The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Bel was equally confused. “Whose notice?”

  Then, nodding slowly, Rowan lowered her sword. “Abremio’s. Let him go, Bel. He doesn’t serve Abremio.” She smiled a little. “But he thinks that we do.”

  Bel released Willam in astonishment. “Us?”

  He lay on the ground, rubbing his chest. “I thought, when you named him ...”

  “I thought I was naming you,” Rowan said wryly.

  “Me?” It came out a childish squeak.

  “Who knows what guise a wizard might travel in?”

  Bel watched Willam with suspicion. “It still might be him.” She stepped around, so that he had a woman with a sword on either side.

  Rowan studied him. His panic had eased a bit once he knew they were no minions of that wizard; he was waiting with a combination of confusion and wariness.

  She considered the clues. “You’re afraid of Abremio’s attention. Is he likely to be looking for you? Did you steal something from him, perhaps?”

  He sat up, cautiously. “No. He stole something from me.”

  “What was that?”

  “My sister.”

  “This Abremio steals women?” Bel asked. She directed her query not to Willam but to Rowan, and the steerswoman saw that the boy took careful note of that. Abruptly she realized that she and Bel had ceased to be innocent travelers in his eyes. In acting to protect themselves, they had compromised the only protection they had. There was no longer an easy explanation for their movements. She cursed herself silently.

  But what explanation was there for Willam? He had threatened the use of magic and was frightened at the thought of attracting Abremio’s attention. “Why does Abremio care about you?”

  He thought carefully before replying. “Why does he care about you?” he asked.

  He was as cautious as they. Bel smiled despite herself. “We don’t know that he does,” she replied.

  He looked from one to the other. “I don’t know for sure, either. But if he doesn’t care, it’s because he doesn’t know I exist.”

  “You’re a danger to him?” Rowan asked.

  “No. Not yet.” His composure was returning as they spoke. Then an idea occurred to him, and he looked suddenly intrigued. “But you are, aren’t you?”

  Bel’s sword was across his throat again, the guard close under his left ear. “Boy,” she said in a perfectly reasonable tone, “I want you dead. My friend”—she nodded up at Rowan—“doesn’t agree. But she’s a sensible person, actually. She won’t risk our lives on a kindhearted whim.”

  “The odds are against you,” Rowan pointed out, “unless you can convince us that you’re harmless to us.”

  His fear had returned. “I am!”

  “The more we know about you, the better we’ll be able to judge that. The less you know about us, the less risk you are.”

  “Don’t ask questions,” Bel clarified. “Answer them.”

  He took a deep shaky breath and looked up at Rowan. “I won’t betray you. Because I think we’re all on the same side. I’ll tell you anything you want.”

  She considered. It was difficult to believe that this big clumsy-looking boy, so obvious in his deceptions, could represent any direct threat. He looked more than a little foolish, sitting awkwardly on the ground, his possessions scattered about him; the warrior beside him could dispatch him as simply and negligently as she might snap the neck of a snared quail.

  And yet

  “The package you left in the ferns contains something magical?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Charms. They’re useful, in a small way. But they can be dangerous, if you’re not careful.” He held up his right hand for them to see. As Rowan had noticed before, the hand lacked its last two fingers. The underside of the arm was also scarred, as from an old burn, and his right eyebrow was faintly ragged. Abruptly the pattern made sense, and she realized that at some point in the past he had flung that arm across his face to protect his eyes from sudden fire.

  “Why were they given to you?” Bel asked.

  “They weren’t.” He looked stubborn, as if he had often had to defend that statement. “I made them.”

  “You said that you’re not a wizard,” Rowan pointed out. “No. Not yet.”

  “Are you an apprentice?”

  “No.” He looked earnest. “But I’d better become one, don’t you think?”

  “Easily said, less easily accomplished,” Rowan observed. Wizards sometimes acquired apprentices; but where those young people came from, no one knew. They were never of the folk in the wizard’s own holding. They appeared, apparently from nowhere, and more often than not vanished abruptly, never to be seen again. Only very rarely was it possible to make a clear connection between the disappearance of a known apprentice in one part of the Inner Lands and the sudden appearance of a new wizard in some other region. Even in those cases, the apprentice’s antecedents were either untraced, or untraceable.

  The boy went on. “I have to find a Red wizard. Abremio’s Blue; so is Corvus, nowadays. I don’t want anything to do with the Blues.”

  “What makes you think that any wizard would accept you?” she asked.

  “Well ...” Willam spoke grimly. “I suppose he’d have to. It wouldn’t do to have one of the folk walking around doing magic, would it? He’d either have to take me in, or kill me.”

  Bel leaned closer. “Then he’ll kill you.”

  From his position he could not comfortably look her in the eye, but his expression was defiant. “Maybe not.”

  But Rowan had reached her conclusions. She gestured to Bel to relax her guard, but the Outskirter was wary and did not comply. Will watched the silent argument in confusion.

  Rowan casually sat down on the ground next to them, placing her sword across her lap. “You’re going to become a wizard so that you can kill Abremio, for taking your sister.”

  It was an obvious conclusion, but Willam startled a bit when she stated it. Bel gave one delighted “Ha!” and released him again, stepping back to sheathe her own sword. She sat down herself, pulling her cloak under her, and viewed Willam with approval. “Can your magic do this?” she asked.

  The sudden change in their mood made him no less uncomfortable. “No,” he admitted, studying each of them in turn. Something in Rowan’s watching and waiting expression made him amend his statement. “That is, perhaps. If I caught him by surprise. But I can’t count on that. And I’d never get him alone. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.” He spoke with intensity. “That’s his way, not mine. I’ve never used it to hurt anyone.”

  “Except yourself,” Bel pointed out.

  He was embarrassed. “I don’t think that counts.”

  “It’s not a game, and no one’s counting,” Rowan said. “Abremio can do as he pleases.” If Willam did join the ranks of the wizards, Rowan suspected that he would soon learn to do as they did.

  “But—they’re not all like him!”

  Rowan gestured vaguely; it seemed to her that it was only a matter of degree. But she admitted, “He’s the worst of them.”

  “Stealing women?” Bel asked. “What does he do with them?”

  “Children,” Rowan corrected. “Of both genders. And no one knows.” Before leaving the Archives, she had spent two intense hours with Hugo, as he briefed her on the known details of the six major wizards. Hugo had learned in his own travels that Abremio occasionally sent a pair of soldiers to confiscate an infant or a young child from its family. It occurred rarely enough to seem a unique event to the folk involved, yet often enough to form a habit recognizable to someone who observed widely. “Was there something different about your sister?” Rowan asked Will. Often, though not exclusively, that was the case.

  He was puzzled. “No ... small for her age, perhaps. She spoke early and walked late, that’s all. Why do you ask?”

  But to answer would be to admit a larger scope of knowledge than she was supposed to possess. As had often happened on this journey, she found nothing sh
e could safely say, and so said nothing. It was the worst sensation, to close the lid on her knowledge, a wrenching unpleasantness. She set her mouth in a grim line to keep from speaking and looked away, trying to control her instincts.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

  She turned back and found Willam glaring at her in fury.

  “You—you treat me like I’m stupid, or like I’m nothing. But I can figure things out for myself. I know that you’re both spies, from a Red wizard.”

  Bel and Rowan exchanged a startled glance, then Rowan seized the idea and turned it over and over in her mind.

  It was the perfect answer. It explained all their actions: their original deception, their reaction to Will’s claims of magic, their attack on him, their unwillingness to explain themselves. Will had assumed that they served a Red wizard because of their fear of Blue Abremio.

  They did not have to lie at all; it was deception by silence. Without a word passing between them, Rowan and Bel agreed on their new identities.

  As spies, they would hardly admit to being spies. They both sat simply looking at Willam, waiting for him to realize that. Eventually he did, and grudgingly let his temper cool.

  “We’re not enemies,” he pointed out. “I hate Abremio, I don’t want anything to do with any Blue wizard. I’m looking for a Red. So, we’re on the same side.”

  “It would be a good idea if you forgot that we’re anything but a merchant and a mercenary,” Bel said. Rowan could not help but smile; the statement was perfectly true on every level, yet served only to reinforce the credibility of their new deception. Even her smile, she realized, added to the effect.

  “I won’t give you away,” Will assured Bel, and included Rowan in his glance. “But, well ... maybe we can help each other.” Bel looked at Rowan. “It might be a good idea ...”

  Rowan’s humor vanished. “I don’t like it.”

  “But if his magic is any good—”

  “We don’t know that it is.” Rowan was reluctant to have anything at all to do with magic, but as the supposed servant of a wizard, she could not admit to that. She hoped Bel could follow her reasoning without prompting.

  But Bel turned back to Willam. “Show us this magic, then,” she suggested.

  The boy hesitated. “But you don’t want people to notice us ...”

  “And it would attract attention?” Rowan asked.

  He nodded. “It’s rather loud, most of the time.”

  “You can’t do it quietly? Put a spell of silence on it?” Bel wondered. “There’s still a lot about it that I can’t control.” He rubbed his damaged right hand, an unconscious, musing gesture.

  “What does it do?” she asked. “What do you use it for?”

  He looked a little sheepish. “I can dig wells. And help clear boulders and stumps from new farmland.”

  “The boulders vanish?”

  “No ...” He searched for words. “Sometimes they break apart. Sometimes they just ... leave. Very fast.”

  “How is that dangerous?”

  He looked at her darkly. “It’s not good to get in the way.”

  “I believe that’s true of every sort of magic,” Rowan said.

  But Bel was delighted. “It sounds very useful,” she said, ignoring Rowan’s interjection. “I think this is a good meeting. I’m sure we can help each other.”

  “No!”

  Bel and William looked at Rowan, startled.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all.” She wanted to say: If the wizards are ignoring their own lines to cooperate against us, if every wizard is our enemy, then we do not want one of their fledglings at our side. We don’t know enough about them; we don’t know why they act as they do. This boy wants to learn their ways, and their ways are all against us. We would never know when he might turn.

  She could say none of that. All she could say to Bel, in Willam’s presence, was: “Think about it.”

  Bel shook her head, a broad emphatic gesture. “If you find a perfectly good sword by the side of the road, you don’t throw it away.”

  “What if you suspect it’s cursed?”

  Bel replied, stressing each word, “You use what comes to hand.” Will nodded, watching Rowan for a response.

  Rowan took a breath, trying to calm herself. She turned to Willam. “And how would we help you?”

  “You take me with you,” he said. “And when we return to your master, you tell him about me.”

  “A recommendation?”

  He nodded.

  “And what makes you think we carry any influence?”

  “Perhaps you don’t. But it’s better than me just showing up on his doorstep. And if I really do prove myself ...”

  “Where’s the harm?” Bel asked. Rowan saw that Bel was trying to suppress amusement. “If we have the chance, we let it be known that Willam helped us, and that he’d make a good apprentice.”

  Willam was waiting for Rowan’s answer, his face open, sincere, eager, guileless ... and for a moment, she cared about him and what might happen to him. “Will,” she said honestly. “You shouldn’t become an apprentice. I hate to think what it will do to you. No good will come of it.”

  Something in her expression reached him, and he was taken aback, suddenly uncertain. Then she understood; it was her sincerity. Never before had he seen sincerity in her face, and it broke her heart to realize that. “Trust me,” she said to him, knowing she had never given him reason or evidence to trust her.

  “My sister ...” he began.

  “Do you realize you’re not the only one?” Rowan asked. “He didn’t single you out; it’s simply something that he does, periodically. Does that make any difference to you?”

  “No ...” he said at last. Then he became more certain. “Maybe it makes it worse. And it’s not the only evil he does. I’ve seen how he works, a bit. I lived near his city, The Crags—but you knew that.”

  Rowan called into her mind a detailed map of that area. Willam’s village had to be on the near side of the drawbridge, far enough from the city proper that he had not acquired its involuted manner of speech, but near enough that pronunciation of individual words was the same. He had lived close enough to the city to be familiar with Kundekin handiwork, and that eliminated the farther-flung villages under the city’s direct influence. Also, he had been near enough to enter the city on occasion and see Abremio’s daily manner of rule at first hand.

  She hazarded a guess. “Oak Grove.”

  He stopped short, disturbed. “That’s very close. Langtry.” He went on. “Anyway ... I guess I have to stop it, if I can.”

  She nodded, comprehending. “You’ve been working on this for a long time.”

  “A long time ... working so hard ...”

  “Attise.” It took Rowan a moment to remember that that was her name. “Maybe we can help each other.” Bel said it simply, watching Rowan’s expression, and it occurred to Rowan that the statement might carry more than one meaning.

  “You’re from the new holding, aren’t you?” Willam asked. “The one they fought the war for, with those two wizards together?”

  “Shammer and Dhree,” Rowan supplied without thinking, then realized that her reply would be taken as an admission that he had guessed right.

  “Do they have an apprentice?”

  “No.” She sighed and spoke to Bel. “If either of us has the opportunity, we’ll put in a good word. That’s the only promise we can give.” It was a true statement, as true as she could make it, and still it carried in its heart a hundred unspoken lies.

  But it satisfied Will, and he laughed with happy relief.

  13

  “I would very much like to see what he can do,” the steerswoman said.

  Bel looked back at Willam, who was chatting with one of the caravan’s mounted guards. The man was riding a rather bedraggled horse, and extolling the romance of his lifestyle, with expansive gestures and more than a little condescension.

  The boy ambled along be
side him, with his odd, distinctive gait. His strides were slightly longer than his height would suggest, and he walked smoothly and jarlessly, as if he were carrying a load of eggs in his pack. It seemed easy and natural.

  The donkey trotted along beside them in cheerful high spirits, due simply to the fact that it was no longer carrying Rowan. It had protested being ridden from the first, and now that it carried only her baggage and Bel’s pack, it seemed to feel that its little universe had been restored to rightful order. Its bad temper had completely vanished.

  Bel added to Rowan’s statement. “Without attracting attention.”

  “He did say it was loud.”

  “I wonder what sort of noise it makes?”

  “I can’t imagine.” Like the donkey, Rowan had been restored to a more natural mode—she was walking. Her clothes were not the best for such exertion—the wide split skirt hissed around her legs annoyingly, and the boots were too new to be comfortable—but she walked and felt easier in her mind for the swinging familiarity of it.

  There were two main roads running east and west in the Inner Lands. One, the Shore Road, stretched east from Wulfshaven and eventually ended in Donner; but it was an ill-kept route and wasted many miles by laboriously tracing the northern shoreline of the sea. It served mainly to connect the little villages each with its neighbor. Only by happenstance did it form a continuous road with both ends terminating in major towns.

  But the Upland Route, which they had chosen to take, was centuries old, a good and dependable route east. It crossed the Wulf some miles north of Wulfshaven, dipped south to the city itself, skirted the hilly country that ranged down from the north, and traveled northeast and then due east to Five Corners. It was part of the major caravan route, and from Five Corners transported goods could continue in several directions.

  But that town was too likely to recognize Rowan and Bel from their earlier visit. They planned to leave the caravan long before that point and wend their way across country and along less direct roads to the Outskirts.

  The day had turned warm early on, and both women had added their heavier outer clothing to the donkey’s burden. They walked in the midst of a faint haze of road dust raised by the travelers ahead of them. Rowan breathed it in as if it were sea air.