Prisoner of Haven

19

Almost a week after the storm, Usha stood at Loren’s bedchamber window in a pool of sunlight. Behind her, Loren spoke quietly to a servant. Usha heard distress in the woman’s voice when she said, “Sir, there’s precious little breakfast to serve. The bread’s gone, the cheese is moldy, there hasn’t been bacon in days—”

Loren cut her off, but not harshly. “Take what there is into the solar, as usual—but not before you’ve eaten.”

She murmured something. It sounded like protest. Usha knew it wouldn’t be heeded. Loren, the son of ship captains, a captain once himself for a while, knew the value of keeping his crew as strong and hale as possible. Above all, he knew the value of sharing fare equally with all in hard times. So resentment had no chance to grow, to be sure, but there was more to it—a fundamental fairness people could count on. It must have made his sailors glad to crew with him, and it did make his few servants feel loyal as kin.

Usha stood in the warm fall of light, hearing more said but no longer listening. For the first time in days, the morning sky showed a faint wash of blue. The gray cover was thinning, light trying to win through. She couldn’t bear to look away.

Gently, Loren’s hands touched her shoulders, then slipped down her arms.

Usha looked around, accepted his kiss, and when she felt his hands tighten a little on her shoulders, she turned back to the window. She looked up, her eye caught by a shadow swirling across the ruined gardens.

“They’re still there.”

Loren grunted and said, “They won’t be going away, love.” He slipped his hands along her arms again, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. He kissed her neck, and her skin shivered.

In the sky above Steadfast, a talon of dragons came in from the east. They had no riders—those were quartered in Old Keep—but the dragons came at call. No riders, but they carried burdens—food for the barracks, food for Sir Radulf’s table. As these came in, another dragon flew in from the south, a knight attendant, and swung down over the river turned toward Old Keep.

“Loren...”

He turned her from the window. She let him, but only long enough to kiss him. He tried to stop her from returning to look at the sky, but she stepped out of his arms, closer to the window.

“I can’t pretend they aren’t there, Loren. The knights and all the dragons. There must be twice as many now has when Sir Radulf called in reinforcements. The moor must groan with the weight of them. And I can’t pretend I like it.”

“No one likes it.”

Usha said nothing. She didn’t think anyone did who wasn’t Sir Radulf. But she did think Loren himself tolerated the occupation. Before the storm, when Sir Radulf was willing to give a little for all that he was taking, Loren had been able to win concessions, small mercies. Now, Loren had nothing to offer and so nothing to gain. Haven was in ruin.

“Loren,” Usha said, “is Sir Radulf afraid?”

“Of what?”

“The flood. The city slipping out of his grip.”

Loren kissed her again, a brush of lips across her neck. She felt his breath warm on her skin. “I don’t think so. If he were—” He slipped his arms around her, and she leaned against him. “If he is, we’d all do well to be afraid. However it is, things are going to get harder.”

The red dragon dropped down from the sky to Old Keep’s courtyard. Its rider leaped from the saddle and hit the ground running. Usha couldn’t hear the clanking of armor, but she imagined it well. They all came and went in armor now, and if they damned the heat, their master must have threatened worse than damnation to the knight who did not show himself at full strength at all times.

In the days since the storm, rumor ran all over the city. Sir Radulf had lost most of his foot soldiers in the flood. No, he had not. Knights died and drowned in the river. No, they had not. These rumors were like massing armies to Sir Radulf, who’d maintained control of his conquered city with display of force.

The truth Haven hated was that Sir Radulf had not lost a knight or dragon in the storm. He had reinforced his strength until he’d doubled his force again. Knights manned the walls, rotating shifts and sleeping in the watchtowers so there was never a moment when the walls were unguarded. Dragons sailed the sky day and night. Radulf had indeed lost many of his foot soldiers, though. The river yielded up the bodies of dozens, along with the corpses of the unlucky folk who’d been caught unawares.

The one true tale was the one Sir Radulf could have no effect on. The great storm had savaged all of Ansalon with the same power and rage as the Cataclysm hundreds of years before. No nation had been spared. No one had gone unscathed. Out of that story, came the rumor Sir Radulf hated most, the one that said his occupation force was being recalled to Neraka.

In the sky, dragons wheeled. Usha turned away from the sight of them, come like vultures to feed. It had been a pretty hope and a sweet rumor, but Sir Radulf wasn’t leaving.

“Are you going to Old Keep today, Loren?”

He shrugged, and his eyes seemed suddenly shuttered. “Perhaps.”

If he were, he’d go when he was summoned, not before. A dragon would come for him. It was Sir Radulf’s way now. He wanted Haven to see that her nominal leader went and came at his command, taken and returned when he willed. It didn’t used to be that way before the storm. That was when Usha knew Sir Radulf was, if not afraid, then no longer willing to trust his captives. There was no pretense made now of sophisticated men making reasoned choices, no play at all about cooperation and negotiation, and never a word about how what is good for the occupation will be good for Haven.

“I want to go to the inn today.”

Loren took her hand and led her from the window. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Perhaps. I’m going though.”

He raised an eyebrow. She said nothing. She could not explain her reason. He’d been too long not knowing about Dezra—or Aline or Madoc for that matter—to begin explaining her concerns now.

“Usha, it isn’t safe yet.” He began to dress in quick, efficient motions. “And there’s no need.”

“Rowan said he’s been getting through the streets well enough. The route from here to the Ivy is fairly direct now.”

Loren shook his head. She knew he was going to say, again, that he would set up a studio here for her. He would tell her he’d send servants into town to get what she needed. He would do whatever she wanted, but he didn’t want her to go into Haven. Not now, with the city so unsettled.

Sir Radulf ordered the clean-up of Haven as though the city were his household and every man, woman, and child his servant. He wasted no time on hangings anymore. Disobedience of any order issued by his knights, no matter how slight the order or how light the resistance, resulted in death on the spot.

Usha sat on the edge of the bed and took a silver-plated brush from the nightstand. She polished it absently against the silk of her bed gown. In the four days since she had been to the inn, she’d had no word of Dezra. At night when she lay down beside Loren, memories of the last time she saw Dez and their bitter, parting words clutched at her throat hard enough to strangle.

Neither had she heard a word from Aline or even a whisper from Madoc. Usha could say nothing to Loren about this. Day and night, she held her worry close and tried to soothe it by reminding herself that though the broader streets were no longer dangerous, many of Haven’s streets were still impassible, and those that weren’t were filled with Sir Radulf’s work crews coming and going. She imagined that Aline was keeping to home. What could Rose Hall, so near the river, be like now? She imagined that Madoc was lying low. In dark hours, though, she imagined far worse.

“Loren—”

“Love,” he said, “listen.” She heard the first strain of tension in his voice, the first catch of an emotion she hadn’t heard even during the height of the terrible storm. Then he had been afraid. Everyone in the city had been. What she heard now had a darker edge of dread. “Usha, things are hard now, harder than they have been. I want you close. I want you safely here.”

“Loren, I have work to do. I have ...” People to find. The need to know how her friends fared cut like knives. “I won’t take foolish chances, and when I leave, I’ll take Rowan and go safely.”

His eyes flared, suddenly in anger. “Leaving is a foolish chance, Usha.”

Usha stood, chin lifted, eyes coolly narrow.

From the doorway a soft voice said, “Father?” Tamara stood, a slim shadow in a lavender bed gown. “I heard horses in the courtyard.”

In the moment of her saying so, Usha heard them too, the clatter of iron-shod hoofs, the ring of bridles. Loren crossed to the window then turned away. “Sir Radulf’s men. Looking for my gardeners again, no doubt.”

The knight used them hard, working Loren’s servants as though they were slaves. Loren had more than once objected to this ill-treatment.

Weak though it was, the spreading light of day illuminated Tamara’s face. The skin under her eyes was marred by the shadows of sleeplessness. “Father, Radulf needs those people.”

A snap of anger charged the room, Loren’s eyes held storm. For Tamara’s sake, Usha held out a hand to still him, then saw him choose to soothe rather than to argue.

“Of course,” he said. “Things will be much better when we can get around again.”

Loren put his arm around his daughter and ushered her back across the hall. He didn’t return, and Usha had no illusion that the matter of her leaving was finished between them. As she finished dressing, however, she thought, neither should Loren have had the illusion that he’d convinced her to stay if it were her will to go.

To a silent breakfast table at which Usha sat alone, a servant brought two messages: Loren would not be at Steadfast all day, and Mistress Tamara would be abed with a headache. The woman’s small frown indicated that she thought it was a planned headache, the kind young women get when their men are not attendant. To that, Usha made no comment. The morning, only newly started, had been enough to provide headaches all around.

“Oh,” the servant said as plucked a folded sheet from her belt. “And a rider come with this for you.”

Usha took the note and waited until she was alone to read it. In Rusty’s tidy, accounting script she read that her old studio was ready for her, clean and dry and aired out.

There was more, but Usha couldn’t read it, for her eyes were filling with tears. Caramon Majere had been the closet thing to a father she’d ever known—a good, kind man whose bluff manners never hid his noble soul.

Ah Dez! Did she know?

After a moment, Usha wiped her eyes and looked at the rest of the note. It was only one line.

Usha’s heart thumped hard. Her hand shook with sudden relief. She read the note again, and only then realized how circumspect were the three words of the announcement. Though she never had before, Usha wondered now how much Rusty knew about Dezra’s comings and goings.

Usha’s relief that Dezra was back proved short lived. Dez had returned to the Ivy only long enough to leave sign of her presence before vanishing again. In Usha’s studio, a boot split at the sole, a sodden shirt, and a puddle of muddy water indicated that Dez had been there. Though the studio was, indeed, clean and ready to function, Usha’s bedchamber had not been more than aired out and swept, Dezra’s had fared worse, for the shutters had been splintered. A tree had fallen on the roof, and water still dripped continually down the wall beside the bed. The room was hardly useable.

Way stops, Usha thought, picking up Dezra’s discarded clothing and tossing it in a corner. For both of us, the inn is nothing but a way stop.

The thought stung, a sudden thorn. In Loren’s arms, in Loren’s bed, she wanted to be nowhere else, and there, she never doubted her right to his love. Now, amid the ruin of her studio, picking up Dezra’s sodden clothing, she knew she had no right to use that love as a refuge.

Out the window she saw the dragons flying. One it seemed carried a double burden, a knight and someone clutching behind. Was it Loren summoned? She remembered his anger of the morning and then recalled Tamara’s distress.

Father and daughter, they each had become tied to Sir Radulf. In her chest she felt a small pressure, the kind that comes before the first cloud of storm can be seen on the horizon. Her hands full of wet clothing, looking at the ruin of the streets below, Usha knew. Between Sir Radulf and Loren, something had changed.

A thread of fear wound through Usha’s heart.