The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

  His stance was stubborn; his face, less so. But he spoke defiantly. “You’ll have to tie me up to keep me from going.”

  “I’ll get the rope,” Zenna said.

  Rowan took him by the arm, led him to the armchair, made him sit; then found that she was sitting on the floor before him, both his hands in her own. His hands were large and strong and had far fewer calluses than hers did. She remained speechless, unable to combine gratitude, admiration, and unequivocal refusal in one sentence. She wished she did not need to deny so great a spirit.

  Zenna spoke. “Changed your mind about Janus?”

  He glanced over at her. “Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. But that’s not the thing.” He looked down at Rowan. “Janus has got two good friends willing to do anything it takes to help him, and one of them going straight ahead and doing it. Maybe that’s more than he deserves, maybe it isn’t. But seems to me that what I’ve got is my own good friend, going straight into bad trouble, and I couldn’t look myself in the eye if I didn’t help her.”

  From his face, he knew every one of Rowan’s objections; and that very fact forced her to voice them. “Can you handle a sailboat?”

  “Never done it.”

  “Use a sword or a bow?”

  “You know I can’t.” His hands shifted in hers. “But I’m strong, and I’m steady, and I’ll do any kind of work that’s put in front of me for as long as it takes. I’ve seen enough demons not to freeze up when I spot ’em. I don’t give way, I’m smarter than I look, and I’m good at taking orders.”

  “How good?” Zenna asked.

  He turned to her, then back to Rowan. “Real good.”

  “Complicated orders?”

  Something in Zenna’s voice gave him pause. “Well, sure. I can keep a list in my head, I do it all the time.”

  Zenna regarded him sternly. “Can you do what you’re told, do it straight away, and save any questions for later? Lift something, push something, haul on a sheet?”

  He blinked, sat up straight. “If you tell me to,” he said with enthusiasm, “I’ll pull a pillowcase right over my head and not ask you why until springtime.”

  “A sheet is a rope.”

  “Well, I’ve seen a rope before.”

  “Perfect. Rowan, we’re all going.”

  “What?” She released Steffie’s hands.

  Zenna folded her arms. “My brain,” she said firmly, “and Steffie’s body. Between the two of us, we can sail that boat all the way back to Alemeth, even without you.”

  “But— ”

  “Shut up, Rowan, it’s settled. Steffie, get over here for your first lesson in seamanship.” He leapt to his feet as Zenna reordered Janus’s charts; Rowan was left sitting on the floor by an empty chair.

  “Now,” Zenna said to Steffie with mock seriousness, “this is what we steerswomen like to call a map.”

  He played along. “Map. Right. Got it.”

  “Here’s Alemeth. And here’s where we think the wizard’s keep is. Now, as you can see, only the first part of the journey is by sea, and the rest is over land— ”

  “I guess I know how to walk— ”

  “You’ll be walking nowhere!” Rowan climbed to her feet. “You,” she said to Steffie, “will be staying with the boat and with Zenna. You are never to leave her on her own.”

  He smiled at her. “Right. Sure. Makes sense to me. If I’m the body and Zenna’s the brain, well, you never see your body walking off and leaving your brain behind, do you?”

  “Actually,” Zenna put in, “I know a few people who fit that description— ”

  “And at the first sign of trouble, you will both turn around and sail home!”

  Steffie pursed his lips, shook his head. “No, don’t think so. Just can’t see that happening.”

  “I think that what we’ll do instead,” Zenna said, “is turn around at the last sign of any trouble that we can’t handle ourselves.”

  “Right.” Steffie stepped behind Zenna, rested his hands on her shoulders. “That’s the way it’s going to be, Rowan,” he said, “and you can take it or leave it. In fact, forget about the leaving it part, because you’re going to take it, and that’s a fact.”

  Rowan realized then that she had already acquiesced and they were merely hammering out the details. She huffed a small, helpless laugh, and then another. “Oh, very well.” Steffie laughed and clapped his hands; Zenna leaned back in her chair, with a broad, catlike smile of satisfaction. “For as far we sail,” Rowan said, “we sail together.”

  She came to the table, turned the chart around. “From Alemeth”— and she indicated it to Steffie— “east and then south”— avoiding a number of islands with treacherous crosscurrents— “east again through the center of this.”— THE CHANNEL, Janus’s chart read— “past these”— MERMAIDS? the notation wondered and later declared, oddly and emphatically LITTLE SNAILS!— “then to shore and an anchorage … here.”

  Steffie leaned in to see, paused while sorting out the words, then breathed them in a tone of wonderment, “ ‘The Dolphin Stair’ …”

  “And from there,” Rowan said, “I go on alone.”

  28

  FOUR, the notation read, nothing else.

  And at that point, Janus’s chart of the shoreline route beyond the Dolphin Stair ceased. Squinting in the sunlight, the two steerswomen studied the map clipped to the chart stand. It rattled slightly in the breeze.

  “That must be it,” Rowan said.

  Zenna’s finger traced the marked path that followed the wavering shoreline. “Something’s there, for certain.” Her finger passed the numbered sites in turn. “One, Two, Three, Four.” Sites One through Three were circled, then crossed over. Only Four was merely circled.

  “Possibilities identified, then eliminated,” Rowan stated.

  “Only if the crossing means elimination,” Zenna said, with obvious reluctance. “For all we know, it might mean something else entirely.”

  The ship’s rise and fall became, briefly, a stutter as the bow met a series of small cross-waves. A startled “Ho, hup!” came from above, and the motion smoothed again.

  “Something was found at each of these sites. And the last is different from the other three. That’s got to be it: a wizard’s keep.”

  Rowan had once seen a wizard’s keep, when she and Bel had infiltrated the fortress owned jointly by the brother and sister wizards, Shammer and Dhree. It had been huge, with towers and chambers, courtyards— in all effect, a village unto itself. The wizard Abremio possessed something similarly impressive, built on a cliff overlooking the city of The Crags.

  As a student in Wulfshaven, Rowan had once wandered near the limits of the sprawling riverside estate belonging to Corvus; a forester, one of several in Corvus’s employ, had kindly warned her back.

  Of the other known wizards, Jannik possessed a large and mysterious house in the heart of the city of Donner; and lsara dwelt in a seemingly humble but magically impregnable cottage in the upper Wulf valley. Only Olin’s abode— variously described by perplexed witnesses as a palace; a fortress; a floating house; a cave; and on one occasion, a hollow tree— had never been reliably located but must lie in his holding, somewhere north of Five Corners.

  One more wizard, previously unknown, immensely powerful, jealously secretive … And a mark on paper, reading FOUR.

  “You’d think,” Rowan said aggrievedly, “that Janus would at least have had the courtesy to label it ‘Wizard’s keep here.’ ”

  A few strands of hair had escaped the tight braid Zenna wore; the wind caught them, streamed them across her face. “And since he didn’t,” she said, capturing and twisting them behind one ear, “is one there at all?”

  Rowan was silent a long moment. “It’s the easternmost location on the map.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the last place Janus went.”

  “Yes.”

  “After which … demons came to drag him away.”

  “And only a wizard co
uld make that happen.”

  “It’s got to be Slado,” Rowan said through her teeth, then in sheer frustration thumped the edge of the chart table with the side of one bare foot. “Who else would hide like that?”

  Zenna leaned back on the pilot’s bench and closed her eyes. “We don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.” She opened them. “Shall I say it a few more times? But what I’m convinced of is this: Janus was taken there.”

  “Then that’s where I go.”

  A thump, as Steffie slid down off the low cabin housing. “Did it.”

  “Good,” Zenna said without looking at him. “Do it again.”

  He hesitated, opened and closed his mouth, then hoisted himself back onto the cabin, turned to hands and knees, cautiously gained his feet. “Don’t lock your knees,” Rowan called, just as the boat crossed another set of cross-waves. Rowan noted, pleased, that Steffie managed to fall forward, instead of back off the cabin. “You’ll make a sailor of him yet,” she said to Zenna.

  “My loyal crew. And to think I joined the Steerswomen because I thought I’d never make captain.” She looked up. “Ho! Steffie! Clip your line!” He glanced about, found the safety line where it had slid under the edge of the small skiff lashed to the top of the cabin. Steffie retrieved it, dutifully clipped it back onto his harness. Then, with a preliminary deep breath and squaring of shoulders, he set hands and feet into the footholds of the mast and climbed.

  “How is his seasickness doing?”

  “It comes and goes.”

  Rowan considered the direction of the wind, and rose. “I believe I’ll sit over there.”

  It had taken the travelers six days to pass through waters already familiar to the local fishers. Sails had been sighted regularly at first, then less and less often, eventually dwindling to the occasional small fishing boat, cautiously putting out from one or another tiny settlement along the shore east of Alemeth. Finally, even the most stubborn of these turned about and headed toward shore, its bright green sail a mere chip of color on the west horizon. They never saw it again.

  Two days past the last village, Janus’s chart indicated that the boat should head to deeper water south. The reason was obvious. The shoreline became more and more fragmented, with crossing wave patterns and foamy whorls betraying the presence of subsurface upthrusts of rock, treacherous to navigation, impossible to predict.

  With regret, Rowan watched the shore retreat to a mere shadowy line on the northern horizon. Janus’s chart suggested that land was probably continuous from Alemeth all the way to the Dolphin Stair; but no steerswoman had yet been there, and if the area had seen other explorers, their reports had not reached civilized lands. Rowan wondered if the land was inhabited, or if some change in the native life prevented humans from settling there, wondered if Routine Bioform Clearance had ever been used there.

  But she was allowed no opportunity to observe. Even before land vanished completely from sight, the winds grew fickle. Many resettings of sails and adjustments of sheets were needed to keep the boat moving at best speed, and all three sailors were kept busy. Rowan had no time for study or speculation.

  She tried to allow Steffie and Zenna to handle most of the duties, so that they might learn to work smoothly together. It would not do for them to depend on her assistance. But for speed’s sake, she ended up pitching in as often as not. She only hoped that there would be no need for such great hurry, if Zenna and Steffie must return without her.

  Soon, rain settled in, and for two days sightings of stars or Guidestars were impossible. When at last the clouds broke, Zenna’s reckoning found the ship to be further east than her assumed speed warranted.

  “We’re in the channel,” Zenna said, brooding over the chart below decks.

  Rowan wished the aft cabin had the headroom to allow her to pace. “And too soon. We’ve found a current.”

  Zenna nodded, plied her calipers again. “Hm. Let’s check our speed.” They donned oilskins and clambered above.

  Steffie was delighted to see them appear on deck; the tiller terrified him. He relinquished it to Zenna with gratitude.

  Rowan handed him a wood chip. “Take this. Go to the bow. Lean as far forward as you can.” Steffie began to look considerably less grateful. “Drop the chip, and when it passes the bow, shout ‘Now.’ ”

  “Right.”

  Rowan stationed herself at the taffrail. Steffie gave his shout; somewhat later, Rowan gave another, as the chip passed the stern. During the four steps that brought her back to the cockpit, Rowan performed a quick calculation; arrived, she found that Zenna’s own matched it.

  “Definitely a current,” Zenna said. “Good. It’s helping us.”

  “Yes, but if we were sailing against it, and the wind were exactly wrong, we’d be having a hard time of it.” And this might happen, on the return trip.

  “Hm. I wonder if it speeds up further on?”

  “It would have to get a great deal faster, if it were the sole deciding factor in ships getting lost in the channel.”

  “You’re right.” Zenna tilted her head. “You can come back now, Steffie,” she called.

  “Oh, good.”

  “But what this means,” Zenna continued to Rowan, “is that we should look for trouble that much sooner.”

  The sky cleared, and days and nights grew cold. The wind was steady from the southeast, tacks became predictable. Steffie’s facility with ropes and sails grew more dependable; and Rowan quite suddenly found herself with nothing whatever to do.

  She could not map the land beyond the horizon. There was nothing to amend on the nautical charts. She could not change the winds or make the ship move faster.

  She ended up positioned in the forepeak, scanning the eastern horizon for sail.

  Somewhere ahead: an unseen wizard’s ship— quite possibly on the same course, and certainly with the same ultimate goal.

  She doubted that Janus’s nameless boat could outpace any wizard’s, and the wizard would probably not stop at Janus’s anchorage at all but sail onward without pause. Why Janus himself had chosen to travel by foot after the anchorage, neither Rowan nor Zenna had been able to determine. But there must have been good reason, and for caution’s sake Rowan would follow the marked path.

  All the more reason to speed the voyage. The current and the winds were better than could be hoped for. She ought to be grateful; she was instead, persistently, pointlessly, impatient.

  Steffie, however, welcomed the inactivity. He settled down on the deck behind Rowan and exhaled gustily. “Never figured,” he said, “that sailing was such a busy thing.”

  “Have you never been on a sailboat at all?”

  “Couple of times. Just to ride.” Spotting a coiled mooring line nearby, he pulled it closer with his foot and turned himself around to stretch out in the sun, the coil serving as pillow. “Helped Gwen’s dad run his crab traps a few times, but that’s rowing.”

  The steerswoman made a distracted, noncommittal sound. Both were silent for long minutes.

  “Funny,” Steffie said eventually.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Never thought to wonder before. About sails. With the wind pushing at the sail, how come we can go east? How come we don’t just go away from the wind?”

  Rowan paused, then revealed to Steffie the surprising fact that the wind was not pushing on the sail, but pulling it forward. Explanations were required, and digressions; then elaborations, and eventually diagrams. The afternoon passed rather more easily than it might have otherwise.

  The weather remained fair, then entered into a pattern of rainy mornings followed by clear afternoons and starry evenings. The ship passed through an area to which Janus had attached the question MERMAIDS? but none appeared, to the steerswomen’s disappointment and Steffie’s relief; mermaids were rumored to bring bad luck.

  Zenna drilled Steffie intensively on more and more sophisticated maneuvers. The training paid off. Twice they were caught by storms. The
second lasted two days, and at the end of it, Steffie declared that encounters with demons had at least the advantage of being over quickly, and fell asleep in the middle of his dinner.

  Rowan took his turn at watch that evening. Just before dawn, she was roused from her stargazing by the distinctive sound of Zenna clambering up the companionway. “You’re early,” Rowan called to her. Zenna’s next watch was not due to begin for another two hours.

  “I know.” The younger steerswoman had not bothered to bring her crutches above. She reached herself from the cabin housing to the port rail, and made awkward but efficient progress aft by means of long, braced hops. “Go below a moment,” she told Rowan, and reached out for an assist to take Rowan’s place. “There’s a noise. Tell me what you make of it.”

  Rowan did not hear it when she reached the bottom of the companionway, nor when she entered the dark aft cabin. After a moment’s thought, she lay down in the bunk, its blankets still warm from Zenna’s body.

  Tick, came through the pillow.

  She tossed off the cushion and laid her head directly on the mattress.

  Tick-tick.

  She had felt the sound through her hand on the bunk’s wooden edge. She laid her head directly on the wood, and pressed her ear tightly against it.

  T-t-tick, tick, and then the sound increased briefly, becoming a continual tapping, quiet and intimate, like the sound of winter sleet against the outside wall of the sleeping room in her childhood home. It faded again.

  Beyond the open door, shadows shifted from a moving light. Rowan found Steffie in the passageway, shirtless, sleep-touseled, carrying a lantern. “Did you hear that?”

  “It sounds like pebbles striking our hull.” Both paused to listen.

  Nothing.

  “Got pretty loud before, up front,” Steffie said. They went forward to the sail locker where Steffie had been sleeping. Rowan touched one of the bare ribs curving up the inside of the hull, then the wood between, then moved her hand lower, below the waterline, feeling the rhythm beneath her fingers become clearer. “Down.”

  They climbed into the hold, Steffie lifting the lamp as Rowan sidled her way between the crates and barrels. Before she could reach the hull, the sound reappeared, now clearly audible, increasing: a continuous faint clatter, like hail. She stood puzzled, thinking, listening. The sound was louder toward the bow. “We’re passing through something …” The rough wood planking of the floor communicated it to her bare feet, as well: hundreds of tiny collisions.