Prisoner of Haven

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  In the steamy garden, the night thick and dark and smelling of the foul river, Usha walked in silence beside Loren. She held his hand, and through flesh and bone and sinew she felt his sorrow. Beyond the walls of the garden the city was quiet. They no longer heard the rumble of carriage wheels or cart wheels as they used to do. What voices they did hear were those of Loren’s servants going about their work, safely within their master’s walls.

  “I wish it would rain,” Usha said softly.

  Loren nodded but absently. In the sky, dragons wheeled and turned.

  “My love,” Loren said, answering the unspoken question between them. “If all the free realms fall, as Haven has, I must ensure my daughter’s safety. The safest place will be with the winner.”

  Usha pressed his hand, a silent answer. It had never seemed a good enough reason, and Usha had never been able to answer the old question of what she would do.

  Loren was a good man caught in difficult circumstances, and this one was his own making. She wanted to suggest that Tamara be taken out of the city by Aline’s people, but she could not. She did not admit that she couldn’t trust a man so close to Sir Radulf.

  They passed the garden’s loveliest spot, a reflecting pool ringed with several varieties of weary, rain-hungry mint. Tamara would be leaving this place, and whether she admitted it or not, she would leaving the peace and security of being a cherished daughter in a rich man’s home for the instability of being the wife of a knight.

  Usha made a sudden decision. In the portrait Sir Radulf asked for, she would create this delightful garden as the setting for the young woman who soon would leave it.

  “Loren,” she said, her voice low and soft. “Leave off worrying. What’s done is done, and we can only hope it is done for the best.” She looked back to the house and the lights in Tamara’s bed chamber. “It’s been a long day and a very long night. Can we call Rowan to bring the carriage around?”

  He looked at her, holding her hand. “If you wish.”

  But she didn’t wish. She wanted him.

  “Loren—”

  “Stay,” he said.

  Please, she thought. Don’t ask, don’t.

  “Usha, stay.”

  Usha looked up at the sky, at the dragons circling. The wind freshened, and this time it carried more than the failing promise of rain-scent. A cool drop and then another splashed onto her cheek. Lightning flashed, thunder crackled, and in the next moment the sky poured down rain.

  Laughing suddenly, Usha said, “I think I’ve made up my mind.”

  She tugged Loren’s hand and the two ran back to the house.

  In the morning, Haven woke to find the river overflowing its banks, the willows and many of the elms along the banks uprooted. Cellars and cisterns had been turned into mud holes.

  Loren’s gardeners cried woe, for their small, green realm lay savaged by the storm, battered and unrecognizable, as were all the gardens in the city. But Usha, standing at the bedroom window, knew she’d made the right decision to set Tamara’s portrait in the garden, to seat the girl on the curved stone bench beside the fish pond. She would recreate the beautiful space of flower beds and birch groves she remembered even then, looking out at the storm-wrack and ruin.

  “My lady.”

  Lady Mearah looked up, whetstone in hand, her sword across her knee. She sat alone in the vast armory, that place where her knights used to practice. No one had come near her for hours. No one wanted to look into those dark eyes and see her sorrow and the fire of her lust for revenge. Agmar, however, didn’t seem to mind. Sir Radulf’s squire had seen enough rage and blood-lust to be able to look into the lady knight’s eyes and not flinch.

  “Tell me,” she said, knowing he came from his master. She didn’t look up to the gallery or the doorway that led into Sir Radulf’s wardroom. The knight had been there all night and most of the day, honing his plans to tighten his grip on Haven as keenly as Lady Mearah now honed her sword.

  Agmar bowed. “I have a name for you, compliments of my master.”

  Mearah put the whetstone by. “He knows who killed—” She made a small sound, like bitter laughter withheld. “He knows who caused the dark elf’s death? How?”

  “By the ones you hanged, my lady. Tavar was last seen going into the Grinning Goat. We can guess he went out with the knights on the word of a man who knows most of the gossip and all the rumors that surge around Haven.”

  “The mage.”

  Agmar nodded. “Madoc Diviner.”

  18

  Usha peered out the carriage window at devastated Haven. There was water everywhere—running in the gutters, pooling in low spots, and turning gardens into swamps.

  The horses snorted and shook their heads. Rowan called softly to them, encouraging with a firm and gentle hand on the reins. Usha saw the horses’ ears flatten. The offside mare flung up her head, eyes rolling so the whites glared. She wasn’t going to move, and so her harness mate went back on her haunches, making her own position clear.

  Rowan tied the reins to the side of his box and slipped down into the street. He made no splash to frighten his team, and he kept talking as he walked, always using a soft, encouraging voice.

  What should have been a short drive to the Ivy had become a tense and frightening journey. Rowan had been using every bit of his considerable skill to guide the carriage through deep water and muddy streams with active currents running through them. Some ran as high as a quarter way up the wheels. The horses had refused anything deeper, and Rowan searched long and circuitous ways to find even that. Two days after the storm, they still encountered roads as far as five blocks in from the river where they couldn’t see the cobbles and bricks. Trees torn out by the roots lay across many roads. Countless houses and shops had lost roofs to the wind, and those were the lucky ones. Others had been crushed by falling trees.

  People stood in water up to their knees, shaking their heads in dismay. Others wandered stunned and looking witless as they sloshed through the water, hoping to find the things the storm had stolen. Many had awakened to find their kitchens flooded to the ceilings, the stores in their larders ruined, their vegetable gardens at the bottom of rank pools of water. The wells on the low side of the hill were polluted, and drinking water was suddenly, frighteningly scarce.

  Loren’s gardener said bodies were washing up from the river, corpses of citizens and soldiers alike littering the banks. Usha and Loren had been wakened by Tamara on the night of the storm to watch three talons of dragons move out to the moors, for there was no high ground left for them near Haven. At dawn, Usha had asked Loren if he would allow Rowan to take her to the Ivy. He had agreed and said he would go with her, but Usha had declined. While it was true Usha wanted to check on her belongings, she wanted most to see whether Dezra was at the inn or had left word that she was well and safe. She didn’t want to encounter Dez or receive a message in Loren’s company.

  “Just let me do this,” she’d said. “You have much to do here, and I’ll be guided by Rowan’s advice. If he thinks the way is too dangerous, I’ll abide by his word.”

  Reluctantly, Loren agreed, for what she said was true. He had much to look after at Steadfast and could not really be spared.

  Usha looked out the window again and saw Rowan take the cheek strap of the offside mare. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Hold on, Mistress.”

  She grabbed leather hand straps as the carriage lurched sharply forward. Rowan led the mare and so the team, who would advance only in fits and starts. They went this way slowly, and Rowan did not resume his seat on the driver’s box. The route was not direct, and it was not quick, but in time Usha saw the stone chimneys of the inn rising darkly into the gray sky. No smoke curled up from them. Only the small yellow lights of candles and lanterns showed from the windows of the common room, and not many of those. Like wraiths, the dim figures of people drifted back and forth within, guests looking for the comfort of their fellows’ company.

  “It’s l
ike a war,” Rowan muttered.

  Usha nodded. It was—a battle against the city by nature. She thought Sir Radulf and his talon of dragons hadn’t been worse.

  Rowan led the horses into the mud that had been the inn’s dusty dooryard. He tied the reins to the hitching post and came around to help Usha down. Sweat ran in his face, and his hair was slicked to his neck, exposing the cant of his ears. He brushed absently at it, the old habit of covering this sign of mixed blood that was seldom welcome among elves or humans.

  Usha took the hand he offered and stepped into water that soaked her skirt to the knees. The mud sucked at the bottom of her shoes. He said he’d wait with the carriage and the skittish team.

  “All right,” Usha said, trying to sound optimistic and failing. She hiked up her sodden hems. “I’ll go see what’s left.”

  The inn’s common room had taken on water. The rushes always so carefully laid and refreshed were sodden piles swept up against the walls and smelling faintly of rotting herbage and the river. Mud streaked a floor that hadn’t dried and wouldn’t soon. Guests sat or stood around in small groups, still stunned two days after the storm. A woman sat alone at a table near an unshuttered window, hands clasped at her breast as though in prayer as she looked out with the eyes of one beginning to lose hope.

  “Her man and her two children,” Rusty whispered to Usha. “They were at the market when the rains came. Never came home.” He dropped his voice. “There’s talk of bodies washing out of the river, and I think—” He glanced toward the woman. “I think maybe…”

  Usha nodded, her eyes on the woman at the window. “It’s more than talk. What do you hear, Rusty?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing much. People are just coming out now. They stop in sometimes, looking for help or news. I can’t offer much news, but I help where I can, even if it’s only a place to sit and talk for a while. It’s bad, Mistress Usha. Wells are polluted. Larders and storerooms full of ruined food. Not just here, though it’s bad enough in my own storerooms, but everywhere in the lower districts. The whole market square is under water.” He shook his head. “Bad.”

  “Have you heard from Dez?”

  “Not a word. But she’s a survivor, that one. She’ll turn up.”

  He meant to cheer, but after what they’d both learned of the city’s fate, Usha was little heartened. “You know where to find me.”

  Rusty nodded and assured her he’d find her with good news as soon as it arrived. After a discreet pause and a clearing of his throat, he said, “Will you be removing there permanently?”

  “No. Things will clear up here. I’ll keep our rooms.” She avoided the urge to look at the watcher at the window again, the woman holding on to thinning hope. “I know Dez will be back and wanting hers.”

  “You’re not going to find much.” He jerked his chin at the stairway. “Storm blew the shutters right off the windows. It’s as wet up there as it is down there. I’m sorry.”

  Usha stood haplessly in the middle of the space that had only days before been her studio. Her easel was shattered, her palette vanished, swept away in water that had poured in through the open windows. Charcoals and sketches were gone. The painting she’d been working on—a commission lately taken and only days old—was ruined. On the floor, things were worse. Her paint had been storm-flung along with the ingredients of her favorite pa’ressa recipe. They had changed the color of the oak floor.

  With no place to sit, Usha stood, head low, heart aching for the loss.

  “Well,” Rusty said, outside the door and peering in. “It’s certainly a mess, but it’s a colorful mess.”

  “It’s not a mess, it’s a horror, but it’s my little horror. I’m not sure what I can do here. But if nothing more, I can pay you this month’s rent and next so you can hire workmen.”

  But where to go? There wasn’t a room at the Ivy that wasn’t in use or made useless by the storm. She could not imagine there was anyplace else in Haven for her, though she did ask. Rusty confirmed her fear.

  She could only return to Steadfast, to Loren and the game they played with rules no one clearly understood. Since the storm she’d spent each night in his bed—how to say no, to beg for a guest chamber from the man she loved?

  Usha turned to Rusty. “Until it gets better here, I think I can work at Steadfast.” She looked around, weary now. “I suppose I should see if I have a salvageable wardrobe.”

  Things were not much better, but some things could be salvaged. She had only sodden clothing to bring back to Steadfast, but with Rusty’s help she bundled it all up the best she could and dumped it onto the floor of the carriage.

  Usha’s last word to Rusty, private and urgent, was to remind him to let her know the moment he heard anything about how Dezra was faring. Despite his attempt at reassuring her that all was well, Usha was not eased. There should have been something—a message from Dez, Aline, or even Madoc. The silence boded no good.

  19

  Almost a week after the storm, Usha stood at Loren’s bedchamber window in a pool of sunlight. Behind her, Loren spoke quietly to a servant. Usha heard distress in the woman’s voice when she said, “Sir, there’s precious little breakfast to serve. The bread’s gone, the cheese is moldy, there hasn’t been bacon in days—”

  Loren cut her off, but not harshly. “Take what there is into the solar, as usual—but not before you’ve eaten.”

  She murmured something. It sounded like protest. Usha knew it wouldn’t be heeded. Loren, the son of ship captains, a captain once himself for a while, knew the value of keeping his crew as strong and hale as possible. Above all, he knew the value of sharing fare equally with all in hard times. So resentment had no chance to grow, to be sure, but there was more to it—a fundamental fairness people could count on. It must have made his sailors glad to crew with him, and it did make his few servants feel loyal as kin.

  Usha stood in the warm fall of light, hearing more said but no longer listening. For the first time in days, the morning sky showed a faint wash of blue. The gray cover was thinning, light trying to win through. She couldn’t bear to look away.

  Gently, Loren’s hands touched her shoulders, then slipped down her arms.

  Usha looked around, accepted his kiss, and when she felt his hands tighten a little on her shoulders, she turned back to the window. She looked up, her eye caught by a shadow swirling across the ruined gardens.

  “They’re still there.”

  Loren grunted and said, “They won’t be going away, love.” He slipped his hands along her arms again, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. He kissed her neck, and her skin shivered.

  In the sky above Steadfast, a talon of dragons came in from the east. They had no riders—those were quartered in Old Keep—but the dragons came at call. No riders, but they carried burdens—food for the barracks, food for Sir Radulf’s table. As these came in, another dragon flew in from the south, a knight attendant, and swung down over the river turned toward Old Keep.

  “Loren…”

  He turned her from the window. She let him, but only long enough to kiss him. He tried to stop her from returning to look at the sky, but she stepped out of his arms, closer to the window.

  “I can’t pretend they aren’t there, Loren. The knights and all the dragons. There must be twice as many now has when Sir Radulf called in reinforcements. The moor must groan with the weight of them. And I can’t pretend I like it.”

  “No one likes it.”

  Usha said nothing. She didn’t think anyone did who wasn’t Sir Radulf. But she did think Loren himself tolerated the occupation. Before the storm, when Sir Radulf was willing to give a little for all that he was taking, Loren had been able to win concessions, small mercies. Now, Loren had nothing to offer and so nothing to gain. Haven was in ruin.

  “Loren,” Usha said, “is Sir Radulf afraid?”

  “Of what?”

  “The flood. The city slipping out of his grip.”

  Loren kissed her again, a brush o
f lips across her neck. She felt his breath warm on her skin. “I don’t think so. If he were—” He slipped his arms around her, and she leaned against him. “If he is, we’d all do well to be afraid. However it is, things are going to get harder.”

  The red dragon dropped down from the sky to Old Keep’s courtyard. Its rider leaped from the saddle and hit the ground running. Usha couldn’t hear the clanking of armor, but she imagined it well. They all came and went in armor now, and if they damned the heat, their master must have threatened worse than damnation to the knight who did not show himself at full strength at all times.

  In the days since the storm, rumor ran all over the city. Sir Radulf had lost most of his foot soldiers in the flood. No, he had not. Knights died and drowned in the river. No, they had not. These rumors were like massing armies to Sir Radulf, who’d maintained control of his conquered city with display of force.

  The truth Haven hated was that Sir Radulf had not lost a knight or dragon in the storm. He had reinforced his strength until he’d doubled his force again. Knights manned the walls, rotating shifts and sleeping in the watchtowers so there was never a moment when the walls were unguarded. Dragons sailed the sky day and night. Radulf had indeed lost many of his foot soldiers, though. The river yielded up the bodies of dozens, along with the corpses of the unlucky folk who’d been caught unawares.

  The one true tale was the one Sir Radulf could have no effect on. The great storm had savaged all of Ansalon with the same power and rage as the Cataclysm hundreds of years before. No nation had been spared. No one had gone unscathed. Out of that story, came the rumor Sir Radulf hated most, the one that said his occupation force was being recalled to Neraka.

  In the sky, dragons wheeled. Usha turned away from the sight of them, come like vultures to feed. It had been a pretty hope and a sweet rumor, but Sir Radulf wasn’t leaving.