The Steerswoman's Road (44 page)

—because Corvus wished it so.

Rowan found that she was on her feet, her chart, forgotten,
sliding with a rustling hiss from her lap to the floor. Shadows from the
flickering fire ranged up against the walls, across the long room, shuddering
against the stone walls and the motley ranks of bookshelves.

She looked down at Bel, a backlit shape seated on the stones
of the hearth, and made her answer to those dark, puzzled eyes. Her voice was
tight with anger. “I’m the advantage. Corvus is using me.”

The Outskirter took in the information, considering it with
tilted head, then nodded. “Good.”

“What?”

“If he’s using you, then he’ll want to help you. He’ll want
you to finish your mission.”

“I don’t want a wizard’s help!”

“Too late. You’ve got it.”

“If Slado is trying to keep the Guidestar secret from the wizards,”
Henra put in, “then Corvus can’t move, can’t investigate it himself without
attracting attention. Perhaps he can learn something by seeing how Slado
behaves among the wizards, but for outside information, for—” She spread her
hands and made careful, delimiting gestures. “—for an understanding of the
effects of these events ...”

“He needs me.”

“He needs you. You might be his only source. You might be
the only one able to discover why the Guidestar fell.”

“And find why Slado wants to keep it secret,” Bel added. She
leaned forward to retrieve Rowan’s fallen map. “Corvus himself didn’t know,
until you told him.” She regarded the chart thoughtfully, her eyes tracing
undrawn lines of unknown routes across the blank face of the Outskirts.

But what help could Corvus provide, across those empty
miles? And at what price?

“Gods below,” Rowan said quietly. “He’s made it true. I am a
wizard’s minion.”

The Prime spoke quickly, leaning forward, emerald eyes
bright in the gloom. “You’re no one’s minion, not even mine. What Corvus decides
to do is his own choice. Your business is to learn. He’s under ban, and you
have no obligation to tell him anything.”

To be a steerswoman, and to know, but not to tell .

As she stood in that wash of firelight, Rowan felt the long
room behind her, felt it by knowledge, memory, and sensation of the motionless
air. She faced the warmth of the hearth, and the far, unheated corner of the
room laid a cool, still hand on her shoulder.

High above, all around, the tall racks and unmatched shelves
stood, like uneven measurements, staggered lines across and up the walls. The
books they held had no uniformity: fat and narrow, with pages of parchment or
pulp or fine translucent paper that would stir in the merest breeze, between
covers of leather, cloth, or wood. Each book was the days of a steerswoman’s
life, each shelf the years, each wall long centuries in the lives of human
beings whose simple hope was to understand, and to speak. And Rowan knew,
without turning to look, where lay that one shelf in the southeast corner that
held her own logbooks: five years of her eyes seeing, of her voice asking, of
her mind answering.

Her books stood to the left on the shelf. The right-hand end
was empty. And more shelves waited.

“I will tell Corvus,” Rowan said slowly. “Without his
needing to ask.” And she sat.

Her cold cup of tea was still in her hand, and Bel shifted
the stack of charts to clear a place for it on the table. Rowan set it down and
composed her thoughts.

“Whatever Slado is up to,” she began, “it looks to be bad
not only for the folk, but for the wizards as well, else he wouldn’t need to
keep it secret from them. For some reason, he can’t let his plans become
known—so the thing that we most need to do is to
make
them known,
whatever part of them that we can see; known to everyone, even the wizards.”
She looked at the Outskirter, at the Prime, then spoke definitely. “It will
make a difference.”

The Prime was motionless but for her gaze, which dropped
once to her hands in her lap, then returned to Rowan’s face. “So the truth becomes
a weapon.”

Rowan was taken aback, and paused for a long moment. “That’s
true.” It seemed such an odd idea: innocent truth, a weapon. Then she nodded,
slowly. “It’s always been true. Truth is the only weapon the Steerswomen have.”

“Look.” Bel was holding two maps, Rowan’s unfinished one and
the copy of Sharon’s. The Outskirter laid them one atop the other, then turned
to raise the pair up with their backs to the fireplace. Yellow light glowed
from behind, and the markings showed through, one set superimposed upon the
other. The viewpoints suddenly struck Rowan as uncannily similar.

Fascinated, she reached out and took them from Bel’s hands.

On both charts: west, a small, known part of the world,
shown as clearly as could be managed by the cartographer; in the center, a long
vertical sweep labeled
OUTSKIRTS;
beyond,
emptiness.

Sharon’s map, and Rowan’s: the oldest map in the world, and
the newest.

Bel’s dark eyes were amused as she watched her friend’s
face. “You’re starting over.”

Rowan separated the charts again and, across near a thousand
years, looked into the face of her sister.

She smiled. “Yes,” she said.

“Our friends have headed into an ambush,” Bel announced.

The old woman looked up from the campfire and peered at the
travelers. She was large-framed, ancient muscles slack within folds of skin,
heavy belly slung on her lap, and her features were gnarled around a vicious
scar, ages old, driven across her face from right temple to left ear. One eye
was blind. “Have they?” She spoke calmly; she watched intently.

“Yes.” Bel unslung her pack and nonchalantly strolled into
the encampment, Rowan following with more caution.

It was a temporary bivouac, a mere holding place for the
packs and equipment of the raiding war bands: a shadowy glade among the firs,
cleared and flat, a little rill conveniently nearby. Midmorning sunlight
dappled the deep greens and browns, splashing shifting spots of white on the
old woman’s sunburned skin, her threadbare tunic, her single wary eye. The tiny
fire was a snapping orange flag in the gloom.

“A boy spotted your camp at sundown and warned the villagers,”
Bel continued. She dropped her pack and seated herself uninvited on the ground,
idly nudging the earth banked around the fire with one shaggy boot, a pose lazy
and ostentatiously comfortable.

The old Outskirter turned her attention to the steerswoman
standing at the edge of the camp, half in shadow, ill-at-ease. “That one of
them?” The question was addressed to Bel.

Rowan had been warned to expect Outskirters sometimes to dismiss
her. She answered for herself. “No,” she began, intending to continue.

“Good. Have to kill her, otherwise.” The woman returned to
her task, breaking branches into kindling, grunting under her breath at each
snap. “Well, if you’re not going to attack me, what is it you want?”

Bel gestured Rowan over, and the steerswoman approached, her
expression held carefully impassive. She lacked Bel’s ease of dissemblance; no
steerswoman could lie in words, and Rowan’s training and own natural
inclinations rendered her unskilled at lying by behavior. She had only two
choices: to permit her face to be the natural mirror of her thoughts, or permit
it to show nothing at all. There was no easy middle ground. Rowan chose the
latter extreme.

Joining Bel by the fire, she doffed her pack and sat down on
it. There was a loud creak, and the old woman looked up with a sharp glare
intended to freeze; she was met by a flat, blank gaze, impassive, impenetrable.
Rowan had learned that the effect was often daunting; it did not fail her now,
and the woman wavered. “At the moment,” Rowan said, in a voice so mild and
carefully modulated that it communicated only the content of the words, “we
want nothing from you.” This was perfectly true. Bel spared Rowan a grin of
wolfish pleasure.

Bel’s plan to gain acceptance into the raiders’ tribe
depended on timing and knowledge of tradition and unbreakable custom. The time
was not yet. The travelers waited.

During the long pause that followed, Rowan’s Inner Lands etiquette
began to require that introductions be made. She quashed it.

There was kindling enough, but the old woman continued her
job, unnecessarily: a delaying tactic. Unknown to her, it worked more to Rowan
and Bel’s benefit than her own. “It takes more than an ambush of dirt-diggers
to stop warriors,” she said derisively. “You should have joined them. Plenty of
booty.”

Bel tilted her head, dark eyes amused. “We didn’t like the
odds.”

“You’re afraid,” the old woman said scornfully.

Bel took no offense. “Of some things. Such as fighting
against bad odds beside strangers whose skills I don’t know, who don’t know
mine, and who use strange signals to direct the battle.”

During the speech, the old woman’s interest in Bel began to
alter, and by the end, she had abandoned pretense of work. She squinted her
sighted eye at Bel, and Rowan read there clearly, for the first time,
curiosity. “Where are you from?” she asked slowly. Rowan could not see what in
Bel’s words had prompted the question.

“East.”

The ancient Outskirter grunted once and sat considering, as
if the single word spoke volumes to her. Eventually she indicated Rowan. “Her?”

“West,” Rowan supplied. Then, because it was against her nature
to give so incomplete an answer, she added, “I’m a steerswoman.”

This won her an astonished look. “Ha!” It was a word, not a
laugh, but laughter followed. “One of them. A walker and talker.” And to Rowan’s
surprise, she dropped into a parody of graciousness. “Tell me, lady,” she said,
following the form used by some common folk, “what’s a good village to raid,
hereabouts?”

Rowan answered truthfully. “The area is new to me, and I’ve
been avoiding towns on this journey. The only town I can advise you on is the
one I just left, and about them I can tell you this: Your warriors have walked
into an ambush. Any survivors should be returning very soon.” She heard a
rustle far behind her, and voices in the distance. “I believe that’s them now.”

“You have sharp ears,” Bel commented, pleased. One voice
rose above the others, in an anguished wail; Bel cocked her head, then addressed
the woman. “If your tribe is very far from here, you’ll need our help, I think.”

“You should have helped before,” the woman spat.

“We’re here now,” Rowan said calmly.

“We don’t need you, and we don’t want you.”

The noise grew closer: several people, traveling quickly and
with difficulty, abandoning silence for speed.

“I wonder if the others will agree,” Bel said.

The voice that had cried out cried again, inarticulate, and
the old woman startled. Someone shouted: an urgent hail. The woman responded “This
way!” and lumbered to her feet as quickly as old bones would permit.

The sounds grew rapidly closer, and a male voice called out,
“Dena!”

“Here!” The old woman hurried to follow the sound.

Bel was on her feet and beside her in an instant, Rowan
close behind. “Quickly,” Bel said, “do you want our help or not?”

Dena stopped to stare at her blankly. “No. Go away.”

“You there! Lend a hand!”

All turned at the voice, and Bel slapped Rowan’s shoulder urgently,
once. “Go.” The steerswoman hurried ahead into the brush.

There were four of them: one man with a bloody face supporting
another staggering with three arrow shafts in his thigh, and behind, a third
man half-dragging a woman who was clutching the front of her vest over her
abdomen with both fists, sobbing helplessly at each movement.

Rowan rushed to her side and slung one arm across the woman’s
back to the man’s shoulder. “Here.” She gestured, urging him to link hands
behind the woman’s knees to carry her.

He was panting, his face pale with shock, and he looked at
Rowan in confusion, seeing her clearly, for the first time, as a stranger. “Who
are you?” he gasped.

“My name is Rowan.” She gestured again, hurriedly. “Here,
like this—”

There was a hand on her arm: Bel, holding her back. Rowan
protested, “What—”

Bel spoke to the man. “That’s her only name.”

Concern for the plan to gain acceptance vanished in Rowan’s
desire to help. “Skies above, Bel, let me go—” Bel’s fingers became like iron
bands. Rowan caught the man’s expression.

Panic and desperation were struggling in his face with something
else, another force, equally compelling. His gaze flicked between Bel’s face
and Rowan’s. His mouth worked twice, as if there were something he needed to
say, but did not want to.

Between them, the wounded woman writhed once and emitted a
clench-toothed wail as an appalling amount of blood worked its way between her
fingers.

The question resolved itself. Custom and tradition combined
with need.

He turned to Rowan. “I’m Jermyn, Mirason, Dian.” Bel vanished,
gone to help the other wounded, and Jermyn locked his right hand on Rowan’s
shoulder and quickly swung the woman off the ground as they linked hands behind
her legs. “Help me get my wife to camp. I think she’s dying.”

It was the help they rendered that gained the two travelers the
right to ask for assistance of their own. But it was the exchange of names that
guaranteed it would be granted.

They began the short trip to the tribe’s main encampment slowly:
three wounded people supported and aided by four whole, carrying as much of the
cached equipment as they could manage. Soon, they were moving more quickly,
with only two wounded members.

Rowan paused, looking back to where the body of Jermyn’s
wife lay in the trackless brush, abandoned. “Aren’t they going to bury her?”

The others were already far ahead. Bel had dropped back, waiting
for Rowan. “Customs differ. Even among the Outskirters.” She winced. “My people
wouldn’t leave her like this. But we wouldn’t bury her, either.”