“How will a horse help me on a ship?”
“It might be a little easier to explain . . . never mind. You have to get rid of the idea that the ship’s deck is the ground; you mustn’t try to align yourself to it. You need to find your own center of balance. Don’t make the mistake of just trying to keep your head level—”
“I have to keep my head level!”
“Yes, but don’t bend your neck to do it. Don’t put your head at odds with your body. Use your legs. Bend your knees to compensate for the change in the deck’s position . . .” She demonstrated as the approaching swells altered the deck’s angle, exaggeratedly bending her left knee as the ship rose on the wave, then straightening and shifting the flex to her right as they rode over the crest.
Bel imitated Rowan’s movements stiffly. “That’s better,” Rowan told her. “Keep your body relaxed; keep your head centered over your torso. Look past me at the waves as they approach.”
Bel kept her eyes grimly on Rowan’s face. “Must I really?”
“That’s how you can tell what changes to expect.” Bel shifted her gaze, her tan complexion graying. But as Rowan continued her coaching, the Outskirter eventually began to look more comfortable; whether from gained skill or from the distraction of learning the technique, Rowan could not determine. “Weren’t you seasick when you were belowdecks?”
“I was too busy with the cook. I had too much on my mind to notice.”
Rowan stopped exaggerating her leg movements and shifted back to her own more natural sea stance. “Then here’s something to occupy your mind: At Saranna’s Inn, what section did the dragon nestlings attack first?”
Bel attempted to make her own physical adjustments match the subtlety of Rowan’s. “Do you mean, north or south? I lost all my direction, inside the building.”
“Think about it.”
“Well . . .” Bel loosened her death-grip on the railing and tested her ability to balance without support. “As we entered the guest-room section, the corner they attacked was across from us, diagonally. On the opposite side of the open area.”
A trio of crew members jogged past aft to where a mate stood, exhorting them to some minor adjustment in the sheets. Rowan prompted Bel, “And?”
“And up. Toward the roof. The corner where our room was.”
Rowan said nothing.
Bel considered for a long time. “Did we do something to attract them? What sort of thing attracts dragons?”
“I have no idea. Very little is known about dragons. I don’t know what they like; I don’t even know what they eat.” She looked off to the side, thinking. “But I know that in Donner, the dragons are kept in check by Jannik’s powers.”
“But sometimes they get loose.”
“Sometimes. They chose an interesting moment to do so.” Around the two women, the ship’s activity rapidly increased. Without thinking, Rowan noted that the wind had shifted, and a major readjustment of the sails was imminent. More passengers had come on deck, either to enjoy the brilliant sunlight, or to observe the crew’s movements. Rowan stepped closer to Bel and, with a hand on her arm, directed her closer to the rail, away from the action. “And here’s something else to think about: The first night out of Five Corners, we were attacked by a soldier who turned out to be in the service of a wizard.”
“So you said. But he wasn’t wearing a surplice or a sigil. How could you be sure he belonged to a wizard?”
“I saw him at the inn at Five Corners, remember, and he wore a Red surcoat then.”
“Perhaps he just resembled one of the Red soldiers at the inn.”
“I don’t forget a face.” Rowan saw Bel’s dubious expression. “I don’t,” she stressed. “It’s part of my training. I could sketch his portrait, right now.”
Morgan himself had come on deck and was sending out a steady stream of shouted directions, relayed by mates to all quarters of the ship and up the rigging. Bel had to raise her voice to be heard. “Can you really think that a wizard is responsible?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“But why would a wizard care about us?”
“I’ve never attracted one’s attention before. And there’s been only one change in my activities, one new thing that I’m doing.”
Bel looked at her. “You mean that jewel. Of course, it’s magic—”
“We don’t know that—”
“But I’ve had my jewels for years, and no one’s cared. And that innkeeper at Five Corners, he’s never been bothered.”
“There’s a difference.” Oblivious to the noise around her, Rowan reviewed her speculations in her mind. “Several people have the jewels,” she said, “but I’m the first person trying to find out about them.”
Bel took a few pacing steps and found she had to grab the railing when the ship hit a sudden uneven swell. She moved cautiously away from the rail and leaned her weight against a vent cowling farther amidships. “Are you certain about this? Is this something . . . something your training tells you?”
Rowan came out of her reverie. “No, my training tells me not to be certain, not yet.” She smiled. “The steerswomen have a saying: ‘It takes three to know.’ “
“Three of what?”
“In this case, three instances. In the first instance, it’s possible that the soldier was performing a little independent banditry, for his own profit. In the second instance, the dragon’s attack may have been pure coincidence. But if anything else of the sort occurs . . .”
“Then you’ll be sure.”
“Exactly.”
Bel made a derisive sound. “Much good it’ll do, if the third instance kills you.”
“Being unconvinced is not the same as being foolhardy. The possibility alone is strong enough to make me cautious.”
Bel’s gaze narrowed as she considered the situation. “I don’t like this. It feels like we’re running away from our enemies. If we stayed in Donner, we could have found out more about that dragon attack. It would have been much simpler.”
Rowan found herself agreeing. “But I want to get to the Archives, and this is the only ship to Wulfshaven at the moment.”
“So we sail.”
“Yes.”
There was a small burst of activity, a thumping of leather-soled shoes—no sailor hurrying, but Reeder’s boy, dashing to the starboard railing, followed more sedately by a crew-woman. “There!” he cried excitedly. “It was out there!” He pointed. “But I don’t see it anymore.”
Rowan moved aft, Bel following carefully, unsure of her new sea legs. The crew member, a strong, brown, middle-aged woman, peered out to sea. “Don’t see it.”
“It was dark-colored, and small. It went up and down, on top of the water.”
“Hm. Piece of driftwood, maybe.”
“I think it was a mermaid.”
The woman suddenly dropped to the boy’s height, grabbed his shoulder with her left hand, and covered his mouth with her right, roughly. “Don’t say that! That’s bad luck on a ship! They’re evil creatures, murderous. Do you want to call one?”
“The boy spoke in ignorance,” Rowan said gently.
The sailor looked up at her. “Aye. But you know the saying, lady: ‘What you don’t know, can kill you.’ “ She released the boy but shook her finger in his face, once, admonishing.
Rowan looked out to sea, seeing nothing. “Perhaps it was a dolphin.”
The sailor brightened. “Aye, perhaps.” She scanned the waves again.
“Dolphins aren’t real,” the boy said. “They’re . . . they’re just heraldic beasts. Like lions.”
“Dolphins certainly are real,” Rowan told him.
“Lots of sailor’s tales of dolphins,” the crew-woman added.
“And the steerswomen have verified it, as well.” Rowan saw that Bel had come closer, listening to the conversation with interest. Rowan continued. “More than two centuries ago, a steerswoman went swimming off the bow of a becalmed ship. Dolphins came up to her, pushing her lik
e children at play. They danced on top of the sea, standing on their tails.”
“It sounds like a wondrous sight,” Bel said. She had found a seat on the roof of the pilothouse. “Lady, what’s a dolphin?”
Rowan gathered her information. “A fish, large, nearly as long as a man is tall. They leap in the air as they swim along, and have a hole in the top of their heads. They sing through that hole, as you would through your mouth, but their song is like all the different birds of the air. Their tails are flat, opposite to other fish—” She demonstrated the configuration with her hands. “—and they are so strong that they can balance on top of the sea’s surface by moving only that tail in the water. They possess great curiosity, and have never been known to injure a human.”
“Are they good to eat?”
The sailor threw her hands in the air. “More bad luck!” she cried.
Bel spoke quickly. “Sea woman, I beg your pardon. I come from a far land and know nothing of the sea. If there is any ritual or obeisance I should make, please tell me now, so I can fend off the evil of my words. And, please, I ask you to teach me what I should know, so that I will never offend the sea god again.”
Rowan looked at the Outskirter in admiration. A barbarian in birth but not in attitude—or, again, there seemed to be more to the Outskirters than rumor credited.
The sailor nodded, mollified. “That was well spoken. Aye, I’ll teach you, if you need it. Between me and the steerswoman, we’ll see you safe.”
The boy sniffed disdainfully. Rowan looked down at him and recognized trouble on the way. He said, “Tell me, lady, what’s a mermaid?”
The sailor made a grab for him, but Rowan stopped her with a hand on her chest. The woman wavered, agitated, trapped between two customs of equal force.
Rowan dropped to her knees in front of the boy and spoke eye-to-eye. “Child, I will be glad to answer your question, but first I will give you information for which you did not ask. Sailors live on their ships, care for their ships; a ship is a sailor’s home. The beliefs of the sailors are like a religion. Now, when you’re in a person’s home, it is bad manners, it is inexcusably rude, to scoff at his or her religion, whatever your own beliefs. The person has offered you kindness and protection, and you cannot offer insult in return. It is outrageous, uncivilized—” She thought of Bel and amended her comments. “It is crude. It would be kinder, and inoffensive, to wait until we reach Wulfshaven, when we are in no sailor’s home, to ask that question. So tell me again, boy, do you have a question for me, at this time?”
The child stared at her, wide-eyed, and the sailor leaned close to his ear. “Say that word again, and I’ll throw you overboard.”
A voice came from behind them. “What’s this?” Reeder’s boy broke and ran, clattering down a companionway into the ship.
The crew-woman straightened, startled. “Ah. Sir. You shouldn’t sneak up on one like that.”
It was Tyson, the navigator. “Now, Marta, I can’t help if my boots are silent. You know I would never sneak up on you.”
“Aye, sir. Right, sir. Officers never sneak up on the crew.”
Bel spoke up. “The boy might have seen a dolphin.”
Tyson laughed and clapped his hands together. “Then that’s good luck!” He took a few moments to make a methodical examination of the sea off to starboard. Rowan did the same, but neither found any encouraging signs. The sailor, Marta, peered out dubiously; then, with a noncommittal grunt, she returned to her labors.
“Ah, well.” Tyson turned back, leaving one arm resting along the railing. As he tilted his head back to view the new set of the ship’s sails, Rowan discovered that she rather liked the way his auburn hair looked against the pale sky, how his light eyes contrasted with his broad brown face. She found herself watching herself watching him, a little amused.
Bel roused out of deep thought. “I like what you said,” she told Rowan. “About respecting other people’s religions. That’s very sensible.”
Distracted from her distraction, Rowan considered her answer. “I’m sorry, Bel, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t necessarily respect other people’s religions, or any religion. But the people—I respect them, and I give them the honor they deserve, whatever they believe.”
“And that boy—would you have answered his question?” Bel turned to Tyson. “He was asking about ill-omened creatures,” she explained.
Rowan leaned back against the railing and studied Tyson’s and Bel’s expressions. “Yes. I would have, had he asked again.”
Tyson nodded, with the understanding of long association with steerswomen, but Bel shook her head ruefully. “You. I don’t understand you at all, sometimes. Just when you finish saying a hundred things that are incredibly wise, you turn around and act like a plain fool.”
Rowan felt a flare of anger. In all the Inner Lands, no one spoke to a steerswoman so insultingly. She was about to retort in kind when, by reflex, her training stepped in. Everything she knew about Bel, in all her short experience with the Outskirter, came to her mind in ordered array: the patterns of Bel’s behavior, what Rowan surmised about Bel’s context of knowledge and habit, the occasional sudden swordlike thrusts of Bel’s quick mind . . .
To everyone’s surprise, including her own, Rowan replied with a laugh. “And you,” she said to Bel. “Just when I’m convinced you’re nothing but a plain fool, you turn around and say something incredibly wise.”
Bel wavered, uncertain of how to interpret this. At last she said reluctantly, “Then perhaps between the two of us, we make one very clever person.”
“Perhaps that’s the case.”
Tyson had watched the exchange with some perplexity. “You’re an odd pair of friends,” he said. “You are friends, aren’t you? Traveling together?”
“Yes.” Rowan clapped Bel’s shoulder in a consciously overacted gesture of hearty camaraderie. “And very advantageous it’s been, for both of us.”
Bel caught her mood. She said to Tyson, aside, “She covers for my ignorance, and I cover for her flaws of personality.”
Tyson smiled. “Flaws of personality?”
“She’s difficult to convince.”
“True,” Rowan admitted.
“She has no gods.”
“Also true.”
“She’s too serious.”
“A matter of opinion.”
“There’s not enough magic in her soul.”
“Well, I’m not at all certain about magic,” Rowan admitted.
Bel dropped her bantering attitude and stopped short. “What can you possibly mean?”
Rowan regretted the change in mood; nevertheless, she considered carefully before speaking. “The few times I’ve been faced with something called magical, it seemed . . . well, simply mysterious. As if there were merely something about it that I didn’t know. Understand, I’m not giving you a steerswoman’s conclusions, here. As a steerswoman, I have to withhold my decision, out of ignorance. But the fact that I can be this unsure . . . that seems to indicate something, to me.” She shrugged roughly, uncomfortable with her uncertainty. “Sometimes I feel people call it magic, because they want magic.”
“Perhaps Rowan feels that way because steerswomen are immune to some kinds of spells,” Tyson said to Bel.
She looked at him in astonishment. “Immune? Can that be true?”
Rowan made a deprecating gesture. “So it’s said. It’s supposed to be true of sailors, as well.”
“Sailors and steerswomen.” Tyson nodded. “We’re much alike. The sea in our blood, you see.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Bel said. “I know there’s real magic in the world, but would it be so . . . selective?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t enough information,” Rowan replied. “But it seems unlikely.”
Tyson clapped his hands together and laughed. “Simple way to prove it. There’s a chest in the hold; belongs to a wizard. We’re shipping it through Wulfshaven.”
Bel was suspicious. �
�So?”
“It’s guarded, by a simple spell. Nothing major, so I’m told. But we had to take precautions loading it. Come and take a look.” He looked at Rowan, eyes crinkling in humor. “Come, lady, let’s look at a wizard’s magic; and perhaps we can show your friend something surprising of our own.”
After pausing for Rowan to don her now-dry boots, the two women followed him. He led them down a forward hatch to a series of narrow companionways that carried them deep into the hold, far below the waterline.
The air acquired a contained feel, and the slap of waves came from somewhere overhead. They went back along a cramped passage created by the crates and bales that crowded the hold. Following last, Rowan found herself distracted by the variety of shapes, and the odors hinting at what each contained. There were dusty kegs of wine, others sending out a tang of brine, chests of some sharp spice; one bale of wool exuded a cloud of fine powder when Rowan’s hand touched it. She sneezed.
She heard another sneeze and, looking up, spotted Reeder’s boy perched on top of the bale. His eyes were wide with distress at being caught, his jaw slack. Rowan only smiled and waved, and he watched dumbly as she followed Tyson and Bel.
Tyson brought them to a corner where several chests were stacked less precisely. He leaned back against a column of crates made of some rough pale wood. With a sweep of his hand he indicated rather vaguely the general area of the chests. Rowan and Bel looked at them.
“Which one?” Rowan asked.
“Perhaps Bel can tell.”
“What, me?” Bel gave him a cautious, dubious look.
He spread his hands. “It’s a minor spell, I know. Won’t harm you, it’ll just . . . warn you. Rowan pointed out, when people expect magic, they sometimes find it when it’s not there. I’d like to see if you can find it if you don’t know where it should be.”
Bel raised her eyebrows and rocked a moment, intrigued. She scanned the area, then cocked her eye at one chest of dark wood, ornately carved and inlaid with a pattern of lighter wood. She approached it and, standing at the farthest distance possible, stretched out her left hand to touch it with index finger extended.
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