Prisoner of Haven

12

Heart pounding, pulse in her temples booming, Dezra pressed herself against the stony side of the jagged gulch. Dirt slithered down the neck of her shirt, and something small with too many legs scurried past her cheek. Her breathing sounded like a bellows as she bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air. Above the crashing of her heartbeat, Dez tried to hear the sounds of pursuit.

She heard it—a shout, thunder of hard-ridden horses—and Dez pressed into the shadows as four horsemen galloped by above the gulch. She saw the horses, the foam of sweat on their legs. She saw the flash of iron and mail as someone shouted, “Where’s the woman got to?”

Another voice called, “How should I know?”

The pack above slowed, horses stamping and blowing. She heard a curse in a language she didn’t know and the sound of argument. Quickly, she looked upstream, back the way she’d come. Silt clouded the water, but that would be hard to see from above.

She hoped.

Another curse, and this one in Common. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go before milady comes looking for us.”

“And then what? Go back and tell her we might have seen something of interest but didn’t find out what?”

Other voices lifted in rough opinion, and Dez’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. Milady! These were Lady Mearah’s men, dark knights from Old Keep. Behind them, on the high land above the ravine, a farmhouse burned, and the corpses of the farmer and his two sons were laid out for wolf-fodder. Ahead, Dunbrae and two refugees rode toward the ravaged farm, toward the place they expected to meet Dezra. The farm was to be a waystop where friends would feed them and keep them the night. It was to be the place where Dunbrae would hand over the refugees to Dez so she could take them the next leg of the journey on the road across the moors and through the stony Seeker Reaches.

That plan was shattered when Dez came out of the hills and saw the smoking ruin of what had once been a stubbornly thriving farm. She’d had no chance to learn what had happened, whether outlaws had fallen on the lonely farm or something else, for standing in the ruin, she’d heard the sound of harsh laughter and the ring of bridles as four knights flashed down from one of the lean, stony pastures behind the farmyard.

One had seen her, another cried the chase, and Dezra had fled onto the moor. The best she could hope for now was that everyone’s luck held and Dunbrae and his charges wouldn’t run into the horsemen.

The argument was short-lived, and the riders stormed past. After a moment, Dez heard a change in the sound of the ground-thunder. The pack of them turned away from the gulch and galloped west across the moor.

Dezra groaned a prayer of thanks. If her luck held, they’d ride a good bit before thinking about checking the gullies and ravines.

Dezra ran, splashing through the narrow brook. She eyed the rocks on each side and the slopes of the rift. Sooner or later, she’d have to find a place to clamber up one side or the other.

She stumbled, splashing to her knees. Cursing, she tried to get up and fell again as pain like fire shot through her knee.

The damn thing’s busted—!

She tried again, staggered, and knew her knee wasn’t broken. It just hurt like it was. That was little comfort as Dezra stumbled on, searching for a way up, a way out of the gulch. She no longer thought it had been outlaws who’d raided the farm and torched it. In memory, she saw the dead man again, and then thought of his wife and daughter. They might now be suffering a harder fate than their kinsmen. Dark knights were not, these days, taken from the ranks of noble families. If Lady Mearah’s knights out of Haven had done the ill work, they wouldn’t be above selling the women in the same hideous markets where outlaws did their foul trade.

Dezra stumbled again, righted herself, and went on. Her knee screamed in pain, and she grunted curses at every step.

If knights had done the work, they’d have done it because they knew the farmer and his kin had been helping people escape Haven. By all the gone gods, the name Qui’thonas might have been spoken. Her heart sank. To save a wife, a daughter’s life, the secret might have been exposed.

And it would have been exposed for nothing.

Dezra rounded a sharp bend and blessed vanished gods when she saw her way up. A small path crawled up the eastern slope of the gulch, not more than the trail a slide of rocks might have left. Dezra laughed bitterly. Right there, at the foot of the path lay the stones that had forged the way, and they’d not made a secure path, no. No matter. It was a way, and she would take it.

The blood pounded in her head. Pain marked the beat. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Her knee throbbed, but not with the pain of a broken bone. For that, she was grateful.

“All right, then,” she muttered. “Up, now.”

Up, and it was a hard climb, a crawl at the end, with sweat and tears the fee for gaining the top. She looked around, seeking her bearings. Haven was a smudge on the southern horizon. Around her stretched harsh gray moorland. She stilled her breathing, trying to hear, but only the cries of gulls from the river and the occasional rasp of a raven interrupted the constant moan of wind over the moor.

And then she heard it—the ring of steel on steel. A small brown haze of dust hung in the air, and Dezra knew where the fighting was.

Dez shifted the quiver on her hip and strung her bow. She hadn’t the legs for running. Her knee would betray her. And so she walked toward the dust and the shouting. Steadily, head down and determined, she marched toward the sound of a horse’s scream. Closer, she stopped and nocked an arrow to the bowstring. Two others she clamped between her teeth. Stalking on, like grim death hunting, she picked her first mark and didn’t let him out of sight. Dezra took down his horse with an arrow through the eye. She killed the fallen rider the same way.

They had been four on horseback and one of them a knight. By the time Dez killed the horse and rider, one more horse was down but not killed, and the others were shying and rearing. The knight lay dead in his armor, and Dunbrae was yanking his axe out of the man’s throat. The dwarf fought a defensive fight with his battle-axe, the deadly blade flashing around him even though the haze. One of the refugees backed him, and his was the third kill. He left Dunbrae and turned, looking for the last of the attackers.

Dez saw him first—a burly, unshaven foot soldier who looked ugly enough to have goblin blood in him. The man turned toward a pile of stones, menacing a thin young woman who clutched a little girl wailing in terror. He had dark eyes empty of any light of mercy.

Dez nocked the third arrow, and Dunbrae abandoned the battle-axe for his throwing axe. In the same instant each took aim and let fly. An arrow through the throat, Dunbrae’s axe between his shoulder blades, the soldier fell, shock filling his eyes and blood bursting from his mouth.

Across the corpse, the dwarf’s eyes met Dezra’s. She raised an eyebrow, he cocked a dry grin, and so each knew the other was hale enough.

“Someone knows about Qui’thonas,” Dunbrae said.

Dez loosened the tension of her bowstring. “And the farm is burned to the foundations.”

“Damn.” Dunbrae squinted out across the moor, north as though he could see the ruins of the farm. “All dead?”

“The father and the sons. The women ...” She shrugged. “No sign of them. But outlaws or knights—”

Dunbrae spat in the direction of the last dead man. “It was knights. I heard ’em crowin’ and carrying on. The women are gone, carried off somewhere.”

“We have to tell Aline that this way out is a dead end now.”

“Worse,” said the dwarf. “Sir Radulf knows about Qui’thonas. Not the name, maybe. All luck holding, not who’s running it. But he knew enough to burn one of our safe houses.”

Dez grunted, and when he cocked an eyebrow, she said, “I’m not sure about Sir Radulf, but these knights were talking about Lady Mearah.”

“So? One plague’s the same as another.”

“Maybe,” Dez said, but for some reason her gut seemed to know that wasn’t so.

Wind moaned down the moors, dust swirled in little dervishes, and flies had come to buzz around the dead. Gulls cried like ghosts. Dezra waited for the question she knew would come.

“Who cleared this route, Dez? Who told us there’d be no knights anywhere near this place?”

“Madoc Diviner.”

The dwarf grunted. The sobs of the terrified child huddled in her mother’s arms filled the silence between them.

“Men are dead, Usha.” The thud of Dezra’s boot heels as she paced the wooden floor punctuated her words. “Killed two nights ago, and—gods help them—two women were stolen, either dead or on their way to be sold.”

Usha set a plate of cold venison and a pitcher of water on the nightstand next to her sister-in-law’s bed. Dez ignored the makeshift breakfast, and Usha sat on the edge of the bed in stunned silence. The hair on the back of her neck prickled when she thought of the fate of the two missing women.

Dez stopped at the window and leaned against the sill. Blood smeared her clothes, dried and stiff and none of it her own. Her normally sun-browned face looked ashen in the afternoon light. The marks of fatigue and harrowed emotion showed in dark smudges under her eyes.

“Dez, what happened?”

Her voice leaden, Dezra said, “We were betrayed.”

Usha’s blood ran cold. “Do you know ... do you know who betrayed you?”

Dez turned, her eyes flat and hard to read. “Funny you should ask, Usha. Maybe someone who can find a dark knight when he needs to—and get something back in kind for the information he passes on.”

Usha ignored the sarcasm. She tried to brush aside her own anger. The idea was ridiculous.

“I don’t believe you.”

Dezra’s bitter laughter sounded harsh as a crow’s. “You don’t ever believe me about Madoc.”

“I don’t believe little ghosts of rumors, if that’s what you mean. You know why he’s seen with the dark knights.”

“Sure. Information goes both ways. You give a little and hope to get more.”

Dezra poured water into a cup, drank it empty, and stabbed a chunk of venison with her knife. She ate as though she hadn’t had a meal in days.

“How careful do you think he is with what information he lets go, Usha? How soon do you think it will be before he’s made an offer much better than Aline’s?”

“Madoc would never betray Aline.”

“As you like. But no matter who you believe, it was Madoc who told us—his words to my ears!—that no knights would be patrolling where we were going that night.”

It was damning. Usha couldn’t deny. Still, she wasn’t able to believe it.

“Why is it so impossible to believe that Madoc himself was given wrong information? Or information that changed suddenly?”

“Him?” Dezra refilled her cup. “Madoc Diviner who boasts no one knows as much about the goings-on in Haven as he does? Give it over, Usha. He’s not to be trusted.”

Dezra said no more, plainly considering Madoc damned.

“What does Aline say about it?”

Dez looked disgusted. “You know how she is about him—besotted. Aline doesn’t know how to think when it comes to him. It’s like she’s never heard of working both ends against the middle.” Restless, she began to pace, her strides long and her boot heels thumping a grim tattoo on the floor. “He might be a traitor, but Madoc’s no fool, Usha. No one can be an honest broker of information these days. Sooner or later, Madoc will have to take sides. And the wise man picks his side early. Looks like he’s made his choice.”

Usha’s cheeks flushed with anger. “You have no reason to say that!”

“No reason—!”

“A mistake was made. Knights were where you weren’t expecting them. You don’t know Madoc set you up.”

“And I don’t know he didn’t. All I know is that I haven’t trusted him from the start, and I’m not starting now.”

Usha lifted the hem of her skirt and stepped over a dark, trickling stream of ... she didn’t like to think what. Rats flashed around the piles of trash outside narrow doorways, bold even in daylight. One lean old gray sat atop a heap of rags and rotting food, beady eyes glinting darkly as it looked at her with clear disdain.

She shuddered. Though the sun sat high over Haven, in this narrow street between the Goat and the tumbledown building that might once have been a warehouse or a stable, it was always night. In this place, the heap of rags piled in doorways could turn out to be someone sleeping off a drunken binge. As easily, it could be the body of a man murdered for revenge, spite, amusement, or killed for the few copper coins in his belt.

Usha drew her skirts closer and hurried the last few yards to the tavern.

The door stood wide, perhaps to ease the smell of the place. Smoke from a badly laid fire in the kitchen hung thick in the air, but it couldn’t compete with the sour smell of beer and sweat and sawdust on the floor. Usha stepped inside, looking for Madoc and feeling every eye turn toward her.

“Mistress Usha!”

She turned, startled, and looked into the laughing eyes of Sir Arvel. The mark of her anger hadn’t healed from his face—four long scratches from cheekbone to mouth. She moved her lips in a chill, disdainful smile of acknowledgement. In answer, he sketched a mocking bow.

“It’s good to see you again, Mistress. But then we do see a bit of each other these days, don’t we?”

At the bar two women laughed, shrill peals that sounded like screeching. A low voice muttered something, and they laughed even harder. In the smoke and shadows, other people could be seen, some of them knights, others men, and a few women who seemed to have a great deal invested in keeping their faces hidden.

Sir Arvel put a hand under Usha’s elbow. When she moved pointedly away, he looked amused. “You’d be looking for our friend the mage?”

“I’m here to see Madoc, yes.”

“Too bad about that.” He jerked his head toward the farthest, smokiest corner of the tavern. Two people sat at a little table, one at his ease, the other hunched over, hiding or cursing, perhaps pleading. “He’s busy seeing what he can earn from some tale of grief and woe. Why don’t you come along with me and we can keep each other company while you wait?” He pulled a somber face, and the scratches on his check seemed to lengthen. “This isn’t the place for a lady to linger unescorted.”

A white hand slipped between them, snatching Usha’s own hand before the knight could reach for it. Bess, the tavern girl who’d occupied Madoc’s lap the last time Usha was there raised an eyebrow the knight.

“Now you know she’s not going to want to be sitting with the likes of you.” She tossed her head and gave him a saucy smile. “These women from the high streets, they have no taste for real men, Sir Knight.”

She slipped an arm around Usha’s waist and swept her away to a table near Madoc’s, yet not close enough so the face of his companion could be seen.

“Wait here now, Mistress. The mage knows yer here, and he’s told me to get ya what ya like to drink.” She shrugged. “Told me to keep an eye on ya.”

Usha smiled, surprised to do it. “You know, Bess, most people don’t think it of me, but when I was your age I was fairly handy at slipping away from the likes of Sir Arvel. I’ll be fine. ”

She saw the moment of disconnect she almost always did when people she didn’t know understood that she wasn’t the young woman she appeared to be. She saw the other look, too; the one that said, The woman’s daft or drunk.

“Well, then, if yer sure. Bring you an ale then?”

Usha thanked her and declined. She didn’t sit long before Madoc joined her. His eye on the bar and the whereabouts of Sir Arvel, Madoc spent some time in small talk until he saw the knight leave.

“Look,” he said, nodding toward the door just then closing.

Usha did, in time to see Sir Arvel fall into step beside a slender man half a head shorter than he. The man, dressed in brown hunting leathers, had the look of an elf about him, but they were gone before Usha could be certain.

“Who’s that?” Madoc asked.

Puzzled, Usha shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Madoc grunted. “Too bad. Whoever he is, he came here like your shadow, half a step behind you and quiet as graves.”

A chill skittered down Usha’s spine. “Madoc, I assure you—”

“You don’t have to. I’ll keep an eye on him. Now, let’s talk about why you’re here.”

She raised a brow, and he barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “Dezra and old faithful Dunbrae can talk any damned lie they like, Usha. I had nothing to do with what happened on the moor.”

Surprised, Usha said, “I’ve only heard the tale myself an hour ago.”

He shrugged. “I’m good at what I do. I heard about the ambush at the safe house. I heard the knight in charge and his foot soldiers were killed. Eh, not all of them, though it probably looked like it. One got away—some half-breed goblin quivering in a ditch and hoping to look dead if anyone saw him. He came back to tell a fine tale of a murderous dwarf and a demon woman.” He took a gulp of ale and thumped the mug onto the table. “I’m no traitor, whatever those two say.”

“Madoc, I know you aren’t.”

He grunted as though to say he might believe her and he might not. “My information was good when I gave it. No one expected those knights to be on the moors last night. Not even Sir Arvel. And if you’re thinking he betrayed us, he didn’t.”

Thinking of the knight, his leering smile, his insulting glances, she said, “How do you know?”

Madoc tapped his temple. “I know. When it works, the magic still works pretty well. And Arvel? He can’t shield himself. He’s like an open window. I think what happened was just cursed luck.”

“But why did they attack the house then?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, and I’m thinking no one’s going to learn why from the dead. They did. That’s all. Maybe they stopped for water or food or to ask the way to Haven. Who knows? Maybe the farmer and his kin got nervous.” Madoc shook his head. “Maybe one thing, maybe the other. Damn, I don’t know. It happened. Look, Usha, I’m an honest broker who’s compromised himself for...” For Aline. “But I am still the man everyone in Haven knew how to trust. Everyone,” he said with low bitter laugh, “but Aline. Now she does trust me. And she can continue to trust me. Dezra and the dwarf are going to have to live with that.”

His flat statement begged the question of what would happen if Dez’s mistrust continued. Neither addressed it.

Madoc shook his head, his mood changing. “You are a strange element in the design that’s growing in Haven, aren’t you Usha? We’re like colors on your palette, Aline and I; Dezra and I. We’re together because of you. Happy in it or not so happy. Whatever is taking shape here is because we’re connected to you.” Madoc lifted his mug in ironic salute. “You give us a cohesion, a shape, that wouldn’t be possible without you. It’s like one of your pictures—disparate colors and shapes and ... suddenly something emerges that surprises even you. Something like Qui’thonas.”

Usha drew blurry little designs in with the mug rings on the table. She wanted to deny the metaphor, but she couldn’t. Madoc was right in what he said, but he didn’t say it all. There were other colors on the palette, and if those made by Aline and Dez and Madoc were one thing, those made by Usha and Loren, by Sir Radulf and the occupation, were another. What sort of portrait would finally come clear when all was laid down on Haven’s canvas?

Around them the noise of the tavern became a roar, men bellowing to be heard at the bar, tavern maids and women of colorful repute shrilling over that. Smoke hung thicker in the air. Whatever was burning in the kitchen no longer smelled like it could have been food. They were an island of silence in that tumult, Usha drawing random shapes with the mug rings on the table, preoccupied with her thoughts, Madoc finishing his ale in what she thought was moody silence.

It was another kind of silence. He reached across the table and tapped her arm to quietly get her attention.

“My magic isn’t always as reliable as my more mundane methods of gathering information, but as I said, sometimes it still works.”

Madoc pointed to a pair of open doors. Beyond, Usha saw a rough little garden behind the tavern. From what she could see, it was more stone than garden—a few scraggly clumps of marigolds and a miserable rosebush gasping its last for lack of water. The garden’s chief attraction, she imagined, was its privacy. To Usha’s dismay, she saw Tamara Halgard walking arm in arm with Sir Radulf there. As she watched, the knight leaned down so that his lips were close to Tamara’s ear.

“That child is a friend of yours, eh?” Madoc drank down the last of his ale.

Usha didn’t move, not even to nod.

Madoc tipped his chair back, the better to see the two as they passed. Usha looked where he did and saw Tamara’s hand slip into the knight’s.

“Madoc, have you seen them here before?”

“Not the girl. Him, though. That’s Sir Radulf.” His glance shot to Usha, and his expression sobered. “But you know that, don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed as though he scented something much more interesting than he’d at first thought. Usha felt the feather touch of soft inquiry in her mind.

“Stop it.”

He didn’t have to. Madoc’s magic failed him. The mental touch faded as though it had never been. But he had other skills, and no vanished god could take them packing with him.

“The knight,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful, “and pretty little Mistress Halgard. If she is a friend, Usha, you’d do her a favor to let her know she’s playing in a dangerous field.” He let his chair drop back, the front legs thumping on the floor. “You’re pretty close with what you know, Usha; but I can guess some things. One thing I’m guessing is that you’d better leave now. If wagers were laid, I’d bet it won’t do to have Sir Radulf see you here with me. You’re keeping interesting company these days—the daughter of a merchant prince, and the merchant himself, maybe, yes? I’m guessing you don’t want the questions to arise. Or unfortunate connections made at the wrong time.”

Usha didn’t argue. She rose to leave, but the mage stopped her.

“If you need help—” He jerked his head toward the garden. “If I can help, let me know. But for now, you’ll be followed again when you leave here.”

Her breath caught in her breast, but he smiled and shook his head.

“By a friend. Don’t worry, and don’t look around to see who it is. This friend of mine is yours, and you’ll get home without hooded strangers in your wake.” Something quick and vulnerable flashed in his eyes then vanished. “Whatever Dezra thinks about me, I’m yours to command, my lady Usha.”

She smiled at the title she’d not allowed since her arrival in Haven. It had lately sounded a wrong note in her ear, a flat sound. But Madoc, the disgraced son of a noble family, a rogue most times, knew how to speak it well. Usha did not discount his offer. She had learned years before that however things seemed, Madoc Diviner’s heart would always be true.

On the way back to the inn Usha was occupied with Madoc’s ideas of connection and conjunction—hers with Qui’thonas, hers with him, with Dez and Aline, and hers with Loren and Tamara’s with Sir Radulf.

It had been her agreement with Aline that she would keep apart from Qui’thonas, for the sake of their work and hers. She’d thought it a good idea, as had Aline and Dez; but Usha wasn’t so sure now.

Now, people were dying.

In the middle of the night, when the streets were quiet and the inn silent with sleepers, Usha woke. She lit a candle and looked for a piece of paper she’d tossed aside a day or so ago. She found it under a drift of sketches—a note from Loren Halgard. By the flickering glow of the candle’s light, Usha read it again: Just for supper, a quiet meal with my daughter and me. I’ll send a carriage for you—only tell me when. Won’t you come?

Usha found an inkwell, and she sharpened a quill. She smoothed the folds out of Loren’s note and wrote a response below his own lines. She folded the paper again, sealed it, and in the morning, she found a quick-footed lad and sent him off to deliver her reply.

Later, Usha thought she might have discussed the matter with Aline, but in the end, she decided that the risk she’d undertaken must be hers alone.