Prisoner of Haven

21

Madoc Diviner wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand, scraping a grit of mud across raw skin. Water dripped down every wall of the tunnel, slid off the supporting beams, and pooled on the floor.

Floor. Odd word for it, he thought scornfully. It had been a while since this sucking mud could be called a floor. In some places, he sank to his shins in mud.

This was the best of the tunnels under Haven, yet every time he looked around, Madoc thought that would be the moment it turned into his tomb.

There were rats—big ones with pelts the color of an old man’s beard, beady black eyes, and pale, hairless tails. Get close enough and you could see the vermin riding their backs. They plopped into the water and swam, finding rat-ways in the dark. They scurried along the sides of the sunken floor, chittering. Sometimes they just sat in gloomy corners and preened their whiskers. The less tolerant of them, like the one just outside the light so only its eyes showed, glared.

“I hate this place,” Madoc muttered.

The dwarf Dunbrae grunted, but he didn’t say what he usually said to a comment like that. He didn’t say—and so I’m not going to throttle him, Madoc thought—he didn’t say, “I know.”

Not only did he keep quiet, Dunbrae didn’t run his thumb along the side of the onyx ring, that silent way he had of suggesting he knew pretty much anything anyone could want to know about what was going on in the mind or the heart another. Madoc would like to have thought that a good thing. He didn’t. He wasn’t a man to waste his time on fantasy. Likely the dwarf was distracted and had omitted the insult.

In the dark, Dunbrae seemed to exist only half-embodied, a shimmering ghost in a spitting pool of light cast by oil lamps that hated the moisture in the air and gave only sulky illumination. He stood on a brace of wood laid across the tunnel, which made him the driest man in the place. He didn’t venture into the tunnel itself. If Madoc had gone into mud to his shins, Dunbrae would have been up to his waist. And so, in this operation, the dwarf was the pit-boss. Madoc twisted a humorless smile.

“We have to go farther,” Dunbrae said. He held up a lamp and peered out as far as light would let him see. Not very far at all. “It’s looking good. I’m thinking as far as we’ve gone—”

“We?” Madoc groaned, stretched his back, and shifted his weight. “Dwarf, I’ve gone, and I’ve come back, and I’ve gone again. You haven’t stirred yourself in an hour.”

“As far as we’ve gone,” Dunbrae said, “we’re seeing some hope for this tunnel.” He lifted a lamp to see Madoc better. “It’s drying out, you say.”

It was, somewhat, and when water ran, it ran down and out to the river again. The backwash from the storm had collapsed nearly every tunnel in Qui’thonas’s network, dragged out floors, and carved away walls. Bad as this tunnel seemed, the worst hadn’t happened. It could be functional again soon.

Even better though, the tunnel below Rose Hall was revealed as a wonder, for around the next bend was the side branch they had never used. They’d always believed it doubled back to become a dead end, the way blocked by years of stone and rubble from an old collapse. The storm and the river’s backwash had changed that, undermining what had seemed an impassible blockage and revealing a stone-walled cavity that might have started out as a cave but ended up as a catacomb. Past the old rock fall, the level of the floor dropped fully the length of a tall man’s height. There had been bodies—old bones and skulls—washed out from their burial niches in the flood and dragged into floors of the maze. Best, though, the catacomb was part of a network of burial chambers, little rooms leading one to another, each stoutly walled by the bones of the earth, some passageways arched in stone, others rough as the world had made them.

Every one of those chambers—“Little jewels on a necklace,” Dunbrae called them—was solid, and a man could walk the path of them and find himself in places below the city Qui’thonas or pirates had never dreamed existed.

It all looked dwarf-built, from before the time of Old Keep, or so Dunbrae said. And then he went on to praise the work of dwarves, to assure Aline that this string of catacombs was exactly what Qui’thonas needed.

“Go out to map,” Aline had asked Madoc. “If it’s as Dunbrae says, it will be more than we ever imagined we could hope for or have.”

In truth that was everything Madoc wanted—that Aline could have all she hoped for. So he mapped, slogging in the tunnels with Dunbrae in the days after the storm. Some days were bad, most were worse, but today, despite what he said to the dwarf, today wasn’t so bad. He’d gotten into the catacombs yesterday, left kits for torches and leather bottles filled with water. He’d get back there today, and he’d leave more. Qui’thonas had a new way out of Haven, one not even Aline herself had known about.

Madoc stood as best he could—knees stiff, feet wet—and took a lamp from the dwarf. He saw to the tarred sack on his back, shifting the weight of brands and wicking and oil. Dunbrae’s light grew faint behind him. Ahead the beams holding the dripping ceiling glittered, and the stone walls glistened. The passage had been risky here yesterday, a slog through mud and standing water. It had changed since then. Madoc caught glimpses of a floor lower than it had been. Like a sculptor, the great storm had carved something out of Haven below ground no one now living had known how to see.

At the intersection where the first burial chambers were, Madoc stopped and shifted the load on his back. He listened to water drip. Behind, Dunbrae moved in such a way that his light was obscured. Breath held, Madoc waited to see it again. He didn’t. He drew breath to call out, and something itched in his mind—the old feeling of knowing, a warning to keep quiet. Dunbrae must have moved, for his light winked again in the darkness.

Madoc kept still, listening to the sounds of the tunnel and the quiet beat of his heart. The silence erupted in sudden shouting.

“Mage!” Dunbrae bellowed. “Bring ’em in!”

The tunnel filled with the sounds of panic—splashing, cries of terror, and Madoc recognized Dezra’s voice, quick and commanding.

“Run! Don’t turn! Go straight! Go, go, go!”

Madoc ran for her, splashing into a part of the tunnel he hadn’t seen yet today, hoping no sink hole had opened, no walls had collapsed.

“Dez!”

Lantern high, he saw only the flash of light on wet walls and the golden gleam on puddled floors. He swung the lantern in an arc, hoping that Dez was close enough to see and be guided.

They came out of the murk and the darkness—white-faced, an old man, a child, and a tottering woman whose white hair clung to her face and neck in filthy snarls. They were a battered lot, every one of them with scratches and cuts, even the child bruised and torn, as though they’d fled and fought and fled again. As Madoc reached them, Dez turned and swooped the old woman up into her arms. Madoc thrust the lantern into the man’s hand and snatched the weeping child.

“Ahead,” he told Dez. “Dunbrae is there.”

Gasping, Dez shook her head. “No. We can’t.”

The child sobbed, and the old man said, “We been found by knights.”

Madoc looked at Dez, who nodded.

“I collapsed the tunnel back there. Not hard. It was all mud and sliding. But it won’t keep.”

“Worse,” Madoc said. “They know it’s here.”

Dez sifted the light load of the half-fainting woman and slogged on. Her voice like a knife’s edge, she said, “You can’t imagine how much worse.”

He learned. Dez had gone out with two others of Qui’thonas on a route scouted well in advance to a safe house found in one of the fishing villages downriver. They’d been met on the road by knights.

“Killed the child’s father,” she said, her voice low. “And killed Konal.”

Madoc winced. Konal had been the only elf left to Qui’thonas, a young woman working for what she’d proudly called a debt of honor. Konal’s had been one of the first families rescued from Qualinesti after Aline’s marriage funded the effort.

“Who else?” Madoc asked.

“Dead? No one.”

Madoc’s belly went cold.

“Barthel’s been captured.”

With a great splashing, Dunbrae came down the tunnel, sloshing through muddy water up to his shins, lantern as high as he could hold it. His face all shadow and white eyes, he jerked his head back the way he’d come.

“No one’s going that way,” he growled. He stood, a steely-eyed guardian at the gate. “No one’s leading knights any farther.”

The old woman moaned.

“There are no knights,” Dez said, walking past him.

Dunbrae got in her way. “You said they found the tunnel.”

Madoc wouldn’t have needed a shred of his old divination skills to know that Dez stood on the ragged edge of her temper. The pulse pounded in her temples, and her jaw was a hard, clenched line.

“I collapsed the damned thing, Dunbrae. Let it be.”

The dwarf stood stone stubborn.

“I don’t care. They know it’s there. They’ll dig or think things through. Whatever they do, they won’t let it be till they find where it ends. No one’s getting near—”

He didn’t speak Aline’s name, he didn’t have to.

“He’s right,” Madoc said, lip curling a little at the irony of affirming Dunbrae’s case. “We can’t go farther, Dez. Or not the way we used to.” He nodded to Dunbrae. “Barthel’s been captured. He’ll hold out. Maybe. Or maybe not.”

The dwarf’s face shone white above his dark beard. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his onyx ring.

“Might be you don’t know him so well as I do. He’ll hold out. So get it into your head. I’m not leading a pack of damned knights right to where Barthel is going to die to keep them from getting.”

“Could we not do this?” Dezra snapped. “Later, if we live. But not now.”

Dunbrae grunted, but Madoc ignored him.

“The catacombs,” Madoc said. “We’ll go that way.”

Dez shook her head. “No one knows how far they go. You could wander around down there for days.”

“No dwarf with half an eye wanders anywhere like that for days,” Dunbrae said. “You think people just dig and go and dig and go? There’s always a plan and a structure. These are catacombs. People like to find their dead when they’re lookin’ for ’em. Just because Haven forgot about it doesn’t mean the place isn’t orderly. There’ll be a way in and a way out.”

“But out where?”

“Anywhere not on a... dangerous doorstep,” Madoc said quietly, “is a good place to start.”

Anywhere far from Aline.

The conversation had not inspired hope in the refugees. The elderly man looked from Dez to the dwarf, avoiding Madoc’s eye when the talk turned to catacombs. In Dezra’s arms, the frail old woman wept. The child had fallen silent on Madoc’s shoulder, exhausted or terrified.

Madoc put the child foot to ground, and Dez helped the old man settle her frail burden as best they could where the wall was strong and the floor not too wet.

“Dez, it’ll be a while of walking. Find a way up and let people know what’s happened.” He looked at Dunbrae. The dwarf nodded as though over a forgone conclusion. “We’ll find our way back.”

They parted, Dezra slogging ahead as Madoc and Dunbrae shepherded the trembling refugees toward the catacombs. As they went into the deeper darkness, the child asked in a tremulous voice about dead people and ghosts.

“We’re not going to worry about that,” Madoc said with a wink. “Live people run faster than dead people.”

Dunbrae snorted. “Quit trying to scare the child, mage. Dead people don’t run at all.”

Usha sat in the carriage beside Loren, her hands composed in stillness that did not reflect the turmoil of anger and fear within. Loren sat very still, his hands clenched in fists on his knees, the knuckles bone white. Usha put her own hand over one of those fists and found it cold.

It had been Sir Radulf’s habit to send for Loren if he wanted to speak with him. He would have a knight escort him, carrying him to the keep on dragonback. Sir Radulf had not sent for Loren today. Loren went at his own will, and he would arrive unannounced. Loren was going to Old Keep to take back his daughter.

As Loren would go, so would Usha, for she ignored his every objection.

When Loren didn’t so much as glance at her to acknowledge the touch, Usha returned to looking out the window. Haven had a sad shabbiness about it these days—ruined gardens, houses with shutters torn off, taverns with windows boarded up. The people went about their business in whatever of their clothing had survived the flood. Old men and young went scavenging through the streets for wood that might be dried in the sun. Girls and women had sacks over their shoulders to reclaim clothing, pots, candlesticks, sodden boots ... whatever they could find that might be salvaged from the storm. Once-proud Haven looked like a village of unhappy, overgrown kender.

Rowan took the carriage into the courtyard of Old Keep. The ancient tower loomed like a dark finger pointing to the sky in baleful accusation. High over the tower flew dragons, reds patrolling the city, others coming and going on other business. Sir Radulf’s own black soared over the river, wings wide and slipping along the air currents, patrolling the waterway.

Rowan leaped from the driver’s seat and opened the door.

“Usha, you needn’t come,” Loren said, looking at the tower.

Usha didn’t dignify that with an answer. Of course she would go with him. All the way to the top of those stairs. She extended her hand to Rowan, who helped her down.

Loren crossed the courtyard beneath the scornful eyes of dark knights. Usha knew he went with all the pride he could muster, and beside him she looked neither right nor left. Her heart thundered in her chest, but not with fear anymore. Now, she was simply angry—on behalf of the stolen girl, the father made helpless, and the city that had fallen. Usha climbed the long stairway with the easy grace of a woman ascending a staircase in her own home. Loren stopped before tall oaken doors. Usha slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. For the frist time since she’d refused to stay behind, he looked at her, his eyes offering silent thanks for her support.

To the side of each door stood a knight, eyes forward, each with a hand on the sword at his side. Usha wanted to smile when she saw her lover straighten to his full height. If he was supposed to beg entry, Loren didn’t. If he was to wait as a supplicant outside the doors, he wouldn’t. His daughter was within. Ignoring the knights, they entered the keep.

Tamara had been at Old Keep two days and a night. For this reason above any other, Usha had insisted on coming. She would not say it to the girl’s father, caught between dread and anger, but he might find his daughter more in need of a woman’s help than a man’s.

Usha hoped it wouldn’t be so. Loren had sent for Tamara, and he had been told it was her wish to stay. Upon receipt of a letter written over her name but not in her hand, Loren had gone to take his daughter home. He had been given a glimpse of her in the gardens behind Old Keep. She’d stood with a little merlin hawk on her wrist, lifting it to the sky. The hawk had cried and spread its wings, Tamara had turned, and she might have seen him.

Loren’s escort that day had been Lady Mearah. He had not been able to speak with Tamara, but the lady knight assured him that Tamara was well. And then she’d taken Loren back across the river by dragon, leaving Rowan to follow through the winding streets with the carriage.

That night, Usha sat on the bed watching Loren pace, now and then stopping to look across the river to Old Keep. He jerked his head in short rhythm. She knew he was counting the lights in the tall, narrow windows, trying to imagine which bright rectangle was the room where Tamara lay. Once, he stopped in mid-stride. Usha joined him at the window as a figure passed before the window facing Steadfast.

“It’s Tamara,” Loren said.

She’d put her arms around him, leaning her head on his shoulder. She felt his heart beating beneath her hand, fast and hard.

“I’m sure she’s well, my love,” Usha said, not at all sure and hoping he didn’t hear that uncertainty in her voice.

He heard something, for he said, “No one can know if Tamara is well. No one can be sure.”

He was right, of course. Tamara might be at Old Keep against her will; and she might be at Old Keep with all her consent. She had been strange and wild these last weeks, like a bright flame consuming all the pure oil in a lamp’s well. She’d spoken often of her hopes for the marriage with Sir Radulf. The city would recover because of him. The people would understand that everything he did, he did for the well-being of all.

Sir Radulf Eigerson, the Red Wolf, who allowed his second, Lady Mearah, to hang men and women for the least infraction. This was her knight. Tamara never spoke of the growing unease in Haven, the mood shifting into grim foreboding. She never once asked whether Loren thought trouble could spread through a city whose people grew a little bit hungrier every day, the wealthy becoming as thin as the poorest gully dwarf.

None of this seemed to concern Tamara. It was as though she knew what others didn’t about her betrothed—or believed what others couldn’t.

This morning Loren had said to Usha, “I will have my daughter back. I will go and take my child out of there, if I have to go with stones in a sack and a sling.”

When he’d refused to let her go with him, she’d said, “You will not go without me, Loren. If I have to follow you on foot, I will.”

And so he’d sent word to Sir Radulf that Tamara would come home with him tonight, and Sir Radulf could object standing in blood—Loren’s or his own.

Now, in the bright light of day, Usha walked into Old Keep beside him. Knights lounged around the armory that had been Old Keep’s great hall—some laughing and gambling, others honing weapons or testing their skills against each other. The place rang with rough laughter and the clang and clatter of iron when Usha and Loren entered, but silence followed in their wake as they climbed another set of stairs, these winding down from a gallery. Someone muttered unintelligible words, another laughed in a way that made Usha think that if she knew what the first knight had said, she’d have wanted to slap his face.

At the top of the stairs Loren stopped outside a vaulted chamber. In a city where wood was too wet to ignite and little kindling existed, where candles had been washed out of flooded houses and oil made useless, it seemed to Usha that all the light in the world had come into Old Keep. Every torch, every brazier, each lamp and rush light—and on the vast stone table banks of candles to illuminate a feast of food not seen in Haven since the great storm.

Dragons, carrying supplies for the garrison, had carried the means of illumination as well as food, and into this dazzle a slim figure came from the other corridor—Tamara dressed in blue and gold, her arms white, her midnight hair piled high on her head like a crown.

“Father!” Tamara cried, and she sounded as startled as she was pleased. She ran to Loren, her sapphire eyes glittering, her fair cheeks flushed. Usha’s heart contracted to see Loren sweep his daughter into his arms and hold her tightly.

“Tamara!” he rasped. “Are you all right?

Tamara laughed—a thin, crystalline sound. “I’m fine, father.” She turned to Usha. “Why have you come?”

“To be with your father. To learn what’s happened.”

Tamara went still, like a deer scenting danger. Then, carefully, she stepped out of Loren’s embrace. The look she gave Usha, cold and scornful, reminded her of hard glances of earlier days.

“I’m fine, thank you. As you can see. I’m here because I want to be.” She lowered her eyes, her lips curved in a smile, then she looked up at Loren. “Father, he has been all you would want him to be. Radulf has been a knight of honor.”

Usha saw Loren shudder, but his daughter didn’t seem to feel it as she took his hand and led them inside. “Come and sit. Radulf will be here in a moment.”

Like the lady of a fine house, Usha thought as Tamara took them into the solar and seated her father beside the head of the table. Usha seated herself beside him. Tamara’s own chair was opposite them. The chair at the head was empty and waiting for the master of the hall.

On the table lay a brace of hares, roasted and displayed on a silver platter. Beside them a burnished copper pot steamed, filling the room with the aroma of tender pork stewed with onions and carrots, parsley and sage. There were apples piled in bowls and boards of bread.

This was more food than Usha had seen in three weeks. It was more than she expected to see for weeks to come. In the houses of the wealthy and the hovels of the poor people ate what they could find. They hoped for ships to come upriver with supplies. They fished in the river, old men and young children, and they were sometimes lucky, catching enough to eat, sometimes enough to dry and hoard. They never found herb or vegetable or fruit to help the pale diet.

Sir Radulf, it seemed, had better supplies than Haven could hope for. The sight of the food, the smell of it, turned Usha’s stomach.

Tamara, well-fed and pale as a fever victim, cheeks splashed with hectic color, hands quick and trying to hide a small trembling, didn’t seem to be benefiting from the fine fare.

A shadow slipped across the floor, and a footstep sounded sharply on the stone.

“Loren,” said Sir Radulf, “it’s good of you to come.” He bowed to Usha. “And Mistress Usha. As ever, I am your servant.”

He said it coldly as he straightened the collar of his white shirt. His men went armored, but he did not. Sir Radulf dressed in finest linen. His breeches were of soft, dark leather, his boots glossed and well tended. He looked like a lord come to supper, a man with weighty matters on his mind.

Usha said nothing and neither did Loren.

“I’ve been detained by business,” said the knight. “I hope you haven’t minded the wait.”

“I am here,” Loren said. “I’ve come to take Tamara home.”

Tamara moved restlessly, her glance darting between her father and her betrothed. It rested on Sir Radulf. “I don’t want to leave. I ... I’m staying until the wedding, father. We’ll be married in Old Keep.”

Loren’s neck flushed with anger. Usha, fearing what that anger could unleash, put her hand on his knee. The flush did not die, but whatever he would have said went unspoken.

The knight took his seat, shifting the chair to an angle that allowed him to touch Tamara’s hand. The gesture turned Usha’s stomach. She found she could hardly look at the man, and yet she dared not take her eyes from him.

Tamara curled her fingers around Sir Radulf’s. He leaned closer, his shirt sleeve brushing her arm. On the cuff of the shirt’s white sleeve, Usha saw a mark—a small dark stain, as though Sir Radulf had been careless with his wine.

The knight’s hand slipped from Tamara’s and slid lower, to her leg. She blushed, confused before her father. Her sapphire eyes darted to Usha as Sir Radulf stroked the thin blue fabric of her gown.

“Take your hand from her,” Usha said, her voice deceptively gentle. “It isn’t proper, sir. Not with a lady.”

The knight’s eyes flashed then stilled. He did not move his hand.

Loren rose. “Remove your hand.”

Sir Radulf stood, tall and whip thin, and once again Usha saw such anger in Loren that she feared. She touched his hand and glanced across the table, reminding him that his daughter stood within hand’s reach of Sir Radulf.

Loren understood her meaning, Usha recognized the stain on the knight’s shirt sleeve. It was not rich red wine. It was blood. There was more—a splash near the inside of the elbow, a rusty streak drying on the inside of his palm.

“Sit,” said Sir Radulf.

Loren sat, gesturing to Tamara to come to him. She hesitated and glanced at Sir Radulf, the pulse in her throat racing so hard that Usha could see it from across the table. As though the matter were one not worth his concern, Sir Radulf shrugged.

“You will be happy to hear,” he said as Tamara went to stand beside her father, “that I have learned a thing I’ve long been wanting to know.”

Usha’s heart beat hard as the knight turned over his palm, looked at the blood there with a feigned expression of surprise. Now Usha saw blood crusted beneath his nails.

“I’ve learned that there is, in fact, more than luck involved in the way people have been vanishing from Haven.”

A chill crept along Usha’s spine.

“Do either of you know the word, Qui’thonas?”

Loren said, “Elvish, isn’t it?”

“Specifically, Qualinesti. It means, ‘the path away,’ or so I was told.”

Beneath the table, hidden by linen, Usha’s hands trembled.

“I’m inclined to believe it. The man who screamed it was past the point of pain where he could dissemble. They get a look in their eyes. You know when something has broken and truth leaks through.”

Beside Loren’s chair, Tamara shuddered.

“Radulf,” she whispered. “What... what have you done?”

The knight glanced at her, but with little interest, then turned away. “I haven’t learned all I want to know, but I will. For now, I have learned something interesting. Qui’thonas used to be active in getting elves out of Qualinesti. They were based in Haven.” He shrugged. “It used to drive them mad in Qualinost, knights watching elves slip away into the dark and the river, never finding them. I doubt they knew of an organized effort or had the wit to imagine it. It took them a while to tighten the borders, but they did, and left the problem neatly in place across the river for me to discover.

“Qui’thonas is operated by a very enterprising person, someone who has reversed the course of the path and now ferries people out of Haven.” Sir Radulf’s eyes narrowed a little, as though he were considering something. “We know the head of Qui’thonas is a woman.”

Loren said nothing, apparently surprised. The roaring in Usha’s ears was the sound of her blood racing, her heart hammering, yet she managed to keep her expression one of curiosity.

“We can guess that she’s well-funded. We will find her. She cannot he allowed to live, and she cannot be allowed to vanish. When she is executed, all of Haven must know about it.”

The silence hung like a question between them, an invitation to speculation. Who is she? Who among Loren’s wealthy circle could be the mastermind behind Qui’thonas?

Usha glanced at Loren, feeling his tension, knowing his mind must be racing to think of the name of a woman in Haven with the funds to manage such an organization.

Hidden, her hands shook harder. One name would come to mind, must come to mind. Few women had more wealth than the widow Wrackham. Homely Aline, the sweet-tempered young woman who had come from Solace to marry the wealthiest man in Haven. Everyone knew her for a quiet young woman. After the death of Lir Wrackham she hadn’t tried to assume his place among the influential in Haven. She kept to herself, and after her husband’s death no one in Haven could match her wealth.

Loren glanced away from Sir Radulf, just as Usha saw the knowledge in his eyes that Aline was the woman the knight sought.

The knight shrugged, having seen nothing.

“No matter. There’s a tenacious shred of life left in my... resource. I’ll learn the name.”

Tamara made a sound like choking. She clutched Loren’s shoulder. It seemed to amuse her knight. “Such sensitivity, my dear. You surprise me. Does it trouble you to think I know how to get what I need?”

Usha’s heart ached for the girl, the child who had gotten what she wanted and now was being forced to admit how vile and ugly it was.

“I... I never thought you would do something like this.”

He laughed, the hard sound of winter ice cracking on the river. “You’re judging me, Tamara? By the same measure you judge your faithful father, perhaps? The man who decided he’d sell you—”

Usha gasped at the naked insult.

Loren leaped to his feet. “I have not sold her! I haven’t liked the idea of this marriage—”

“You promoted it!” Sir Radulf’s smile vanished. “For what, Halgard? Your comfortable place in Haven, consulted but not on the Council? Were you thinking you’d like to step in when the Council is finally disbanded, the lord mayor made irrelevant? You have found a way, haven’t you? You say you sold the girl for the sake of peace in Haven. But was that really it?”

He crossed the distance between them. As though he were picking up something he’d carelessly dropped, he took Tamara’s hand.

“And you, my dear. You’ve made your own bargains, haven’t you?” He nodded toward the table, the platters of food cooling, uneaten. He slipped a finger down the length of her lovely neck, tracing the delicate hem of her gown’s gold-edged bodice. “And I’m a fair man. I’ll marry you. I’ll send you home till that day, and we’ll do it right and well before all the city. And then your food will be the finest, your gowns of the best silk, and our bed, my Tamara, will be of deepest down.”

He turned her around and put his hand at the small of her back, caressing as he urged her toward the corridor. “Go pack your things. Your father is impatient to have you home.”

She went, stumbling once when she looked over her shoulder. In her eyes Usha saw terror and shame. Usha rose and opened her arms to the girl, but Tamara fled in tears.

Beyond the two doorways out of the solar Usha heard the sound of knights—walking, armor rattling, a word exchanged, a grunt, and silence. Sir Radulf had posted watch.

“I’ve sent for your carriage,” the knight said. “It is waiting in the courtyard.” He paused, a cool smile returning to his blade-thin lips. “I’ll look forward to seeing you again, father-in-law.”

He bowed to Usha, and there was something lurking in his eyes now she hadn’t seen, before—cold suspicion. “You, mistress, have become a very interesting person to me. People speak of you who—” He broke off deliberately. “I look forward to learning more about you.”

Shuddering, Usha watched him leave. Her knees weak as water, she stood braced against the back of the chair. Loren’s expression was that of a man sick with grief and impotent fury. He could only look into the shadows outside the solar where Tamara had gone. The daughter whose safety he had hoped to purchase with his cooperation had become a hostage.

Usha wrapped her arms around herself, remembering Sir Radulf’s words. People speak of you who—and she thought of the prisoner he’d tortured.

She must find Dezra. She must warn Aline!

Usha stared out the carriage window, surprised to find that night had not fallen. In the twilight, the dim shapes of buildings jerked past as Rowan guided the team down from Old Keep and into Haven. In the carriage, silence lay like a funeral pall. Loren sat like stone beside the other window, unmoving. Tamara was a half-seen form in the gloom of the seat opposite. She lifted her head.

“I will not marry him, father.”

Usha glanced at Loren. The announcement didn’t seem to move him.

“Tamara,” she said, then said no more, for Loren looked away from the window and the night rattling by. His face was like that of a bleached skull, his eyes hollow, the flesh vanished in shadows.

“I will not marry him.”

Choking on words Usha knew he hated, he said, “Child, you don’t have a choice.”

“I used to have one.”

“Tamara, we both used to have a choice.” The carriage slowed to approach an intersection. Loren glanced out the window. The watch was changing at the corners—tall knights on tall horses making ready to guard Sir Radulf Eigerson’s city. “We don’t anymore.”

Usha reached for the girl’s hand. It felt cold as ice and thin as frost. Her refusal was not the child’s stubborn willfulness Loren had allowed—or had not discouraged while it propelled his daughter through her own part of the course they’d taken. A child, Tamara had demanded the suitor she desired and didn’t look deeply to see how dangerous the choice. The woman sitting beside Usha now knew better.

Yet Tamara’s willfulness and Loren’s determination to have what he would had combined to make the woman’s resolve late-grown and useless. Usha pressed Tamara’s hands between her own, trying to warm them.

Loren had wanted to soften the blow of the occupation, he’d wanted to ensure his child’s well-being, and he’d wanted his piece of power.

He has none of that now, Usha thought, and in the gamble he’s lost his daughter.

“Tamara, it’s done,” Loren said. His bleak glance took in Usha as well as his daughter. “Sir Radulf won’t allow the betrothal to be broken. And if I fall out of favor with him, things will be harder for Haven, impossible for... you, Tamara.” He looked away, then back to Usha. “And for you, my love.”

He was rationalizing. Usha knew him well enough to know that. He didn’t know what else to do.

Silhouetted against the purple twilight, her face pale as though it were cast in alabaster, Tamara said, “If you go along with him, father, you might as well be him.”

No one spoke after that—no word of reproach or accusation or even comfort. They rode the rest of the way in silence, like people going to a funeral.

“Loren,” Usha said softly.

He didn’t move. He lay on the bed in silence while the stars wheeled above the river. Usha heard the voice of a servant whispering in the corridor. Tamara said something in return. The girl’s voice no longer sounded brittle or frightened. Neither did it sound weary when she said, “Thank you. If you leave it there ...” The rest of the words trailed away as she walked toward her bed chamber.

Usha sat propped with pillows, a small book on her knee. She glanced at the doorway, then at Loren. Wine goblets and a plate of untouched food sat on the small table in the center of the room. Usha had Loren eat, but the food remained, the wine barely tasted.

Usha put aside her book, the pages unread, the words hardly understood.

“Loren, I want to go back to the Ivy.”

He looked up. “Why?”

She wanted to find Dez, to get word to her that Sir Radulf knew about Qui’thonas. This she dared not say, and so she said, “I want to see how things are in my studio. There’s work yet to do, and I have been neglecting it.”

The explanation seemed to suit, for he settled again, returning to staring at the ceiling.

“I’ll have Rowan take you in the morning.”

Usha put her book aside. “We’ll see. I might like to walk.”

He raised none of his usual objection to that, and though she thought it was strange, the whole night had been strange. “Good night,” she said and kissed him.

He returned her kiss then leaned up on his elbow. “I love you.”

The sudden passionate declaration startled her.

“I love your generous heart,” he whispered. “Your soul always open to wonder.” He touched her hair, her face. “Shaper of images, married to a man who cannot see what he has and what he’s losing.”

The words sent a pang of sorrow through her.

“You are the most mysterious woman I’ve ever met.” He sat up now and took her into his arms. Usha felt his heart beating, hard and fast. “All that I love, Usha. You fill a place in me that has been too long empty.”

His voice shook, his arms trembled a little. She had felt him tremble with passion, but if strong emotion shook him now, it was not the same thing.

“Loren—”

Loren shook his head. He moved away, and his expression was closed to her. A chill ran down Usha’s spine, and in the moment it did, the closed expression left him, as though it had never been.