Loren cocked an eyebrow. He did not often mention Dez, and Usha never did. His attention could quickly become Sir Radulf’s… or worse, Lady Mearah’s.
“And now my sister-in-law and I are trapped here. As for my people, they are…”
She stopped, for how could she tell him the story of the infant raised by the Irda and deny the naming “mysterious?” What words could she find—what words had she ever been able to find?—to tell him of the haunting sadness of being a human child among people whose physical beauty surpassed any legend’s telling? How to tell the story of a child who’d known herself as desperately ugly among the most beautiful creatures in Krynn, who became a woman without a country, with no family but that of the husband who’d deserted her?
Of these things she’d hardly spoken to anyone. For all her life the pain had felt too raw.
“Usha, what of your husband?”
She scraped carefully, steady, even strokes. The blade whispered to the canvas.
Into that whisper, Loren said, “You ask for my trust, Usha, yet you won’t give me yours.”
It was a flat statement, but it felt like an accusation. Grimly, she admitted that given the reason she accepted—no, be honest, encouraged—his interest in her, the word “trust” was something to wince from. She didn’t.
“Loren, there is no mystery about my husband other than where he might be right now. Palin Majere is a man who has been pleased to step out of my life without so much as a fare-thee-well.”
Considering the matter closed, Usha returned to her canvas.
Surprise, like the breath of lightning, lifted the fine hair on her arms. Where she’d been working, an image, ghostly and indistinct, shimmered and became a figure she hadn’t painted, one she had not contemplated painting. But it was there, a trick of intuition.
“Come here,” she said, her mouth going dry as the image resolved itself.
Perhaps he heard the quiver in her voice, for Loren came around the easel at once.
“Do you see that cloaked man? That is Palin Majere, a mage who suffers the inability to trust his magic, as all mages do these days, but who shares nothing of his feelings with me, not a word of this thoughts. He journeys on errands he will not speak of. He returns in despair and he leaves in anger, and I don’t know where he goes or why. He’s been gone from me for a long time.”
Loren moved closer, his sleeve brushing against her arm. The image on the stark canvas faded. In moments it vanished as though it had never been. Loren drew an astonished breath.
Shaken, Usha said, “Our last parting was the bitterest of all. I don’t look to find my husband returned should I ever get out of Haven.”
“Usha,” he said. “How can you bear a loveless life?”
Usha gasped, a small sound, like flinching. The question, so gently, compassionately asked, called up a memory she’d been a long time trying to forget—that of the look in Palin’s eyes the last time she’d seen him. It used to be that she could look into her husband’s eyes and see the light of his love. It had burned brightly in youth, warmly in their middle years. But the last time she’d looked into Palin Majere’s eyes, with the echoes of recrimination, anger, and suspicion still hanging in the air between them, what she’d seen recalled a spent and guttered candle.
Loren touched her cheek, his gray eyes filled with both sorrow and longing. Again, her skin prickled, and again Usha thought of how it felt when lightning passed close by outside the window. In a bright moment of clarity, Usha knew she could accept the caress or turn from it.
She turned.
“I… I have a lot of work to do, Loren, if I’m to deliver two portraits when they’re promised.”
The words no sooner spoken, Usha regretted them, but Loren had stepped away from her and the moment was lost.
“Will you consider my commission, Usha?”
A business-like request, and there was no sign of wounding in his voice. Usha knew better.
“I will consider it.” She gave him a long, level look, then nodded gravely, though the gravity was belied by a smile. “Come tomorrow and we can talk again.”
How can you bear a loveless life?
Loren’s question haunted Usha. Unspoken in every conversation she had during the day, behind even the most mundane thought, it haunted her. She didn’t try to avoid it. In truth it seemed she’d been trying to avoid it long before she came to Haven. She’d begun to think that was why she’d come to Haven, to answer the question. She thought in Madoc’s strange metaphor now.
Perhaps I’ve come here to see what shape emerges next in the design, or perhaps I’ve come to make a new shape… .
A new shape for her life? For love? Women did it. So did men. Marriage grew old. People grew apart. They no longer tried to mend what kept breaking, yet they did not dissolve the bonds of family. It was done that way among the highborn folk in Palanthas. Discreetly came lovers, and then people stood in different relationships to each other than before.
The problem occupied her mind, but Usha didn’t languish. She worked, preparing canvas for the two portraits she’d promised—mixing paints, scraping her palette, and selecting sketches of her subjects. She slipped into her work as she’d slip into a familiar river—easily, trusting the currents to take her where they willed, confident that if magic was one of those currents, it would take her where it must.
Loren’s question slipped away a little, hushed by work, and then eclipsed by something else—rumor, bright and deadly.
There is a secret path.
Not more than that was said, a tantalizing promise, a teasing hope. A secret path, a way out of Haven… and no one mentioned it when there were knights around. It was hardly spoken aloud, but people whispered and they wondered. Some scoffed. Others said the wise man keeps his mouth shut about such things in case Sir Radulf should hear and decide he needs to execute someone for it.
Still, people did speak—those who hoped and those who wondered. They spoke very quietly of the family of dwarves down in the wharf district, the Stonestrike clan who had vanished one and all—mother and father, the last son, two daughters, and even the dog. They simply vanished. There one day. Gone the next.
Usha heard that story and others—all in whispers, hurried speculation between Bertie the cook’s boy and the girl from the chandler’s shop, and the murmuring of house maids as they traveled in little knots under the cold stares of the soldiers who strode along Haven’s streets and atop Haven’s walls. With increasing unease, Usha wondered whether Qui’thonas had been discovered.
One day, she heard about the secret path from Loren.
He had come back at her invitation, but neither spoke again of a portrait for Tamara. It had become Loren’s habit to arrive at her studio on the mornings he knew she’d be working. He made himself good company from the first day, a man who knew when to talk and when to be silent while she worked. On that first day, he’d come with a book from his library. As a young man, he’d been to see the great library in Palanthas and ever after longed to have a library of his own. Five shelves of bound books he owned now, and Usha exclaimed, “Wealth!” each time she saw a book.
This morning he’d come, book in hand and rumor on his lips, a tale of a secret path out of the city. “Some fond hope among the servants.” He’d looked troubled and said it was his own hope that none of his people came to believe the rumor. “There’s nothing but heartache and grief there.”
“Disappointments,” Usha said, agreeing.
The skin around his eyes tightened, and his lips became a hard, thin line. “Deaths. Sir Radulf has been talking about patrolling outside his perimeter.”
Usha frowned, not understanding. “Is he bringing in more soldiers?”
“No. More dragons to patrol from the sky. That should kill the rumors and any foolish idea of acting as though rumor were truth.”
Usha agreed, but what he said changed worry into dread that Aline’s efforts would soon be detected.
“Don’t worry a
bout rumors,” Dez said. “Where are you hearing them, anyway?”
Usha shrugged. “Around. In the street, in the market.”
The night was dark, the sky hung with clouds. In the empty garden behind the Ivy, Usha sat on the stone wall and Dezra stretched out on the ground beside hedges overgrown by thick, fragrant wisteria. They’d not seen each other in nearly a week. Usha hadn’t heard even the quiet sound of Dez slipping into the inn at late hours.
“What’s your friend Loren Halgard say?”
Usha plucked a rose bush of its hard, red hips and piled them on the wall. Dezra knew about Loren’s morning visits. She wasn’t often at the inn these days, but when she was it was usually to be found on her way to bed. She and Loren had twice passed each other in the corridor outside Usha’s studio. She didn’t ask Usha about it, and Usha volunteered nothing more than that he was interested in having his daughter’s portrait painted. But Usha knew Dezra was wondering, for she’d asked her question carefully.
“He says something you want to know.”
Dez sat up, suddenly tense. “How would Loren Halgard know about… anything I’d like to know?”
“He doesn’t. But I do. Sir Radulf is calling in more dragons.”
“Not knights?”
“Dragons, Loren says. Radulf is afraid that people are going to start wanting to make the rumors true. The sky patrols are going to double. You have to be careful, Dez.”
Dez grunted. “We are.”
“Will you pull back for a while?”
“That’s up to Aline. Whatever she says, we’ll do. We’ll be all right.”
Usha looked around the weary garden, the roses browning from lack of rain, the herbs outside the kitchen door going to seed. It hadn’t rained in Haven in long weeks. It had doubtless been longer than that where the river had its headwaters, for where it slid past Haven, the White-rage had grown narrow, the verge on either side brown mud flats where stranded fish died and the air stank.
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Dez pitched a pebble over the wall. “I wish Qui’thonas had half the fine bolt holes out of the city everyone seems to think.”
This was more specific news about Qui’thonas than Usha had heard in a long while. Sweeping little piles of rose hips into the sluggish stream, Usha sat forward. “You don’t?”
“Not so many. Things change all the time. What’s here today might not be there tomorrow. You know those fine citizen patrols your friend Loren got for the city?”
“Yes. To give the people a hand in what’s happening.”
Wind kicked up, and the clouds began to shred. Through the rent in one the light of a moon only two days from dark shone down. Dezra’s face was a mask of shadow, her expression hidden.
“They do a pretty good job of freeing up knights and foot soldiers, too.”
“Dez, I don’t know—”
Dezra’s temper flashed. “You’re right, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like outside this pretty inn and you don’t know how it is not to be able to trust anyone but those you go out into the night with. And not even all of them.”
That she meant Madoc was clear without having to be said. They continued to be uneasy allies, the two, and each for the sake of Aline. That might keep them safe as trust would, and it might not. But the decision was Aline’s to make, and she’d chosen to keep them both.
Dez sat up, and Usha saw her face, all hard lines. “It’s a dangerous place, this city. I—” She stopped and shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She laughed, but as though at herself. “I really want to get out of here. I want to see home again. I want to see my father and my sisters.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I want to know if they’ve learned anything about Palin. He’s been gone a long time.”
“Yes, he has.” Usha’s voice sounded flat, even in her own ears. “I’m tired. The day started early, and it’s ending late.”
Dez got to her feet and dusted down her breeches. “Early again tomorrow?”
Usha tried to gauge the meaning of the question, to know whether it touched on Loren. Dezra’s expression gave away nothing.
“Yes. There’s a lot of work to do on the last portrait.”
Dez sat still, chewing her lower lip as she did when she was thinking. “What are you doing, Usha? With Halgard? What are you doing?”
“Will you find what I told you helpful?”
“You know I will.”
“That’s what I’m doing. Trying to help.”
Dez had a look on her face like she wanted to say, Only that? Nothing else? But in the end, she said nothing. Uneasy silence stretched between them, drawing out until Usha rose and shook out her skirt, sending rose hips skipping to the ground.
“That’s all I’m doing, Dez—listening to what Loren has to say and seeing if there’s anything that can help you. Will you let Aline know what I told you?”
Dez jerked her head, a nod of assent. They went indoors in silence, and at Dezra’s door Usha bade her good luck, in case she was going out with Qui’thonas.
“Be careful, Usha. All right? Be careful.”
It did not escape Usha that her sister-in-law’s warning had more than one meaning.
Dezra left the Ivy in the small hours, slipping out the bedroom window and dropping down to the grass and away. Her routes were secret, known only to her, and they changed every night. This night, with Usha’s warning still echoing in her mind, she took the quickest, safest way to Rose Hall. She slipped through shadows, crossing alleys and little streamlets. Madoc Diviner might know the pattern of each night’s patrol, and that was handy, but when she must make her own way Dez traveled nighttime Haven simply assuming she’d meet a knight around ever corner. It never failed her and within a very short time of leaving the inn she was jumping the low stone fence two blocks north of the corner where Rose Hall loomed. From there, she’d find very little cover until she came to the part of the street where trees grew thickly, right opposite Aline’s thorny rose garden.
She grinned, her blood warming to the dare, and crossed the distance—a no man’s land where trees didn’t arch and no shadow fell. There was no cover, and nothing for it but to make her way across as best she could. She listened but didn’t hear horses or voices. She waited until she saw Dunbrae come around the corner as he usually did, the knights be damned. The knights weren’t damned, and they’d come to know Dunbrae’s route well enough to consider him within bounds as long as they saw him keep to his regular walk.
The dwarf lifted his head when he came around the corner, like an old hound sniffing the air. He saw her and waved her on. Dez started into the street then stopped when she saw a shadow slipping down the alley between Rose Hall and the stable of the neighboring house. She’d killed a man of Sir Radulf’s there only a month before. This shadow-goer, though, was known to her. To Dunbrae as well, for the dwarf muttered a curse, the end of which Dez heard when she came up beside him. Halfway down the alley, Madoc Diviner saw them and didn’t miss a stride. He sauntered the rest of the way to the street as though it were noon and he was expected.
Dez glanced at Dunbrae. “Someone call him here?”
“Not that I know. Probably doesn’t matter if anyone did. He comes and goes at will—her will.”
Aline’s will.
Dez waited for more, though by the look of him, more might have unleashed a few hours of listening to the dwarf’s grumbling and snarling. She waved Madoc on and said, “I need to talk to you both, and Aline.”
“What about?” Madoc said, looking up the street and down to be sure it was still clear.
“We have to talk about Usha.”
Aline plumped the cushions on the bench against the west wall of the solar, the one that still held the day’s heat. Through the open window the scent of roses drifted. She sat and pulled her bare legs under her night robe, never blushing though it was clear she’d been awake and not awakened, that she had been waiting for Mado
c, now sitting in the chair opposite her. Dunbrae’s brow was thunderous; lightning seemed to kindle in his eye. Madoc managed not to smile, and Dez thought it best to maintain the most neutral expression she could.
The lovers long separated, she thought, had become lovers in fact—and by the look of them, some time ago.
“What have you come to tell us about Usha?” Aline asked. “Is she well?”
“She’s fine,” Dez said, thinking of Loren Halgard and looking at the two lovers. “She’s fine, but she has news.”
The three listened closely to the warning Usha had passed on to Dez, and Aline’s face went still and pale.
“We have two teams outside the walls tonight, don’t we, Dunbrae?”
The dwarf nodded. “They’re checking old routes, the ones we used when we first started taking elves out of Qualinesti.”
Aline drew a breath and let it go slowly. “Do you know when these dragons are coming in, Dez?”
“No. Usha didn’t say. I don’t think Halgard knows.”
“Do you think he knows what he’s talking about?”
“I don’t think he’s puffing himself up to impress Usha.”
Eyebrows went up all around, discreetly.
“Well, he’s been underfoot since she did the portrait of his nephews. Anyway, I don’t think he’s the type.”
Madoc’s lips twitched. “Underfoot, is it?”
Dez glared.
Aline changed the subject. “I think you’re right, Dez. Halgard isn’t the kind of man who needs to embroider his stories. If Usha believes him, I do.” She turned to Dunbrae. “How quickly can you get word to the teams that are out?”
“I’ll make sure they hear before noon. They’re not too far away. I’ll either pull them in or send them someplace they can’t be spotted.”
“Do it now,” Aline said. “Come back when it’s safe.”
Dez rose to join him, but stopped when Aline gestured. “Dez, what’s Usha doing?”
At the door, Dunbrae stood to listen. Madoc kept still. His cocked grin vanished, the wicked gleam gone from his eye. Dez wanted to say that she didn’t know what Usha was doing or why she was doing it. She wanted to speak out against Halgard for the sheer satisfaction of making her complaint. Instead she shook her head.
Prisoner of Haven Page 19
