Prisoner of Haven

13

In the stern gray light of dawn, Lady Mearah woke. Her narrow bed, shared last night with her lover, was hers alone again. The smallest of notes lay on the pillow where Tavar had lain his head, a curl of parchment cut from something longer. Not a love note, never that from Tavar Evensong. The lady knight reached for the black silk tunic at the foot of the bed and slipped it over her head. Barefoot on the cool stone floor, she went to the hearth and the embers still glittering from last night’s fire. She breathed on the embers, and small tongues of fire licked up around the edges of charred log. The light glowed on tanned skin, illuminating scars like runes on her arms and legs to tell tales of battle. By this light, Lady Mearah read: Usha Majere was seen again with Madoc Diviner, and a runner has gone out from the Ivy with a message to Steadfast.

A message to Steadfast... to Loren Halgard.

Lady Mearah’s quarters were spare, as befit a knight in the field. They were without any luxury but that of a window that commanded a wide view of the river and Haven. She opened the window shutters and looked out into the steely light. Because of the way the river curved, it looked as though Old Keep and Steadfast sat upon opposite sides of the White-rage. They did not. Each was on its own hill, the two buildings seeming to glare across the water at each other.

Halgard had been eager enough to step into the breach when Sir Radulf commanded the lord mayor’s resignation and the dissolution of the Council. There had been no talk of remaking what Sir Radulf had dissolved—none until Loren Halgard suggested that a frightened populace would respond better to being told the mayor and council had been replaced by one of their own than to news that a dark knight now reigned in Haven.

“You can mow them all down,” he’d said. “Hang them and perhaps inspire a riot that your greater forces might will quell. No one disputes it. But in a merchant city, when you kill the merchants, you kill what made the place valuable in the first place. Let me go between you and them. They know me, and it will make things easier.”

Lady Mearah had thought that clever, and she’d decided this Loren Halgard was one to watch. Now her lover’s words came back to her in memory, ghostly: Usha Majere isn’t one for infidelity, but if she were, she wouldn’t look for an opportunity on the low side of the street.

Steadfast shone steely gray in the rising light of day. The lady knight thought that Usha Majere had certainly found something interesting on the high side of the street, as Tavar suggested. But what, she wondered, was going on at the Grinning Goat to lure Mistress Majere to the low side?

Twilight came down softly over occupied Haven, the light leaving the sky slowly and climbing up to deepest blue. A haze turned gently to mist above the river. Usha smelled a sweetness of honeysuckle in the air. Loren’s driver, the half-elf Rowan, opened the carriage door for her. Two women passing on the street stopped to watch him close the door and spring up to take his seat and the reins again.

“Some people,” one murmured to the other, “are doing rather well these days.”

Usha smoothed the folds of her dove-gray skirt and straightened the bodice, pretending not to hear.

“That’s Mistress Majere. She’s been makin’ portraits for the well-to-do. No shame in it. A woman’s got to live, doesn’t she? No doubt she’s going out on business.”

The first woman sniffed. “Dressed rather grandly for that, don’t you think? And isn’t that Loren Halgard’s carriage? Some as says he’s a collaborator.”

Her friend shook her head. “Some say that, but they’re wrong. I know him. Well, my boy does. Shipped out on his first voyage with Loren Halgard himself. When my old man Gerris died...” She caught her breath against familiar pain. “Why, Loren Halgard came himself to the funeral, and he spoke right kindly to me. And the winter after that, it was hard for us, but my boy and me, we wanted for nothing. Thanks to Loren Halgard. The man’s no collaborator.”

Not to be deterred, the first woman muttered, “You could say Mistress Majere is on business of some kind, I suppose.”

The woman’s ironic tone made it clear to Usha what kind of business she meant. Her friend laughed and said something Usha couldn’t hear as, with a flick of the reins, Rowan took the carriage out into the streets.

Usha sat in flushed and angry silence.

Old cats, she thought.

And yet, were she honest with herself, she’d have to admit that what the two gossips had seen tonight didn’t suggest a better picture. Usha smiled wryly. The gods only knew what stories would be told of the artist from Solace who went to dine privately in the home of the man said to be the city’s only liaison with the occupation. Her smile dimmed. No one need guess what Dez would say.

Well, well, they’d all have to manage, the gossips of Haven, and Dez, too. Usha had never denied that Loren was an attractive man, charming and attentive. Sitting in his carriage, rattling through the cobblestone streets where dark knights gathered to patrol the night, she looked down at her hands folded on her lap and remembered what she’d forgotten—the warmth of Loren’s hands when he’d held hers the night he walked her home from the unveiling of “Pride and Promise.”

Usha unclasped her hands and looked out the window.

It might be as the old gossip had said, that Loren was a collaborator. If that were so, Usha would be sorry. But if it were so, cultivating Loren’s interest in her would put her in a position to learn things Qui’thonas would want to know. She might prevent another ambush, more deaths like those of the farmer and his family out in the empty moors of the Seeker Reaches.

The ride through Haven at the end of the day was cool and pleasant. The clip of the horses hooves, the ring of the bridle iron drew the attention of people hastening along the streets to make it home before curfew. Where once she would have hurried, too, tonight Usha didn’t have to worry about curfew. Loren had assured her that his crest on the doors of the carriage was her passport: So she watched the sky grow dark, the stars pricking through. Knights and foot soldiers paced the wall, patrols gathered at the major crossroads. In the woods, or by the river’s edge, or perhaps in secret shadows soon to fall, Dezra and Qui’thonas would be running through the night, escorting a frightened family out of Haven and into the far reaches beyond Sir Radulf’s occupation. After the ambush on the moor, Aline had redoubled her caution and her determination. Knights may stalk the streets, dragons haunt the sky, but Haven had been a free city of free people. If people wanted to leave Haven, Qui’thonas would find a way, the only fee being the promise to cry the tale of their captivity abroad.

Aline redoubled her efforts, and tonight, riding in the carriage of the man who had made himself the liaison between Haven and the occupation, Usha was initiating hers.

Fireflies winked in the darkness beneath the trees lining the rising road to Steadfast. Havelock Gance’s house was a finer one—larger, with half-timbered additions and wide reaching gardens, but Loren’s, high upon a hill above the White-rage, was older. There wasn’t much that went on there that a man with a good eye couldn’t see from the behind the crenellated wall of the Old Keep. Loren’s was a stout granite square of a house, built in the days of pirates and raiders, made for defense and not altered much over the intervening years. It had always been known as Steadfast.

Loren stood on the bottom of the eight broad steps to the house. There was nothing of pretense or posturing about him. He waited eagerly for Usha, and he didn’t mind who knew. He helped her from the carriage and dismissed Rowan with a nod. In the purpling twilight, his eyes were smoky gray, a little gleam from the silver earring he wore caught Usha’s eye and sparked her smile.

“Usha, it’s so good of you to come. I’d thought... well, I hadn’t thought you’d even answer my note. Not after what happened.” He jerked his head toward the river and Old Keep.

He’s a collaborator. He’s not a collaborator. Usha felt the tug of both assertions as she lifted her hand in a small gesture to dismiss Loren’s apology. “I don’t hold you responsible for that. You’re doing what you can.”

As she said so, Usha found herself wanting to believe it. She dropped her glance as though the next thing she said was almost too difficult to speak.

“The Council, the lord mayor ...”

He took her hand and held it gently. “The lord mayor is well. His council is ... in exile, if you will. But unharmed.”

“Under guard, then.”

Loren shook his head. “Not at all. They go about freely, their families unmolested. Why, Lorelia and Havelock were here to visit only the other day.”

“Then I assume a new council has been convened?”

“No.” The word sounded sharp, abrupt. “They don’t want a council now. They want—”

They. The occupation.

“Sir Radulf wants you,” she said, her voice chill.

Loren said nothing for a long moment. Then, “Usha, I’m not claiming anything that isn’t mine. I’m ...” He shook his head, his eyes those of a man who had long been arguing this point with himself. “I’m what works now. I’m keeping their place.”

A comforting explanation, Usha thought.

“To return it to them ... when?”

Shadows deepened. In the gloaming they seemed to creep out from under the trees and up the hill from the river itself.

“I don’t know,” Loren said, and in his frank, gray eyes Usha saw that he told the truth. He didn’t know, and to his credit he wouldn’t pretend he did.

“Come inside now. The air is damp, and—” he looked up to the windows of Steadfast glowing brightly with light from within—“it’s getting dark.”

Loren put his hand under her elbow. Usha permitted it with only the slightest hesitation. His hand was warm and strong. This close, she smelled the river on him again, and now something more—the bite of tar and the tang of the pine oil used to polish a ship’s deck. Some of Loren’s ships had gone down to the sea with the rest of the merchant fleet. Others remained, and clearly their master had been spending time aboard.

If his cousin had trouble with disappearing servants, Loren did not. A tall, elderly man opened the oaken door and held it wide. Loren led her into the great hall where a flight of stairs climbed to the second storey. Another servant moved between four tall pillars and two high banks of candles, lighting the last of them against the coming night. The hall smelled faintly of honey, and the candles glowed as though they held light within. These were not thick-skinned candles from a ship chandler’s shop. These were beeswax, not dipped but hand rolled and bearing the hexagonal imprint of the hive. At the top of the stairs, others had been lighted, and torches flared in silver cressets on the wall, one set in the wall at every fourth step.

Voices drifted down to them—a woman’s and a man’s. Usha couldn’t recognize them, not at this distance. Loren’s hand slipped from her elbow, leaving a faint trace of warmth along her arm as it did.

“We’ll dine in the solar tonight. Tamara has been looking forward to seeing you again.”

This, Usha doubted even as she managed a gracious smile. She gathered her skirt, the hem lifted a little off the stone, and walked beside him up the long flight of stairs. At the top, the gallery ran around the stairwell and the doors from there into the solar stood opened wide. The scent of freshly cut fruit mingled with the tang of wine. Servants had laid the table near the hearth for the supper’s first course. Tamara sat on one of the two cushioned benches beside an open window, a small crystal cup in her hand. She sipped wine, and her eyes shone like sapphires in the light of the tall candles placed on either side of the benches. Her dark hair was plaited with ribbons of silver, bright love knots of the kind the women of Haven traditionally wore for their suitors. She was not alone in the solar. Sir Radulf Eigerson, the image of a perfect knight, stood in attendance.

Usha glanced at Loren and saw his surprise, perhaps his disapproval in the tension in his shoulders. Then he relaxed, hiding the emotion as Tamara looked up.

“Father,” she cried, still laughing at something the knight had said. “Look, you have company.” She acknowledged Usha with a strained smile. “Why, you have more company, I should say.” In the sing-song rote of a student addressing her elderly tutor, she said, “Good evening, Mistress Usha.”

Sir Radulf turned and bowed. He stood in dusty boots, light mail sliding over a black shirt like a darkly scaled second skin. The gemmed grip of his sheathed sword winked in the candlelight.

“Loren! I hope I haven’t caused a problem arriving untimely.” Tamara’s hand slipped into his, and he smiled down at her absently. “And Mistress Usha. It’s a surprise and, of course, a pleasure to see you again.”

The knight’s eyes met Usha’s, and she heard the screams of terrified people, saw the flash of a dragon’s eye. In that glancing moment, Usha knew he wasn’t in the least surprised.

“Sir Radulf,” she said, her voice cool.

“But I haven’t come to dine,” he said, answering a question no one had asked. “I’ve come to take Loren away for a while. You will forgive me, if I promise to have him back in time for the wine and cheese, won’t you?”

Again, Loren’s shoulders tightened, again they relaxed, and Usha said, “Of course.”

Tamara reached for Sir Radulf’s hand, but he was already across the room, his hand on Loren’s shoulder and turning him toward the door.

“Come,” he said to the girl, over his shoulder and as an afterthought. “It seems Mistress Usha is prepared to forgive. Make allowances, Tamara. Your father is essential tonight.”

The word hung strangely in the silence. Essential. Why, essential? What would they speak of? Where would they go? Sir Radulf’s voice had gone cold when he said it, and his blue eyes had changed to ice. Usha didn’t imagine the conversation they’d have would bode well for whoever was under discussion.

And Usha wouldn’t hear it or know if it meant trouble for Qui’thonas.

Not this time. But there will be another night. More if I can manage them.

Usha turned back to see Tamara standing by the open window and looking down to watch for her lover. In that moment, Usha felt sorry for her. Sir Radulf hadn’t cared whether she would make allowance or would not. The sound of his boot heels in the corridor had overridden whatever answer Tamara had started to make.

In the light of candles and torches, the solar seemed cavernous, the ceiling lost in shadow, the walls suddenly distant, the flagstone floor wide. Usha thought Tamara looked very small by the window. She went and stood beside her when she heard the sound of horses. Tamara permitted it until the riders were out of sight, then she turned and walked away, putting distance between them.

“Shall I call my father’s carriage for you, Mistress? No matter what they say, he’s often gone half the night when Radulf needs him.”

And Usha thought: Radulf is it? Well, well.

“If he’s not back soon, perhaps.”

Surprise flickered in Tamara’s eyes. “Please yourself.” She crossed her arms, paced to the window, looked out into the empty dark, and came back again. After a moment, she huffed a sigh and said, “Well, what do you want to do? My father isn’t going to be back—”

“For some time. Yes, you’ve said.” Usha made herself comfortable on one of the cushioned benches. She put a loose pillow behind her back, and smiled. “I think I’d like to sit here for a while.”

Again, Tamara said, “Please yourself.” She didn’t leave, and she didn’t sit. She paced from the window to the table and stood there a moment. “I don’t suppose you want any wine?”

Usha hid her smile. “Why, yes, I would. Thank you.”

A moment, and she heard the sound of wine being poured. Another moment, and Tamara brought the cup to her. They sat for a little while, opposite each other, each on her own bench. Tamara twirled a lock of dark hair around a slim finger, looking at nothing. Too well bred to leave her father’s guest alone, she had to stay; and every other moment her eyes glanced to the hall as though she waited for rescue. And Usha wondered, Who would come to rescue her? Not her father who must wait on Sir Radulf’s pleasure, and not the knight himself.

A kind of rescue, she supposed, would be Usha’s request that the carriage be summoned and this awkward interlude ended.

Usha wasn’t about to grant it. Loren might well return soon. Until then, she would wait. Neither was she inclined to engage in small talk. She watched Tamara for a moment or two, thinking not about her but the shape of her face, the way her shoulders, while slim and feminine, reminded her of Loren’s. They had expressive shoulders, those two. Tamara’s were a stiff line of resistance. And mobile mouths. Tamara’s was just then returning to a sullen pout.

“I’m told,” Usha said, “that you look much like your mother.”

Startled, Tamara eyed her carefully. “I’m told so, too.”

“She must have been lovely.”

“So I hear. My father loved her very much.” She paused. “So I hear.”

They sat that way, quiet while one watched and the other strived to present an appearance of supreme indifference. Usha thought it was becoming ridiculous. She would have the carriage called and leave. But she didn’t. Something about the way the girl looked around the empty room, just her in a pool of light, with darkness coming ever closer as the wicks burned ...

“I have a daughter,” Usha said, “a bit older than you.”

“That is very nice,” Tamara said.

“Her name is Linsha. She’s a Solamnic Knight.”

Interest, then something much like fear, flared in Tamara’s eyes. “You shouldn’t say that here.”

“In this nest of dark knights? Not ever. But in Solace I am happy to boast out loud about my daughter the knight.”

“Where ... ?” Tamara said. “Where is your daughter?”

“I don’t know. It’s that way for knights—of any order. They are sworn to their causes and that leaves their families to do nothing but hope. I used to pray before the gods ... left.”

“Gods.” Tamara said the word as though it were from a foreign language. “I know nothing but tales of gods. I don’t know if they ever really existed.”

Usha remained quiet for a moment, for she knew gods and she knew they existed. The beginning of the great strife among gods, the Chaos War, had flung her out of her island home. The Irda had died or vanished in the destruction, and the end of that war had flung Usha into Palin Majere’s arms. She knew gods.

Candlelight flickered, yearning delicately after a passing breeze. The night had grown cooler, and the air smelled of the river. A servant, a woman with quick, careful eyes, came quietly into the solar.

“Mistress Tamara, we’re wondering in the kitchen what’s to be done about supper?”

Tamara looked at Usha.

“I am quite ready for supper now,” Usha said. “I’d like to dine in the garden, though.”

“Please yourself,” Tamara said, but this time with a small, tentative smile.

“Thank you,” Usha said. “It would please me if you’d join me.”

In the scented night, with candles on the stone table in the garden and fireflies winking among the birches, Usha dined with Loren Halgard’s daughter. They treated the meal as a picnic, had it bundled into baskets and set out on heavy pewter plates. The wine chilled in the stream that fed the pond down the hill. In this setting, the girl relaxed, and Usha found herself liking Tamara. A mother, she was touched by the motherless girl. An orphan child, she understood something of what Tamara’s life had been like.

She had loved the Irda. They had treated her tenderly, and sometimes she still dreamed of them with an aching sense of homesickness. But in the end, the magical Irda were not her kin, not mother or father. She was a woman who’d grown up without a mother, yearning for something in heart, in soul, that could not be replaced. Tamara was that, a motherless child. It showed in her eyes, the haunted look sometimes poorly hidden.

“You have the strangest eyes,” Tamara said, wary still of the growing ease between them. “Sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green. I’d swear they’re golden now.”

Usha smiled. “It would be hard to say if they favor my mother or my father.”

“Because they never stay the same color?”

Because I don’t know what my mother or father looked like.

She smiled. “Exactly so.”

Tamara leaned forward to say something then sat up suddenly, eyes wide and alarmed. Usha turned at the sound of a snapped twig behind her. A lean, dark figure stood outside the grove.

“Show yourself,” Usha demanded.

The knight did, stepping closer to the light of their candles. Tamara’s breath hissed in surprise.

“Lady Mearah.”

Lady Mearah, the fallen child of Palanthas, the executioner of Sir Radulf’s occupation. She’d forgone heavy armor, wearing only high hoots, riding leathers, and a dark tunic. Her hair, the color of the night, had been caught up in an intricate weaving of braids, like a crown upon her head. Lady Mearah bowed with grave courtesy, but when she looked up the sly smile on her lips belied gravity.

“Forgive me, Mistress Usha. I’ve been sent.” She turned to Tamara. “By your father. He wants me to express his regret for having missed supper, and that he won’t be able to join you—” a sly smile tugged at her lips—“for the wine and cheese course. He hopes you will forgive him.”

Tamara nodded.

“And Mistress Usha,” her eyes gleamed fox-bright. “I’m sent to escort you home.”

Indeed, Usha thought, but I think not. She smiled for courtesy and declined. “Loren’s carriage will take me. Thank you.”

Lady Mearah picked up an apple from the table. She inspected it carefully then polished it on her sleeve, the motion calling attention to the insignia on the breast of the black silk tunic—a crimson sword. She took a bite.

“No, you misunderstand. I am going to escort you home. There are no carriages on the streets tonight. No horses other than ours.”

Tamara frowned. “My father—”

“Is with Sir Radulf. I am here to escort Mistress Usha home. Good evening, Mistress Tamara.”

Usha took the girl’s hand and found it cold.

“Go inside,” Usha said, her voice low and confident. “I’ll be fine. Your father knows where I am.” She glanced at Lady Mearah who took another bite of the apple. “I’m sure everything is all right.”

She’d been thinking of Tamara as a girl. All evening she’d been thinking of her as a child. Now Loren’s daughter stood straight, head high, the lady of her father’s house. “Mistress Usha, if you wish I will call Rowan.”

To do what? Defend them against Sir Radulf’s executioner? It was a bold offer, Usha thought, and a dangerous one, for Lady Mearah did not laugh.

“Go,” Usha said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Pretty little thing,” the lady knight said, watching as Tamara walked up the hill to the house. “I’m sure she’s her father’s treasure.”

“No doubt,” Usha agreed, “and from what I hear, the delight of your commander’s heart. Some might think that an enviable position to be in.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? ‘Her father’s treasure.’ A poet’s turn of phrase, yet true, isn’t it? She’s quite like a pearl—luminous, nearly breathing with light. Have you ever heard, Mistress Majere, that few men are more vulnerable than the man who possesses a pearl of great value?” Into Usha’s silence she said, “No? Hm, perhaps they don’t have that wisdom where you come from. Well, allow me to enlighten you. The man with a pearl of great value is a man who will do anything to keep it.” She tossed the half-eaten apple into the bushes. “Anything at all. That, I’m sure you’ll agree, makes him quite vulnerable. To thieves, to fire, to storm ... to hard-hearted killers.”

Usha said nothing for fear that she would make things worse. She followed the lady knight from the garden. Given the chance to ride pillion, Usha said she preferred not to. It seemed to matter nothing to Lady Mearah, who professed herself pleased for a chance to stretch her legs on such a pleasant night.

The two women attempted no conversation as the knight led her horse through the silent streets of nighttime Haven. Usha was just as glad. Never abroad at night since the fall of the city, she was surprised by how truly quiet the streets were. Usha marked every knight set to watch at the crossways and was surprised to see that the mounted patrols were not all knights.

Lady Mearah shrugged and broke the silence. “Some new idea of the commander’s. Damned if I know why, but he’s putting a few citizens on with the watch. They work for their city,” she said when she saw Usha’s surprise. “Enforcing the curfew and keeping their fellows out of trouble. It’s new. Something your friend Loren Halgard suggested as a way to keep the people involved.” Her smile was icily ironic. “Well, ‘involved in their own fate’ is how he put it. Sir Radulf thinks it’s working to keep things quiet. For now, anyway. Should make you feel good, eh?”

Usha shuddered. Nothing about Haven at night made her feel good. All the life seemed to have dwindled away or fled to such places as the Goat where Sir Radulf allowed exceptions to his rule of curfew for the sake of being able to keep his finger on the pulse of the occupied city.

At the door of the inn, Lady Mearah said, “You’re a married woman, Usha Majere, and your husband is a mage of some repute. Are you looking for a little companionship these days? A way to pass the time?”

Stung, Usha replied, “What I do is my own business. I’m harming no one and breaking no law.”

The knight laughed, a cold sound, like the voice of winter. “Or vow?”

Mearah cared nothing about vows. Of that Usha was certain. Mearah wielded the word as though it were a thin, sharp knife, something to pick with, something to use for a probe. Usha didn’t flinch.

“Or vow,” Usha said, “though it’s kind of you to be concerned.”

The lady knight shrugged. “In truth, for the most of it, I don’t care. But it’s a tricky thing, making friendships in a captive city. You’ll want to be careful. If your friend falls, you might tumble with him. If you fall, so might he, and all that he treasures with him.”

The knight bade Usha good evening, and Usha went inside.

From the upper story, out her bedroom window, Usha saw Mearah watching the Ivy. It was a long while before she heard the knight leave, and a long while before she was able to sleep.