The Steerswoman's Road (7 page)

Bel accepted that, and a large peaceful silence ended the discussion.

Rowan watched the Western Guidestar shining between two
roofs in front of her. As she was watching, it went dark. “It’s not long before
dawn,” she observed.

Bel checked the Guidestar herself and nodded. “Let’s go,
then.” They rose and crossed back to the inn.

The ornate double doors of the dining area were locked, and
the windows that looked out on the square were shuttered tight. Rowan knocked
lightly, hoping to get the attention of the servant who had been sweeping
earlier. There was no response.

Bel was amused. “Do we break in?”

Rowan shook her head, then beckoned. “The common room is
this way.” She led the Outskirter around the building to the left, to its opposite
side, where they found a single low door and four shuttered windows facing the
small side street. As they approached, the door opened, and a stout woman in an
apron leaned out to peer at the sky, with the attitude of a person guessing the
time.

“Three o’clock,” Rowan supplied.

The woman shook her head aggrievedly. “Late again, and there’ll
he plenty of early breakfasts, what with that ship leaving this morning.” She
examined Bel and Rowan. “Up early, or coming in late?”

“A little of both, perhaps,” Rowan replied.

They entered the common room and declined the woman’s offer
of guidance to their chamber. Carrying a single candle, Rowan led Bel to one of
the two doors flanking the fireplace, and passing through, they found
themselves back in the deserted dining area.

“How did you know this was here?” Bel wondered.

“It stands to reason. If a large fireplace doesn’t back on
an outside wall, then it’s two-sided.” She led Bel around the tables, dimly
visible in the gloom. “The other side would serve either the kitchen or the
common room. The closed-up fireplace in that open area by the stairs backs on
the kitchen, so I knew the common room had to connect to the dining room.” Bel
bumped into a table; they had left the lighted doorway to the common room
around a corner. Holding her tiny flame higher, Rowan took Bel’s hand and
guided her through the alcove and the door to the sleeping chambers.

Bel stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs. “Listen!”
Rowan heard a faint scrabbling. “Rats.”

“So many?” The sound intensified briefly, then ceased.

The two women continued up. “Any large town is bound to have
a lot of them. They’re attracted by the garbage.” The rooms along the second
floor were quiet, but dim light showed beneath the doors of two.

As they turned the corner and approached the stairs leading
to the third floor, the scrabbling returned, behind them. It was punctuated by
a human squeak. “It’s only a rat, woman,” Bel mumbled derisively.

Rowan looked back across the balcony to the two lighted
rooms. Now another room on the left was also lit. “It sounds like they’re
climbing on the east wall.”

The scrabbling turned into a patter of small feet. From the
newly lit room the voice sounded again, a faint, weird wailing.

Bel was halfway up the stairs. Rowan grabbed her furskin
cloak to stop her. “No. Wait.”

“What?”

Rowan looked across the central well, and in that moment all
her training, all her skill in perception, observation, integration, and reason,
came into play in perfect coordination. She was aware of the space around her,
the wall to her left, the staircase behind her, the balcony rail, and the open
area beyond. She sensed the chandelier above, the distance from floor to roof.
She knew the direction of the sounds, the three lit rooms along the east wall,
how they stood in relation to the building as a whole, as clearly as if by some
sense of touch. The air around her was alive with meaning.

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

“Right now?”

Rowan let loose Bel’s cloak. “Yes. Now.”

“We’ll want our packs.” Bel continued up.

“No!” Rowan clattered up the stair after her and, as her head
cleared the stairwell, reached out and buried her fingers in Bel’s shaggy boot.
The Outskirter fell sprawling.

Bel turned over and wrenched her foot away. “Rowan!”

Rowan looked past her to the door of the third floor corner
room. White light was spilling out beneath it, growing brighter. “That’s our
room,” she said.

The door burst open, splintering, driven by three gouts of
white flame.

“Down!” Rowan shouted over the sudden roar of fire. “Go
down!” Then, as loud as she possibly could, she yelled, “Fire! Get out, everyone!
Fire!”

Bel stumbled down the stair after Rowan, colliding with her.
The now-useless candle fell and rolled off the balcony. “Come on!” Rowan
hurried along the landing.

Two doors on the east wall burst outward, flinging with them
a woman, a woman in flames. She fell against the railing, clawing at some dark
shape that clutched her thigh. The railing broke, and she fell.

Heat, and wreckage; Rowan and Bel paused for an instant.
Rowan began to pick her way across the burning rubble.

Around them, doors were opening, voices were shouting,
people were running. One man recklessly pushed past Rowan and rushed toward
the stairs. The wall beside him opened like a flower, gushing smoke. The
landing above collapsed. He was buried in burning timber.

The way was blocked.

Rowan turned back toward Bel, seeing half a dozen stunned
faces behind her, Reeder and his boy among them. “Windows!” she told them, and
ran back the way she had come.

The group followed, and as she opened one of the doors, they
pushed past, fighting in panic to reach the window. A half-dressed dark-skinned
man reached it first and, with a blow of his fist, smashed out the shutters. He
scrambled up the sill, and then a white lance of flame caught the side of his
face. His hair was burning.

He fell back, shrieking. “They’re loose! They’re swarming!”
Someone caught him and threw a blanket over his head, smothering the flames.

“What’s loose ?” Bel shouted, but Rowan knew.

Over the edge of the windowsill, weaving its flat head, came
a glittering cat-sized creature. Its hide was shimmering green and silver, its
faceted eyes bloodred. Flailing its tail as it sought balance, it emitted a
two-toned whistling shriek, an infant version of a dragon’s scream.

It froze like a lizard, studying them with one of its
side-set eyes.

Rowan stepped forward as it swung to face them, pulled the
blanket off the man’s head, and flung it at the beast. The blanket burst into
flame, and the creature squealed in fury.

Two more small forms appeared in the window. “Out,” Rowan
said, pushing people before her. A pale woman urged the now-blinded dark man,
pulling at his arms.

Bel was already at the railing. “We can’t go out the
windows, and we can’t reach the stairs that lead down.”

Rowan looked across the central well and saw that the east
and south sides of the top floor were burning wildly. On the second floor, the
balcony along the east wall had collapsed to the ground. Directly across, the
lower south wall showed spots of fire.

Two people clattered up the stairs to the top floor. How
they planned to escape, Rowan had no idea.

“We go over,” Rowan said. “Drop down.” She swung herself
over the balcony, shifted her grip to the bottom of the balusters, hung by her
hands, and dropped the last eight feet.

The boy imitated her immediately, followed by Reeder; they
hung, dropped, then ran toward the exit to the dining room. The pale woman
shouted instructions to the blind man, guiding his hands to the railing.

Bel stood frozen on the landing, staring in shock at the
distance down.

The sounds of fire and the crack of weakening timber surrounded
Rowan as she looked up. “Skies, no,” she cursed in anguish. “Bel! Bel, do it!”

Out of the wreckage along the east wall, small writhing
shapes began to emerge from the fire.

The blind man came down in a twisting sprawl. His woman
began to follow, and as she hung by her hands Bel suddenly moved. She grit her
teeth, grasped the rail, and swung herself over the edge.

The pale woman reached the ground and led her man stumbling
to the exit. Under the landing where Bel hung, a door opened, and a burly man
and two women in nightshifts emerged. The man wore a sheet. They gazed about in
confusion.

Bel looked down once, and Rowan cried, “Don’t look, just
hang and drop!”

Bel dropped. Behind Rowan, the landing cracked, splintered,
and fell.

Bel landed on her feet and made to run. Rowan stopped her.
The exit was buried under the fallen landing.

Rowan turned to the man. “Your window.”

One of the women answered. “It’s all animals, spitting fire,
like. Outside.”

Rowan looked around quickly, seeking an option, any option.
The east wall looked as though it might collapse inward. Along the south wall,
the fire was moving along the rubble of the fallen balcony. The smoke, rising,
had completely filled the upper half of the central well; the air Rowan
breathed was hot, getting hotter fast, but still clean.

There was a sudden movement in the ceiling of smoke, and
Rowan pushed Bel and herself against the wall as the chandelier came down with
a screeching crash, shattering on the stone floor. A pair of small forms
tumbled out of the wreckage. One landed at Rowan’s feet, writhing, trying to
right itself. It was the size of a rat. Rowan stepped on its head; it was like
standing on a stone. The creature struggled wildly; then suddenly its skull
popped, and it lay twitching, emitting a brief shower of sparks.

Bel shouted in fury, and Rowan turned in time to see her
swing her sword against the side of a larger beast. The blow injured it not at
all, but the force sent it sprawling aside, and it tumbled into the open door
of the just-vacated room. The burly man stepped forward and pulled the door
shut.

“That won’t stop it for long,” Rowan said. Instinctively,
she began to back along the wall, away from the heat, toward the old fireplace.

Bel came up beside her, looking back at the wall of fire. “We’re
trapped. We’re truly trapped.”

“Yes.” Rowan looked at the mortared-up hearth and raised her
voice to be heard more clearly. “We’ll stand up against the fireplace. Perhaps
when the wreckage falls, the configuration—” She stopped short, suddenly
remembering. “Yes!” She ran to it.

The others followed quickly and found her searching the
right-hand edge of the hearth. “It has to be here—”

Bel had not understood. She brought her face closer and
shouted, “What?”

Rowan faced her. “A door! There has to be a door!”

One of the other two women had collapsed in terror. The man
was trying to pull her to her feet. The second woman pointed at the rubble on
the other end of the fireplace. “Door’s buried!” she shouted.

“There was another. I saw it!” Rowan turned back, and saw
how the wood paneling overlaid the stones. She moved right, and found the door
she had seen the chambermaid open. She pulled it wide.

A linen closet. One of the women made a sound of anguish.
Bel let out a single, near-inhuman shriek of fury, gripped her sword tighter
and swung around to face the inevitable attack of dragons.

Rowan began pulling out linens, throwing them blindly behind
her, shouting as she did. “This area was a common room! The fireplace backs on
the kitchen; did you ever see a common-room hearth like that, that didn’t have
doors on
both
ends?” The fronts of the shelves were bare. The left wall
of the closet was stone; the right was wood. Rowan could not see to the back.

She smashed the heels of her hands against the underside of
a shelf, and the plank lifted and clattered onto the one beneath it. Using both
hands, she tugged at the right edge of the second shelf, and it tilted up, then
slipped off its supports to the floor.

Rowan stumbled over the shelves, tripping, and fell against
the back wall. It was wood.

She regained her feet, pulled out her sword, and put all her
strength into a two-handed underhand stab. A half-inch of the point wedged into
the wood. She twisted it as she pulled, then checked the result with her
fingers: a shallow gouge.

“Bel!” Rowan came out of the closet and gripped Bel’s shoulder.
“The back wall is wood. We have to break through!” Bel stared at

Rowan blindly, her face that of a warrior’s during battle.
Then her expression changed, and she understood. She pulled away and scrambled
over the scattered linens into the closet. She was stronger than Rowan; her
sword was heavier. Shorter, she had room to swing overhand.

The burly man was standing against a wall, one of his women
clinging and sobbing, the other standing free and watching Rowan with desperate
alertness.

The man was huge. Rowan extended her sword hilt to him. “Take
this. Help Bel.”

He extricated himself, stepped to the closet, and pulled out
the planks of the fallen shelves. Lifting one, he tested its heft. He said to
Rowan, “You keep the sword,” and pointed past her with his chin.

She turned and saw the shattered chandelier, and on it,
three dragons. They crawled over it and over each other, indiscriminately,
heads weaving and searching, tails writhing. The largest was as big as a dog.

Behind her, Rowan could hear the thumps as Bel and the man
set to work. She stood with her back to the closet, knowing it was only a
matter of time before the dragons sighted her. Wondering if, like frogs, they
could only see moving objects, she stood as still as she could.

She sensed a presence beside her. Glancing to the side, she
half expected to see Bel, but found instead one of the two other women, the
self-possessed one. The woman was holding another plank in her hands, dividing
her attention between the chandelier and Rowan’s face.