Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (45 page)

He nodded.

“Willam, I can’t possibly do that myself.”

“I know. But I shouldn’t be the only one who has it. Because
somewhere, sometime, someone else might know how to use it. Because … because
it’s something powerful, that the wizards don’t know we have.”

Rowan opened the paper. Numbers and letters, in meaningless
sequence. She found herself impelled to say, irrelevantly, “Willam, your
handwriting is terrible.”

At this, the man who mere hours before had nimbly manipulated
bizarre and incomprehensible magics looked as sheepish as a child admonished by
a teacher. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t often write by hand.”

“You generally write by magic?” Bel asked.

“Well, yes.”

She grinned. “Clever boy. But what about the Krue in the Outskirts?
Could they use it if they had it?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what kind of link they have.
But Rowan is right; if your friend Fletcher could turn against the wizards,
another might, too.”

Bel laughed. “Rowan,” she urged, “make a copy!” She turned
back to Willam. “One of them is bound to turn. You can’t live as an Outskirter,
be one of us, without learning to care about your tribe.”

Tell her, Rowan thought; but she did not have the heart, at
the moment, to quash Bel’s enthusiasm.

Rowan sifted among the charts on the table, located her logbook.
She flipped through it, looking for the first blank page.

“It’s possible,” Will was saying to Bel. “Those people are
so isolated from the Krue. They’d have to form local attachments, it’s only
natural.”

Loose sheets slid out of the book, lost themselves among the
charts. Rowan retrieved them:

Slado, nursing his tea. Slado, standing by the wharves.
Slado’s portrait, left unfinished when young Ona fled. The handkerchief boy’s
primitive pastoral scene. Rowan slipped them back into the logbook, one by one.

“Some may have already turned, or be about to,” Bel was telling
Will. “The tale of what has been going on has been spreading among the tribes
for four years now.”

“And if Slado uses the heat again, they could die along with
the Outskirters,” Will replied. “One already has, that I know about.”

Rowan stopped with the last drawing in her hands. She
stared.

“Slado doesn’t care,” Bel was saying. “He never warned
Fletcher—”

Rowan held up the drawing, face-out.

Conversation ceased. Bel and Willam regarded the picture,
perplexed. They shifted their confusion to the steerswoman. Rowan said nothing.

Presently, Will spoke, tentatively. “… Horsies in a
field?”

Rowan said: “The sky is white, the stars are black.”

They remained confused; then Willam blinked, and comprehension
dawned. “Stars?” He took the drawing. “Kieran … Kieran was looking at the
stars?”

“Yes,” Rowan said, definitely.

“Are you sure—”

“Yes!” That was why the images had seemed so familiar, had
seemed beautiful. It was the beauty of the natural world, like the sweet sight
of the world itself, from high in the air. And if a Guidestar can look down,
why not up?

“Why black on white? Why not the way they would really
look?”

“I don’t know.”

“But, why so many? Rowan, there were more than ten thousand!”

“Kieran was looking at the sky.” She had no doubt.

“But—” Willam studied the child’s drawing desperately, as if
it were itself one of the magical images, as if it could provide the answer.
“—but, why ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rowan, you know the sky,” Bel said. “Where was he looking?”

Rowan thought, and thought harder, trying to recall; but no,
she had recognized nothing …

But how could one, with the colors reversed, the view not
known to be stars at all, and the entire scene viewed from behind, backward?

The steerswoman turned out the chair and sat. She closed her
eyes. “Give me a moment.” She concentrated: dots, blots, streamers, hazes …
reverse it, match to known constellations …

She heard Willam moving about in the room; there came the
sound of papers being shifted; and then something was in the steerswoman’s
hands. She opened her eyes, looked down. She said, in a small voice, “Oh …”

It was beautiful, rendered with that inhuman perfection
typical of wizards’ maps. A chart of the sky, black stars on white, but with
nothing labeled, with every object mute and nameless.

She looked up at Willam. He said simply: “Hard copy.”

But nothing was familiar. Rowan turned it about, and about
again, to no result. “This might be in the sky of the far south. There are
stars beyond our horizons that no one has ever seen.”

“Try this one.” Willam passed her another, handed hers to
Bel, who studied it curiously. He held one more in his hands.

Rowan tried again, recognized nothing; and then she did, but
not from her own knowledge. “Give me the first again.” Bel passed it back to
her. Rowan compared them. “They overlap.
^”

They laid them on the bed, side by side. Rowan turned them
about, testing orientations. “Here.” She slid them together. Two charts
overlapped diagonally, with the third centered on the section in common.

368
THE
LANGUAGE OF POWER

The steerswoman, the Outskirter, and the wizard’s apprentice
stood regarding the result.

Then Rowan lifted and dropped her shoulders. “Apparently
Kieran was charting the sky.” A wizard who loved flowers, and children, and the
stars … But surely ten thousand overlapping charts would cover the entire sky
many times over. Why such obsessiveness?

Accuracy, perhaps. By drawing each one fresh and comparing
previous versions, errors would be obvious, and could be corrected on a master
chart. Rowan separated the charts again, checked the overlapping area, and
nodded. One chart did differ slightly from the other two.

Fifty, on this one
night
alone,
Will had said
to Corvus.

Rowan felt foolish. “Of course,” she muttered, “he didn’t actually
draw these himself.” It would take Rowan hours to make an accurate chart of
even a portion of the sky.

Will looked at her in surprise. “No, they’re not drawings at
all. They’re—it’s hard to explain. They’re images of what’s really there. As if
you could capture exactly what you see, and save it forever.”

Rowan rubbed her eyes, which suddenly stung with exhaustion.
Magic,
a part of her mind whispered;
Impossible. Incomprehensible.

No. She knew better now. Anything existing must be possible;
anything existing could be comprehended. She understood Willam’s
blasting-charms. A similar logic must lie behind this.

Accept it; go on from there.

“If this is what Kieran actually saw,” Rowan said, and
pointed, “then, what is that?”

Willam and Bel looked. “Stars,” Bel said.

“Four stars,” Willam said.

“But they’re not on this chart, nor”—she checked closely—“on
this.”

Four tiny stars, like the points of a tilted square, on one
chart only. On the others, there stood in that position only a single star.
“Will, what order were these”—charts would not do; she used his own word—“these
images created?”

This presented a problem, as the images were not marked.
Willam finally reasoned from the order in which he had passed them out.

In the relevant area, one star; then that star gone, and
four in its place; then one star again. “These three images, all on the same
night?”

“Rowan,” Willam said, “these images were captured just
seconds
apart.”

And the steerswoman knew that she could take this no
farther.

There was information here; but she could not recognize it.
This was—and she was certain of it now—the very answer they had been seeking.
But she could not understand it.

Individually, each one of these captured views of the sky admitted
of at least reasonable explanation. In fact, any two taken together did—because
there were such things as new stars appearing where none had stood before, and
she assumed that stars must sometimes die

But all three images taken together in sequence immediately
negated even the most extreme speculation.

New knowledge was built on earlier knowledge, built on
knowledge learned earlier still, all of it growing wider, deeper, higher, and
reaching endlessly farther. But these magical images represented information
too distant from everything the steerswoman knew as true.

There were steps between: a dozen, a thousand.

Context; she had no context in which to understand this.

Rowan considered long before speaking; so long that she
moved the images from the bed to the table, sat down on the bed, pulled up her
legs, and remained, gazing in the distance, and silent, for some time.

Bel watched her, disappointed, then leaned against the wall,
crossing her arms. “Send them to the Archives,” she said. “The Prime can put
all the steerswomen there on it. Maybe together they can—”

“Willam,” Rowan said, “if Corvus saw these images, would he
understand them?”

Bel was immediately, sharply disapproving. “Rowan, we should
think carefully before we do that. Corvus may have passed you by once, but I
don’t think it’s a good idea to put yourself in his path again.”

Willam seemed not to hear Bel. At Rowan’s question, his face
had become expressionless. He turned the chair out and sat, elbows on his
knees, hands loose. He gazed at his hands, then looked up at the steerswoman.
“I don’t know. He’s never been interested in the sky. I don’t think he knows
much about it at all.”

“But, with his magic, would he be able to learn more about
it, if he chose?” Wiliam only nodded.

Bel threw up her hands. “Wonderful! And whatever the wizards
know, they keep secret. Let’s give them even more secrets, shall we? Let’s
allow Corvus to figure all of this out, and just remain in the dark ourselves.”

Rowan sighed. “Bel, this is beyond us. We need help.”

“And why would Corvus help us?”

Rowan waited for Willam to speak; he did not.

Bel could not fail to miss this. She said slowly, in a
dangerous tone: “Someone tell me what is going on.”

“Wiliam,” Rowan prompted.

Willam gathered himself to speak. He glanced at the Outskirter,
but could not meet her eyes. He looked away. “Bel,” he began; but apparently he
could get no farther. He fell silent.

The steerswoman said: “Willam did not escape from Corvus.
Corvus sent him here. Willam has been working for Corvus all along.”

And the Outskirter seemed, at the moment, beyond words; but
a word emerged nevertheless, weakly, on a breath not planned for speech:
“What?”

Will closed his eyes. “This wasn’t supposed to involve
either of you, I didn’t know you were here—”

Bel’s breath found its force.
“What?”

Rowan discovered that she had risen to interpose herself between
Bel and Willam, and that the room was far too small for such sudden action. She
found herself with her hands on Bel’s shoulders, and Bel against the wall.
Rowan wondered how long that would last.

Bel shifted her anger to Rowan, but at least used words
first. “You
knew?”

“I’ve only just found out. In Jannik’s house, when Will
asked Corvus for help.”

“Corvus was there?”

“No. Only his voice was there. Bel, think of what Willam has
done for us, working with us, helping us, giving magic to the people of
Donner.” Rowan moved to look the Outskirter directly in the face, and stressed
her next words, “Willam is not our enemy.”

Bel looked at Rowan, then glanced past her at Willam. Rowan
did not know what the Outskirter saw, but Bel said, “No. No, of course he’s
not.” And Rowan relaxed somewhat, and released her friend. “Will, what’s the
meaning of this?” Bel asked. “Why did your master send you here? Is Corvus
working on our side now?”

“Corvus is playing his own game,” Willam said.

“With you as his pawn!” Will did not deny this. “To do his
dirty work, risk your life, and lie to your friends—and lie to a steerswoman!”

“I tried not to!” Will said. He looked lost, helpless. “I
did, but it was so hard, I had to keep watching what I said, it was hard to
keep track—”

Bel pushed Rowan aside; but there was no violence behind it.
She stepped in front of Willam, and stooped down level with his face. He
regarded her bleakly. “You’re talking about words,” she said. “I’m talking
about actions. You did everything you could to make Rowan and me think you
didn’t serve Corvus. Will—what kind of power does the wizard have over you?”

“It’s not like that—”

“Bel,” Rowan said.

The Outskirter ignored her. “That blast Slado sent was meant
for you! Is that how it is, then? Will you walk into danger for Corvus, lay
down your life for him, betray your friends at his word—”

“It was my idea!” Willam threw out both arms. “The whole
thing was my
idea!
Bel”—he turned
to the steerswoman”Rowan … Whatever Slado is doing, it’s got to be as bad for
the wizards as for the common folk, or why would he keep it secret from them?
Bel, Corvus
is
trying to find out
what’s going on but, but he has to be careful. He can’t let Slado know that he
knows anything, and he
can’t
let
Slado know he’s trying to learn even more!” He dropped his arms. “So, so after
the last Bioform Clearance … I remembered that Slado had been an apprentice
in Donner,
I
thought that there
might be fragments of records left, and I said we should get into the house
system and look for them—but Corvus wouldn’t do it.”

“He was afraid,” Bel said, with scorn.

“What happened to Jannik could happen to Corvus. Just as easily.
But then, I thought”—he laid his hand on his chest—“I thought that if I was the
one to actually do it, then if it went wrong Corvus could deny that he knew anything.
So we let on that I had run away.” He leaned back, seeming suddenly weary. “And
if everything went right, if no one noticed what I did, I could go back to
Corvus with my tail between my legs. And Corvus would make a show of forgiving
me, and take me back. The wizards would think that he was weak, and foolish,
and a slave to his passions, and they’d gossip and laugh at him behind his
back—but that’s all they’d do. No one would be any the wiser.” He looked up at
Rowan. “I thought I could do it all myself. I thought you’d never have to know.
But when it turned out to be
F arside …
I
didn’t know how to reach it. I needed his help.”