The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (28 page)

She counted the weeks since the Prime’s letter. “I suppose we could expect her any time now.”

“Well, no. Unless she hires her own ship. Shipping here goes with the worms. If the worms went up the hill tomorrow, its two, three weeks till there’s enough thread worth coming for. So one ship’s already scheduled, for about a month from now. After that, cloth starts coming out, and two months or so to build up, then it’s a ship a week.”

Rowan could not see the Prime releasing enough funds to hire an entire ship merely to hurry Mira’s replacement. “And . . . your suggestion is that I find something to occupy myself away from town for the next few weeks?”

“Right. That’s my advice exactly.”

She found herself looking at her own two hands. “It’s hard for me to do nothing. And suppose more demons come?”

“Well, we got two of ’em without you. We’ll get the next ones. And, as for this Janus business . . . maybe you haven’t noticed, Rowan, but there really isn’t much you can do, is there?”

It certainly seemed not.

But by the time she reached Carter Street, she realized that she might be wrong. There might be a way to learn more.

The steerswoman threaded her way westward along the docks, each in worse condition than the next, finally reaching the point where she had to step widely to avoid gaps in the planking. Water gurgled and plashed below, seaweed swirling deep green and murky to the movement of small waves.

Janus’s boat had been shifted, and was now stern-tied to the splintering wharf, bow-tied to a broken piling. The contrast between ancient neglect and recent small repairs made it a shabby and motley vessel. Sometime long in the past some proud owner had embellished the transom with a name, now evident only from the blistering beneath layers of old paint: a name long and ornate, beginning with an E, ending with DRA, and otherwise illegible. A more recent owner, a simpler soul, had painted it over and replaced it with a single, short word; but even this was now unreadable, mere shadow lettering. Janus’s boat had no name.

Rowan glanced about. This end of the harbor was deserted. Even Harbor Road was empty of everyone but Steffie, whom Rowan had shamelessly recruited to guard her back.

It was one long step from the last plank to the boat. Arrived, Rowan found her feet immediately steadier.

Too steady. The boat was riding heavier than its construction suggested. She was disturbed; there must be stores already aboard. And that meant that Janus planned to leave soon.

A hatch from the cockpit led below. Rowan descended the steep ladder to find herself in a short companionway open to a tiny portside galley. Aft, a door led to a simple cabin, with a bunk, a cabinet, a small stern window, a tilted chart table bolted to the flooring.

No charts were in evidence. The cabinet was empty, as were the storage drawers beneath the bunk.

A small room adjacent to the galley was also empty: used, Rowan guessed from lingering food scents, as a pantry. Apparently Janus had yet to stock it from his main stores.

From the companionway, the forward door led to what was clearly designed to be a second cabin. Scratches on the floor indicated that heavy objects were sometimes brought there; perhaps it was also used for storage, but now it stood empty. A small door forward of the room opened to the sail locker, with its hatch leading up to the deck, now dogged tight.

Back in the companionway, Rowan clambered further down the ladder to the hold, and paused to give her eyes time to adjust to the gloom.

Empty.

Impossible: there must be stores aboard or some kind of cargo. Disbelieving, Rowan paced the length of the hold, ducking under the beams. Nothing.

She leaned on one leg, then the other; the boat’s response was slow.

Odd. Save the anchor, the steerswoman herself was the heaviest single object on board. The boat ought to have reacted more to the displacement of her weight.

She ran her hands across the inside of the hull. Good solid oak, despite its age and neglect; but not heavy enough to explain the boat’s behavior. She pulled up the free floorboards; perhaps something was hidden below. But the bilge held only six inches of water.

Perhaps the hull itself was thicker than she had assumed. She walked the hold again, measuring in her mind, then climbed back above and studied the visible size of the vessel.

The hold matched the deck.

Rowan walked to starboard, back to port, back again. The boat did respond by rocking, but not as easily or quickly as it ought.

“Something lashed to the keel?” she wondered aloud.

This time she did look about; no one was visible nearby. She stripped, then eased herself over the gunwale and into the water. She took a breath and dove.

She came up almost immediately, gasping, deeply regretting her action. The salt water was like fire pouring into the three long scratches the demon had left. Clutching a porthole cowling with her fingers, she waited, jaws clenched, until the pain subsided.

When it did, she dove again. She resurfaced, steadied herself with one hand on the cowling, used the other to confirm what she had seen.

The hull was not bare wood. There were strips, like tin— but tin would quickly corrode in seawater. Tacks held the strips in place. No gleam of metal showed through the water. Rowan’s delicately searching fingers found the place underwater where the black paint of the hull ended, leaving metal bare further down, out of view of the casual eye.

The paint continued above the waterline, for about a foot. Rowan scraped at it with her fingernail.

Copper. The hull was sheathed in copper.

The steerswoman clambered back aboard awkwardly, and lay in the sunlight beside the tiller to dry and to think.

So much copper must have been expensive. It seemed an extravagance. But Janus lived on the edge of poverty. Therefore, it was a necessity.

Rowan felt eyes on her. She sat up, turned.

A boy, perhaps four years old, sat on the edge of an adjacent houseboat, studying her with deep curiosity and a degree of astonishment. Rowan felt it rather misplaced: he was as naked as she, and as wet. Possibly he was startled by the appearance of the demon scratches. “Have you been swimming?” she asked him casually. “It’s a lovely day for it.” She squeezed water from her hair, shook her fingers.

“Yes,” he replied, and watched as she stood to dress. He knit his brows. “I think you lost something.”

Rowan stopped to consider. “No,” she informed him, “that’s how I’m constructed.” She resumed dressing. “Does your mother never swim naked?”

“My mother never does anything naked.”

He was not at all intimidated by her; perhaps he was too young to have been among the tricksters she had frightened. “Do you know the man who owns this boat?” Rowan left her sandals off, and found a seat on the gunwale, opposite the boy.

He scanned her, seeming to compare her previous appearance with her present. “Janus. He’s nice. But he likes that scary woman. He brings her here sometimes.”

“Scary woman?”

He demonstrated by screwing up one side of his mouth and using his fingers to push his nose toward his ear, and making noises of disgust.

“That’s not fair,” Rowan said. “Maysie can’t help how she looks. How would you feel if something bad happened to you and people didn’t like you anymore, even though it wasn’t your fault?”

The issue was too complex for him. He gave up the effort and set to winding his bare legs in a complex configuration in and around the gap-spaced uprights of his boat’s railing, one leg in each direction. “I can do this,” he said, half surprised himself.

“So I see,” Rowan replied. An interesting possibility came to her. “Does Janus talk to you very much?”

“Sometimes.” He was suddenly caught by a happy memory. “Oh, oh!” he exclaimed, unwinding his legs. “One time we flew kites, Janus and me, they went way, way up!”

She smiled. “They must have been very good kites.”

“We flew them from that hill.” He leaned far over the railing to indicate. “I was going to let mine fly loose and fly away, but Janus said, he said a kite can’t fly without a string, it’ll just fall right down. He told me all about it.”

Apparently some steerswomen’s impulses had not left Janus. “That’s very true,” Rowan said. “What other things has he told you?”

The boy missed the change of direction. “And then he cried,” he said nonchalantly and began to amuse himself peeling splinters from the railing.

Rowan was taken aback, uncertain that she had heard correctly. “Did you say that he cried?”

“Yes.” Peeling splinters became a deeply absorbing occupation.

“While you were flying kites?” The event made no sense to her.

Exasperation. “Yes. I
said
. We flew the kites, and they went way up, and we were laughing, and then he cried.”

“Did he tell you why? Did you ask him?”

Another nod. “He gave me a big hug, like my dad does when he’s been away.” He squirmed a bit, uncomfortable at the memory; perhaps he found it as confusing as she. Then he brightened. “Then we went and got some biscuits. There were a lot of them. I ate the most.” He began to eye her with sudden speculation.

“But didn’t he say why he was crying?”

“He wasn’t anymore. When we got the biscuits.”

“But earlier, when he was crying, didn’t he explain?”

“He said it was nice. Everything was nice. Are you going by the baker? I could go put on my clothes now.”

Rowan persisted. “What exactly was nice?” And she added, “I think I might go by the baker’s in a little while. What kind of things did Janus say were nice?”

Gluttony spurred his memory. “He said, ‘Look how beautiful. See how pretty the town is?’ Something about all the people, how good it is here. And he liked the boats, they were all sailing away to places, and that was— that was— Janus said it was brave and good. And he said I was a good boy, and I should grow up and get married and have lots of babies and play with them. Belinda has two babies, but she’s not married.”

This last was his own contribution. “Perhaps she hasn’t met a good boy.”

“She’s met me. But I won’t marry her. I don’t like
those
babies.” He undraped himself from the railing. “Let’s just go and see about those biscuits, then, shall we?” The statement was incongruously serious and precise, and was obviously copied from some adult, perhaps Janus himself.

She could not help laughing. “That’s a good idea.” And he thumped off to get dressed.

She rose and slipped on her sandals. The falling sun glaring on the water made her shade her eyes, to view the world through her slitted fingers. She sighted Steffie at the foot of New High Street; he waved at her once, then ambled off.

This was the signal that he had spotted the day workers returning to their homes; Rowan jumped back to the wharf and strolled toward Harbor Road. The little boy, clad and shod, stamped up to join her and took her hand with utter trust.

She did owe him biscuits.

17

A
t the bakery, young Anna dealt with her fear of the terrible steerswoman by fleeing out the back door the instant Rowan and the boy entered. Rowan collected a dozen assorted biscuits, counted out the precise amount of change from the abandoned till, and sent the boy on his way with biscuits in both fists and more bulging his pockets.

She had managed to hold on to two. She handed one to Steffie, and they sat on the bench by the door. “Don’t know about boats,” Steffie said, after she had described her findings on Janus’s vessel.

“A copper-sheathed hull is not usual.”

“Wouldn’t it last longer, just generally? I thought salt water makes things rot.” He bit the biscuit, made a face; they were not the freshest.

“Yes. That’s why we paint boats. With maintenance, paint is sufficient. Perhaps . . .” But no. “That wouldn’t work.”

“What?”

They waited as a small group of people passed by on their way home to dinner. “Demons require water with a different kind of salt than is found in the Inland Sea,” Rowan said when they had gone. “Perhaps that sort of salt would cause more damage to a hull— but if Janus is using his boat to sail to wherever he goes, then it must be someplace contiguous to the Inland Sea. It’s not possible for seawater to maintain a different composition in only one place.”

“Why not? Oh. Waves and things. It’d all mix up.”

“That’s right. If the demons need different water, then that water must somehow be separated from the sea. And Janus could not sail there.”

“And he can’t haul his boat across land to some lake or other.”

“No. Not by himself. Not by any normal means.” A part of her mind had been taking note of a series of quiet crunches and rustles; it now found reason to direct her full attention to the little noises. Rowan combined the audible clues with a little simple reasoning.

She pitched her voice slightly louder. “If you want to take part in this conversation, you’ll find it much easier if you come to the front of the building, Gwen.”

Gwen emerged from behind the corner. Her grin showed no trace of embarrassment. “You’re hard to sneak up on.”