The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

  To start it off, he just held the old logbook up, and tilted his head toward the back of the aisle. “Found it back there …”

  And he stopped right then, because she did, too, standing in the middle of the room with her eyes wide and her mouth open. And when she got past that, she said, like she really did mean it, “The bloody stupid old cow!” She swung herself at him, taking six thump and swings to get there. She put out her hand for the book; and when she took it, Steffie saw that her left hand had the twisty silver ring and there was a little gold chain around her throat— and there she was, another steerswoman.

  Mira’s replacement, he thought straight off— but no. She was young, a couple years older than him, maybe. “There’s nine of them,” he told her, “that I found so far, that is.”

  “Nine? That’s insane. What can Mira have been thinking?” She riffled through the pages. “Where are the others? I’ll have to pack them straight up and off to the Archives— ” Then she stopped short and looked off into the air all of a sudden, like she’d heard something no one else could hear. “Dan!” she said— to Steffie, which made no sense that he could see. But then she did a neat little spin in place that brought her around the other way, crutches and all.

  The cooper was still standing by the door, watching like he’d had a hod of bricks dropped on him. “It was really very kind of you to help me bring all my gear from the ship,” the woman said to him, “and as soon as I can figure out where we keep the fixings, I’d be happy to get us some tea. Unless there’s something better around.” She looked at Steffie over her shoulder, needing to look up as she did it, being so small. “Is there anything better around?” Close up, her eyes were as black as her hair.

  “The beer’s from yesterday.”

  “Dan, the beer’s from yesterday. Will tea do?”

  Dan looked like he was having trouble keeping up with her. “Um, thank you all the same, lady, but I need to be getting back. It’s gone pretty late, now; I need to close up things for the night.” He got a little easier. “I was glad to help, lady, and I hope to see you again soon.” He nodded a goodbye to Steffie and went out the door.

  The steerswoman was nodding to herself. “Dinner,” she said.

  There was a little pause, and then Dan came back. “Excuse me?”

  “You mentioned dinner. What was the name of that place, the Mizzen? Perhaps not tonight— I’m really too tired— but tomorrow night? I’ll see you there?” And Steffie had to smile: One step ahead of you.

  Dan was taken aback. “Yes, but I’m thinking, Brewer’s is just around the corner, and that’d be easier for you to get to, if you take my meaning.”

  She smiled a long smile. “Of course. Tomorrow, then.”

  Dan left, and the woman pegged herself over to the chairs by the hearth. “I am exhausted.” She dropped into the wicker chair, then gave the room a once-over. “This is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.” She set her crutches aside.

  “Lot of work been done.” And he figured he had the right to ask: “Do I get to know who you are?”

  And she laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m Zenna. And you’re Steffie, and Gwen is probably around here somewhere.”

  “Well, no.” Gwen was still acting all huffy with him. But she was starting to get over it, with Rowan two days gone. Probably get huffy again when Rowan got back. Everyone was thinking Rowan had gone for good, and he wasn’t telling them different. “Are you looking for Rowan? ’Cause she’s not here.”

  “Dan mentioned something about it. I’m not surprised.”

  “Right.” He felt a bit funny, her showing up here with him in charge, in a way. But she’d just got into town, and she already knew his name and Gwen’s. Maybe Dan told her— or maybe she’d read Rowan’s letters? “Were you at the Archives?”

  “Months ago. Then I got stranded in Donner.” The chair set up a riot of creaks, her shifting in it while she tried to use one crutch to pull the short stool closer to her.

  It was too far, really. Steffie came around the table and hurried over to help, so she wouldn’t have to get up. “How long was it you were thinking of staying?”

  She pulled one side of her mouth back, not a happy look at all. “Well, I wasn’t thinking of coming here ever; but it looks like I’ll be staying here, oh, for the rest of my life.”

  By now he had the stool, and he’d put it right in front of her. Which put him eye to eye with her about three feet apart when she’d said that, and when she said the next thing, which was: “I’m Mira’s replacement.” She thumped one foot up onto the stool.

  Funny. “You mean,” he said, “just for a while? Until your leg gets better?”

  “My leg,” she said, “may it rest in peace, has done all the getting better it plans to do.”

  Which was when, all of a sudden, he realized that the foot on the stool was the only foot she’d got. And that her other leg, the right one, ended someplace between the hip and the knee. He could see that now by how her skirt lay.

  It hit him with that sort of thump and twist inside that people get when they see something like that. And that twist made him want to turn away and look at something else and not stare like a clod; but then he remembered what Rowan had said about people not looking at Maysie, and how that made things worse instead of better. So he tried to do as Rowan said and just look at Zenna the way she was, instead of as something people thought she was supposed to be.

  It didn’t exactly work. So he ended up just going red-faced, and her looking at him staring at her; and he figured he ought to say something or other, but all he could think of was: “Could be worse. You could be dead.” Which was true, because that was a bad place to lose a leg from. Most people just died from it.

  She put her eyebrows up and said, “Oh, yes.”

  He backed off. “I guess you’ll want to know where Rowan went, and why.”

  “I already have a good idea. But I’d be interested in how she managed to figure it out. Did she happen to leave any notes behind?”

  He thought. “No, took her logbook and all with her. But there’s a sketch around here someplace.” Janus’s sketch of that cut-up demon.

  Now, where was it …

  Rowan had told him not to tell the townfolk much; but she couldn’t have meant for him to keep it from another steerswoman. He figured the only reason she hadn’t mentioned Mira’s replacement was because it was too soon for her to come.

  Come to think of it, how did Zenna get here?

  And he must have said it out loud, because Zenna said, “Hired a ship.”

  “All for yourself? That must have cost a lot.”

  “Not that much. I pulled a few strings. I still have connections.” She settled back a bit and watched Steffie poke around the room, looking for that sketch. “It’s too bad I couldn’t catch Rowan before she left,” she said. “But it’s just like her, getting the jump on us all. Do you know if she’s going through Southport or through The Crags?”

  That came out of the blue. “She didn’t say anything about either of those places.” He’d heard of both before, but he didn’t know where they were. Far away, anyway.

  “Well. What a steerswoman tells you can depend on what you happen to ask her. Still, I’m sorry I missed her.”

  “But she’ll be coming back …”

  “Oh, I hardly think so.”

  He knit his brows. “But she is. She said so.”

  “It’s a long way to Southport, and longer to The Crags. And plenty to occupy Rowan after that. I’m sorry, but it’s not likely you’ll ever see her again.”

  That’s when he stopped looking for that drawing, and walked right over and sat down in the big chair across from Zenna. And he put his hands on his knees and said to her, “Lady, what’s happening here is you and me are talking about two different things. It’s you talking about what you think is going on, and me talking about what really is. Seems to me, if you come to a place where you’ve never been before, it’s the people who are already t
here stand the best chance of knowing what’s up.”

  She looked at him like you look at a kitten that’s done something especially clever. “Very well, then … What is up?”

  And right then he remembered exactly where that sketch was; and he went and got it, and handed it to her. “Things like that are up, to start with. Rowan says they’re called demons.” And he sat back down.

  She looked at it; and it was funny, because he could see her look at it three different ways, one right after the other. The first was a sort of What is that? and that made her sit right up; and the second was a happy Oh, I see— this is amazing!; and the last one was No, hold on a minute …

  And that one went on for a long time. And the reason came into Steffie’s head, all by itself.

  Handwriting. “I guess you know Janus,” he said.

  “You guess right.” She put the drawing down on her lap and looked at him again, but different this time. She looked like she had thought that he was someone else, but he turned out to be himself. “And I guess it’s a long story.”

  “Well, you guess right, too.”

  “Then before you start— yesterday’s beer is fine by me.”

  20

  It took a long time to tell.

  Steffie kept missing bits, backing up, filling in, going on. He got it all out in the end, but it did take a while— all through dinner, in fact.

  When he was finally done, they were by the hearth. Zenna sat in the wicker chair with Janus’s demon drawing in her lap, thinking about the whole thing and sipping beer. Steffie sat on his heels, with his back to the fire, just for the change. He watched her think.

  Zenna thinking was different from Rowan thinking. Rowan would look far off in the distance with her brows a bit knit and her eyes moving like she was looking at some hard country up ahead that she’d have to travel through, or was maybe already traveling through; and sometimes she’d pace back and forth.

  Zenna thinking stayed still and leaned back, and was quiet; and she tilted her head and held her eyes half closed, like a cat with some plan on its mind. She stayed that way all the while she was figuring. “Rowan was right to go,” she said after she’d thought for a while.

  “I think so, too.” And as soon as he said it he was suddenly embarrassed, because the way he said it made it sound like he had some say in the matter— and who was he to be agreeing or disagreeing about what a steerswoman ought to do? But it was the truth, and it wasn’t like he knew nothing.

  “I hope the island is full of demons.” That surprised him, and he saw her notice, so she went on. “Because I don’t like the other explanation. It’s much better that demons be living close by and stumbling blindly into the nearest large town than that demons have suddenly got it in their heads to travel hundreds of miles, specifically picking out Alemeth as their target.”

  “But it’s got something to do with Janus, either way. Right?”

  She twitched her mouth. “Possibilities are two: Either it’s got something to do with Janus, or Janus has got something to do with it.”

  Steffie had to stop and sort that out, because it sounded like she’d just said the same thing twice— but she hadn’t, not really, not if you thought about it. “But it’s just as well Rowan’s out of the way, because one thing he’s definitely got something to do with is making people feel funny about Rowan.” And he did some explaining about that, how Janus was spreading bad stories, and Rowan saying exactly the opposite, and no one knew who to believe. “They’re mostly putting it down to a lover’s quarrel. People figure she’s an old sweetheart of his.”

  Zenna was thinking hard, and her face didn’t change at all when she said the next thing, which was, “No. That would be me.”

  “Oh.”

  She nodded slowly. She’d gone all quiet, not just her voice but everything about her; and it made Steffie sorry to see that. “I was already on my way here when Rowan’s letter about him reached the Archives,” she said. “When the Prime read it, she wrote to me and to Rowan. The letters caught up to me in Donner. I read them both. I dropped everything. I hired the ship.”

  “Oh.”

  She stirred herself, then she looked at her beer like she’d forgotten she’d had it and was glad to see it again. She took a big drink. “How much did Rowan tell you about Janus’s history?” She sounded more normal.

  “Well …” Steffie began, then he stopped again, trying to think how to say things nice, now that he knew Janus was her old lover. “Well … she just said he used to be a steerswoman— I mean a steersman. He got in a shipwreck, had a rough time, and took it bad. Figured he didn’t want to be a steersman anymore, and quit. Oh, and some steerswoman asked him why, and he didn’t want to talk about it, so he got put under the ban.”

  “That’s it, that’s the thing,” she said. “He wouldn’t say why.”

  “But …” There were some things a person might not want to talk about; and things that hurt you or scared you were right at the top of Steffie’s own list. He’d still tell, himself, if it was a steerswoman who asked. But it wasn’t hard to see that someone else might feel different.

  Before he could say all that, Zenna went on. “Over a year later.”

  “What?”

  “If Ingrud had asked Janus right after it happened, and Janus couldn’t answer, that would be one thing. Or a month later or even three months— but nearly a year and a half later? No. He’d be able to talk about it, at least in general terms, by then.”

  “So, you don’t buy it?”

  “ ‘Buy it’?” She smiled a bit, which he was glad to see. “What an interesting turn of phrase. Must be local. No. I don’t buy it. And the Prime didn’t buy it, and neither did Arian— ” She saw him start to ask, so she answered before he could. “One of our teachers. He’s the only other steersman we have, at the moment, now that Hugo’s passed on. Arian took a special interest in Janus during our training, as you might guess. And Arian definitely did not buy it.”

  Steffie hadn’t known that, about it being a year and a half later that Janus got asked about quitting. Made things different. He chewed his lip. “How come Rowan bought it? At first, I mean.” Because it seemed to Steffie now that he wouldn’t even have bought it himself.

  “He must have given her some explanation. Including an explanation of the delay. And it must have been a very, very good explanation.” Her face said, clear as if she spoke, that she couldn’t think of any explanation that good. “Well.” That look on her face went away. “Either whatever Janus said was enough to convince her, or it was enough for her to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Well, doubting’s all she gives him now. Don’t think she’d trust him as far as she could toss him with one arm.”

  “Hm.” She leaned back in a slouch, with her mug held on her one knee.

  And that brought Zenna up to date, Steffie figured. So, it was her turn. “Tell me, lady,” he said in the formal way, and he was about to go on and say, Why is it you thought Rowan was gone off to those places you mentioned?— but all of a sudden he saw that he already knew, because there was just one thing that would make Rowan stop worrying about demons, stop looking in the books in the Annex, and go running straight off somewhere else. So instead, he asked, “Where’s Slado hiding? And how did the steerswomen figure it out?”

  Zenna sat right up and raised her eyebrows and blinked a couple of times. “Steffie, has anyone ever told you that you’re a very surprising person?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “Mostly they tell me exactly the opposite.”

  “Hm. Well, in answer to your question, we figured it out by looking very far into the past. Actually, I say ‘we’ but that’s not entirely accurate. ‘We,’ the steerswomen living at the Archives, yes; but we had split ourselves into two groups, each following a separate line of investigation. And it was the other group that found the clue.” She put on a frown. “Damn them.” But she said it in a friendly way, the way you say it about people you’re jealous of but re
ally like, so you’re happy they did good, but you still wish it was you instead.

  “You see,” she went on, “up until quite recently, we didn’t even know there was any one wizard with authority over them all. That’s something Rowan discovered herself. When it became urgent that we find that wizard, we all just delved in and started looking for clues.”

  “Signs of magic,” Steffie said, “with no other wizard around.” That was what Rowan had said to him.

  “That’s how we began, yes. We found one hundred and eighteen books covering the ten-year span around the time the Guidestar fell. And other than a few false leads, the only interesting thing we found was some peculiarities in the weather. But then,” Zenna went on, “one of us came up with a very interesting question: How long has this been going on?”

  “How long has Slado been causing trouble?”

  “No. How long has there been a master wizard?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Possibilities, as we like to say, are three.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Either Slado is the first wizard to gain authority over all wizards; or at some point in the past one wizard gained that power so that Slado is the latest in a line; or there has always been a master-wizard. And if master-wizard is a position that gets passed on to another— ”

  “Maybe the place he lives gets passed on, too!”

  “Exactly. And that’s when we split into two groups. One looking for unattributed magic in recent times and one looking for it anywhere in all the rest of recorded history.”

  She stopped, so Steffie could let that sink in. “But,” he said, “wouldn’t that take forever? You’d have to look in every single book.”

  “So you would. But then one member of that group— and come to think of it, it was Arian— suggested that if there has always been a master-wizard, we might try looking for one single, inexplicable thing, which has persisted, or repeated, since our records first began.”

  Still seemed like it would take forever. But Steffie said, “Right,” meaning he understood it.