

“Now, how can we keep proper security,” Druin complained in
exasperation, “with three quarters of our people off chasing the moon, I ask
you?”

“Don’t know. Why don’t you ask Themselves?”

“Not me.” He made a sound of dry irony, then returned to
business. “Well, you show these two around, give them something temporary. We’ll
see about more search parties later.”

Ellen was a big square woman, broad of stomach and blunt of
features. Her arms bulked with muscle. Leading the pair through the passages,
she studied Bel briefly. “You, what’s your name?”