Prisoner of Haven

20

Tamara came to Usha dressed in the color of bruises.

On the first day of her sitting she arrived wearing a flowing skirt the shades of gray and purple and little sandals that laced up to her knees with slim leather straps dyed listless green. Around her neck and draped over her shapely arms, she wore a filmy scarf whose colors were a sad shade of fading yellow.

Dark rings marred the skin beneath her eyes, as they had for days. The color she applied to those marks, something she’d hoped would be flesh toned, did nothing to hide the circles.

Fear lurked in swift, darting glances, peering out and ducking back.

“Child,” Usha said, taking Tamara’s hand and leading her to the long-legged stool. “I’m glad you could come.”

She wanted to cry out, Who has done this to you? More, she wanted to see whether the draping scarf hid actual bruises.

“What a lovely scarf,” she said, touching the long end. She moved her hand a little, and the scarf slid from Tamara’s neck. Relief washed through Usha when she saw the white skin of neck and shoulders unmarked.

“This will be the easy part,” Usha said when Tamara was settled.

She took her own place on the stool opposite. The girl looked up, her attention returning as though from a distance. She arranged her skirt, and Usha watched, carefully pretending not to. No bruise stained Tamara’s legs. No one had laid a hand on her. It was weariness that marked her—and fear.

“All I need from you is that you stay where you are.” Usha put her sketchbook on her knee and took up a stick of charcoal, her hand already working to block out space for images. “I don’t even mind if you move around a little or talk at this stage.”

Tamara didn’t move but to sit straighter. She was like a child determined to do her best at the task to hand. The restive, glittery-eyed young woman Usha had come to know had utterly vanished as though she’d been an illusion.

“I’m sorry I missed you at breakfast,” Usha said. “Rowan could have driven us both here and taken us home again, but then I was up and out early.” She looked up to smile. “I wanted to be ready for you. Poor Rowan, he’s doing a lot of backing and forthing for this painting, isn’t he?”

Absently, Tamara said, “I suppose so.”

Charcoal slipped along paper. Whispering lines and curves became the smooth shape of Tamara’s cheek and elegant neck. A flurry of curls appeared, dark hair spilling down her shoulders, feathering her cheeks.

“I think we’ll be able to have the painting Sir Radulf wants in time for a wedding gift.”

Tamara brought back her attention, this time with a sudden, guilty start. “He hasn’t been asking.” One hand sought the other, fingers very carefully entwining in the appearance of relaxed ease. At ease, she would have been regal.

The merchant prince’s daughter. Liking the thought, Usha bent to her work, letting her charcoal find the shape of a woman at the threshold of her beauty, intelligence, and talent.

“Of course, Sir Radulf has been very busy,” Usha said, gently. A small line, a touch of shadow near the chin, a widening of the brow around the temple, and the image became more like the person before her. She became, to any eye, Loren’s daughter.

Tamara nodded. “It’s difficult. He has ... well, there are so many things ... Radulf needs to do, to have done. He ...” She shrugged, as though that would tell the rest.

The gesture said little to Usha, but Tamara’s hesitation to speak the name of her betrothed said much. She didn’t flaunt that name with pride, as she once had done.

The even, northern light dimmed as something sinuous and swift sailed before the sun.

Never a flock of gulls these days, Usha thought.

The image she’d been keeping in the middle distance between mind and paper vanished.

The breeze fell, and at once the upper room felt steamy. Usha brushed her hair back from her face with a swift gesture. She looked up and lifted a hand to tell Tamara to turn. “Just so I have light on your profile and—”

The charcoal broke in her fingers.

She reached for another, and on the page the perfect swirl of curls slipping down the swanlike neck smeared as her hand passed over.

Usha stopped, hand in mid air. No charcoal dust stained her wrist, not her fingers. She had not touched the page. The image she’d been coaxing wavered, like something seen under water.

“Tamara,” she said, her heart tripping. She put the paper away, slipped it onto the table behind her. “Child, you look weary.”

Tamara found a too-bright version of her swift, confident smile. “I think I’ve been keeping too many late nights.” She lowered her lashes, an imitation of a woman’s thoughtful modesty. “Radulf is so attentive.”

Usha’s heart ached. The imitation was a good one, but the girl who made it remembered too late that Usha knew she’d not been from her father’s house in days.

“He sends gifts,” Tamara said quickly, slipping from the stool. With small, distracted motions, she gathered the yellow scarf around her shoulders as though, in the heat of the steamy day, she were cold. “Books, and music.” She laughed breathlessly and walked to the window. Outside, right below the window, a horse snorted. “He sent a new lute—right from Qualinost, he says.”

Plunder.

Tamara crossed to the window, not glancing at the smeared sketch.

“It’s hard to resist trying to learn more music. I want to...” Tamara glanced out the window, and her shoulders tensed. “Well, I want to play for him and show him how much I appreciate what he’s done.”

The clanging of a bell caught Usha’s attention. She joined Tamara at the window and saw the produce cart trundling around the corner to the inn. Bertie the cook’s boy jogged down the path but soon turned back. The cart carried very little food—clearly nothing Bertie thought worth buying. In these days of scant produce and little game, Usha knew it must have been a hard thing to reject anything. The driver and horse, looking dejected and weary, moved on.

“Food isn’t coming in from the countryside,” Usha said.

Tamara’s fingers plucked absently at her scarf. “There isn’t much. Everything was flooded or drowned.” The scarf slipped from her shoulders, and she caught it back. “He’s trying, Usha. Radulf is trying, and he knows people are scared and hungry.”

And he’s no fool, Usha thought. He knows frightened, hungry people are dangerous.

Usha put an arm around Tamara’s shoulders. “We’ll be fine. Haven is a strong city. The people are good and sensible when they remember to be, and they almost always remember. They’ve held together through the occupation. They’re not about to topple now.”

Tamara drew a quick breath and found another smile. “You’re right. Of course we’ll be fine.”

She glanced out the window again. In the street below, the sound of a horse shaking its bridle mingled with the scornful grunt of a man replying to a low-voiced request. A knight waited below, looking up and down the street, then up at the window.

“And there. See? Radulf has sent an escort for me. I won’t wait for Rowan. I’ll see you at home.”

Tamara turned quickly, kissed Usha’s cheek so suddenly that Usha hardly felt it before she saw the hem of the gray and purple skirt vanish out the door.

Usha touched her cheek, and she thought of the girl who’d eyed her with sullen suspicion in Lorelia Gance’s garden. That child had watched a woman she’d thought a rival, and with the supreme confidence of arrogant youth had gauged Usha and decided she needn’t be overly concerned. What had happened to put the girl with the white roses in her hair into clothing the color of bruises?

On the street, Tamara stood talking to a knight, a stocky man darkly armored, obeying his master and damning the discomfort. He held two horses, one a tall red gelding, the other a small dappled mare dressed in fine gear, its pretty mane threaded through with blue ribbons. They spoke—by the tense look of them, they argued—and suddenly the knight took Tamara’s arm, gripping the elbow. Tamara hung back, perhaps to protest. She turned and looked up at the window.

Hiding anger, Usha leaned on the window sill, eyes on the knight, and called, “Did you need something, Tamara?”

The knight loosed his grip. He sketched the barest of bows. “Mistress Usha, good day. I’ve come to see Sir Radulf’s betrothed safely home.”

“How good of you. And your master. Tamara? Did you need something?”

Tamara lifted her hand to her neck. “My scarf. I’ve left it behind. Will you—”

Toss it down ...

“Of course I’ll look for it. Come back and help me. It’s all over paint and charcoal up here, and we don’t want to keep your escort waiting long while I plow through it all.”

Usha turned her head as though to leave the window. She did not, however, turn her back until she saw Tamara slip away from the knight and run into the inn.

Anger at the thought of the real bruises that knight’s grip must have left and cold fury at the idea of such blatant intimidation stormed in Usha’s heart. She looked around the studio for the missing scarf—on the tables, the floor, near the stool where Tamara had been sitting to pose. No sign of the filmy yellow scarf the color of almost-healed pain. She passed the table where she’d put the failed sketches, the ones she’d felt she had to hide. Listening for Tamara’s footsteps on the stairs, Usha slipped the pages toward her. Chilled, she saw that the images continued to shift and change. Sometimes they moved subtly, sometimes obviously.

Usha’s heart tripped again, swift in her breast. She’d known since first she’d felt the rush of her art in her blood that magic could also enter in. She’d become used to it, and though she never could call it, she often looked for it. Something was different now. These sketches were not trying to find a way, if it even could be said that her magic did seek a way to express itself. These sketches did not want to settle, and to look at them now made Usha’s stomach turn.

Knees weak, she leaned against the table and closed her eyes against the sight. Still she saw the writhing. Image piled upon image, lines and curves, circles and collapsing angles all in a slow demon-dance. There were ravens, sometimes swords and a great battle rushing. Now a wolf, then a streak across free space, a furious black lightning bolt. Her ears roared, her chest grew tight. As if from a great distance, she heard an anguished cry.

“How could you?”

Usha shuddered, opened her eyes, and pushed away from the table. Shaking, she turned and saw Tamara standing behind her, the yellow scarf balled up in her fists, her face white.

“I thought you were my friend! How could you—?”

Usha looked at the sketches under her hands. The images of fear and death had finally resolved so that she could not look at even one without being certain that what she truly saw was the tall, perilous shape of Sir Radulf.

Tamara saw it too.

“Tamara—”

The girl flung away. “Get away from me! You never liked him. You and my father, you’ve always suspected him.” She sobbed again. “You’re jealous.”

“Tamara, stop it! You’re wrong about Sir Radulf. He isn’t what you think he is.” Usha took a step closer, reaching to calm the girl. “He couldn’t be. He never was. He’s—”

Blue eyes flashed, as much in panic as anger. Tamara raised her fists to strike or ward off. Usha never learned which. A slim, swift figure darted into the room, and Tamara cried out, rage and terror as Dezra pinned her arms and turned her.

Half laughing by the flash in her eyes and wholly annoyed, Dezra said, “Enough of that! What—”

Tamara yanked back, kicked Dez’s shin hard, and wrenched out of her grip. Dez cursed. Usha reached for Tamara. On a storm of weeping and fury, the girl was gone.

Twisting Tamara’s fallen scarf in her hands, Usha looked around the studio. No different in appearance than moments before, still it felt as though lightning had lashed through.

“Well,” Dez drawled, “it’s certainly heartening to see you getting on so well with Loren’s daughter.”

Usha eyed her sister-in-law, looking for anger or bitterness. She found none. Dezra seemed even paler than when Usha had last seen her. She was grieving Caramon, the father with whom she’d often had a thunderous relationship, yet the father she’d so loved.

“Well,” Usha said, thinking of fathers and daughters, “things have been better.”

Dez jerked her head toward the window. “I saw her going off with one of Sir Radulf’s knights. What’s going on?”

Usha had a hundred questions for Dezra about what had been going on—where had she been, how was Aline and what had become of Madoc—but she let them stay unspoken. The tidy silver braid she’d made of her hair was fraying. She pushed back stray wisps from her neck. “What’s going on? Pretty much what it looks like—a trapped woman screaming for help.”

“And it all comes out sounding like curses.” Dez picked up the fallen sketches. She looked narrow-eyed at one and then the other. “She see this?”

“Yes. She didn’t like it much.”

“Can’t blame her, but—” an awkward pause then—“she shouldn’t blame you. Not for seeing what’s there to see.”

That wasn’t peace, but it could be in time. Usha felt tensions fall away she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

“I’m not sure she really blames me. She blames ...” You never liked him! You and my father! “She doesn’t know who to blame, and she’s certainly not going to blame herself for getting what she wanted. I don’t know. It’s complicated with girls that age.”

Dezra laughed, a sudden explosive sound that had nothing to do with merriment and much to do with understanding. “You’re telling me? I used to be a girl that age.” She stepped out the door and came back in with a pack. She shoved the two stools to the window and lifted her face to a small breeze as she set the pack on the sill.

“Come over. It’s cooler here.”

Usha did. When she was comfortable, Dez took a leather bottle out of the pack. She pulled the stopper, and the sweet scent of blond elven wine drifted out. Usha’s eyes went wide. The scent was almost taste.

“Where did you get that?”

“Let’s say I got it and leave it there.” She dipped into her pack again and came up with a heel of bread and a fist-sized chunk of cheese.

Usha’s eyes went wide. “And those? Where’d you get those?”

“Same place. You hungry?”

Usha was always hungry. Not starving but always a little bit hungry from dining on thin soup and whatever the servants in Loren’s kitchen could make of the odd things that survived the flood. It mostly had to do with water and dried fish. Gratefully, she accepted half the bread and cheese. Then, taking small sips of wine, the two sat in silence and watched the street.

After a while, Usha said, “I don’t really like the quiet.”

“It’s been like that all over the city,” Dez said. She passed the bottle, Usha wet her lips and handed back the wine as sweet, delicate fire drifted through her. “You hardly see anyone in the day time. They’re all shoveling out, and looking for food. You’d think that would mean you’d see them on the streets, but you don’t. They try to keep out of the way of Sir Radulf’s men, and they know the side ways, the alleys, and who to find across the backyard fence. No one goes far from home, and everyone worries about finding food.”

One more sip, and Usha put the bottle down. She let silence last as long as it took for the wine’s fire to settle again into banked warmth.

“Dez.”

Dezra nodded, as though she knew the question to come. She bounced a fist lightly on her knee.

“Aline is fine. Rose Hall took a hard hit. You know those windows everyone admired? They’re halfway to the bottom of the river now, if not washed up on Qualinesti banks. But Aline doesn’t care. It’s only glass, she says, and then she goes on trying to make Qui’thonas work.”

“But how?”

Dez glanced at Usha, then away again as though trying to decide how much to say. “She does what she can. We all do. It was never easy.” Again, a moment of silence then, “Madoc’s fine. And Dunbrae.”

It was all Usha wanted to know. For the rest, she knew what all of Haven did. The moors of the North Seeker Reaches had become an abode of dragons. No one was traveling those gray roads on any business at all.

Dez nodded, as though to agree with some private understanding. She took another sip of wine.

“I used to think we were trapped here, and I hated it. I found ways out for others but never one for us. Not that I didn’t try. I always did, looking at every way. Was it safe? Was it the right way to take? Trapped. I used to think so. Now I think we’re lost. Gone down a wrong road and no way back.”

The words chilled Usha, winding out of a dark, hollow mood she’d never heard from Dezra before. Why did it surprise? Dezra had come to Haven as she always did in summer, on business for her father’s inn, to meet a lover and renew a sweet acquaintance, then to ride back home again. Now, her father was dead, her lover hanged ...

Usha closed her eyes.

... and her brother’s wife was sleeping with another man.

“Dez, there will be a way out. There will be a road home.”

Dezra’s lips twisted. She leaned across the distance between them and flipped Usha’s silver braid over her shoulder.

“What are you,” she said, “some guiding star? There’s no way. None I can see, and I’ve been doing nothing but looking.”

With sudden, restless energy, Dezra pounded the stopper into the bottle and shoved it into her pack. A clatter of boot heels and she was halfway across the studio.

“If you’re looking for me, let Rusty know. He’ll find me.”

Indeed, Usha thought, but she said nothing, asked none of the questions left unanswered—including how much Rusty knew about Dezra’s business, and how it was he would know how to find her.

“Dez?”

Dez lifted a hand—farewell or an attempt to stall further questions. She did that on her way out the door and didn’t turn to say more.

In the silence of the empty studio, Usha thought she heard echoes of the strife that had crackled through it like wild lightning. Behind those echoes, like ghosts, she heard words she’d twice recalled since Tamara had shouted them, words she hadn’t truly weighed until then.

You never liked him. You and my father, you’ve always suspected him!

Gods know I never liked him, Usha thought as she went around the studio picking up sketches and moving stools against the wall. But she hadn’t thought Loren’s feelings for his daughter’s betrothed were obvious in his daughter’s presence. The knight was his security, his way to Haven’s peace—or at least his daughter’s well-being.

What did Tamara imagine Loren suspected of Sir Radulf?

From the doorway, a voice said, “Mistress Usha?” Rowan nodded when she looked up. “Master Loren sent me looking for you. Are you ready for home now?”

“I am.”