The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  The rhythm of the exchange came to a halt. Her response had been unexpected. Brother and sister exchanged puzzled looks. Finally the young woman said in a light voice, “She’s afraid of what we’ll do to her. She’s a coward.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rowan said. “But I’m not stupid. I don’t wish to die, or even to suffer, particularly.” She smiled thinly at their confusion. “Here.” The guards shifted nervously when she reached into the neck of her cuirass; she turned a flat gaze on them, then continued, pulling out the leather pouch where her ring and chain nestled beside the mysterious jewel. As the wizards watched, she placed the ring on the middle finger of her left hand and slipped the chain over her head, its gold glittering against dull leather. “There. Now I’m a true steers-woman again.”

  She found, with surprise, that her emotions had relaxed, her body stood at ease. In the clutches of the wizards, she was suddenly like a prisoner freed. She was at home again, the home she carried with her. Her mind was clear, and she knew exactly what to do. Facing the pair, she said calmly, “Ask, and I’ll answer.”

  The young man shot his sister a glance. She said stubbornly, “It’s a trick,” and he turned back, watching with narrowed gaze.

  “It’s no trick. Steerswomen do not trick people.”

  “And you expect us to believe it’s as simple as that? You don your symbols, and you’re suddenly trustworthy?”

  “It’s not at all simple,” she told them. “It only seems so from the outside. And you’re free to believe anything you like.”

  “Impossible,” the young woman muttered.

  “Wizards are under the Steerswomen’s ban,” her brother pointed out.

  “Not at all. A person is put under ban once he or she refuses to answer a steerswoman’s questions, or lies to her.” She turned from one young face to the other. “I don’t believe either of you have ever spoken to a steerswoman at all, and you haven’t lied to me yet. The ban can’t apply to you. The only reason I used deceit was my desire to survive. You tried to kill me.”

  He snorted. “Not us.”

  “You be quiet!” the girl told him. He raised his brows at her speculatively, but said nothing. Rowan made mental note of the exchange.

  “Once you knew the soldiers were ours, you came here,” the female wizard continued.

  Rowan shrugged.

  “Why? Once you defeated them, why not run?”

  Rowan thought. “Curiosity.”

  The brother was astonished. He threw his head back and laughed. “It’s true,” she went on. “I know too little; it makes me vulnerable.”

  He made a vague gesture. “You know something.”

  “I don’t even know which of you is which.”

  He smiled up at the ceiling. “I’m Shammer.” His sister made no comment.

  Rowan nodded.

  “Very well.” Dhree recovered her composure and ostentatiously turned her back, giving her attention to the vase of daffodils. “Then answer our questions, steerswoman.” She toyed with one of the golden blooms. “To begin with, why are you being hunted?”

  Rowan stopped, stunned. “You don’t know.” Not a question, a statement.

  Dhree carefully showed no reaction. Shammer watched from his chair, head tilted insolently.

  If they had sent their soldiers against her, and they did not know why, then her conclusion had been right: they had been ordered to do so. Who could give commands to wizards?

  “You seem to be held in low esteem,” Rowan hazarded.

  “What do you mean?” Dhree asked, controlling anger, and her brother smiled at her discomfort.

  “You’re being treated like servants,” Rowan said.

  “If we were held in low esteem, we wouldn’t be here at all,” Shammer drawled.

  Meaning that they were there by permission, that leave had been granted to them, the right to claim and defend their holding. Granted by whom?

  “Possibly true.” Rowan opened the sack again. “Then perhaps you can make something of this.” She passed Dhree the enigmatic chip of blue.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the reason you were told to capture me.”

  The wizard took it in her hand, glanced at it once, twice; then, astonishingly, she flung it down on the table. She whirled on Rowan in outrage. “Don’t be stupid, steerswoman, and don’t play games.” She stepped close and glared down at her. Rowan noticed how fine the wizard’s skin was, and how clean her hair. She smelled faintly of rosemary. Her voice hissing spite, she said, “Do you really think you can fool wizards?”

  The steerswoman was not intimidated. “If you’re going to tell me it’s a decorative object, I won’t believe you. I’ve been told that already, by someone who was clearly trying to deceive me. I know it’s magic.”

  “Of course it’s magic! But it’s common, we use them every day, in any number of spells. I could show you a hundred like it—”

  “No. Not quite.” Her brother had risen and moved to the table; he was turning the jewel over and over in his hand.

  “What do you mean?” Dhree hesitated, then reluctantly came to his side.

  He indicated. “Look at the coating. It’s constructed differently.”

  “That’s your area.”

  “Of course it is. You’re theory, and I’m execution. Well, dear sister,” he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm, “theorize.”

  She studied it, touching it with one forefinger. “Is that coating inactive?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Then it’s protective.” Her aspect had altered. Gone was the bravado, the venom. She showed the clear concentration of an intelligent mind involved in solving a problem. Other considerations had vanished. Rowan felt an odd, sad touch of kinship with her.

  “Protective from what, I wonder,” her brother said.

  The young woman stared at the jewel, but her attention was turned inward. “Environment,” she said at last.

  “Ours don’t need this protection. And they survive any sort of weather.”

  “Then a different environment entirely. Desert, perhaps.” She looked at him. “You’ve worked with the Grid.”

  He shook his head. “They’re nothing like this.”

  Rowan fought to keep her excitement from her face. Information, she thought.

  Dhree turned her attention back to the steerswoman. “Where did you get this?”

  “That one, from an irrigation ditch in farmland by the eastern curve of the Long North Road. And there are many more, scattered across the countryside in a broad line that runs southeast from there clear into the heart of the Outskirts. If you have a map, I’ll show you exactly.”

  Brother and sister, side by side, gazed at her suspiciously. Then Dhree gestured to one of Rowan’s guards, who hesitated, then stepped back to the door to call the servant.

  “Maps, Jaimie,” Dhree instructed when he arrived. “Covering the lands north of the Inland Sea. The librarian will know which.” She paused. “And bring another chair for this table.”

  It was a strange collaboration.

  At times Rowan forgot where she was and with whom she was dealing. She presented her information as completely as if she were speaking to steerswomen, and as long as she was the person speaking, she could become lost in the work itself.

  It was only when she felt a question about to escape her that she stopped short and remembered: If she asked a question, they might refuse to answer. On their refusal, she could no longer reply to their questions, and all progress would cease.

  And her first question was about the maps.

  Shammer took one from the group presented by the servant and unrolled it on the tabletop. At first Rowan could not orient herself to it; it seemed to be a work of art, executed in a style delicate and beautiful, like a watercolor painting. Then abruptly, with a small internal shock, she recognized along the right edge the course of the river Wulf. Southwest she found the city of the Crags, with the fjords depicted in maddening detail. The center
of the map was dominated by an immense sweep of mountains, the same that lay on the western limit of all the large-scale maps in the Archives.

  And, west of the mountains, past the mountains, on the other side of those mountains which no living person had been known to cross: A string of lakes like jewels on a necklace. A range of weird, twisted hills. A river broader than the Wulf, longer than the Greyriver, writhing northeast to southwest and vanishing at the map’s edge.

  She stood silent. Her hands hung limp at her sides. She forgot to breathe. She suddenly remembered a long conversation she had once had with a Christer, as he tried to describe to her the sensation of holy epiphany.

  And she said to herself: Don’t ask them. Don’t ask.

  Where had the information come from? Who had been there? Who had seen it? How had they traveled?

  Who had drawn that map, with so steady a hand, such elegant colors? How precise were the measurements? Were there communities beyond the mountains? Were there wizards?

  Shammer released the edges, and the map rolled closed again. “Wrong one.” He swept it to the floor impatiently.

  Rowan wanted to rescue it and cherish it as if it were a living thing.

  The wizard pulled out another chart, read the legend on its outer edge, and spread it on the table. “This one, I think.” Dhree tilted her head at it and nodded.

  From where Rowan stood, across from the wizards, the map was upside down. That should not have mattered, but the style was so different from that used by the Steerswomen that she was momentarily confused again.

  It seemed that the mapmaker considered roads to be no more important than the natural features of the land. Rowan located a brownand-green shape that she finally understood to be the salt bog, and managed to locate the eastern curve of the Long North Road nearby, dimly marked by a faint gray line. Again she felt that internal shift as the chart became comprehensible.

  “Here.” She indicated. “There are a number of farms between the Eastern Curve and the salt bog. They’re irrigated from this brook—” Astonishingly, one of the irrigation ditches, probably the largest, was marked. “That’s where my jewel was found. I began to ask, and then search for more ..” Dhree handed her a stick of charcoal. Rowan overcame her reluctance to deface the map and drew, from memory, the location of each finding. “And finally, I heard that there are a large number deep in the Outskirts.” She drew a narrow oval, encircling the northern findings, sweeping southeast, and terminating in the middle of a huge area colored dull brown. Leaning closer, she found a jagged line crossing the oval at its far end. It was labeled “Tournier’s Fault.”

  “That must be what the Outskirters call Dust Ridge.”

  Shammer made a face. “What a bother, walking all that way, just to see more of something you’ve already seen.”

  “It might be important.” Dhree knitted her brows in a frown of thought.

  “Perhaps you should go there, Sister.”

  “Perhaps I will, if we can’t get any answers from Slado.” Her face impassive, Rowan grasped at the name.

  “And how soon did you realize you were being hunted?” Dhree asked.

  “It was after I left Five Corners to return to the Archives.” She described the soldiers at the inn. “One of them accosted me on the road later. I don’t know who controls that area, but the soldiers were Red.”

  “That’s Olin,” Shammer told his sister. “Such a stupid man. He always does too much, or too little. Or nothing, when the mood takes him.”

  “He’s insane,” Dhree said, half to herself. “Really, that basilisk ...”

  “Still, as she was crossing his holding with her questions, I suppose he’s the one who’s started all this.”

  “Maybe not. I can’t imagine he’d place any more importance on this jewel than we did.”

  “The only importance the jewel seems to have,” Rowan pointed out, “is the degree of attention it provokes.” She took a risk. “I expect Olin was also acting under orders.”

  Shammer’s only response was a twitch of his lips, and the muttered word “Orders.”

  Rowan tread carefully. “It’s interesting. I always assumed that wizards are ones who give orders, not take them.”

  “Don’t become too interested.” But both their faces showed the hate they held for the one who gave them orders. They would disobey if they could. And that meant that they could not.

  Discussion continued. They dined—a late dinner, or early supper, Rowan could not tell which. The day had dawned overcast, and the shift of Rowan’s sleeping time had skewed her usually reliable time sense. The courtyard outside showed no shadows.

  Rowan explained that the jewels were a recent phenomenon. “The earliest date I can pinpoint for their appearance is about thirty-five years ago. I have that date for only two of the findings; the others are indeterminate but don’t contradict it. And it’s interesting that the farms between the Eastern Curve and the salt bog are relatively new. None existed before thirty years ago.”

  Dhree drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “And why was that, do you know?”

  “Demons in the salt bog was the rumor. But only rumor. No one living there had ever seen one.”

  “That’s odd. Demons are never found in the Inner Lands.” Shammer thought briefly. “It’s possible. They need salt water.” Rowan puzzled. “But there are none on the shores of the Inland

  Sea.”

  A wry smile. “It’s the wrong sort of salt.”

  Rowan put that aside for later consideration.

  Eventually exhaustion overtook her, and the wizards decided to consider her information and continue in the morning.

  They wondered what to do with her. “We certainly can’t keep her in the dungeon. Considering, that is, all the help she’s giving us.” Shammer spoke as if amused, but behind his air Rowan could still read suspicion and wariness. He was off-balance.

  Dhree, musing on the jewel, did not look up. “One of the inner guest rooms. We need bars on the windows, a strong bolt, and an opening in the door for the guard to watch her.”

  “So we do. That’s a day’s work on the window for a mason.” He pursed his lips, fidgeting with the end of his queue. “I’ll do it myself. An hour or so.” He departed, humming, possibly relieved to be leaving the theoretical discussion for work more direct and practical. Rowan was left with Dhree.

  “What happened to your entourage?”

  Rowan was puzzled. “‘Entourage’?”

  The wizard pushed aside the charts and jewel. “Yes, those mercenaries who fought for you during your attack. Our man reported that his squad was badly outnumbered.”

  Rowan’s mouth hung open for a moment; then she laughed long and without restraint. Dhree frowned.

  “Your man,” Rowan said when she had recovered, “assumed I would never show up here to give the lie to his story. I had two assistants, no more.”

  A muscle in Dhree’s cheek twitched. “And the three of you overcame our trained soldiers?”

  “That’s the case.”

  “Where are your hirelings now?”

  Rowan neglected to correct the term and answered only the question. “Not here,” she said regretfully, internally limiting “here” to its most circumscribed definition.

  “How unfortunate for you.”

  Her prison was a small, comfortable room, luxurious in its appointments. The bed was goose down, with silk sheets and satin coverlet, curtained with lace. A comfortable chair stood by the hearth, where a small blaze had been kindled. Bare spaces on the wall and the off-center arrangement of furniture betrayed the removal of certain items, possibly objects useful to visiting fellow wizards, dangerous or forbidden to common folk. An empty bookcase occupied one corner. Her guard politely instructed her in the use of the magical lamps that illuminated the room; a small brass wheel on the wall by the door, when turned, caused the light to dim and go out according to her wish.

  When he left, Rowan settled before the fire, fighting sleep to give h
erself the time she needed to think. She was a steerswoman again.

  She had used that fact as both tactic and technique.

  It was a tactic of delay. Cooperating with her captors was buying her time, the time she needed to devise an escape.

  And it was a technique of manipulation, far more effective than any web of lies; with every true sentence she spoke, the wizards gifted her, by their reaction and response, with information they would never betray to direct questioning.

  Each new fact was like a card, and she sat late into the night, mentally shuffling and spreading them, watching the interlocking patterns appear and dissolve. The branching of possibilities began to narrow, and the patterns started repeating, but she played them, over and over, fighting not only to recognize, but to understand.

  When at last she turned down the lamps and took herself to bed, she had managed to reduce all her still-incomplete knowledge down to one fact, true and inescapable: Something was wrong, and her whole world was at that moment in the very act of altering. It was changing from something she now recognized as badly misunderstood into something whose new nature she could not even guess.

  She slept without dreaming.

  23

  Except for the fact of being a prisoner, Rowan could find no complaint for the treatment she received. Breakfast was excellent, and the servant who brought it inquired after her comfort during the night. Despite her assurances, he offered extra bolsters, a softer quilt, a finer bed robe; when his list of suggestions eventually worked its way down to musicians to divert her, she stonily called it to a halt and requested his personal absence.

  She chose from the selection she found in the wardrobe, grateful at least for the fresh clothing. Presently her door was unlocked, and she was conducted back into the presence of the wizards, and the business was picked up from the previous day.

  As their discussions continued, Rowan began to see the inefficiency in the wizards’ division of labor. Dhree was quick to follow dense theoretical matters, but when Rowan pointed out practical considerations, she had difficulty altering her ideas to accommodate them. Shammer was able to recognize detail and devise immediate solutions to practical problems; but in questions of theory he first waited for Dhree to reach her own conclusions, then laboriously explain them to him.