Steerswoman

by Kirstein, Rosemary

  Once outside the chamber door, Rowan led Bel to the end of the landing and down the stairs. Along the way they passed rooms silent with sleep, or raucous with snores. One room on the ground floor leaked the mutters of two women in argument, punctuated by an amused masculine rumble.

  Seeing no other exit, Rowan found their way through the passage to the dining area. “It’s like a maze,” Bel remarked, surprised when they reached the large room. “Your sense of direction is better than mine.

  “Part of my training.”

  Outside the night was clear and dusted with stars, the Guidestars nearly balanced opposite each other, the Eastern slightly higher than the Western. Stable points in the sky, they told Rowan her exact position by their angles, and the precise time by the constellations that lay behind them.

  Saranna’s Inn fronted on a round court where a decorative fountain had been erected with much ornamentation and little skill. Beside it, more prosaic, were a simple well and watering trough, constructed with straightforward efficiency. Around the court the houses were dark and quiet, save one flickering candle in a baker’s shop. A breeze replaced the smell of sea wrack with that of fresh bread.

  The two women circled around the fountain and paused on the far side by the watering trough. Bel leaned back on the edge, regarding the dwellings. “How can they live so close, for all their lives? They must tread on each other constantly.”

  “You don’t live completely alone in the Outskirts, do you?”

  “No, but the tribe, that’s different. It’s one’s own kin, and comrades. When we cross another tribe, then there may be trouble.”

  “The proximity can be useful. People can barter work, or trade objects . . .”

  “We trade, when we have something to trade.” Bel jingled the coins in her pouch.

  “Where do you get what you trade? Do you sell part of your herd?”

  The Outskirter was outraged. “The herd? Never, the herds are life!”

  “For a goldsmith, gold is life.”

  Bel considered this.

  Rowan moved to sit beside her. The open court pleased her, its edges crowded with shops, now silent, a pause filled with the imminence of the next day’s activity. Events to come; movement.

  “What is life for a steerswoman?”

  Rowan looked at her in surprise. She had never heard the question posed in that way. Related questions, questions direct and easy to answer, she had often considered, but she saw that those were only pieces of this one. She took a long time to think. Bel ventured, “Is it your books? Those charts you take such care at?”

  “No . . . The books and charts are just the means to hold on to what you learn, in a way that makes it easier for others to learn from you. They’re a way to—” She thought carefully. “To add up learning, to accumulate it past your own lifetime.”

  “The learning itself?” The barbarian watched her with wide dark eyes, patient and curious.

  “No . . .” Rowan saw that in some way the things she learned were also only pieces. She moved her hands, shaping a space between them, tilting the space as though investigating what lay there. “Facts, ideas fit together. It’s the fitting, the paths that connect them, that matters. The pieces can change, but the fitting lies beneath it all. The world is made of such fittings.” Then she had the answer, but it seemed too large, and it sat strangely in her mind, like an important childhood memory that explained things that had seemed not to need explanation. “It’s the world, I suppose.”

  Bel accepted that, and a large peaceful silence ended the discussion.

  Rowan watched the Western Guidestar shining between two roofs in front of her. As she was watching, it went dark. “It’s not long before dawn,” she observed.

  Bel checked the Guidestar herself and nodded. “Let’s go, then.” They rose and crossed back to the inn.

  5

  The ornate double doors of the dining area were locked, and the windows that looked out on the square were shuttered tight. Rowan knocked lightly, hoping to get the attention of the servant who had been sweeping earlier. There was no response.

  Bel was amused. “Do we break in?”

  Rowan shook her head, then beckoned. “The common room is this way.” She led the Outskirter around the building to the left, to its opposite side, where they found a single low door and four shuttered windows facing the small side street. As they approached, the door opened, and a stout woman in an apron leaned out to peer at the sky, with the attitude of a person guessing the time.

  “Three o’clock,” Rowan supplied.

  The woman shook her head aggrievedly. “Late again, and there’ll be plenty of early breakfasts, what with that ship leaving this morning.” She examined Bel and Rowan. “Up early, or coming in late?”

  “A little of both, perhaps,” Rowan replied.

  They entered the common room and declined the woman’s offer of guidance to their chamber. Carrying a single candle, Rowan led Bel to one of the two doors flanking the fireplace, and passing through, they found themselves back in the deserted dining area.

  “How did you know this was here?” Bel wondered.

  “It stands to reason. If a large fireplace doesn’t back on an outside wall, then it’s two-sided.” She led Bel around the tables, dimly visible in the gloom. “The other side would serve either the kitchen or the common room. The closed-up fireplace in that open area by the stairs backs on the kitchen, so I knew the common room had to connect to the dining room.” Bel bumped into a table; they had left the lighted doorway to the common room around a corner. Holding her tiny flame higher, Rowan took Bel’s hand and guided her through the alcove and the door to the sleeping chambers.

  Bel stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs. “Listen!” Rowan heard a faint scrabbling. “Rats.”

  “So many?” The sound intensified briefly, then ceased.

  The two women continued up. “Any large town is bound to have a lot of them. They’re attracted by the garbage.” The rooms along the second floor were quiet, but dim light showed beneath the doors of two.

  As they turned the corner and approached the stairs leading to the third floor, the scrabbling returned, behind them. It was punctuated by a human squeak. “It’s only a rat, woman,” Bel mumbled derisively.

  Rowan looked back across the balcony to the two lighted rooms. Now another room on the left was also lit. “It sounds like they’re climbing on the east wall.”

  The scrabbling turned into a patter of small feet. From the newly lit room the voice sounded again, a faint, weird wailing.

  Bel was halfway up the stairs. Rowan grabbed her fur-skin cloak to stop her. “No. Wait.”

  “What?”

  Rowan looked across the central well, and in that moment all her training, all her skill in perception, observation, integration, and reason, came into play in perfect coordination. She was aware of the space around her, the wall to her left, the staircase behind her, the balcony rail, and the open area beyond. She sensed the chandelier above, the distance from floor to roof. She knew the direction of the sounds, the three lit rooms along the east wall, how they stood in relation to the building as a whole, as clearly as if by some sense of touch. The air around her was alive with meaning.

  “We have to get out of here,” she said.

  “Right now?”

  Rowan let loose Bel’s cloak. “Yes. Now.”

  “We’ll want our packs.” Bel continued up.

  “No!” Rowan clattered up the stair after her and, as her head cleared the stairwell, reached out and buried her fingers in Bel’s shaggy boot. The Outskirter fell sprawling.

  Bel turned over and wrenched her foot away. “Rowan!”

  Rowan looked past her to the door of the third floor corner room. White light was spilling out beneath it, growing brighter. “That’s our room,” she said.

  The door burst open, splintering, driven by three gouts of white flame.

  “Down!” Rowan shouted over the sudden roar of fire. “Go down
!” Then, as loud as she possibly could, she yelled, “Fire! Get out, everyone! Fire!”

  Bel stumbled down the stair after Rowan, colliding with her. The now-useless candle fell and rolled off the balcony. “Come on!” Rowan hurried along the landing.

  Two doors on the east wall burst outward, flinging with them a woman, a woman in flames. She fell against the railing, clawing at some dark shape that clutched her thigh. The railing broke, and she fell.

  Heat, and wreckage; Rowan and Bel paused for an instant. Rowan began to pick her way across the burning rubble.

  Around them, doors were opening, voices were shouting, people were running. One man recklessly pushed past Rowan and rushed toward the stairs. The wall beside him opened like a flower, gushing smoke. The landing above collapsed. He was buried in burning timber.

  The way was blocked.

  Rowan turned back toward Bel, seeing half a dozen stunned faces behind her, Reeder and his boy among them. “Windows!” she told them, and ran back the way she had come.

  The group followed, and as she opened one of the doors, they pushed past, fighting in panic to reach the window. A half-dressed dark-skinned man reached it first and, with a blow of his fist, smashed out the shutters. He scrambled up the sill, and then a white lance of flame caught the side of his face. His hair was burning.

  He fell back, shrieking. “They’re loose! They’re swarming!” Someone caught him and threw a blanket over his head, smothering the flames.

  “What’s loose?” Bel shouted, but Rowan knew.

  Over the edge of the windowsill, weaving its flat head, came a glittering cat-sized creature. Its hide was shimmering green and silver, its faceted eyes blood-red. Flailing its tail as it sought balance, it emitted a two-toned whistling shriek, an infant version of a dragon’s scream.

  It froze like a lizard, studying them with one of its side-set eyes.

  Rowan stepped forward as it swung to face them, pulled the blanket off the man’s head, and flung it at the beast. The blanket burst into flame, and the creature squealed in fury.

  Two more small forms appeared in the window. “Out,” Rowan said, pushing people before her. A pale woman urged the now-blinded dark man, pulling at his arms.

  Bel was already at the railing. “We can’t go out the windows, and we can’t reach the stairs that lead down.”

  Rowan looked across the central well and saw that the east and south sides of the top floor were burning wildly. On the second floor, the balcony along the east wall had collapsed to the ground. Directly across, the lower south wall showed spots of fire.

  Two people clattered up the stairs to the top floor. How they planned to escape, Rowan had no idea.

  “We go over,” Rowan said. “Drop down.” She swung herself over the balcony, shifted her grip to the bottom of the balusters, hung by her hands, and dropped the last eight feet.

  The boy imitated her immediately, followed by Reeder; they hung, dropped, then ran toward the exit to the dining room. The pale woman shouted instructions to the blind man, guiding his hands to the railing.

  Bel stood frozen on the landing, staring in shock at the distance down.

  The sounds of fire and the crack of weakening timber surrounded Rowan as she looked up. “Skies, no,” she cursed in anguish. “Bel! Bel, do it!”

  Out of the wreckage along the east wall, small writhing shapes began to emerge from the fire.

  The blind man came down in a twisting sprawl. His woman began to follow, and as she hung by her hands Bel suddenly moved. She grit her teeth, grasped the rail, and swung herself over the edge.

  The pale woman reached the ground and led her man stumbling to the exit. Under the landing where Bel hung, a door opened, and a burly man and two women in nightshifts emerged. The man wore a sheet. They gazed about in confusion.

  Bel looked down once, and Rowan cried, “Don’t look, just hang and drop!”

  Bel dropped. Behind Rowan, the landing cracked, splintered, and fell.

  Bel landed on her feet and made to run. Rowan stopped her. The exit was buried under the fallen landing.

  Rowan turned to the man. “Your window.”

  One of the women answered. “It’s all animals, spitting fire, like. Outside.”

  Rowan looked around quickly, seeking an option, any option. The east wall looked as though it might collapse inward. Along the south wall, the fire was moving along the rubble of the fallen balcony. The smoke, rising, had completely filled the upper half of the central well; the air Rowan breathed was hot, getting hotter fast, but still clean.

  There was a sudden movement in the ceiling of smoke, and Rowan pushed Bel and herself against the wall as the chandelier came down with a screeching crash, shattering on the stone floor. A pair of small forms tumbled out of the wreckage. One landed at Rowan’s feet, writhing, trying to right itself. It was the size of a rat. Rowan stepped on its head; it was like standing on a stone. The creature struggled wildly; then suddenly its skull popped, and it lay twitching, emitting a brief shower of sparks.

  Bel shouted in fury, and Rowan turned in time to see her swing her sword against the side of a larger beast. The blow injured it not at all, but the force sent it sprawling aside, and it tumbled into the open door of the just-vacated room. The burly man stepped forward and pulled the door shut.

  “That won’t stop it for long,” Rowan said. Instinctively, she began to back along the wall, away from the heat, toward the old fireplace.

  Bel came up beside her, looking back at the wall of fire. “We’re trapped. We’re truly trapped.”

  “Yes.” Rowan looked at the mortared-up hearth and raised her voice to be heard more clearly. “We’ll stand up against the fireplace. Perhaps when the wreckage falls, the configuration—” She stopped short, suddenly remembering. “Yes!” She ran to it.

  The others followed quickly and found her searching the right-hand edge of the hearth. “It has to be here—”

  Bel had not understood. She brought her face closer and shouted, “What?”

  Rowan faced her. “A door! There has to be a door!”

  One of the other two women had collapsed in terror. The man was trying to pull her to her feet. The second woman pointed at the rubble on the other end of the fireplace. “Door’s buried!” she shouted.

  “There was another. I saw it!” Rowan turned back, and saw how the wood paneling overlaid the stones. She moved right, and found the door she had seen the chambermaid open. She pulled it wide.

  A linen closet. One of the women made a sound of anguish. Bel let out a single, near-inhuman shriek of fury, gripped her sword tighter and swung around to face the inevitable attack of dragons.

  Rowan began pulling out linens, throwing them blindly behind her, shouting as she did. “This area was a common room! The fireplace backs on the kitchen; did you ever see a common-room hearth like that, that didn’t have doors on both ends?” The fronts of the shelves were bare. The left wall of the closet was stone; the right was wood. Rowan could not see to the back.

  She smashed the heels of her hands against the underside of a shelf, and the plank lifted and clattered onto the one beneath it. Using both hands, she tugged at the right edge of the second shelf, and it tilted up, then slipped off its supports to the floor.

  Rowan stumbled over the shelves, tripping, and fell against the back wall. It was wood.

  She regained her feet, pulled out her sword, and put all her strength into a two-handed underhand stab. A half-inch of the point wedged into the wood. She twisted it as she pulled, then checked the result with her fingers: a shallow gouge.

  “Bel!” Rowan came out of the closet and gripped Bel’s shoulder. “The back wall is wood. We have to break through!” Bel stared at Rowan blindly, her face that of a warrior’s during battle. Then her expression changed, and she understood. She pulled away and scrambled over the scattered linens into the closet. She was stronger than Rowan; her sword was heavier. Shorter, she had room to swing overhand.

  The burly man
was standing against a wall, one of his women clinging and sobbing, the other standing free and watching Rowan with desperate alertness.

  The man was huge. Rowan extended her sword hilt to him. “Take this. Help Bel.”

  He extricated himself, stepped to the closet, and pulled out the planks of the fallen shelves. Lifting one, he tested its heft. He said to Rowan, “You keep the sword,” and pointed past her with his chin.

  She turned and saw the shattered chandelier, and on it, three dragons. They crawled over it and over each other, indiscriminately, heads weaving and searching, tails writhing. The largest was as big as a dog.

  Behind her, Rowan could hear the thumps as Bel and the man set to work. She stood with her back to the closet, knowing it was only a matter of time before the dragons sighted her. Wondering if, like frogs, they could only see moving objects, she stood as still as she could.

  She sensed a presence beside her. Glancing to the side, she half expected to see Bel, but found instead one of the two other women, the self-possessed one. The woman was holding another plank in her hands, dividing her attention between the chandelier and Rowan’s face.

  One of the dragons sent a random gout of flame splashing against the center of the fireplace.

  Rowan searched her knowledge, seeking information about dragons. She found little, next to nothing. She had only her eyes and her reason.

  She watched for a few moments, then spoke to the woman beside her. “The larger they are, the slower they move. They’ll cover ground quickly, because of the length of their stride, but these don’t react as fast as the tiny ones. Those flat heads have no room for much brain; they’re not very smart. Their eyes are set on the sides of their heads, but the flame comes from their snouts. So, if they’re looking at us, they can’t burn us; when they’re trying to burn, they can’t see us well.”

  The woman nodded; one of the dragons froze, studying her with its right eye.