The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (32 page)

Rowan closed her logbook, began gathering her pens and blank paper. “You have exactly two options,” she went on. “Either dozens of people scour the seas, stumble on your island, and pry into every aspect of your work— or you take me there, I look for demons, and if I do not find them, I leave quietly. There are no other choices.”

“And if lots of people go looking, who do you think Luwa will blame?” Steffie pointed out.

“She’ll blame me either way.”

“Then,” the steerswoman said, “which would you rather have her blame you for?”

Gebby half grumbled, “Luwa was right. Talk to nobody you don’t got to, she said. See where it got me? All for a bug.”

“I need an answer.”

The girl’s entire body radiated hatred. “I’ll take you. Let Luwa sort it out.

“Then I’ll just get my pack.”

Upstairs she loaded appropriate clothing into her pack, brought it back downstairs. In the main room, she retrieved her map case, rolled a collection of sea charts. “I’ll need to get some provisions. I don’t want to throw off your rationing. Where do you get your food?” The maps went into their case.

“Michael’s. He’s the only one knows about me and the island. He told me ’bout the bugs— look what that got me . . .”

“Then I’ll use someone else; it’s best no one connect us. Also, we shouldn’t be seen together. I’ll meet you at your boat. How will I know it?”

“Har. By the smell.”

“Very well,” Rowan said, bemused. “I’ll go ahead now, and try to get myself aboard your boat without being observed. You come later.”

Gebby seemed to be turning over in her mind various methods by which to circumvent Rowan’s wishes. Apparently, nothing suited, and she gave up the effort. “You got a long wait. I got to buy things.”

“Even better. A delay will help. People will be less likely to connect our departures.” The steerswoman slid the map case down into her pack, tied down the flap.

“What should I tell people?” Steffie asked. “They’ll ask where you’ve gone. I won’t want to say about this island.”

“That’s true.” Rowan considered. “Just say that I’ve gone looking for the source of the demons.”

“You know what they’ll think.”

“I do.” She shouldered her pack. “I’ll deal with their misconceptions when I return.”

“And when will that be?”

“Gebby, how long will it take to reach the island?” An inarticulate grumble from the girl. Rowan sighed. “I’ll know the distance as soon as I arrive, there’s no reason to hide it from me now.”

“
He
don’t need to know.”

“Oh, very well. ‘I’ll get two weeks’s worth of supplies. If I’m gone any longer, you’ll just have to split your own rations with me.” She turned back to Steffie. “I’m afraid I don’t know how long it will be before you see me again . . .”

“Right.” He stood before her, uncomfortable; then, to her surprise, he took her hand and shook it formally. “I’ll keep an eye on the Annex for you, lady. And look out for that Outskirter friend of yours, too.”

“Thank you.” She laughed a bit. “Steffie, I
will
be coming back.”

“Right.” He released her hand, stepped back. “Of course you will. In a while. We just don’t know when.”

19

T
here were three kinds of books in the Annex, Steffie found out.

First, there were the ones that Rowan had mostly worked with; and those were the ones all bound alike, in dark red leather. They were all the same shape and mostly the same thickness, too. Except some of them were bound in green instead of red, and they were taller than the red ones. But he thought of them as the same as the red ones, because the green ones were like all the other green ones in the same way the red ones were like all the other red ones.

This stopped making sense when he thought about it too hard, but seemed to make a lot of sense when he didn’t.

The second kind were all different sizes, and no one of them looked anything like any other one. Some were plain; but some were beautiful, bound in the kind of leather that your hand wanted to keep holding, all worked in with little twists and sometimes colors. He decided that they were all the same kind, being books-that-no-one-tried-to-make-look-like-each-other.

Basically, he just wanted to clear the stacks of books off the floor by the table, the ones he knew Rowan was done with. And the ones on the floor in the aisles. And as long as he was doing it, he’d like to do it in some kind of sensible way. Someone else could fix them right later.

So at first he figured that he’d put the either-red-or-green ones all together, and set aside all the really different ones. It seemed like a good place to start, since there were more red or greens than the other kind. And they also had names written on the spines, so he could put all the ones with the same name together, too.

And once he’d finished with the books on the floor, it seemed kind of natural to just keep going. Just putting all the names together and all the really different ones separate from the other kind.

Gave him something to do. Other than keep an eye on the Annex and an ear out for anything Janus was up to. Rowan had asked Steffie to sleep at the Annex, too, while she was gone. In case Bel came by.

But there he was, all night at the Annex, and no one to talk to, with Gwen still mad at him for siding with Rowan. So, he picked up a couple of books, put them on the shelves— and once he was doing it, no reason to stop, really.

It was funny. He could tell where Rowan had been before him: here and there, up and down, back and forth, there were places where all the red and greens with the same names were together already. He kept coming across them. It was like Rowan was a ghost, and he was following her footsteps.

He was doing that when he found the third kind of book, in one of the big boxes pushed back down at the end of the third and fourth aisles.

These books were even
more
different.

They were light in his hand, most of them. They were in rough shape, battered and dirty. Each of them had some kind of strap or string that tied them closed. The edges of the covers went far past the paper and even curled over, so that when the book was closed there were no paper edges showing anywhere. On a couple of them, the covers weren’t stiff at all, so that the books drooped and tried to wrap themselves around his hand when he held them up.

The paper was thinner than what the other kinds of books used, and the writing was smaller— a lot smaller sometimes, especially toward the back of the book. It made the pages crowded and harder to read. One was even written through twice— once the normal way and once turned around sideways, with the words going across the other writing. It sent him cross-eyed to even try reading it.

He held one of them in his hand, trying to think where to put them, other than just off by themselves somewhere. And he’d have to lay them on their sides, because some of them looked like they wouldn’t stand up too well.

And, sort of by itself, his hand put the one book up on a shelf, next to one of the green ones; and sure enough, it flopped right over.
Not made to stand up
, he thought.

His other hand picked up a green book. He looked at it.
Made to stand up. Made to sit on a shelf.

Fair enough. Made sense. He put it back. He picked up the floppy book again—

And all of a sudden he’d sat himself right down on the floor, and he was looking at that book with his jaw dropped.

It shouldn’t be here.

The Annex was not the place for books like this one.

All the red or green books were copies. That was why they were so all-alike— so they would fit easy on shelves. And why they were written so neat— so they’d be easy to read. And why they were sturdy— so they could last a long time, hundreds of years, maybe. They could be all that because they happened
afterward
.

These other ones— he stopped to count them: nine of them— these were the
real
ones, the first ones, the ones other copies were made from. These were the very books steerswomen carried themselves, out on the road. So they were dirty and battered from being dragged around the world; and they were made light, to carry easy; and when the steerswomen got close to the end and they saw they had just a few pages left, they wrote smaller, to fit in more.

And they shouldn’t be here. The Annex was a place you stored extra copies of things. These books were not extra anythings. They were one-and-onlys.

They should be in the Archives. The women there would make copies, and send those copies to keep here in the Annex.

They shouldn’t be
here!
They just shouldn’t, and there was no excuse for it—

— and somewhere out in the main room a woman’s voice said, “
Who’s
a bloody stupid old cow?”

Steffie sat still. Not Gwen’s voice. He got up and looked around the end of the aisle.

Two people were there, one being Dan the cooper. He was shifting some things from a handbarrow that was stopped right outside the front door, to a place inside, next to the coat hooks.

And the other was a woman, standing in the middle of the room, looking at Steffie sort of tilt headed and sidelong. She was young and smallish and thin, with long black hair. Her skirt was long, all the way to the floor, which was longer than most people wore them in Alemeth, and she was using crutches to stand.

“What?” he asked her. If that was Bel, she didn’t look much like Rowan said.

“You said that somebody was a bloody stupid old cow. I can’t help wondering who? Not Gwen, I hope.”

And how did she know Gwen? “No . . .” He came out of the aisle, feeling awkward and sort of shy with a stranger standing in the middle of a house he knew so well. He tried to figure how to explain why he’d said what he’d said, without it taking forever and a day to go through it all.

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.”