Prisoner of Haven

15

Usha turned into the shady lane that led to the Ivy. Heavy of heart, she also felt heavy of limb at the end of a hot, restless day. Two boys passed her, coming from the inn’s dooryard. One carried a folded piece of paper in a dirty hand. Haven’s unofficial messenger corps had dwindled to a few stalwarts who drifted between one inn and another as the travelers who’d been caught in the occupation had found places to stay with friends or relations. One or two of those had given up utterly on the hope of getting out and rented little houses on the eastern side of the city.

The prisoners are settling in, Usha thought grimly as the boys trudged by.

But she was not. No one was less settled than Usha. She’d done no painting for the past few days. The canvas she’d finished priming sat untouched on the easel where she’d left it. In that time, her feelings had swung between fear and elation, the memory of Loren’s kiss, his arms around her, even his gray eyes, driving her between one pole and the other. There was no middle ground. Reasoned thought seemed to be a thing of the past, as did sleep. At last, this afternoon, Usha had abandoned her studio in frustration and went out to walk.

That had been no remedy, Haven seemed airless. Not even the slightest breeze moved, and Usha became aware of the unpleasant smell of the river. The faint odor of dead fish, the marshes up stream, horse droppings, and all the waste a city generates ... a miasma of these hung in the still air. She had not walked long before giving up and turning back to the inn. Now, in the shady lane, Usha thought she would go upstairs and face the empty canvas in hope that she’d be able to begin one of the portraits that would soon be due.

Someone called a greeting. Usha turned to see Bertie the cook’s boy at the top of the lane. She raised a hand to acknowledge and then cried out in sudden fear.

As though the ground opened under her feet, Usha plunged into freezing, almost mindless dread. She wanted to run, to bolt down the lane toward the inn, yet her knees were so weak she could hardly stagger to the hitching post and hold herself steady. Bertie cried out again and, breathing hard, her heart hammering, Usha recognized the terror gripping her.

Dragonfear!

The shouts and cries of others rang out around her. She became aware of a crowd gathering, of voices rising, shouting. Bertie pointed up, and Usha saw that others did, too.

Red dragons came in over the city, a dozen flying out of the west. Light slid along their scaled hides and glinted from the armor of the knights who rode them. Standing in the street, shading her eyes against the glare, Usha thought they looked like flames peeling away from the burning ball of the sun. On the city walls, Sir Radulf’s men cheered. From this distance, Usha couldn’t see them, but the sound of their shouts swelled as the dragons came closer.

People poured into the street from the inn, from the shops up and down the road. Their voices swelled, some screaming in terror, some shouting one to another. A woman huddled in the arms of her husband. Two dwarves in the street cursed. One was Dougal Scree, the saddlemaker from the shop up the street, the other his apprentice. Dougal shook his fist at the sky as the shadows of the dragons slipped across the crowd, sliding up the street toward Old Keep. The impotent gesture died before the derision of a knight riding by.

“Calm down, old father.” The knight laughed. “You’ll burst a blood vessel.

The dwarf rounded on the knight. “Don’t you ‘old father’ me, you ruffian! Go on! Move off!”

Still laughing, the knight pricked his mount’s sides with his spurs. The horse danced sideways, tumbling the cursing dwarf to the ground. Hoofs flashed as the tall gelding reared, and Usha sprang into the street, grabbing Dougal’s arm before the plunging horse came down. She dragged him back, and Bertie took her sputtering charge from her. The laughter of a second knight joined the first, and Usha recognized the voice.

Lady Mearah put her dark horse between her fellow and Usha. She spoke one word, too low for Usha to make out, and the knight put spurs to his mount, scattering people as he tore off down the street.

“Is there a problem, Mistress Usha?”

Usha lifted her chin, meeting the lady knight eye to eye. “There has been for some time now, milady. It doesn’t look to be getting better.”

“Ah.” The Palanthian looked up as though counting the circling dragons. When she looked back, her chill gaze seemed to go right through Usha. “Well, some would say things should be getting better any moment now.”

A hand touched her arm, gently. Usha turned to see Loren standing beside her. He said nothing to Lady Mearah, only holding her gaze in grim silence. She tilted her head, as though weighing something, then laughed.

“I’ll see you later, Halgard.”

To Usha those words didn’t sound like a reminder of an appointment. They sounded like a threat.

Lady Mearah was gone in a clatter of hoofs, scattering the rest of the curious before her. Loren put his arm around Usha’s shoulders and turned her toward the inn where Bertie was promising Dougal Scree a tankard of ale. “To help calm your nerves, sir.”

“And you,” Loren said, his breath warm on Usha’s cheek. “Saving old Scree from certain death and facing down a knight is a good day’s work. You don’t look like you need anything to calm your nerves, though. Perhaps something in the way of congratulation?”

Usha almost laughed as she slipped out of his embrace, and she almost cried to feel how empty the space between them was. Oh, dear gods, I haven’t felt this way in a long time!

Still, Usha spoke calmly. “Come inside, Loren. Take supper with me in the Common Room. We still have to talk about Tamara’s portrait.”

Something like relief passed swiftly over his face, but Loren hung on his heel, just for an instant, long enough for Usha to recall the weighing look that passed between him and Lady Mearah. Then he took a long stride ahead of her and opened the inn door. Bowing her inside he said, “It will be my pleasure to dine with you, Mistress Usha.”

In the high room at Rose Hall, where Aline planned missions for Qui’thonas, Dezra stood with her back to the window and the darkening sky. She’d seen the dragons soaring over the city. With Aline and Madoc and Dunbrae she’d watched the two talons swoop low over the river and arrow inland to circle around Old Keep, one after the other canting spread wings, as though in salute.

Remnants of dragonfear, like wisps of webs, clung to the memory, but even these were fading now. Now she watched Madoc and Dunbrae, the two looking like hounds circling each other. The strife between them, ever smoldering, had flared again—the dwarf and his distrust of the mage, the mage and his dislike of the dwarf. An old matter, but tonight it had a keener edge.

In this, Dez took no side, though once she might have. She waited, she watched, but she suspended decision. Something could break tonight. The shape of Qui’thonas could change as trust fell apart.

“You’re a damned liar,” Dunbrae said, his voice a dangerous rumble.

Aline looked up from the long table. In the past month, the place had become a war room, stripped of its fine furnishings, with only a few chairs and this long, cherrywood table remaining. The rich old merchant’s young widow had changed herself into a battle captain, and Dez read impatience in her frown when she said, “You know the rule, Dunbrae. You make the accusation you can prove. Otherwise you have nothing to say. Can you prove this one?”

Madoc, leaning against the window sill, cocked an ironic smile. “He can’t, because I don’t lie. Not to you.”

Dunbrae turned the onyx ring on his finger, and Madoc nodded as though something passed between them. “You know it, Dunbrae.”

The dwarf put his hand in his pocket, hiding the ring and, Dez thought, hiding the fact that this magical relic, the reader of a man’s intent, told him nothing to back up his claim that Madoc had given Qui’thonas false information.

Still, though Dunbrae had no real proof, Aline granted him the grace to speak and make his case. Suspicion, even a gut feeling, counted for something in Aline’s judgment. The failure of the talisman Dunbrae had so often used didn’t overrule.

“You don’t lie?” Dunbrae said. “I know no such thing. Here’s what I do know. Your information is suddenly no good. After all we’ve been hearing about the famous Madoc Diviner with his finger on every pulse in the city, your information is failing us.”

It was. Twice since the killing at Stone Farm missions had failed. Once because Dunbrae had warning only an hour before setting out with three refugees that the route had been compromised. Again, four days ago when there had been no warning at all. Two refugees died, and a good woman, an old hand from the early days of Qui’thonas with them. Dez had been the one who had to come back and tell Aline.

Dez touched the healing cut on her forehead, the scored flesh just at the hairline. She hadn’t come back with the bad news unscathed. The bruises were fading, the cut itself mending, and it had been days since she’d felt the throbbing headache.

Anyone would find it easy to believe Dunbrae’s assessment of things. Dez had in the past, but now she couldn’t. Two women she respected spoke for Madoc—one his lover, the other Usha. Even though she’d once discounted Aline’s opinion as being that of a fond lover, Dez couldn’t now. Aline was in love, but she wasn’t reckless; and Usha’s was one of the clearest eyes for seeing a man’s character Dezra knew. Yet it remained that people had died counting on Madoc’s information.

Madoc dismissed Dunbrae’s insinuation with a gesture. “You’re making things up. Is it my doing that the knights are roaming all over every way out of the city we know?”

His voice cold, his words pointed, Dunbrae said, “I’m not the one who’d know that, am I? But I do know that since the killings at Stone Farm, nothing’s been going right. You will recall that’s when you told us there would be no knights around to trouble us, yet—” He laughed bitterly. “Yet there were.”

Madoc snorted. “And you told us the knight and the foot soldiers had all been killed. That wasn’t true either, was it?”

Outside the windows the night sky hung down low over the city. The dragons had flown in out of a blue sky, but almost immediately after, the sky had grown dark, as though they’d brought storm in behind them. Slate-colored clouds unraveled at the edges as the wind picked up.

Her finger drumming the desk top, Aline looked from Madoc to Dunbrae. “Is anyone making a provable accusation?”

Dunbrae cursed.

Aline glanced at Madoc, who shook his head.

“Anyone saying he can’t trust the others?”

Dunbrae kicked at the floor. Madoc shook his head.

Aline’s hand reached for a pen, dismissing the matter. She made a few marks on the map before her, then slid it across the desk. “This is what I want to concentrate on tonight.”

Thunder rumbled in the sky, and a stiffening wind carried the scent of rain as the four turned their attention to the map. New-made to Madoc’s specifications, it showed the streets of Haven as they ran from the wealthy quarter of the city out to the river. The position of every patrol of knights and citizen collaborators showed as red points, their routes marked in green. Three places along the river bank were marked with blue triangles—safe ways out of the tunnels.

By moonset, a family of elves—folk who’d lived in Haven since they’d fled from Qualinesti—would begin a flight to freedom they’d not thought to have to make a second time.

“We can postpone this,” Aline said. “We can get word to Liel and his family and tell them things have changed.” She glanced out the window to the sky beyond. “Two talons of dragons does change a thing or two.”

Dez, till now silent, said, “Yes, but those dragons are still shuffling around looking for space to catch their breaths after a long flight—some very likely came all the way from Neraka. If the wyrms aren’t done in, the riders are. The talon Sir Radulf has had till now hasn’t been doing a very good job for him, and they’re still not much to fret us. So I’m thinking that just about now Sir Radulf and Lady Mearah are congratulating themselves on acquiring enough dragons to patrol the skies and look for our bolt holes—tomorrow night. Let’s do it.”

Aline looked at Dunbrae and Madoc. Her green eyes held them. She asked the question she always did before sending them out, perhaps to death.

“Dunbrae, can you do it?”

In his own way, Dunbrae loved Aline as much as Madoc did. He would do anything for her. Gravely he said, “Count on me, Mistress Aline.”

Aline’s voice softened. “And you, Madoc?”

Simply, the mage said, “I’m yours.”

Last she came to Dezra, and though Dez had declared her willingness, Aline’s eyes searched for the answer to another question. Madoc and Dunbrae patched up their thin trust for the sake of Aline. Where did Dezra’s trust hang?

On every one of her companions.

“We can do this, Aline. Let’s get to work.”

Storm rumbled closer, and lightning flashed in the bellies of the clouds. In the alley behind the Goat, Sir Arvel eyed the dark elf, the fallen son of Silvanesti, the lover of a woman whose descent from the favor of her Palanthian kin was as far as his from the elf lords of Silvanost. Outcasts and exiles were the makings of the dark army now. Sir Arvel had heard of days when dark knights had as much honor as those who followed the gods of Good. Those days were gone, vanished when the gods did. Those gods took a lot more with them than some mage’s ability to twinkle a spell to life with his fingers and a prayer on his lips.

“Elf,” said the knight, “I have news for your mistress.”

Sir Arvel thought that naming was amusing, and he thought himself rather clever. But he didn’t smile. It would not have done to smile over anything having to do with Lady Mearah’s private life.

Lightning flashed closer, the heatless glare flinging shadows around the alley.

Tavar pushed away from the wall. “Tell me.”

Imperious bastard, thought Sir Arvel. “There is going to be another attempt to get people out of the city.”

Tavar raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

Ah, no. You don’t get my source, elf.

“You hear things in a tavern. I know. Just like I knew about the attempt to escape over the moor.” He snorted. “Your friends never did find out who was leading the exodus, never did learn who is organizing the escapes. That one your friends managed to bungle, and most of ’em are dead now, eh? All but the mongrel half-goblin who hid in a ditch and managed to get back to Sir Radulf and puke the news that he’s down a few knights. That must’ve given milady a bit of... discomfort when she heard—most of ’em being her pet knights.”

Dark or light, elves didn’t show anger the way humans did. It was one thing Sir Arvel disliked and mistrusted about them. They just got a little closer, a little more still, and something happened in their eyes that made him think of a cat’s adjusting to a change in light. So it was with Tavar. He tilted his head to the side, as though thinking about something.

Arrogant bastard. In milady’s confidence and in milady’s bedchamber.

He said nothing of that, either. Just in case. What he did say was the way to a place far downriver, almost to the bend where the White-rage came in from the east.

“Keep an eye on the bank on the Darken Wood side. It’ll probably surprise you and sprout elves and humans. And this time find someone who can do this without managing to kill everyone he brings along with him.”

The elf gave him a scathing look and left. Sir Arvel didn’t laugh until he was certain Tavar was well gone. Then he did, the sound of it filling the alley. A few moments later, Sir Arvel heard the back door of the Goat slam. Another knight stepped into the shadows. He looked at Sir Arvel and grinned.

“Now, don’t be worrying,” he said in mockery of the idea that Sir Arvel was worrying about anything. “Every one of milady’s men will come back this time, sir. Well... almost every one of them.”

And then he, too, slipped away into the night.

Sir Arvel watched him go, feeling satisfied with his night’s work. He was not fond of Sir Radulf Eigerson, though he’d served under him for a long time. Still, he loved Lady Mearah less, so it didn’t trouble him in the least to take from her and give to him.

No one could imagine Sir Radulf cared a whit who crept into the bed of his second in command each night. Easy enough, though, to imagine how much he didn’t like the signs that those two, Lady Mearah and her dark elf lover, were gathering a noticeable crowd of retainers around themselves from among the younger knights.

It wouldn’t do to get rid of Lady Mearah. Not yet. She was too well regarded in Neraka, and whatever else he was Sir Radulf Eigerson was no fool.

But it’s certainly time break up the team, Sir Arvel thought as he slipped back into the Goat. Time to send out a warning.

“Tell me,” Loren said, standing at the window of Usha’s studio, his eyes on the storm coming in. “Tell me, Usha, what it feels like to do what you did today.”

Usha frowned. “What I did?”

Sketches lay all around the place—on the chair Loren usually sat in to read, on her bed, on the floor. Sketches of Tamara made from memory, from her father’s description. There would be a portrait and about this Usha was both glad and apprehensive.

Loren turned from the window, his back to the street and the threat of storm. “Pulling old Scree out from under the horse’s hooves. You dashed right in.”

Usha supposed she had. She didn’t remember the details, just the look of terror on Dougal Scree’s face and the knight’s unholy glee.

“Why do you ask, Loren?”

He didn’t answer at once. He seemed more interested in something in the middle distance between them, that place where one’s thoughts lay unspoken. Finally he said, “I haven’t done anything so impetuously—” He shook his head. “No, not impetuously. I have not done anything so honestly directed by my heart in ... too long.”

Usha rose from the edge of the bed, sketches fluttering from her lap and drifting onto the floor. She stepped around some, over others, and went to stand beside Loren at the window. She didn’t know how to answer him without sounding falsely modest. It had felt terrifying—the dwarf’s terror, the flashing hooves. Blood-freezingly, heart-stoppingly terrifying.

“Loren,” she said, softly. She touched his arm but didn’t say more.

“It’s ... the Council, Tamara ... I don’t know sometimes whether what I’m doing is the right thing, the wrong thing...” He looked away, out to the lowering sky again. “Or nothing.”

“You’re doing what you can.”

“Really? You didn’t seem to think so when we first spoke, nor when we last spoke.”

She hadn’t, but she also knew she didn’t have the same weight of care that he did. She spent her days painting and hoping to glean information from Loren that would help Qui’thonas. Of that last she was sometimes proud and sometimes ashamed, for it was no easy thing to betray this man for the sake of loyalty to Qui’thonas. And it would be a betrayal if Sir Radulf learned that Loren’s words in Usha’s ears became news to help the underground effort to ferry refuges out of the city.

She shuddered, recalling the look on Lady Mearah’s face when she promised that she and Loren would see each other again.

“Loren,” she said, “sometimes I wish we were two other people.” She should have stopped there, she knew it, but she didn’t. “Two other people, who lived in another country, another time ...”

He turned, and as thunder rumbled behind him, Usha saw a flash of longing in his eyes that both thrilled and frightened.

“Usha.” He traced the curve of her cheek. When she didn’t move, his finger touched her chin, then the quickening pulse at her throat. She touched his finger to stop him and found her hand closing over his. He turned her hand over, bent his head, and kissed the tender skin of her wrist.

“Loren...”

She felt his lips move against her skin. She thought they shaped a word, her name. He let her hand go, and she caught his back.

Usha didn’t cry out when he took her in his arms, and she didn’t push away. He held her close. She heard the beating of his heart. He kissed her, gently then fiercely. She met his fire with her own, and neither regretted the kisses. Later, neither regreeted his afternoon on which they became lovers.

“No lights,” Dez whispered.

She looked over her shoulder and signaled with a sharp cutting gesture. At the back of the small line of travelers in the tunnel, red-headed Gafyn shuttered his lantern. The little elf child Seiley, standing between her father and mother, made a small whimpering sound as everyone around her seemed to disappear into the darkness. Gafyn whispered something, and Dez heard the girl’s whimper change into a nervous giggle.

Good boy.

This was Gafyn’s second mission with Qui’thonas, and the boy whose parents and grandparents had been fishers on this river had immediately proved valuable. There didn’t seem to be an inch of riverside he didn’t know, and Dez—who knew her way around Darken Wood better than most—found Gafyn’s knowledge of the dangerous borders to be nearly as good as her own. Fisher folk, his family had also been hunters in the days when anyone could get outside the walls of Haven.

Gafyn had a grudge against the occupation, one he was happy to prosecute by sneaking refugees out of the city under the very noses of Sir Radulf’s vaunted knights and terrible dragons.

This, though, would be the last mission Qui’thonas would run for a while. After the elf and his family were safely gone from the area, Qui’thonas would lie low and wait for Sir Radulf to get tired of feeding another dozen knights and squires—not to mention twelve ravenous dragons who would devour herds of sheep and goats before long.

After that... Dez grinned. Most of the damn dragons’ll be gone, and off we go again.

With the darkness silent behind her, Dez looked ahead, and her eyes adjusted to the changing light. Outside the mouth of the tunnel the sky hung down like an iron helm. The night closed in, thick and murky by the riverside. Dez looked for Dunbrae and saw the dwarf as only a dim figure at the riverside—a dwarf whose fathers had developed their eyesight over generations of life underground. Dunbrae had no need for light.

He lifted a hand to signal all-clear.

Dez turned and whistled, a low short sound to tell Gafyn to get the little group of refugees moving. She heard the shuffle of their feet, the sound of the little girl’s rapid breathing. Confident that Gafyn had them well in hand, she stepped out of the tunnel.

The first hot drops of rain she’d felt in weeks splashed onto her face. She looked up and saw the clouds had already begun to tatter at the edges. A shower, nothing more.

She waved the elves on. Liel came first, his daughter Seiley next, and Reith his wife after. Gafyn made up the rear, and Dez saw him slip a short sword from the leather sheath at his belt. Liel strung his bow. His wife already had hers in hand.

A small grumble of thunder rolled down the sky. A sheet of lightning flashed, then another. Seiley gasped, and her mother murmured something soothing in Elvish.

Dez had her eyes on Dunbrae, who stood looking back and upward, toward the hill under which ran this portion of the tunnel.

“Dunbr—”

Then she saw his face, his eyes, and his hand flashing for the throwing axe at his belt.

Dez whirled back toward the tunnel and shouted, “Get back! Back!”

It was too late. Four riders on black horses, three knights armored lightly, one an elf in mail red as blood thundered down the hill. Seiley shrieked. Gafyn snatched her up, tucked her under his arm, and fled to the riverside. Liel hung back. Reith, too.

Dunbrae shouted curses and bellowed: “Go! Go!”

It was the plan they’d sworn not to abandon if they were found out. No matter what, Gafyn would take the child and the parents would follow. No one must stay to fight but Dez and Dunbrae. A look of swift self-loathing on his face, the elf ran, his wife’s hand in his own.

In the moment they passed Dunbrae, the dwarf threw his axe and split the skull of one of the knights. Dez let fly an arrow and took another knight out of the world with a bolt through the eye.

“Dunbrae, heads up!”

The dwarf turned in time to see the red-mailed elf spurring toward him, sword raised like an axe to lop off his head. Dunbrae flung himself aside, rolled, and came up, his short sword in both hands. He thrust the blade upward, tearing open the horse’s belly.

The beast screamed, fell, and the elf flew over his mount’s head. Dez heard his neck snap. There was one more, somewhere.

Dez looked around frantically. There had been three knights...

And the last of them came charging around the side of the hill, howling curses, a mace whirling over his head. Dez drew, let fly, and missed. The knight thundered by, the mace wailing overhead as Dez fell, rolled, and came up behind the mounted man. She had no weapon but the knife in her boot, her bow flung aside in the fall. She snatched it out as the knight made another run at her. She saw his teeth flashing white, smelled the sweat on his horse ...

She stood her ground, and it seemed like she could feel the knight’s astonishment, could almost hear him wonder—What is wrong with this woman?

Dez grinned, and maybe it was that dreadful grin that warned the knight.

If it did, he took the warning too late. Dunbrae’s throwing axe flew, lopped off the hand holding the mace, and clattered to the ground. Blood spurted, the knight stared down at the stump where his hand used to be.

It was easy enough for Dez to finish him off after he tumbled to the ground. A swift, flashing stroke across the throat, and it was done.

Dunbrae looked around at the carnage. “We have to collapse the tunnel.”

“No we don’t.” Dez grunted. “They’re dead.”

“Yeah, but not the one who tipped them off to where we’d be, eh?”

Dez closed her eyes, cold in the aftermath of the fighting, sweat chilling like ice on her face and neck. Not the one who tipped them off.

“The boy knows where to go?” she asked.

“Better than either of us. He’ll be fine. If the elves do as they’re told, them and their little girl will be away safely.”

Dez nodded, and neither said what was most on their minds—that the hard part came next, telling Aline what happened and that no one knew anything about this run besides Dez, Dunbrae, and Madoc Diviner.