The Steerswoman's Road (5 page)

“Is this reading about the jewel, or is it about me?”

“Your fate is interwoven with its,” Bel said confidently.
She turned up the next card and put it in position. She looked at it for some
moments, puzzled.

“Poor workmanship,” Rowan prompted. “Pettiness, mediocrity.”

“Yes, but it’s in the Spirit position ... How can the spirit
of the jewel be pettiness, or poor workmanship? Poor planning, perhaps? It’s
very mysterious.”

And very vague, Rowan thought. But if the jewel was magical,
or part of a magic spell, perhaps it had been poorly made? So that in use, it
would fail, resulting in that period of inactivity Bel found in the cards?

Here was the very nature of the cards’ appeal, she reminded
herself. Presenting symbols, emotionally powerful archetypes open to wide
interpretation, they were immensely seductive to any pattern-seeking mind. And
above all else, steerswomen were adept in the skill of detecting patterns amid
seeming chaos.

In any chaos of symbols, patterns, if none existed, could be
easily created. Rowan took a moment to admire the pattern her mind found, to
enjoy it in a purely aesthetic fashion—then, with no regret, discarded it. It
was fantasy, disguised as information. Nothing could be learned from it.

Much could be learned, however, about Bel and the attitudes
of the Outskirters, and Rowan shifted her interest to her new friend and the
culture that shaped her. “What’s the last card?”

Bel turned it up: the Emperor, reversed. “Dependence,” Bel
said. “And danger. Either physical danger, or a threat to possessions.” Bel
thought carefully for a while, obviously casting about for connections, that
same search for patterns that Rowan had briefly followed. “I don’t see how the
jewel itself can be in danger, so it must be that it carries danger. I think we
should be very careful.”

Rowan picked it up and returned it to its sack. “I’m
surprised you don’t tell me to simply discard it.” That would have been the
advice of a true believer in the cards.

“Oh, no,” the Outskirter replied, and she smiled as she
gathered her cards. “This is more interesting.”

Much later, Rowan was still poring over her charts. At last she
rose, and not wishing to disturb the sleeping Outskirter, she crossed to the
opposite side of the fire. Using her hiking stick, she began again to draw the
same graphs, but carefully, accurately. All sense of her surroundings faded.
She was like a swimmer, exploring by touch alone the bottom of some rocky pool,
trying to create a chart for something that could not be seen, a chart not for
the eyes, but for the touch of the mind.

“Never just duck,” Rowan’s old swordmaster had instructed
her. “Bad idea! If the enemy comes up behind, how can you tell what his move
is? An overhand blow, and you die on the ground instead of standing. Duck and
move! Gamble! He’s probably right-handed. If he’s not striking straight down,
he’s sweeping from left to right. That’s his strongest stroke. Move to the
right, fast! Roll! Face him as soon as you can, so you can see what he’s doing.
Instinct will say roll to the left, keep your own right arm free. Fight it! You’ll
be rolling into his blow.”

The memory brought with it the feeling of sawdust underfoot
and the unfamiliar weight of the sword in her right hand. She was aware of the
fellow students in line beside her, all of them shifting uneasily at the fervor
of the instructor’s delivery and his nonchalant acceptance of the existence of
enemies who would seek blood. And later, the strain and ache after hours of
practicing some single, isolated move under the swordmaster’s shouts and
curses. Over it all, the sharp tang of sea air that crept over the high walls
of the courtyard.

Unbidden, all those things flashed into Rowan’s mind in an
instant—flashed and were gone in the space of time it took to hear Bel’s
shout: “Duck!”

Rowan ducked and rolled to the right. The sword came
straight down, striking mere inches from her right arm. She kept moving,
scrabbling, her left hand searching for some weapon. The man drew back again.
Suddenly Bel was on his back. She scratched at his eyes with one hand, one arm
around his neck, and he staggered back a step.

Where was her sword? It was by her pack. Rowan sensed the
fire behind her head. The pack was beyond it.

The man shrugged Bel off, then whirled. The Outskirter
bobbed neatly beneath his blow, eyes aglitter. Rowan’s hand touched something:
her hiking stick. In an instant she was on her feet. She smashed at the
attacker’s head with a weak left-handed blow.

He turned back. She shifted her grip, holding the stick like
a quarterstaff. Misguided instinct; useless, she realized. The sword shattered
the stick in two. She jumped back to keep clear.

Two pieces of stick were in her hands; the one in her right
was short and balanced. She flung it like a knife into the man’s face. It
struck him in the right eye and he shrieked hoarsely.

Rowan turned and dove over the fire toward her sword. She
heard the hiss as Bel drew her own sword, then the ring as it met the attacker’s.

The guard of Rowan’s sword hilt had fouled in one of the
thongs on the scabbard. She struggled with the binding and glanced back in time
to see Bel’s second blow, a two-handed sweep that began over her head and
forced the man’s point to the ground by sheer momentum.

The upstroke that followed split the man’s chest and ended
in his throat.

The barbarian stepped aside to avoid the last move of the attacker’s
sword and watched him fall, his chest a ruin of blood and bone, drained of
color by firelight.

Rowan moved to Bel’s side, surprised to find her own sword
finally in her hand, unused. She looked down at the man. His face worked with
strange emotions. His voice wailed and burbled.

“Who are you?” Rowan asked uselessly. But he was silent at
last. They stood together wordlessly; then Bel shifted. “That’s a bad place to
keep your sword, so far from your hand.”

Rowan nodded vaguely, still gazing down. “He was at the inn.”
Bel was astonished. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.” She turned away from the dead man. Her throat was
dry; she felt light and empty. That could have been her, she realized. She
could have been the one to end staring blankly at the sky, under blood. She
looked at Bel. “Thank you,” she said.

The Outskirter eyed her. “Have you never seen a dead person?”

“Yes, I have. But I never so nearly was one. Had you not
been here—but I think he was counting on that. He didn’t know we were traveling
together. He left before we did.”

“You’re sure he was there?”

She nodded. “He was one of the five soldiers. He was wearing
red then.”

Bel looked back. “Well, he’s wearing red now.”

It was the sea at last. They had spent the last two days
trudging along the damp road that traced the edge of the mud flats, and when
the road turned in and became too undependable they found rides on various
rafts and flat barges that wandered among the estuaries. Those waterways
widened imperceptibly until it finally became clear that the travelers had
reached the shallows of the Inland Sea.

Rowan found herself standing taller, looser, her legs
prepared to adjust to changes in footing, even though there were yet no perceptible
waves. She was home. She had never been to this port before, knew of it only
from her maps. It did not matter; she was home, as the sea was the home of
every steerswoman.

The sea had shaped the order, defining the necessary nature
of Steersmanship by its own variable nature. The need of precision in
knowledge, adaptability in action, clarity in thought, and always the need to
know more, to complete one’s understanding—all these grew from the dangers of
the changing sea, and from the endless sky. They lodged in the hearts of the
steerswomen and stayed however long they might travel dusty inland roads. Rowan
herself, born on flat dry farmland on the edge of the Red Desert, on the far
northern limit of every map drawn—Rowan, who never saw the sea for the first
eighteen years of her life—still knew it as her home, the home of her heart and
mind.

Bel sat quietly on a bale of wool, carefully erect and
unmoving. She watched the wide spaces around the barge as if they might sprout
enemies; not nervously, but warily. Rowan could not tell how much of the scene
the barbarian was assimilating. Finally they rounded a curve of the shoreline,
and the wharves and buildings of Donner came into view.

Donner made a poor port, but it was a necessary one. The
Grey-river was a natural road to the sea, allowing easier and cheaper shipment
than the caravans provided. But there was no deep harbor there, and the ships
anchored far out from the river’s mouth. Barges shifted cargo and people from
the town to the sailing vessels, providing ample though intermittent local
employment, and a certain amount of congestion on the water. The barges
competed for greatest speed and capacity, so that as their boat neared the
docks, Rowan and Bel found themselves surrounded by great masses hurtling in
every direction. The air was full of voices clamoring warnings, curses and
demands of right-of-way. The cause of all the turmoil, a mere three ships,
stood off in the distance, calm and almost disdainful.

Ashore, Rowan wove through the busy longshoremen. Bel followed
in her wake, watching everything with cheerful caution.

They made their way into the thickest part of the crowd and
found there a short squat woman directing the action with sharp shouts. She
carried a slate that she consulted and marked regularly.

Rowan called to her. “What ships are those?”

“Go away, I’m busy!”

“I’m a steerswoman.”

“Damn! Wait, then.” Rowan and Bel waited as the woman laboriously
simplified a complex set of orders for a blank-faced trio of beefy men, all the
while making marks with a black crayon on various boxes and crates carried to
and from the place where she stood. The three men wandered off dubiously, and
she wrote on her slate.

Without slackening her activity, she spoke to the two women.
“That’s the
Beria,
out of Southport, for one—and their navigator jumped
ship; you’ll be welcome there.”

“Where bound?”

“Southport again. Then The Crags.”

“By way of the Islands?”

“No.” She spared an instant to eye the steerswoman. “Sailing
west from Southport. Wizard on board; he promises protection. I wouldn’t risk
it.”

For a moment Rowan’s heart cried to take that trip; to travel,
protected, into that small corner of the sea from which few ships returned.

“Is this wizard Red?” Bel asked.

As she remembered the Red soldiers at the inn, and the
attack of the night that followed, Rowan’s dreams froze in midflight. “Blue.
Our wizard, Jannik, he’s Blue. Someone saw him talking to this fellow.”

Rowan nodded. The Crags had been Blue for as long as anyone
remembered. Still, where wizards were concerned, that was no guarantee of
permanence.

She called to the woman again. “We’re looking to get to Wulfshaven.,,

“The
Morgan’s Chance.
And calling at no other ports
on the way. They’ll be heavy laden, and the cabins all booked.”

“Who’s the captain?”

“Morgan. At the Tea Shop.” She pointed without looking up.

They found the establishment overlooking a weedy estuary,
the patrons dining and socializing on a broad veranda with dark-stained rails,
under the hazy off-white skies. The noise of the distant docks was a faint
clamor, and sea gulls swooped above, alert for opportunities for poaching. The
clientele was cheerful and chatted quietly over the music of a lap harp played
by a tinker who occasionally raked his audience with a gaze of infinite
disdain. His opinion went completely unnoticed.

Rowan asked a few quiet questions, and presently she and the
Outskirter found themselves standing before a table where two men were poring
over a navigational chart. Beside that stood two mugs, a pot of peppermint tea,
and a small pottery carafe labeled “Brandy” in fanciful script.

The man seated on the left examined the women dubiously. He
was lean, almost gaunt, with glossy black hair and sea-blue eyes. He and his
mate were relaxed, comfortable, and dressed in clean clothes. By contrast the
two women were travel-worn and somewhat bedraggled, and more than somewhat
unscrubbed. They still carried their packs and wore their swords. When Morgan
noticed the silver steers-woman’s ring Rowan wore on her left hand, he smiled
and pulled two wicker chairs from a nearby table. The women seated themselves. “How
can I be of assistance?”

Rowan drew a breath. “We need passage to Wulfshaven.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked off across the water. “My
ship is booked. Possibly I can ask one of my officers to shift in with another.”
The other man winced; evidently one of those officers would be himself.

Rowan gestured negatively. “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.
Perhaps there’s room to sling another hammock among the crew members?”

“You wouldn’t be offended?”

She laughed. “Not in the least.”

“There are some who would be.” He rubbed the side of his
nose, still gazing into the distance. “We’ll do well on this trip, but I have
some debts,” he said carefully. “I can’t afford at this point to lose any
money. I’ll have to ask you to pay for your food, or bring your own.”

Rowan made a rapid calculation involving the prevailing
winds, the local weather patterns, and the size of Morgan’s ship. She compared
the resulting length of voyage to the number of coins in her pocket, with a
guess at Donner’s market prices. “That’s not a problem.”

“Good. If you can bring food that doesn’t need preparation,
all the better. Our cook’s shorthanded as it is. We’ve never had so many passengers.”

“Spring,” his companion suggested. “Wanderlust.”