It was too late. Four riders on black horses, three knights armored lightly, one an elf in mail red as blood thundered down the hill. Seiley shrieked. Gafyn snatched her up, tucked her under his arm, and fled to the riverside. Liel hung back. Reith, too.
Dunbrae shouted curses and bellowed: “Go! Go!”
It was the plan they’d sworn not to abandon if they were found out. No matter what, Gafyn would take the child and the parents would follow. No one must stay to fight but Dez and Dunbrae. A look of swift self-loathing on his face, the elf ran, his wife’s hand in his own.
In the moment they passed Dunbrae, the dwarf threw his axe and split the skull of one of the knights. Dez let fly an arrow and took another knight out of the world with a bolt through the eye.
“Dunbrae, heads up!”
The dwarf turned in time to see the red-mailed elf spurring toward him, sword raised like an axe to lop off his head. Dunbrae flung himself aside, rolled, and came up, his short sword in both hands. He thrust the blade upward, tearing open the horse’s belly.
The beast screamed, fell, and the elf flew over his mount’s head. Dez heard his neck snap. There was one more, somewhere.
Dez looked around frantically. There had been three knights…
And the last of them came charging around the side of the hill, howling curses, a mace whirling over his head. Dez drew, let fly, and missed. The knight thundered by, the mace wailing overhead as Dez fell, rolled, and came up behind the mounted man. She had no weapon but the knife in her boot, her bow flung aside in the fall. She snatched it out as the knight made another run at her. She saw his teeth flashing white, smelled the sweat on his horse…
She stood her ground, and it seemed like she could feel the knight’s astonishment, could almost hear him wonder—What is wrong with this woman?
Dez grinned, and maybe it was that dreadful grin that warned the knight.
If it did, he took the warning too late. Dunbrae’s throwing axe flew, lopped off the hand holding the mace, and clattered to the ground. Blood spurted, the knight stared down at the stump where his hand used to be.
It was easy enough for Dez to finish him off after he tumbled to the ground. A swift, flashing stroke across the throat, and it was done.
Dunbrae looked around at the carnage. “We have to collapse the tunnel.”
“No we don’t.” Dez grunted. “They’re dead.”
“Yeah, but not the one who tipped them off to where we’d be, eh?”
Dez closed her eyes, cold in the aftermath of the fighting, sweat chilling like ice on her face and neck. Not the one who tipped them off.
“The boy knows where to go?” she asked.
“Better than either of us. He’ll be fine. If the elves do as they’re told, them and their little girl will be away safely.”
Dez nodded, and neither said what was most on their minds—that the hard part came next, telling Aline what happened and that no one knew anything about this run besides Dez, Dunbrae, and Madoc Diviner.
16
The line of gray light beneath the window shutters spoke of a sullen, clouded day. The air, once filled with storm charge and the tantalizing scent of rain that had not fallen, had a thick, unpleasant smell. No breeze stirred, and Usha lay still, watching the shapes of the furniture in her bedchamber emerge from the darkness—the wardrobe where her clothes hung, the desk and the chair where Loren liked to sit and read. The blue stone jug filled with water and the pewter cups caught the first half-hearted gleam of true daylight as it slipped across the room.
Her lover lay beside her, sleeping.
In a matter of an afternoon and a night, everything in Usha’s life had changed. In these quiet moments, with Loren asleep beside her, she held the memories of their lovemaking to her heart, precious and wonderful. But then she looked at the tangle her life had become and wondered whether she would recognize herself if she managed to unsnarl it all.
Usha turned to watch the morning light creep across the floor. It touched the bed, the pillows and rumpled blankets and, beside her, Loren asleep. His breathing was even and quiet, only hitching a little when he moved, the small motion of a man settling more deeply into sleep.
My love, she thought. The endearment came so naturally to her that she might have been naming him so for a year rather than one impassioned night.
Usha lifted a hand to touch Loren’s face, very different in repose than in waking. This, she thought, must be the face his mother knew when he was a boy, youthful and peaceful, for the mark of adult care was eased away for the few hours he slept.
But she didn’t touch him. She put her hand down, resting it on the soft sheets, musky with the scent of the two of them. She lay still, keeping quiet, as she had been since the first hint of day. Below, she heard the sound of voices as people went down into the inn’s common room in search of breakfast.
“What will we do,” Loren had said last night, laughing, “when people see that I came for supper and stayed for breakfast?”
She’d joined him laughing. It wasn’t the kind of question that truly wanted an answer. Not then. Now, though… now it did. People could whisper what they liked about the matter. They had been doing so since Loren had first come to sit in her studio to read and watch her work. Most likely the gossips imagined that what had happened last night had, in fact, begun weeks before.
These things didn’t trouble Usha. Another did, for whatever people had thought they’d seen they had not, in truth, seen a woman forsaking her marriage vows. Last night, she had done that, and so today she must do something she’d been dreading since waking. Before rumor and gossip spoke of it, Usha must tell Dez what had happened between her and Loren. She had no illusion that this would be an easy conversation, none that it would end peacefully. She didn’t know enough of her own heart to know how to defend her actions, yet she must defend them, somehow.
Of one thing she could be certain. Dez would rail about Palin. But wherever he was, Palin Majere had not walked ghostly through the precious hours of the night past.
Loren woke, sleepy-eyed and reaching for her, and Usha lay in his arms a long time.
“Loren…”
“I know. I won’t stay.”
She was silent, barely breathing.
“Usha, may I return?”
She kissed him, at first tenderly, then hungrily. But she broke away before he could say or do more. On the floor, scattered from the previous afternoon, lay sketches of Tamara.
“There is the portrait,” he said.
There was; and there was Qui’thonas.
“I’ll see you again, Loren. Soon. But now…”
Now she needed time, and Loren gave it to her.
There was no mercy in Dezra’s outrage. It was an elemental force, a blazing up of righteousness and the pain of betrayal.
“Usha, how could you do this? Have you lost your mind?”
It wasn’t a question to be answered yet. Usha didn’t try.
“How can you betray Palin? By all gods, how can you strut around Haven with a man who collaborates with the occupation?”
Dez, white-knuckled fists clenched, paced up and down the little room. Her face was pale, bruised, and scraped. Usha wanted to ask what had happened, but she didn’t try. She would get no answer now. And so she sat on her bed, her back against the wall, legs crossed tailor-fashion, resolved to wait until the storm subsided.
“This easily you betray your husband!” Dez cried. “My brother… what are you thinking? If it doesn’t matter that Palin is your husband—and it sure doesn’t seem to—he is the father of your children. How can you disgrace them?”
And there was the question to destroy Usha’s resolve.
Her cheeks flushing with anger, she said, “I am not disgracing my children. They are grown. A long time grown. They have seen the life their father and I have led, the striving against each other, fighting…”
No. She would say no more of that. If she had betrayed her marriage vows, she could at
least refrain from exposing the wounds.
“Leave my children out of this. When… if they need to know, I’ll be the one to talk about it. Till then, leave them out of this.”
Dezra kicked a chair, sending it crashing across the floor. “Shall I leave their father out of this? My father? My sisters? Your whole family?” She laughed. “But then how can I ask? You’ve been the apple of one man’s eye or another since we came to Haven.”
Usha’s eyes narrowed. “You have nothing to say about betrayal. You don’t know my marriage. You can’t speak about it.”
“I—”
“You don’t know. There are two people in my marriage. Neither of them is you.”
“You almost sound as if you believe it. Poor thing.” Dezra stopped pacing, the silence of her stillness settling around them. “My brother has behaved badly. Everyone agrees—my father, my sisters. But two wrongs in a family don’t make a right. Marriage is not just two people. You know that. In the name of the gods, what happened?”
A husband who left home in storms of anger, and a canvas that showed me negative space from end to end. That’s what happened. Usha didn’t say that or even try to explain. It would only send Dez off into other furies.
“Usha, don’t you care about the family?”
Her voice chill, Usha said, “Dez, why do you hold me to a standard you don’t apply to your brother?”
Dezra’s eyes narrowed as though she suspected a trap.
“That’s right,” Usha said. “You talk about family and what I owe you and your father and your sisters, what I owe my children. Yet you seem think it’s an acceptable thing for your brother to desert his family.”
Again Dezra flared, and she flashed past the question. “You have no idea where he is, Usha, or what he’s doing. He could be dead or—”
“Or he could be lying in the arms of another woman. I don’t know, and neither do you. If he’s dead, I’ll be sorry, but his death or my sorrow wouldn’t mean he didn’t desert our marriage.” Usha rose. “The subject is closed. I won’t talk about it any more.”
Trembling with anger and sorrow, she walked past her sister-in-law’s outrage and left the room.
She wanted peace from Dezra’s impassioned defense of her family and from the ache of her own emerging understanding that she didn’t truly know what that visceral familial bond that drove Dez must feel like. She loved her children. She had loved their father once. But the blank canvas she’d shown to Loren had cried out to Usha that at best her life was negative space filled in with borrowed things, borrowed family, borrowed history.
Like charcoal sketches, those were fading with the touch of a smudging finger.
Usha walked through the market square, hardly seeing the people or the wares on display. She was exhausted and angry all at the same time. When she left the inn she’d thought she would take her weariness to Loren, but she hadn’t. Anger drove her to walking, though the day was hot and oppressive. She went down quiet streets where few folk were abroad. In the hot noon hour women talked quietly outside their homes. Children sat sleepy in doorways and the scent of cooking drifted out. One or two boys trundled high-wheeled handcarts through the narrow lanes, but most of the working folk were leaning against the doorways of their homes or taverns. Later they would return to work, but not until the nooning was had, the bread and cheese, the ale or wine.
Usha walked quickly, at the pace of her anger, but once she stopped to look up at the sky and the low-hanging clouds where dragons circled. Over this part of the city she usually saw two reds. Today she saw five. Sir Radulf had dispersed all three talons, and the sight of them chilled her. She walked on, but the thought of people at their tables made her hungry. She was in no mood for tavern fare or tavern company, and so she headed for the market.
The day’s heat lay thick on the crowded square like a damp, smothering blanket. In spite of it, the stalls were full and the sellers busy. People grumbled about the scant choices. Haven’s fare was down to fish and fowl and whatever vegetables grew in these dry times. Now and then someone would cast an eye at the sky, at the clouds and the circling dragons, but Haven was a merchant city, one that had struck an uneasy bargain with a conquering army. If commerce was difficult, it would not be stifled.
Usha bought a small pastry filled with chopped lamb, mint, and potatoes and wandered through the stalls until she saw the dwarf Henge leaning his elbows on the display table before his booth, his market day offerings spread out before.
“Good day to you, Mistress Usha,” Henge called when he saw her. “I’ve not seen you in a week of days.”
“Longer than that,” she said, looking around. “How is your brother?”
“Ach, him.” Henge shook his head. “That Scur, he’s off looking at a collection of table silver. Got the good work today.”
“Inside and out of the sun.”
“The very job. Stay and talk a while.”
Her restlessness soothed by long walking, Usha agreed. Henge did a certain amount of complaining about his younger brother, but he wasn’t one to like spending all the day in the market manning the booth by himself. She offered to share her lunch, and Henge accepted gladly. In the dusty afternoon, they talked for a while until a sudden silence dropped over the market.
“Reorx’s beard,” Henge whispered.
Usha turned. The crowd in the market parted, opening a broad avenue for the passage of four armed and mounted knights. In this heat, they were armored and helmed, and the visors of the helms were down. They came closer, and Usha saw they drove a group of people ahead of them. Two were elves, a man and a woman; one was a young human man—she put a hand to her lips, stifling a cry of recognition when she saw the red-headed young man Gafyn. They were ragged and dirty, roped together as though they were a string of cattle being taken for sale. The woman stumbled and fell, a knight struck her with the flat of his sword and, when she tried to rise and fell again, poked her with the point.
Henge muttered a curse, his hand knotting into a fist. Usha covered the fist with her own hand, a warning, as Gafyn turned as best he could and lifted the woman to her feet. The shameful spectacle went by, carving a path for itself through the crowd. No one murmured. No one muttered. The knights were greeted by a solid wall of silence.
Then, as though to chip at that wall, the dull thud of a hammer in play drifted from the far end of the square.
“What is it?” Henge muttered.
Usha went up on her toes to see. A small squad of men dispersed through the square, stopping at trees and hammering notices. A little boy ran up to one of them, then darted away, shouting, “A hangin’! There’s gonna be a hangin’!”
The knights rode on, the prisoners stumbling ahead. In the sky, the dragons wheeled, their riders watching.
The refugees were not hanged together. Rather one was hanged beside every gate into the city, and the news of it flew through Haven. At the hour of execution, the common room at the Ivy was deserted. Few went to see one of the hangings. Most retired to their rooms, quiet and frightened and angry.
In the absence of traffic on the streets, Usha heard the scream of gulls, the lap of the river, and the soft hiss of a waking breeze. Somewhere over the moors of the Seeker Reaches, thunder rumbled. She thought it might rain. At last the sky would unburden itself. From where she sat on her bed, she could see the sky out the window. Dun clouds had turned to slate. Dez, on the floor with her back propped against a wall, poked moodily at the poorly repaired chair she’d earlier kicked across the room. It wobbled, not strong enough to hold more than Usha’s charcoals. The silence between the two was the uneasy one of reluctant truce, and Usha was the first to break it.
“How did it happen, Dez?”
Dezra shrugged. “It happened. The two elves were Liel and his wife Reith. They almost made it out. We were ambushed at the mouth of one of the tunnels. Gafyn—” She stopped to swallow hard. “He grabbed the little girl, the parents followed. You know how we do it.”
U
sha nodded. Once out, freedom for the refugees was the most important thing.
“Dunbrae and I handled the knights. Three of ’em, and there was an elf.”
Usha raised a brow.
“Silvanesti, a dark elf. He is…” She laughed, a bitter sound. “He was Lady Mearah’s lover.”
The news went through Usha like ice. She thought of Loren, of the cold face of the lady knight who had spoken to her in threat in Loren’s garden, to Loren himself on the street before the inn.
“We killed them. Dunbrae and me. But the missing knights were found—well, they would be. And Mearah’s dead lover. Not long after, so were the elves and Gafyn. The child is dead.” She made a soft sound, a hitching of the breath. “They’d come to Haven a few years ago, refugees from Qualinesti and thinking they’d go back one day, when all was said and done. Last night—” She nudged the chair. It toppled over. “Last night they were trying to get out of Haven.”
The breeze smelled of rain. Dezra cursed it for a liar.
“We had the route planned, cleared, and—” Dez pounded a fist on her knee. “And we had Madoc Diviner’s oath that nothing would go wrong.”
Usha closed her eyes against a sudden sinking dread.
“But something did,” Dezra said, her voice hard, “Something went wrong, and Madoc swears he sent word that the route was compromised. Maybe he did, maybe not. All I know is what actually happened. He says he sent word by a trusty man, to let us know that the information he had from the first ‘trusty man’ couldn’t be trusted. Of course, Madoc has no idea how the message failed or how his trust was broken.”
Quietly, Usha said, “If he’d wanted to betray you, Dez, you’d all be dead now.”
“I know.” The words came hard. “I know, and yet… his sources aren’t doing well by him, are they? Almost amounts to the same thing.”
Silence sat between them, growing heavier by the moment. Gulls screamed in the sky outside the window. Usha was getting to know that particular gullish shriek. A dragon claimed the air currents over the river as it banked for an inland turn.
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