Steerswoman - 01 & 02 The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Rowan sullenly tossed a pebble at one of the donkeys. It fell short, and the animal ambled over to investigate, on the chance that it might be edible.

  The music stopped, to scattered applause and appreciative comments. It did not start again, and the voices picked up their conversations. Apparently the musicians were taking a rest.

  Someone approached. Rowan looked around the wheel to see Bel wandering in her direction, the very image of nonchalance. Beyond, in a circle of chattering people, Rowan caught sight of one energetic figure topped by a wild cloud of smoky-brown hair.

  Rowan turned back and waited. Her donkey, appetite satisfied, came over to her and lowered itself to the ground. Shifting to one side, it found that the length of its tether was just sufficient to allow it to lean its head against her knee. It did so, and heaved a little happy sigh.

  Bel sat down beside her, eyes reflecting the light leaking under the charabanc. “I like her. She’s an interesting person.”

  “I wish I could talk to her.” Rowan and Ingrud had their differences and were perhaps not the best of traveling companions; yet somehow, despite their talent for annoying each other, they had forged a friendship during their training. It was an odd friendship, one that seemed to require equal doses of distance and proximity.

  But now Rowan felt a need as compelling as hunger. She needed to see Ingrud again, to find out how the road had treated her. She wanted to compare notes with her, to read each other’s logbooks, to reminisce about their training and share dreams of further roads ahead.

  Instead Rowan was sitting in darkness, listening to Ingrud’s music in the distance.

  “I think you’ll need to talk to her,” Bel said. “She’s carrying one of the jewels.”

  Stunned, Rowan turned to her. “You’re sure it’s the same? Did she show it to you?”

  “She’s using it as a brooch for her cloak.”

  Rowan felt a sudden chill. Ingrud was carrying a jewel in plain sight. And whoever had tried to strike at Rowan was looking for a steerswoman with a blue jewel

  “She’s in danger, and she doesn’t know it.” She shoved the donkey aside and rose to peer past the charabanc toward the firelight. Ingrud was no longer in sight. “Can you get her over here, alone, on some pretext ?”

  Bel considered. “She’s too popular at the moment. I’ll wake her from sleep later tonight and tell her there’s something she should see.”

  “She won’t trust you,” Rowan said. “Not even a steerswoman would go off into the dark with a total stranger. Not on this road, not in this season.”

  Bel thought a moment, then smiled. “I’ll bring Willam. She likes him. He’s been plying her with questions all night.”

  “Questions ?”

  “Yes.” Bel laughed. “He seems to have a lot of them. He acts as if he wants to know everything about everything.”

  As Bel made her way back to the firelight, Rowan felt an odd stab of jealousy. She thought: He should be asking those questions of me.

  14

  “The merchant Attise, isn’t it? You’re having no problem, I hope.”

  Rowan looked up at the mounted guard, trying to affect an air of dignified distraction. “No, there’s no problem, thank you. I needed to think, and I thought a bit of a walk might help matters.”

  He shook his head indulgently. “Oh, that’s not a good idea, merchant. Wandering off in the dark by yourself. With all the noise we made tonight, every thief and cutthroat for miles around is surely headed this way. And possibly arrived. We’re one of the first caravans this year, and they’ve had a hard winter, I think.”

  Rowan knew that to be true. “I trust your excellent patrolling.” He laughed. “Best of the lot, that’s me. Still, it’s good to be safe. You’d be wise to take yourself off to sleep.”

  Only a solitary thief could manage to slip into the camp. Rowan carried a sword, and believed it unlikely she could be caught by surprise in these circumstances. “My bodyguard will be joining me shortly.”

  His face brightened. “Sala! Now, she’s certainly impressive. And knows her business well. A fine soldier, and a fine woman, too, I think. She could probably teach me a thing or two. I wouldn’t mind wrestling her, any number of ways, if you catch my meaning.”

  Rowan suppressed a grin. “I’ll tell her of your high opinion.”

  He considered. “You do that.” He turned his horse and moved off, a musing, contemplative expression on his face. Rowan turned back to her own thoughts.

  The first thing she’ll do, Rowan thought, is shout my name. Then she’ll ask why I’ve left my route. Then she’ll wonder why I’m dressed so oddly ...

  Rowan would have to speak first, she realized. She needed to find some way to prevent Ingrud’s quicksilver emotions from giving Rowan away to whoever might still be awake to listen. But she could not think of what to say or do, and then she heard people approaching and knew she had run out of time.

  They were speaking, Ingrud’s tone dubious, Bel’s reassuring, as they came around the side of the charabanc. Will followed in their wake, suspicious of Bel’s behavior and Rowan’s change of plans. Rowan moved back to prevent the light from catching her face too soon. She waited until the trio reached the point where the wagon completely blocked them from the rest of the camp, then stepped forward.

  “Ingrud ... ”

  She had been wrong about her friend’s reaction. Ingrud’s narrow, foxy face quickly showed first surprise, then delight; but when she took in the strange clothing, she stopped short suddenly. One glance showed her that Rowan’s steerswoman’s ring was absent.

  To Rowan’s amazement, Ingrud burst out in dismay, “No! Not you, too!” She turned to one side in helpless outrage and pounded her own right leg with a fist. “This can’t happen again!” Angry, she stepped forward and shook her index finger in Rowan’s face. “I will not be put off this time! I’m going to get an explanation!”

  Rowan pulled the hand down, tried to calm the steerswoman. “Ingrud please, not so loud ...”

  “You and Janus have a lot to answer for—”

  “Janus?” Rowan shook her head, then dismissed the non sequitur. “I’ll tell you anything you like, but please, we mustn’t attract attention.”

  Puzzled, Will said to Bel, “They do know each other. I asked the steerswoman, and she said they didn’t.”

  Bel was distracted by an approaching guard. She stepped forward to reassure him. “They’re old friends,” she explained when he pulled up. “I’m sorry about the noise, but you know how it can be when old friends meet ...”

  “You are going to explain this!” Ingrud asserted, oblivious to everything except Rowan. “Janus can do what he likes and be damned for it, but you’re my friend ...”

  Rowan realized with astonishment that Ingrud was close to tears. Abruptly ashamed for she knew not what sin, she held out her arms to her friend. Ingrud went silent, and then Rowan found herself embracing a helplessly weeping woman. “It’s all right,” she tried to reassure her in the midst of her own confusion. “I can explain everything. It’s all right ...” She looked up over Ingrud’s shoulder at the guard. “I—I’m afraid my little joke went badly,” she extemporized. “I shouldn’t have tried to surprise her.”

  The guard relaxed a bit and looked to Bel for confirmation. “Really, there’s no problem here,” Bel said. “We’re sorry we bothered you.” He nodded, said something to her that Rowan could not catch, and wheeled off.

  Ingrud calmed at last, and Rowan managed to get her to sit on the grass beside the charabanc. The steerswoman insisted through her tears, “You had better tell me what’s going on.”

  “I was about to ask the same of you,” Rowan replied. “What’s the matter? And what’s this about Janus?” She found a handkerchief in a sleeve pocket and gave it to Ingrud.

  Ingrud pressed it across her eyes, as if she wished to blot out the world as well as her tears. “He’s left.”

  “What do you mean? I’d heard he was missing ...�
��

  “No, he’s left, he’s quit!” Ingrud looked up. Light from under the charabanc played across her face. Her agitated hands worked at the handkerchief. “I met him in Deaver’s Well last autumn. He was traveling with a band of tinkers. He’s not a steersman any longer!”

  Rowan rocked back as if from a blow. “He’s resigned? But why?”

  Ingrud shook her head widely, smoky curls moving across her shoulders. “He wouldn’t say. I asked him, and he wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been, what he’d been doing ...” She closed her eyes again. “He refused to answer any of my questions. So he’s under our ban. I told him so. He said he didn’t care.”

  “Incredible ...” Rowan groped mentally, searching for some approach by which to understand what she was hearing. Steerswomen had left the order before, for many reasons, internal or external. But to resign without explanation, without that simple courtesy to one’s fellows; and worse, to place oneself under the Steerswomen’s ban by refusing information ... Small wonder Ingrud had been so upset on seeing Rowan without her ring and chain. It must have seemed that the impossible had happened twice, and this time to a better-loved friend ...

  But while one part of Rowan’s mind was filled with concern for Janus and confusion about his motives, another was casting about, seeking connections and finding none. She said, half to Bel and half to herself, “It probably doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  Bel nodded, satisfied, but Ingrud looked up.

  “I don’t know what Janus was doing, Ingrud,” Rowan continued. “I had heard that he was missing, that’s all.”

  “And what about you?” Ingrud’s face showed a mixture of anger and concern.

  Rowan hesitated. “Will.” He was startled by her sudden attention, then squinted suspiciously. “I think the steerswoman will need her cloak in a moment.”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me,” he accused.

  Bel nudged him. “Of course she is. Now do as you’re told.” With ill humor, he complied.

  Rowan gestured for the Outskirter to sit beside her. “This is Bel,” she told Ingrud, and then proceeded to deliver a rapid, concise explanation of the jewels, the evidence of wizards’ interventions, the Prime’s decision, and her own mission.

  Ingrud interrupted her then. She looked carefully into Rowan’s face, studying her expression. Ingrud’s tilted eyes were a lovely mixture of brown and green. Rowan remembered them as always filled with merriment, but now her gaze made Rowan shy back. “Are you still a steerswoman?” Ingrud asked quietly.

  Rowan drew a breath and expelled it slowly, calming herself. She found that it was difficult to say. “Technically, temporarily ... no.” Ingrud looked dazed, incredulous. “I hope all this is worth it.”

  “I think we’re in a great deal of danger. All of us, the whole way of life.”

  “It seems impossible.”

  Rowan leaned forward to stress her point. “The wizards are putting restrictions on us. They’ve never done that before. We can’t permit it; who knows how far they’d take it, if they had that power over us?”

  “And what’s so special about these jewels? What magic can they hold?”

  “None that’s visible. They seem to do nothing at all. I’ve carried one for over a year, and it’s had no effect on anything, that I could tell. Bel’s carried hers for over ten years. And you carry one yourself, so Bel tells me.” Rowan pulled the little sack from around her neck. Her ring and chain jingled faintly against each other as she pulled the jewel out and handed it across. “Is this the same as the jewel on your brooch?”

  Ingrud studied it, then looked up in amazement. “This is the source of all the problems? Of all these ridiculous schemes?”

  “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.”

  15

  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.