The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (34 page)

“I don’t get you.”

“Possibilities, as we like to say, are three.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Either Slado is the first wizard to gain authority over all wizards; or at some point in the past one wizard gained that power so that Slado is the latest in a line; or there has always been a master-wizard. And if master-wizard is a position that gets passed on to another— ”

“Maybe the place he lives gets passed on, too!”

“Exactly. And that’s when we split into two groups. One looking for unattributed magic in recent times and one looking for it anywhere in all the rest of recorded history.”

She stopped, so Steffie could let that sink in. “But,” he said, “wouldn’t that take forever? You’d have to look in every single book.”

“So you would. But then one member of that group— and come to think of it, it was Arian— suggested that if there has always been a master-wizard, we might try looking for one single, inexplicable thing, which has persisted, or repeated, since our records first began.”

Still seemed like it would take forever. But Steffie said, “Right,” meaning he understood it.

“And then”— and Zenna smiled— “Berry pointed out that if we’re looking for where Slado is, we’re really looking for a place.” She folded her hands on her lap. “Now, if you’re looking for a place, what do you do?”

Steffie winced, because the answer to her question seemed just too easy. But he said it anyway. “Look at a map?”

Her smile got tighter. “Will you fetch my map case for me?”

He did, and she opened it and pulled out the charts. She picked one and set the others aside.

The map was big. Too big to hold in your lap. She looked at it like it had done something mean on purpose, then shrugged and slid herself down to sit on the floor. She spread the map right on the floor in front of her, and Steffie moved the big chair back so he could sit down there, too. “I suspect you’ve seen a map of the Inner Lands before.”

It took him a while to answer. “Not one that big,” was what he said in the end. You wouldn’t think any map would ever need to be so big. But then he saw that there was more on it than the other maps he’d seen. It made it seem realer, somehow, more like the real world.

“It allows for more detail.”

“There’s Alemeth,” he said, happy that he found it. It was just a little thing, off to the side of the great big everything-else.

“Very good. Now, the interesting thing about maps is they
are
history. The more we learn about the world, the more we add to our maps. So every map contains information dating from the very first time any map was ever made, all the way up to the present day.

“And that’s exactly what Arian and Berry’s group had wanted to do: look at all of our history, all at once.”

Zenna pointed. “Here’s the oldest city in the world.”
THE CRAGS
, Steffie read; but it was only easy because he had the name in his head already, her having said it before. “And this is one of the youngest towns in the world.”
SOUTHPORT
.

There was something written between them, right on the water. “Um.” It wasn’t easy. “Ships var, ships . . . ships vanish?” There was more, but he couldn’t make it out at all.

Zenna was looking at that place like she was mad at it. “Any ship that passes through that area is never seen again. Unless— and isn’t this interesting?— you have a wizard on board. And it’s been that way from the days of the first steerswomen.

“It didn’t strike us as odd because— well, because very early on everything seemed odd, really, and there wasn’t much we knew about the lay of the land or what was in it at all. The fact that there was a part of the world that we knew nothing about didn’t seem important; after all, the part of the world that we do know anything about is actually still very small.

“But now, hundreds of years later, look: Everything to the immediate north and northeast is well mapped. And recently people have reached the southern shore of the Inland Sea and started living there. But they did it by crossing the entire sea from the north. Because, in that one area, ships still vanish.

“It didn’t seem important. We were used to it; we didn’t question it; and there was plenty else to keep us busy . . .” She was quiet a few moments before Steffie noticed that she’d stopped. He looked up at her.

Her brows were down, and one eye sort of squinted at him. “Are you listening to me?”

“Um . . .” Silly of him to ask, and then not pay good attention to what she said. “Sorry. I was just looking for the other one.”

The eyebrows went further down, and the squint went away. “What?”

“The other place where ships vanish.” He looked back down at the map. “There’s Alemeth here, see— ” But he got lost after that.

Zenna said— and she said it sort of carefully, like it’d turned out he wasn’t as smart as she’d thought at first— “This chart can’t show every place where a ship went without ever returning; there are too many reasons why a ship might be lost. But the interesting thing about that one area is that no ship entering it has returned.”

“I know. But— ” Alemeth, and some shore off to the right, which was east. But then the lines stopped. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter . . . So, the steerswomen think that Slado might be hiding out in that
ships vanish
place?”

“We don’t know that he’s there. In fact, we don’t know if he has a single residence at all— but most wizards do. If you’re looking for someone who’s hard to find, and you notice someplace nearby no one can get to— wait. Steffie, are you saying that some ships leaving Alemeth never return?” She had all her attention on him.

“Well, no.” And she relaxed a bit. “Not any more,” he went on. “Because no one goes that way anymore. Not meaning to, anyway.”

She turned around so that she was sitting facing him directly. “Tell me about it.”

Not much to tell. “Well, just what the fishers say— you can go east, but only so far. ’Cause otherwise, you don’t come back . . .” And all of a sudden this sounded very bad to him. “Um . . .” He tried to put together what he’d heard, but he never paid much attention to the fishers’ stories. They were all how big a catch, how winds blew, what currents to watch out for— not all that interesting. “I could be wrong.” But what if he wasn’t?

A place by The Crags, where ships never came back. Another one east of Alemeth? And funny things going on in Alemeth, strange things. All of a sudden, Steffie started feeling cold.

He was thinking, and shivering, a long time; Zenna was thinking too. “Why have we never heard of this?”

“Don’t know. The only steerswoman hereabouts was Mira.”

“Damn her.”

And, well, it hadn’t seemed important. Not like it was new or anything. Why would Mira even wonder? “What are the steerswomen going to do about that place by The Crags?”

And she answered like she was thinking of something else but could answer anyway, just like Rowan would sometimes. “Arian is going to walk into it. It can’t be all water. He and Berry, and Berry’s husband, have gone to The Crags. Berry and Josef are going to set themselves up as far south of the city as seems safe. Arian will work his way further south from there.”

They both sat, looking at the map; it flickered and jumped in the firelight, with the whole room around it dark. “Maybe,” Steffie said, “Arian should try sailing there . . .”

“In a copper-bottomed boat,” Zenna finished.

21

S
teffie went straight to the Annex first thing in the morning. When he got there, there was no one downstairs, but the room smelled like food, even though there were no dirty dishes. Eggs, smoked fish, and toasted bread— and not so long ago.

Too late. Zenna must’ve gone down to the harbor to talk to the fishers by herself.

Maybe she didn’t want him tagging along. Might as well work for the day. He could ask her about it later. He got himself a heel of bread from the pantry and ate it while he went up the street to Lasker’s.

But when he got to the mulberry groves, he could see way off past them somebody all alone, moving in a way different from how people usually move. That had to be Zenna, walking with her two crutches, so he jogged along the path to catch up to her.

She waved when he got near and called to him. “I’m glad you’re here! I’m counting on you to introduce me to the fishers.”

He reached her, and fell in beside her. “I’ll be glad to do that, lady, but you’re going exactly the wrong way.”

She made a noise. “I don’t mean right now. Right now, I’m just getting a little morning exercise. You’re welcome to come along, if you can keep up.”

“Well, guess I can.” Rowan used to get out and walk every morning, too; but it must be harder for Zenna. He wondered why she was doing it.

“What I need,” she said, and she pushed herself along a little faster, “is some flat ground, as long a stretch of it as I can find.” He noticed that her crutches had loops on them, made of leather, one down over the back of her hands, another further up. Looked like a smart idea.

“Well, Harbor Road is long and flat. Even got paving stones for a piece.” He had to walk a little faster now, but it was still slower than he’d go by himself.

“I’d prefer a place where there aren’t a lot of spectators.”

Steffie looked around. “Then you’re going the right way. Big meadow, just past Karin’s last field. Been fallow for a while— she used to use it for beans. So there’s no tree stumps.”

They went along, him strolling, her swinging. He was still wondering about the ships vanishing, wondering and worrying, too. He was about to bring it up, but she spoke before he could. “How do you think people would feel if I worked with the worms sometimes?” she asked.

He almost stopped dead in his tracks. “Well, they’d be surprised, that’s for sure. Do you really need the money?” There was that ship she’d hired to get her here. “People will give you food and things, if they know you need it or if you ask. You’re supposed to help a steerswoman.”

“No, I don’t need the money. I think.”

“Then, why work? I mean, other than at the Annex, on the books and things? Mira never did.”

“Mira was an old woman. I’m not. I can’t sit still all the time. I’ll rust.” She sped up a bit more.

“Well, I guess people would get used to it. In the end.” By now she was going as fast as she could, and Steffie could see it was hard work for her. She was getting sweaty, and there was this funny twist showing up as she moved, like she was shoving one shoulder before the other sometimes. It looked hard, and it looked clumsy.

He could see why she didn’t want people gawking at her. Maybe he shouldn’t be around, himself, staring at her and all.

No, that was wrong: he wasn’t staring, he was just going along with her, and that was just the way she moved. If that was the only way she could do it, then that made it her way of doing it, her own right way.

“Well, if I’m going to”— and it was getting hard for her to talk, getting out of breath— “live here . . . for the rest . . . of my life . . . they’ll get used to me . . . one way or the other— ”

And she was off.

Then Steffie stopped dead so sudden he almost fell right over, and now he
was
gawking.

Zenna was already halfway across the field, and she was
running
.

Steffie said in a little voice, “Bloody hell?” And he took off after her.

He couldn’t see how she was doing it— he couldn’t figure it out at all; but there she was, moving smooth and fast, practically flying across that field. It wasn’t two-sticks-then-swing-the-foot-through-the-middle, but how else could someone go on crutches?

He caught up, which was harder than he’d thought it would be, though once he was there he could keep up. “How do you do that?” he yelled across. There was something about how she worked her arms, not together but each one separate, one forward, one way back, and her leg doing something in the middle. It made Steffie think of the way a bird moves along in the middle of its beating wings, if a bird could fly putting one wing forward and the other back.

“I have to build up momentum first,” she called back at him. And she talked easier moving this way than the other. The whole thing was easier. It looked like she could keep it up for a long time. “And I get my weight moving just right; then I start it by skipping one crutch . . . It’s harder to explain than it is to do.”

“It’s beautiful!” And it was. It was smoother than a two-legged person running; there wasn’t any up and down to it, nothing bumpy or jumpy. Zenna just flowed along— strong, fast, easy.

And her black hair blew out behind her in the wind, and the hem of her dress, too, which was yellow silk, that made a fluttery noise like feathers. It was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and it made him feel good and happy just looking at it.

So for a while he forgot all about Slado and Janus, and he just ran. Right beside her, all across the field and back again— her like a little bird, going so fast and smooth, and him more like a dog would go, keeping up and not going any faster, because it’s happy and wants to stay around.

After that, they did go down to the harbor, except that Lasker’s foreman spotted Steffie and asked him to come and work, because she was shorthanded. He promised to come after lunch. Then he had to introduce Zenna, and all that took some time. But they got to the harbor in the end.