Prisoner of Haven

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 the 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 over 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.

“Show me.”

Wisely, he didn’t smile when he held the door wide. “Come inside.”

Dezra stepped into darkness and stood perfectly still. Behind her, the ambient light of night seemed startling. Light of stars, of rosy candles in the windows at the top of Aline’s house, the waning moon shining down. These combined to thin the darkness a bit outside the shed door.

“Wait,” he said, and took a long stride ahead of her. A vague shape in the dark, he moved. She thought he bent down, then stood again. “Come here.”

She followed the sound of his voice and collided with him. Madoc cursed, caught his balance on something Dezra couldn’t see. She looked down and saw a deeper blackness, a square opening that seemed to drop without end.

“What’s that?” She almost reached for her knife again, then felt faintly foolish.

“A secret way.” He crouched down, looked up and around at her, his face a pale oval in the feeble light from outside. He turned his head and vanished.

Dezra heard a thump and grunt, then he called, “Wait. There’s a ladder here somewhere. Damn ... somewhere.”

Her general mistrust of the mage didn’t quell curiosity. Dezra stood at the edge of the drop. Steel scraped on flint, a spark, a hiss, and a small torch flared to bright light. In the sudden glare, she saw that the drop was not much more than half again Madoc’s length.

“Move,” she said and followed him down.

Mud squelched under her boots. Firelight ran on the surface of puddles and sheened off walls where trickles of water ran. Dez saw a ceiling of damp earth and walls shored up by thick beams. The ladder that should have been propped and ready lay in the mud, it’s footing undermined by the wet, shifting earth.

“A pirate road,” Madoc said. “This is one tunnel of several that run out to the river. I’m here to check it and the others, to make sure all’s well after the rain. Things get unsettled by even a little water.” He lifted his torch, inspecting walls and ceiling. They dripped, but the wooden beams shoring them seemed strong enough to Dezra’s eye. He turned and seemed to take a brand from the earthen wall itself. This he ignited from his own torch. “As long as you’re here, come on along.”

“On your inspection tour?”

Madoc handed her the second torch. “If you like. Or you can go back up and kick your heels against the cobbles with old Dunbrae until it’s time for him to leave.”

Again curiosity sparked. Dezra took the torch. “You don’t much like him. Why?”

Madoc didn’t reply, and she followed him through the tunnel. It wasn’t long before they came to two branches. One looked fairly dry. The other was clogged with mud and rocks and fallen shoring beams. When Dez turned down to look into the clear tunnel Madoc pulled her back.

“No. These branches aren’t going to be safe, even if one looks like it. Listen.”

Beneath the comfortable hiss of torches, she heard the steady trickle of water. “It’s going to fall soon.”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

She lifted her torch and followed, careful to mark her way. At every intersection, he showed her where brands and oil-soaked rags were stored in waxed canvas pouches. “If you have to run these tunnels, you’ll want to know where to find fire at need. Without light, you could wander around under Haven for longer than you’d like.”

Dez noted the places and followed in silence. They splashed through puddles up to their ankles, but found no worse. Three of the small off-shoot tunnels proved dry, and Madoc told her where they led.

When they stopped to check the last cache of torch materials, she said, “There haven’t been pirates up the river since well after the Cataclysm. All this looks a little more recent than that.”

“It is, but only the shoring up and the widening. The tunnels themselves are as old as I say. Before the elven kingdom finally fell, Qui’thonas used them to get elves into the city when it was too dangerous to make a clear run from the river into Haven. A back door, if you will.”

“How? These don’t connect to the river on the Qualinesti side, do they?”

“They don’t. I hear it wasn’t the favorite route—right through Darken Wood. It got harder and harder at the end. More elves died than were saved. But if they made it, they ran north to Haven through the woods, vanished into caves in the hills, or scrambled through those and to the riverside. If they got that far and safely across the river after that, they dashed for the tunnels and came up behind Haven’s walls.” He shrugged. “And then the elves stopped coming.”

Madoc pointed ahead to a place where the tunnel narrowed. “Up ahead is the way out. Not to the river,” he said, answering her questioning look. “That’s down the west arm of the last intersection.” He doused his torch and, reluctantly, she did the same. “Come with me.”

In the dark, with only Madoc’s after-image lingering, Dezra felt familiar distrust crowding in. He’d been forthcoming, careful not to do or say anything to arouse the distrust. Still, she felt it. If Madoc knew that, he gave no indication. She followed as he went a few strides farther then stopped. He took her hand and put it against the rough wooden leg of a ladder. When Dez craned her neck to see up, she had the sense that wood covered the opening.

“Where?” she asked, instinctively whispering now.

He moved her aside, took to the ladder and slowly lifted the hatch. He gestured, she followed, and the feeble illumination of stars and a sinking moon seemed bright to Dezra as she lifted herself out of the hatch. They stood in a small thicket of conifers of the long-needled kind that didn’t grow naturally in this part of Abanasinia. These had been planted for someone’s pleasure many years ago. They made a screen around the tunnel entrance, thick and dense.

The boom of bullfrogs sounded like thunder, the shrill of peepers like screaming. Dezra smelled the water of a pond nearby, muddy after the rain. She looked around for bearings and caught them at once. Across the road she saw the back of the Ivy. In a high window, light burned in Usha’s new studio. A week ago, Usha had counted her savings and decided she’d be able to pay her debts in the city, pay rent in advance for the room she and Dez had been sharing, and pay for the room across the hall. The decision made, it didn’t take long to carry out. With Rusty’s help and Dezra’s, Usha had trundled her easel and paints, her canvasses and sketches and all the rest across to a much larger space, a room that served as her studio with an alcove for her bed. At this hour, she wouldn’t be painting in such uncertain light, but she might well be writing, reading, or immersed in the play and pattern of light and shadow, dreaming half-dreams and thinking about the work to hand.

One dash across the road would put Dez at the inn’s back door. She turned to say something to Madoc. Swift, he pulled her back into the pines, his hand over her mouth. Instinctively, she twisted away from him. He held harder and pointed out to the road.

Three knights walked by. Lightly armored but well-armed, they made little noise as they went, only the sound of their voices and coarse laughter could be heard.

Madoc waited till they were well gone, then let Dez go.

“Do you see, now, Dezra Majere?” His voice grew cold. “This is why Aline needs me. Sir Radulf changed the timing of that watch only this evening, and he added a man to it. No one who isn’t a knight knew it but me. It’s a safe bet I will know where the watch is every day, in every corner of the city.”

Suspicion flared, and Dezra said, “It’s how you know that troubles me.”

Madoc’s eyes glittered, hard as stone. His expression was no longer congenial. “I know, but telling you how will compromise more people than you or Aline. You say I have no allegiance. You’re wrong. But you don’t know where all my loyalties lie, and there’s no reason for me to tell you. Aline can live with that. Can you?”

Dez made a choice. “I can, and I hope Aline and everyone else won’t die of it.”

He looked up the road and down again. All was quiet. “You’ll have to take the chance.”

“You, too,” Dez said. “If I even think you’re going to be a danger to Aline or to Usha ...” Her hand moved swiftly, the knife flashed from her boot sheath. “You’re a dead man.”

Madoc shrugged as though to say she’d spoken the obvious. “But for now, we work together.”

“For now.”

Dezra dashed across the road and slipped through the shadows and across the garden behind the inn. Not surprisingly, she found the kitchen door bolted. It wouldn’t be opened again until Bertie the cook’s boy roused himself to go out and see if there would be a delivery of produce from the market or whether he’d have to dig around in the kitchen garden. It could go one way or the other. Sometimes the knights confiscated cartloads of produce from the outlying farms, and sometimes they didn’t. When they came back lacking, rumor said it was because farmers were hoarding, secreting their fruit and vegetables in root cellars and caves. It was the kind of thing that put Dez in two minds. Good for the farmers if they were cheating the knights. Too bad for Haven, which would go hungry soon if food stopped coming in.

For now, however, what the knights took, they dropped off at the market, loading the carts of those who could pay good steel coin and ignoring those who couldn’t. Distribution they left up to the carters, for now. Bertie had a kinsman of some degree or another in the carting business with whom he was on good terms. The Ivy was making out well, so far.

Still, we’ll have to do something about a better way inside than waiting for Bertie, Dez thought as she settled down in the fragrant shadows of a honeysuckle hedge to wait for night to end.