The bodies were left as warning. It was her mark, just as the blood red sword embroidered on the black silk tunic she wore was hers.
“My lady,” said a voice behind her. Agmar, Sir Radulf’s dark-eyed squire, stepped out of the shadows.
The door into the vast second floor chamber that served as Sir Radulf’s own quarters and wardroom stood ajar. The scent of wine and woodsmoke drifted into the gallery. From within came a clipped, “At once, Sir Radulf,” followed by the sound of another door closing.
The squire seemed to have heard neither. He sketched a perfunctory bow. “Sir Radulf sent me to find you. He’s ready for the nightly report.”
“I’m at his disposal.”
She said so, but Lady Mearah didn’t immediately move, instead leaving the squire to bow and withdraw. She was Palanthian, and though subordinate in rank to Sir Radulf Eigerson, her lineage was subordinate to that of very few people, and certainly not to any tally of Sir Radulf Eigerson’s forebears. Rank must be respected, but Lady Mearah was of the kind of folk who knew about nuance, and just how much of a nuanced delay a man like Sir Radulf would understand or tolerate.
She looked once more upon the games below. A smear of blood marred the scrubbed slates of the floor, and one of the combatants went limping off the field. His fellows got back to the business of testing themselves and training. Lady Mearah was pleased. They were like her armory—hard and cold and very strong.
Someone cried out, a harsh curse, and steel belled on steel. She watched the two fighters, men from her own talon. They had been hers from the day she joined Sir Radulf’s command, months before. Loyal, fierce, and devoted to their lady, these men and others formed the nucleus of a group of knights she could count on, steady as stone and willing to do whatever she asked.
Lady Mearah nodded, well content, and went to answer her commander’s summons. As she closed the door to Sir Radulf’s quarters, she framed the nightly report, the tally of men on the walls, the state of the food supply and the readiness the caravans and escorts ready to keep the city provisioned. In her mind, she organized rumors and facts, and she considered the reports from her personal spies, men like Tavar Evenstar. Some she would keep to herself, but she decided to include Tavar’s speculations about the woman Usha Majere.
“I’ve heard, my lord, that you’ve had some contact with her.”
Sir Radulf looked up, eyes narrowed. “I have. Your point?”
One of the torches on the wall hissed and snapped, and the flame flared. In the changing light, his face seemed sharply sculpted, his eyes cold gleams in deep sockets. That look could rock a knight back on her heels, but Lady Mearah smiled right into it.
“No great point, though it is interesting that the wife of a mage once so powerful is abroad in the city.” She shrugged. “I’m sure she’s quite harmless.”
“Utterly,” Sir Radulf said. “A saucy tongue, as I recall, but no more.”
Lady Mearah waited for dismissal, straight and tall and holding back a bit of Tavar’s news. She would not mention anything about Dezra Majere. Lady Mearah didn’t like to raise questions until she had some idea how she might find the answers.
9
The woman is like a sword!
The image of Aline Wrackham startled Dezra, even as it formed. Since their last encounter, most of Dez’s contact with Qui’thonas had been with Dunbrae. Aline left much of the daily business of putting the refugee movement together in the dwarf’s hands. Aline’s were matters of finances, the secret slipping of steel coin or firm promises along avenues as covert as actual paths Qui’thonas used into and out from Haven. From Usha’s telling of Aline’s wedding journey, Dezra thought of Aline Wrackham as a mousy poet-girl with few prospects, who gave in to the command of a grandfather happy enough to sell her in marriage. For a good cause, yes; and Aline had made good use of her gains, but it remained that she’d let herself be sold.
Because no one would ever be able to sell Dezra that way, not for the best and brightest cause in the world, she’d harbored a quiet, perhaps pitying scorn—the girl should have had a decent respect for herself. She’d thought so when she first heard the tale, and though she’d appreciated finding safe harbor in Rose Hall the night Haven fell, she’d even thought so the night she’s accepted Aline’s invitation to become part of Qui’thonas. Nothing had blurred that first impression of Aline until the startling image that formed this evening.
Yet that’s what Aline Wrackham was like—a ready sword, as she paced the oak plank floor where once a thick Tarsian carpet had lain, in the highest room of Rose Hall.
“This won’t be an easy resurrection,” Aline said, her glance leaping from one to the other of those gathered—Dezra, Dunbrae, and—to Dezra’s unvoiced disgust—Madoc Diviner. That one, Dezra thought, never takes his eyes from Aline. Neither did Aline fail to glance at him from time to time, and when she did, her cheek grew dusky. It wasn’t an attractive sight, the blush like a mottled brick. Still, it seemed to please Madoc.
“Qui’thonas won’t have an easy resurrection, but it will be a resurrection,” Aline assured them. Gowned in the high-necked, long-sleeved muted shades of mourning, in the gray light after a rainy day’s sunset, she strode like a commander on the ramparts. Quiet fire lighted her eyes, and her homely face she set like steel “Madoc tells me that many of the old paths into Haven from the river side of the city are gone, overgrown.”
The mage nodded. “Darken Wood doesn’t take long to reclaim its own.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s the air of elven hiding-magic on the Qualinesti side, but those paths are gone. Be that as it may, we wouldn’t be running on that side of the wood. Damned knights are going to be peering out of every shadow there. So we can’t go east or south. And it’s madness to go deeper into Darken Wood and risk running afoul of the centaurs.”
“And the ghosts,” Dunbrae muttered darkly. His eyes narrowed, changing his normally bluff expression to one of mistrust. But did he mistrust motive or something else? Dezra didn’t know.
Aline stopped mid-stride, watching her three friends, but she didn’t interrupt.
“And the ghosts,” Madoc said equably. “Of course the road around Darken Wood is heavily patrolled by Sir Radulf’s knights. All that’s left is the river for a run to the sea—impossible, I think you’ll all agree—and the moors out in the old Seeker Reaches. If anyone can get to them.”
Dez snorted. “You’re as naked to the eye on the moors as on the river. And about the only things living in all that stone and sky are outlaws, goblins, wolves and ravens. There’ll he no safe houses, no helping hands along the way.”
Madoc raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we could simply charter a dragon to ferry the lot of Haven’s refugees out over all the disaster, eh?” Dez bristled, he gestured dismissively, and said to Aline, “We have little choice—give up or find a way. Qui’thonas knows the Seeker Reaches, somewhat. We have friends there, though thinly spread. We will find a way.”
Aline paced to the north window, the one that looked out over the water. Perhaps she looked farther than the Whiterage, Dez thought. Perhaps all the way to the Seeker Reaches. After a moment she turned, her jaw set.
“Dunbrae, take some money and three good men. You know who’s on board by now. Buy enough supplies for a couple of days. Don’t be ostentatious about it.”
The dwarf snorted at the idea that he would be ostentatious about anything.
Aline chuckled. “Go out into the Reaches. Find old friends first, and be careful of making new ones.”
Dunbrae waited a beat, to see if there was more, then rose to leave. Dez watched him out of the room, envious of the dwarf who would soon be breathing the free air outside Haven. She and Dunbrae had worked together well in the short time since she’d declared for Qui’thonas. It hadn’t been hard work, or dangerous, nothing more than leaving sign in certain places—a token on a window sill, a mark on a back door that looked like the scratch a key leaves, a word to an old woman who would pass it to a girl in t
he market, who would take it on from there. Dez understood that these small tasks had served two purposes. They were messages delivered to the quiet forces of Qui’thonas, and they introduced her to folk who would not have trusted her otherwise. In Dunbrae’s company, she was immediately known for a friend.
Aline’s eyes grew still, her expression serious. “Madoc, go back to the Goat and take care of what you have to.”
One swift look spoke of understanding between them. Madoc had received his orders earlier.
In the corridor, past the briefly open door, Dezra heard the soft voice of a servant and the muted laughter of another. The door closed, and Aline fastened the shutters wide on all three windows. A breeze carried the scent of rain and the river.
“Dezra,” she said, still looking out.
Dez went to stand beside her. Looking where Aline did, she saw the river and the willow walk that lined its banks. Beyond, she imagined she could see the line of hedges bordering the common garden that served a little community near the river. Her heart ached, as though a hand squeezed it. The bodies of the hanged had been taken down from the apple trees after the news of Lady Mearah’s idea of swift punishment flew through the city. People had stopped talking about it, but sometimes at night, Dezra saw the dead men behind closed eyes. She saw him. Not as she had then, not as Usha had seen him, bruised and broken and ugly in his death. She saw him in candlelight. Dalan. She held the name in her heart with fierce tenderness. She saw him in memory as she had seen him that last time, his skin golden, shadows sliding purple along the planes of his chest, the muscles of his arms. She saw his flaxen hair in dawn’s light. She saw her lover, and when she did, her blood burned to revenge.
“They aren’t going to be as easy with Haven as they have been,” Aline said. They. Sir Radulf’s knights.
“Three hanged isn’t easy, Aline.”
“It isn’t, but things will get worse.”
Dez turned from the window. The breeze felt cool on her neck.
“So, I need to know,” Aline said. “How far can I trust you?”
Surprised, Dezra stood perfectly still, as though she could find motive or thought on the breeze. Aline didn’t smile to soften the moment. She kept as still as Dez.
Carefully, Dez said, “I’m not sure why you ask that.”
“I don’t doubt your word when you say you will never betray us. I don’t doubt your ability to do what is needed, fight the knights if necessary, protect the refugees I put into your care always.”
“But… ?”
“But how long will you do this, Dez?”
“Why, as long as I’m here. I told you.”
“Yes, you did. I’m wondering whether that means what it seems, or whether it means for as long as it takes to get your vengeance.”
Dezra’s eyes narrowed. “My—? I don’t understand.” But she did understand.
“Dalan Forester.”
The name burned along her nerves. Dezra didn’t flinch. She pushed away from the window.
“I don’t give my word lightly, Aline. I have accepted your secrets, and I will keep them.” That might have been the end of the matter, but Dez didn’t let it go. “Why do you trust Madoc Diviner, but you won’t trust me?”
“I trust you, or you wouldn’t be here, Dez.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Aline lifted her chin, pride and stubbornness. “Because he’s proven himself. When he could have betrayed me, he did not. After he’d seen the portrait Usha painted…” Dez knew the story, Aline didn’t repeat it. “How could I not trust him now?”
How, indeed? Dezra thought. It was a noble story, yet—“I don’t.”
“Why?”
Dezra thought for a moment, trying to find the right words to capture so nebulous a feeling. In the end, she shook her head. “Because I don’t. In my gut, I don’t. We’ve all changed, Aline. In the years since you came to Haven, even in the weeks since the city fell. But one thing, it seems, hasn’t changed: Madoc Diviner is a man known for taking care of himself first, others if he feels like it. He isn’t the romantic rogue you and Usha seem to think he is. At the Goat he’s well known to dark knights, to thieves and worse. He exchanges favors with them. He must. News, rumor and conjecture… these are his stock in trade. A man like that can’t be trusted.”
And there was the matter of Dunbrae—his narrowed glance, the feeling that he didn’t trust Madoc either. Dez said nothing of that. If Dunbrae did truly mistrust Madoc, she preferred to have the dwarf’s reasons from his own mouth.
Aline turned again to look out of the window. Nothing of posture or gesture gave clue to her thoughts. Over her shoulder Dezra saw the rain-washed sky winking with stars. Below, a young man went past the front of the house, head low and hurrying. If he lived near, he would make curfew. If not, he’d have some bad moments till he got to where he was going. Since the hanging, Sir Radulf’s watch had become harder than ever about the rules of curfew. Warnings had become beatings, and at least two men had gone missing.
Yet Madoc could escort Usha home after the hour of curfew and then arrange to have a beer with the knight who saw him at it.
“Dezra.” In profile, Aline’s expression showed nothing. The stars had her attention, or so it seemed. “I trust Madoc. But Qui’thonas will not work unless each one of us can trust the other. Lives are at stake. I want you in Qui’thonas. I need you. I don’t demean my faithful rescuers when I say they are not as experienced as you are. You’re a woman who knows how to fight and—most importantly—when to fight.” She turned then, and again Dezra saw the sword-woman in her eyes, bright and hard. “And I need Madoc. He will be the eyes and ears of Qui’thonas, a secret no one will know outside this group. He will look like just what the knights need him to look like in order to trust him enough to speak in his presence. He will look like no threat to the robbers and rogues that frequent the Goat. He must be this, or he is no use to us. But I won’t risk your life or anyone else’s by asking you to work with a man you can’t trust.”
Silence spread between them, then Aline drew it back.
“Think about it. I’ll respect any decision you make, and I will never doubt that you will keep every secret of ours.”
Dezra nodded.
“In the morning,” Aline said. “We’ll talk then.”
On the corner of River Way and Wrackham Street, Dezra saw Dunbrae standing. She wondered whether he’d found his three men. Had he taken money from some secret coffer and already returned to his post for a last walk around the perimeter before leaving? Dezra crooked a wry grin. For that matter, did Dunbrae ever sleep? She watched him, for a moment thinking to ask him about Madoc, but then turned and walked the other way. Dunbrae had kept watch over Rose Hall in secret since the occupation. The curfew meant nothing to him, for he could melt into the shadows as quickly as breathing. She wouldn’t compromise him now by calling attention to him. She had her own way to find safely home.
Around the other corner, past the alley where Dez and Dunbrae had killed an interloper and bundled off a dark elf to his death, the street narrowed and turned in its rise from the riverside. The back edge of Rose Hall ran along this street, bordered in boxwood, some ambitious, wandering firethorn, and honeysuckle. The peaked roof of a shed rose above the hedge. A gap in the boxwood allowed a glimpse past the boundaries of Rose Hall. The night was still; what breeze had stirred after the rain was gone.
Something moved before the shed door, a shadow flowing on the ground.
Dezra looked over her shoulder. Dunbrae was too far away to help if she needed it. Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled a knife from her boot. She slipped through the gap in the hedge on silent feet, drifting along the edge of darkness beside the hedge. The musty scent of boxwood hung in the moist air. It mingled with the odor of sweat and beer. Tavern-scent.
Dezra stopped, watching as the intruder unlatched the shed. It was a place for the tools Aline’s groundsman used. The door sighed open. The intruder stopped and looked ove
r his shoulder.
Bullfrogs boomed in the night, peepers shrilled, and into that sudden noise, Dezra said, “Did you lose something?”
Madoc Diviner whipped around. His hand never touched the short sword hidden beneath his brown cloak before Dezra’s blade kissed the skin of his throat.
“I said, did you lose something?”
Madoc swallowed, very carefully. “No, I—” he tilted his head back to relieve the pressure of the knife. “No. I’m here on Aline’s order.”
“I heard her send you back to the Goat.”
The pressure did not lessen, but Madoc managed an ironic smile. “You didn’t. You heard her tell me to take care of what I have to do. Some of that was at the Goat.”
Dez raised an eyebrow.
“And that will be my business.” He looked down and to the right, as if to glance over his shoulder. “The rest of what I have to do is here.”
“And whose business would that be?”
“Hers.”
The reverence in the simple word sent a shiver skittering up Dezra’s neck, the kind to let her know she was in the presence of something deeply true. Still, she didn’t move the blade.
“Tell me what it is.”
Bullfrogs and peepers croaked and screamed. A rough voice called out, the words undistinguishable—despair, anger, something hard in the tone to make Dezra think someone had run afoul of the watch.
Madoc risked a shrug. “I’ll show you if you like.” The ring of a hard boot on paving stones spoke of Dunbrae coming near. “Or you can call out to him and see nothing of it.”
Dunbrae with his onyx ring, his magic to do what Madoc was increasingly unable to do—know the heart, the motive of whoever was near. Dezra eased her knife away from the man’s throat, but she didn’t put it away.
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