Prisoner of Haven

10

Usha sat in the cushioned window seat, the city quiet behind her. It was as though all the world was sleeping, and she was a solitary island of wakefulness. She felt so until she turned and looked out the window. Old Keep, high on the hill, blazed with light. Sir Radulf Eigerson was said to seldom sleep; Lady Mearah—said rumor—never did. Usha imagined them pacing the corridor of the place, issuing curt, cold orders to knights and soldiers. A chill slipped down her neck and slid along her spine. How easy must have been the order for a hanging? She remembered Sir Radulf’s ice cold eyes. Not difficult at all.

The scent of the river moved only faintly on the night. The breeze came from another direction tonight, and so the fragrances and sounds of the inn’s gardens drifted through the high windows of Usha’s studio. Honeysuckle and wisteria mingled with the rich odor of dark wet earth, and the peepers still shrilled by the pond across the road behind the inn. Underneath it all, the tang of paint and turpentine remained to speak of a week of her work.

Usha wondered where Dez was now. They hadn’t spoken this morning. Dezra had been up and out early, and she hadn’t come home yet. She was Qui’thonas now, more often with Aline and Dunbrae than at the Ivy. By design or chance, they hadn’t seen much of each other in the week since Madoc had walked her home from the Grinning Goat. Usha wasn’t prepared to lay the blame for that at Dezra’s feet—or not all of it. She hadn’t been able to forget her sister-in-law’s insinuation that Usha’s behavior wasn’t appropriate for a married woman. Still, she wondered where Dezra was.

The night was hot. Usha tucked up her skirts into her belt, as farm girls do. She drew up her bare legs, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.

Shapely legs, Palin used to say. Wife, come here and bring those shapely legs of yours along. He hadn’t said any such thing in a very long time.

Usha stretched and yawned. She thought of abandoning the studio for the little alcove of a bedroom, but returned her chin to rest on her knees. She had been on her feet all day, mixing paints and working at the canvas where the portrait of Lorelia Gance’s two sons was now nearly finished. Another hour of good light and it would have been finished, the complete work drying now. It was not to be, but Usha hadn’t been ready to leave her work once the light left her studio.

And so she’d sat in the window, studying her painting by the moon’s light as it traveled across the room, sweeping the canvas. The images of young Thelan and Kalend had been illuminated by silver for as long as the moon hung outside her window. Shadows had draped most of the portrait, but the eyes of the two boys seemed to gleam with mischief. That silver light was gone now, replaced by the warm glow from two banks of candles, and the faces, once a little distant in the moon’s light, now had come to rich, full life.

Usha laughed softly. She could imagine that if she looked away for even a moment, Lorelia’s imps would leap from the canvas and tear around the studio like a couple of wild goblin-children.

But there on canvas they were quite tame. Kalend stood beside his seated brother. In the end, Lorelia had left the choice of setting in Usha’s hands, and Usha had chosen the solar. She had painted a richly appointed room, one in which books lined the wall, rare bound books of the kind only seen in libraries like the one in Palanthas. Velvet curtains draped the windows, and vases full of roses graced the tables. Thelan sat with quill in hand, a lap desk on his knee. Kalend held a model ship in his hands as though he’d just lifted it to study. She had painted them among the icons of their parents’ riches, and she couldn’t doubt that Lorelia and her councilman husband would be pleased.

A silvery lock of curling hair slipped from beneath Usha’s kerchief. She tucked it back behind her ear, and with the motion came the sudden feeling that were the painting dry this instant, it would not feel finished. Usha didn’t know why, but she knew she should sit and watch; she should wait.

And so she did, “watching the night grow dark as the moon sank. She watched the candlelight rise and fall with the breeze. She sat in the window, the stiffness of the day’s work fading, her muscles relaxing, and she knew when the breeze fell, when the stillness of the night became like a muffling cloak. She heard knights on patrol, the innkeeper’s dog barking, one of many shouting at the night. Cats screeched in the alley. Moments later, she felt the grim shadow of a dragon overhead, the fear of it sliding like ice through her heart. The dogs grew quiet, the cats suddenly silent. Usha felt fear melt when the beast was gone, sailing over another part of the city to chill sleep with nightmare.

At last, the sky grew lighter. She heard the rattle and clop of the cart that made the rounds of the inns and taverns—the produce seller, who if he had anything to sell came first to these patrons with his fruit and vegetables and eggs before taking his goods to the market. The solid sound of hooves on cobbles roused her, as though she’d been sleeping.

Usha yawned, stretched her arms, and stood to ease muscles gone stiff with sitting. Pale dawn’s light made the little candle flames seem to vanish. It lay gently on the painting. Though she had felt that the painting was not complete, the soft light showed her that nothing had changed during her vigil.

“Ho! The inn!” an old man’s voice cried. “Ho! Bertie! Wake up, boy!”

The produce cart by-passed the lane that led to the inn’s dooryard and went along the cobbled street so that Bertie the cook’s boy could dart out the back of the Ivy with empty baskets to fill. Usha heard the kitchen door slam, followed by the thud of the boy’s feet on the dirt path to the street.

“Hey!” Bertie cried. “Pull up, old man! Don’t pass us by!”

The carter laughed and pulled his brown mare to a halt. The laughter drew a smile from Usha. This ritual was old between the two, for the produce seller made it a point to arrive at the Ivy first and wait for a yea or nay from Bertie or the cook.

Like a storm rumbling in the distance, the sound of galloping horses throbbed in the morning stillness. Usha’s smile died as Bertie turned to look up the street in the opposite direction from where the cart had come. From the height of her study window, Usha saw the knights before he did. In the narrow street, they spurred their horses, running sometimes side by side, sometimes three together, as though they were in a race.

Usha leaned out her window, calling out to Bertie. Her warning went unheard as the laughing, shouting knights, five on tall horses, five in flashing mail shirts, swept around the cart, cursing the old man and hooting in laughter at his terror. The brown mare panicked and bolted. The cart lurched, then tumbled. The old man fell from the seat, trying to scramble out of the way of iron-shod hooves.

Bertie ran to help the old man up, the poor creature shaking an ancient fist and cursing as loud as his quavering voice could manage. People poured out of the inn, children wide-eyed and clinging to their mothers’ hands, young men and boys milling around and snarling at the vanished knights. None bent to help the old man and the cook’s boy retrieve the spilled produce until Dezra came running round the corner.

“Come on!” she shouted, elbowing a young man into action, shooing away a few children. “Help the old fellow, won’t you?”

Prodded, the young man got the carter to his feet while Dez and Bertie gathered up what fruits and vegetables hadn’t been damaged. One or two others pitched in by chasing after the bolted mare and trying to right the cart.

Thinking to run down and help, Usha turned from the window.

Her breath caught hard in her throat. Her painting had changed. The boys still stood and sat where she’d arranged them. But behind the children, hardly seen but out the corner of the eye, two strong, well-grown men stood. One had dark hair, the other golden. Thelan went clean-shaven, a proper merchant prince in rich attire. His brother—

Usha gasped, in her heart a pang of both fear and pride. Dark-haired Kalend wore martial attire, and he bore a shield whose insignia Usha well knew—that of a Solamnic Knight of the Rose. The insignia was the same as the one her own child wore, the Lady Knight Linsha Majere.

Kalend stood tall in armor burnished like silver, the armor of a Knight of Solamnia. Painted upon his shield was the mark of an order of knights that even now, in lands beyond Haven, beyond Qualinesti of the elves, fought courageously against dark knights such as those who ran roughshod through Haven today.

With great restraint, Usha assured the harried Lorelia that the painting would be framed—“Yes, exactly as you directed”—and it would be installed in her solar by week’s end. There was a constant coming and going of framers. The dwarf Henge had the work. Not one of them noticed the ghost of a knight, and finally the painting went home, by cart through the streets, wrapped carefully and put in a crate, the crate packed in straw.

On the day of its arrival Usha and the portrait were guests of honor at a gathering of Lorelia’s family, the two boys, her husband, her cousin Loren, and his daughter Tamara.

Who, she wondered, would see just the boys, and who would see the ghost of a knight not yet made?

At Lorelia’s insistence, there was a light supper before the unveiling, afterward a stroll in the gardens while the air was growing cool, and the inevitable discussions between Have-lock Gance and Loren Halgard about when, whether, or if Sir Radulf would begin to issue safe conduct passes out of the city. The two men were not in agreement, and Usha tended to believe Havelock Gance when he said, “Those are for merchants willing to leave their families behind for hostage. I think it was always going to be that way, but early on ...” He shook his head, his skepticism changing to bitterness before Usha’s eyes. “Early on, the talk of passes was to keep people quiet. Fools believed it.”

“We believed it,” Loren said, grimly.

“You heard me—fools. All right, all right,” he said in answer to Loren’s hard look. “It’s true he made a show of letting people into the city and back out again—the Plainsfolk who trade in the market, a farmer or two who wanted to sell his produce. But now that he has his own supply lines the only choice a farmer gets is to hand over the harvest to the knights or die for it. They did the same thing in Qualinesti. I don’t know what made me think they wouldn’t do it here.”

“Qualinesti didn’t have the trade routes we have, or the trading partners. They traded some, here and there and mostly down in the south where the knights could control it. We have the sea lanes, Havelock, and our captains know every port from here south to Ice Wall, from here north over Nordmaar and down to the Blood Sea.” He sat back and took a drink from his wine goblet. “And, to boot, our traders know most of the caravan routes across the Plains of Dust. They can’t keep us prisoners forever. They’ll have to let the fleet go soon. Let them put a knight at the elbow every captain. Let them replace half the crew from their own rabble. They still have to let the fleet go.”

“Some,” Havelock Gance said very quietly, “some think we should resist.”

Loren’s face looked pale. Usha thought it looked like the skin was suddenly drawn tight over his bones. “The time for that was weeks ago, cousin. The Lord Mayor chose otherwise and hasn’t been heard from about the matter since. And I think he was right. If we’d resisted, we would have lost far more than we already have. We are not warriors. We are merchants.”

“Merchants who bought a lie and wait for passes that will not come.” Gance, who had not agreed with the Lord Mayor, growled something into his wine goblet and looked up to see Usha’s doubtful expression. Eyebrow cocked, he said, “Mistress Usha, it seems you have an opinion.”

“Several,” Usha said, smiling to soften the reply. “But on this matter, I agree with Loren. Solace is a wealthier city than Haven these days.”

Gance bristled, and Usha shook her head gently.

“You know it’s true, but Haven has one thing Solace will never have—a merchant fleet. The fleet is the reason the knights took Haven first when they came for the Free Realms. But I agree with you, sir, that Sir Radulf isn’t going to be issuing passes.” Her heart dropped a little as a long held hope leeched away. “He won’t take a chance of letting any of the wealth out of this city. And you know people would bolt with their jewels and silver as soon as they could.”

“Some,” said Loren grimly, “have already decided to do that, and they’re not taking more than the clothes on their backs.”

“That, I think, is the danger the knights most fear,” Usha said. “However unfounded the idea, they don’t want to take the chance that the refugees who leave will return with a liberating army.” Thinking of Dez, of Aline and Qui’thonas, she said, “It will only get harder from here.”

None of the three spoke of the second executions, the five men and three women found hanged on crude gallows erected in the middle of the night at one of the major crossroads, well within the city walls. They’d born a painted placard with the same message as the first: Swift Judgment. Swift Justice. Beneath a sigil shaped like a sword was neatly printed the one, stark detail of their crimes: they had been caught trying to leave the city. Like the first, news of this execution was a horror that ran through the city on wings, then vanished away from public talk almost as quickly. As though, Usha thought, people couldn’t bear to admit too much darkness into their lives for very long.

Conversation drifted away from grim realities. As the day grew cooler and the sky deeper, there had been a rowdiness of boys, and as Lorelia kept mentioning by way of apology for her reduced staff, “a defection of servants throughout the quarter.” They did not indenture servants in Haven. None were vassals of a manor. They were free folk, and many servants did not think it satisfactory to accept meal and bed for compensation until things returned to normal in Haven. There were other jobs to be had, ones that paid at the end of the day. One of the defectors was the tutor of the Gance sons, who’d claimed she was not too proud to find work in a tavern where at least she’d be paid something as server and cook.

There had been all of that, and there had been, since Usha first arrived at Lorelia’s home, a pull and a tug she could not ignore. Loren Halgard had his eye on her more often than on whatever person he was speaking with. When he asked to escort her into the house, Usha put her hand on his arm and allowed it. It was a pleasant sensation, a man’s arm under her hand again. His skin was brown and warm, and when he leaned close to whisper his congratulations on finishing the portrait, Usha smelled the river breeze on him, fresh and cool.

“My dear!” Lorelia Gance fluttered between the painting and the artist. “It’s wonderful! Have you named it?”

All eyes turned to Usha, waiting to learn the answer in various attitudes of interest—politeness, and in the case of Tamara, barely concealed boredom.

“I call it ‘Pride and Promise.’ ”

Lorelia beamed, her husband Havelock made a comfortable sound of approval.

“Pride and Promise.” It sat in a broad oak frame, for the moment resting upon a stout easel until it could be lifted and mounted above the hearth. There, it would become the focus of all who entered. Pleased, Usha admitted the painting showed well. However, she kept private her puzzlement that no one but she seemed to see the faint image of a Solamnic knight standing behind the gangly boy of the portrait. Puzzlement and, she had to admit, a certain amount of relief. She did not doubt her work. She had perfect faith that the magic in her muse would reveal its purpose when that became necessary. Sometimes, though, she wished she could know what the magic was thinking when it chose to express itself.

Usha glanced uneasily at Tamara who peered at the canvas as though looking for faults. If she found any, the image of a Solamnic knight hovering ghostly on the canvas was not one. If she’d seen it, Usha wondered, studying the girl as keenly as Tamara had studied the painting, would she have gone to Sir Radulf with the news?

Tamara moved away. Thelan and his brother, Kalend the knight-to-be, stood restlessly before the portrait of themselves, already bored by the company of their elders. Kalend elbowed his brother, and Thelan poked him hard between the ribs. Their father clamped a hand on each boy’s shoulder.

Tamara returned to the easel, peering even more closely. Watching her while appearing not to, Usha held her breath. She let it go softly when the girl murmured, “I don’t think Kalend’s eyes are quite that far apart.”

Loren, standing beside Havelock, quietly cleared his throat. Tamara lifted her head as though to defy something implicit in the sound, then she sighed.

“But the colors are quite lovely,” she said, not to Usha but to Lorelia.

“And you, Loren,” his cousin said. “You’ve not spoken a word about the portrait. Are these not the exact images of my boys?”

Gravely, Loren agreed that the painting might well be a mirror for the two boys to stand before. He inclined his head in a small bow to Usha. “And I’m delighted that Tamara is improving her understanding of how colors work to make a pleasing whole.”

His guests tended, his own cup full again, Havelock Gance toasted the portrait by pledging the health of both artist and subjects.

He was a tall man, thin as a whippet, and quiet where Lorelia chattered and laughed. Stress marked his pale face—the skin around his eyes tight, the lines around his mouth deeply scored. Havelock Gance was the chief counselor to the Lord Mayor of Haven, a man used to power who had been weeks watching power bleed away.

Were she to paint him, Usha would paint a man trying to staunch a wound.

“Thank you, my Lord Counselor.” She smiled, he returned it, and his eyes lighted in a way that reminded Usha of the glint in the eye of the young Solamnic knight he could not see. “Your sons were admirably robust subjects.”

Comfortable laughter applauded the tactful description of the rowdy sons, and Loren came to stand beside Usha. His eye kindled, but his cheek was pale. She thought of Havelock Gance, a man trying to keep a balance between the needs of his city and the demands of Sir Radulf. It was borne in on Usha that their discussions in the garden had not been casual conversation between friends, or the uninformed wondering that made much of Haven’s conversation these days. The two men had been debating a point, perhaps a strategy toward a goal they shared: the survival of Haven and her people.

“Loren—”

He hushed her with a gesture, in his eyes a plea to soften the abruptness of it. “Walk with me. Later, when this is over, walk with me to your inn.”

Around them, the voices of Lorelia’s family rose and fell, but the conversation was ebbing. Outside, the shadows grew long. People must leave soon, for curfew was coming.

“You won’t be able to do that and return home in time.”

She said so without knowing where he lived. He shook his head. “It’s not a problem. My carriage will take Tamara home, and it will be waiting by the Ivy for me before we return.”

His gray eyes grew dark. Usha thought of storms. But she didn’t think of anger, not his toward her, and she didn’t imagine that he commanded her, though his stern look could be misunderstood that way. And so she agreed. She would let him walk her home.

Usha walked in silence beside Loren in the long shadows and the russet light of sunset. The street was quiet, carts and most carriages gone back to their stables. Dogs ran in small packs, more of those than used to be when the streets of Haven were filled with people day and night.

“It’s like a different town,” Usha said, her voice low, as a knight rode by.

She knew him by his mail shirt. They didn’t go in full armor anymore. They had no fear of a populace willing to do what it must to keep peace. Now and then, they hanged the luckless who tried escape, but Sir Radulf had no real fear of Haveners.

The knight looked at her, slowed his mount and sat to stare. His frank regard made Usha uncomfortable. His eyes reminded her of Sir Radulf’s, the eyes of a man who possesses all he sees. Loren took her hand and placed it in the crook of his arm. The knight smirked and moved on.

“He knows you,” Usha said.

Loren shrugged. “We’ve seen each other before.”

“If I’d been walking alone?”

“Who knows?” Loren lifted a hand to pat hers. She almost smiled to see his expression as he thought better of what would have been a condescending gesture. “But you aren’t alone, and you’re safe.”

The knight met another at the intersection of two streets. They stopped, talked, and rode on. The watch was setting up.

Her hand on Loren’s arm, Usha kept pace with him, and they didn’t stop until they were three or four blocks from the Ivy. The knights were gone, only the sound of their horses hooves to say they’d turned each down a separate street.

Loren looked around and said, “Usha, the portrait of Lorelia’s boys is lovely. Your work is remarkable.” His voice dropped lower for emphasis. “But you will want to be careful.”

She tilted her head a little, to question.

The storm grew stronger in his eyes, some emotion he wasn’t ready to act upon. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. That portrait is dangerous.”

A little thrill raced along Usha’s arms. He had seen the magic in this painting as well as in “Silver Flight.” She stopped, turned, and took his hands in her own. The gesture surprised her. When she began to move away, he closed his hands around hers.

“Loren, what do you see when you look at the portrait?”

He frowned, puzzled now. “You know what I see.”

“In truth, I don’t. I know what I see, and I’m fairly sure I know what others see. But, what do you see?”

Again his voice was low, and he glanced along the street. “You’ve painted a ghost into that portrait.”

“A ghost? Of a dead person?” Usha shook her head. “I certainly don’t see that.”

He did not smile. “Don’t quibble. You know what I mean. The knight. You painted the shadow of the knight.”

She did not argue, and when she realized she was dangerously close to flirtation, her laughter sounded brittle. Usha removed her hands from his. She continued toward the inn, and it seemed to her that the evening air had grown chill.

“Loren, your cousin doesn’t see ... it. Havelock doesn’t. I’m fairly certain your daughter doesn’t either.”

This gave him pause. He was silent and she knew he was trying to understand how some could see one set of images on the canvas while others saw differently.

“I know,” she said. “It’s my magic, but ... it belongs to itself.”

“Are you certain Sir Radulf won’t see a ghost in the painting? Are you sure we are the only two who can see it? And for that matter, why can I see it?”

“I don’t know.”

Again, the sound of a horse, but this came from ahead. Loren’s carriage waited at the mounting block near the inn’s dooryard. He took her hands again, his eyes sharp, his expression earnest.

“Usha, can you fix the picture?”

“Fix it?” The idea was strange to her. “It isn’t broken. Loren, it is what it is. Who is meant to see all of it, will.”

“Kalend himself didn’t see it.”

“Not yet. Perhaps he isn’t meant to.”

“And if Sir Radulf sees it?”

She couldn’t answer, she didn’t know, and so she said, “I trust my magic. You must trust me.”

His hands still held hers. He pressed them now, palm to palm, and covered them both. “I don’t understand you, Usha Majere. In a time when magic is dying, you fling paint onto a canvas and create wonders.” He shook his head. “In this dangerous place, you ask for trust. I don’t understand you.”

He was not taller than she. Usha could meet him eye to eye. She did, looking into the eyes of this man who spoke of putting his hope in the promise of a conquering knight, and at the same time sought the company of the woman who had painted a work he was afraid could destroy his family.

Usha felt a rush of sympathy for him—his struggle to do what was best for his child, his kin, and the city he loved. Traps lay on every side. Sir Radulf could betray his trust, destroy his daughter ... Loren played a dangerous game.

In that moment she wanted to answer him and say, “I don’t understand myself.”

But she did not, for if he’d asked her for a better answer, she’d have to look closely at what that answer could be and admit that she liked the way Loren’s hand felt on her arm. She liked the way he looked at her—gravely from gray eyes as though he had something he wanted to say but had no words for the saying.

She would have to admit that when she was with Loren she could not remember much about Palin Majere that didn’t call up the ghosts of passions that had burned brightly in the years of their marriage—and dwindled to sorrow and loss in these years of his absence.

Shaken, Usha bade Loren good night, freed her hands, and slipped away, running the last half block to the inn.