The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (20 page)

It said, “This message will not repeat.”

11

I
t was nice to think of dinner waiting. It made the whole day go better.

They spent the morning stripping leaves, him and Gwen and Arvin and Alyssa, and Gwen’s dad, and Ivy, and a couple of Maysie’s girls, all in one group, each close enough to the next to talk if they wanted, which meant anything interesting had to be sort of relayed back and forth along the line. They could just see each other’s straw hats over the tops of the short trees, until they cut the leaves, with face after face popping up out of the green suddenly, then the whole line moving up into more green to start over again.

It was Gwen in the middle, and they’d managed it so her dad was at one end and the girls on the other. Steffie was right next to him, which was good, because when the talk got saucy Steffie could choose what got passed down to him.

Gwen picked the least and worked the slowest; but Lasker knew well enough that any group she got put in made up for it by working lots faster, and happier, with her carrying on in the middle. Sometimes you’d see hats bobbing up all across the groves, people trying to see what was so funny.

The girls were saying that they couldn’t stand being around Maysie anymore, seeing that face every day, so they were giving up the work. They were looking for husbands, now, and everyone should get the word out for them.

Gwen made like she and Steffie were going to take their places, and Steffie played along. Which was fun and interesting, too, because he had to say things that sounded normal to Gwen’s dad but had a whole other meaning when they got sent up the other way.

After lunch, they chopped for a couple hours, then spent the rest of the day in the sheds, while the people in the sheds took a turn at the groves. It was not so much fun inside, because you had to be quiet and not spook the worms.

Also, Steffie didn’t like the worms much. When they first hatched out, they always made him think of maggots. Until they got this size. Then they made him think of
big
maggots. And sometimes when you pulled out a rack, a couple of them had died, and then you had to get them out with your fingers. Why big maggots dead should be worse than big maggots alive, he couldn’t figure, but there it was. He always tried to get Gwen to pick them out for him, when he could, or one of the other women. The worms never bothered the women.

And there was the noise. Thousands of worms eating sounded like nothing else in the world. All those little mouths, munching away like there was no tomorrow. The sound never stopped, and it got right down inside your head, or at least it did Steffie’s.

But the thing was, today, when it was over, everything that had anything to do with busy-ness was all done with, and that’s what was nice about dinner waiting. So it was him and Gwen, not a care in the world, just swinging along home, except not home, really: the Annex. Which was starting to feel like home. Which it had when Mira was there, too, but in a different way.

The first thing Rowan said when they got in was, “I hope you don’t mind eating by the hearth; I don’t really want to disturb this.” Her voice was sort of faraway, even though she was right there.

The “this” she meant was the magic box, except not any more. “I guess you got mad at it,” Steffie said. It looked like it had been dropped from a height, or had something dropped on it from a height, or had maybe been pounded a few times. It was all in pieces, spread out across the table, along with lots of papers with writing on them.

Steffie wouldn’t have minded a better look at it, but he remembered how it had stung people before, so he thought, Better Not. Gwen stood, half in the door, gaping, until he nudged her.

Dinner was in a pot on the hearth, and Rowan had pulled out the bench to hold bowls and spoons and plates and butter. There was bread, too, and fresh, but it was funny and flat, and not risen at all. Steffie figured Rowan made it herself, which was just as well, since no one was baking lately.

The steerswoman was in one of her states again, and Steffie was getting used to them; but she always answered if you asked her. “What happened to the box?” he asked. Gwen sat in the wicker chair and started dishing out, one eye on Rowan.

“I dismantled it,” the steerswoman said.

Gwen shot Steffie a glance, one of those glances that people give to each other when they’re both thinking the same thing. But Steffie wasn’t this time, and was still puzzling over it when she handed him a bowl. “Didn’t it sting you?” Gwen asked Rowan. There was something funny in her voice, too, but Steffie couldn’t put his finger on it.

“The guard spell stopped working after I opened it.”

That was interesting. “You opened it? How’d you manage that?” Steffie couldn’t use the bench to sit, so he ended up in Mira’s big chair. He had to squirm to make it fit decently.

“It was the boots,” Rowan said, which was just like her when she was like this, answering exactly what was asked and no more. Steffie wouldn’t have minded hearing a better explanation, but there she was, all wrapped up in writing things, and thinking hard, so he figured he’d wait.

Dinner was chicken stew; not fancy, but it smelled wonderful. He had the first spoonful halfway to his mouth, when Gwen took it right out of his hand, and the bowl, too, and took his elbow and dragged him straight out the front door.

It was a little chilly outside, the houses across the street making shade, with the sun so far down. Steffie opened his mouth to say something to Gwen, like Hold up or What do you think you’re doing?— but the time to say that was when she was dragging him out, and that was over, so it was too late. So he closed his mouth again.

Gwen leaned up against the wall of the Annex, and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s it, then.”

“What’s it, then? What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“Well, that’s what I’m asking, isn’t it? Wouldn’t ask if I knew.”

Gwen twisted her mouth. “What do you think she’s doing in there?”

Which made no sense, because you only had to look to see what Rowan was doing. “Studying it. Like she studied the demon, and her books. Magic box, and all— you don’t think she’d want to study it?”

Gwen reached out and pinched him on the arm, sort of to make her point. “But she couldn’t touch it before.”

“Ow.”

“And now she can?”

“Well, yes. Seems like.”

“But how?”

This was starting to feel bad. “Something about the boots, she said,” he said carefully.

“Makes no sense.”

“It might if you asked her. Go on; you know she’s got to answer.”

“And you think she’ll tell the truth?”

It took Steffie a moment or so to grab hold of that— and once he got it, he didn’t like it at all. “You’re thinking that she maybe
wouldn’t?
”

“Steffie, you’re dense. When’d I last tell you you were dense?”

“You want time of day, or day of week?”

Gwen knit her brows, thinking hard. Usually Steffie liked it when he saw her think like that, because it meant something interesting was about to happen. But this time he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to like where she was headed.

And he was right, because the next thing Gwen said was, “She says she’s a steerswoman, but who’s to say otherwise? Mira’s gone. Who else would know?”

Steffie had never heard of such a thing in his life. “Of course Rowan’s a steerswoman. Who’s being dense now? She opened that box, didn’t she?”

“Says you. And says her. But you and me, we didn’t see it happen, did we? We just saw a box that bit and then a busted box that didn’t.”

“She took it apart after.”

“She says.”

“But— ” This was just mad. “Why would she say she was a steerswoman if she wasn’t?”

“Well, there’s a free place to live, isn’t there? And people giving her things without her paying? And you and me doing her cooking and cleaning— ”

“She does it, too, herself— ”

“— but it’s mostly just you and me, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but she’s working, see— ”

“And what’s that all about, then? Mira never done that.”

“But that was wrong!” And he was going to go on, but they were talking pretty loud, which he suddenly noticed. The neighbors were all busy with their own dinners, but it wouldn’t do to let some late passerby get an earful of this nonsense.

So he took her elbow himself, and got them both around the corner to the blind side of the house. “That’s just foolish,” he said to her, but quiet-like. “You shouldn’t go saying bad things about a person unless you know for sure.” But it did start him wondering, not about Rowan, but about other people, and wouldn’t it be easy for just anyone to say she was a steerswoman? “Is this talk doing anything? Because I don’t see any reason for it. Sounds to me like trouble for trouble’s sake, and what’s the good of that?”

She poked him on the chest. “
I
don’t like being made a fool of,” she said, as if he did, which made him mad.

“Well, no one’s making a fool out of me, and you’d know that if you spent more time paying attention to what Rowan was doing, instead of what she’s not doing, which is everything Mira did, which she ought not to have done anyway!”

“Mira treated us better than Rowan does!”

“Didn’t she just make us dinner? Twice? Mira never done that even once! And have we lifted a finger at the Annex since the worms came out? Mira’d still have you dragging her out of bed in the morning and tucking her in at night.”

“But it’s all
wrong
. She’s not acting normal!”

He couldn’t think what to say back. “Well,” he started, then didn’t know where to go. “Well,” he tried again; but it was basically true, so what could you say to that? “Well, so what? Not everyone’s normal, and what’s wrong with that?”

Gwen talked right into his face. “She’s fake. She’s using us. That’s just like stealing, and it’s
wrong
.”

And it would be, if Rowan wasn’t a steerswoman. He tried to set it up that way in his head, just to see how it stood.

And it did stand, in a way, but only if you left out a lot of things, things Gwen didn’t know, or didn’t pay attention to, or maybe didn’t matter to her. And it was funny, because all those things were still there to see or find out, if you tried, but Gwen just hadn’t, and he couldn’t figure why.

He was going to tell her that, but the whole idea was sort of slippery and kept oozing away. And it was hard to find a nice way to say it, because as soon as he was about to try, he could see it was going to come out that there was nothing wrong with Rowan, but there was something wrong with Gwen.

So he hemmed and hawed and
ummed
, until Gwen got tired of waiting and took herself back into the Annex.

When he got in himself, she was already in her chair, tucking into that stew, watching Rowan sharp-like. Steffie didn’t much feel like sitting by her, not right then.

So he took his own spoon and bowl, put one of those flat breads in it, then stood there with no place to go.

The steerswoman looked like she hadn’t even noticed that they’d gone and come back, like she hadn’t once stopped what she was doing.

She’d set each piece of the box on its own bit of paper, and each one had some word or sentence written by it. She had her own logbook open, too, and a separate paper, and was writing on them both in turns like she was writing the same thing on each.

Steffie wandered over. “What was in the box?”

“A message.”

Everything there looked like it was written by her. “What, from a wizard?” And what wizard would send her messages?

“Yes.”

“Steerswomen don’t deal with wizards,” Gwen put in from the hearth. “Everyone knows that. Wizards are all under the ban.”

“Groups can’t be put under ban, only individual persons.” He could see that the answer-making part of Rowan was talking all on its own, while the figuring-out part kept busy with the box bits. Steffie wondered what that was like from the inside, to have two parts of you both knowing what to do and doing them at the same time.

“Never heard of that,” Gwen said.

“It’s true.” Rowan picked up a round thing, like a fat coin, and shifted it to catch the light better. “But as it happens,” her answering-part went on, “the only wizard not currently under ban is Olin.” She put the coin down and picked up a bit of string, except maybe it wasn’t string, because it looked too stiff. “The last I heard, that is.”

“What about Slado?” Steffie asked.

Rowan looked up at him, surprised; and he could see the two parts come right together, making all of her be in one place. The difference between her in two parts and her in one was sort of shocking. It came to Steffie that when Rowan was all there, she was more there than anyone he ever saw. “That’s very interesting,” she said. “It never occurred to me. If Slado happens never to have met a steerswoman, then he can’t have lied or withheld information from one. So, no, he would not be under ban.” She looked like the idea didn’t please her much.