Prisoner of Haven

22

Tamara ran like a ghost through alleys she’d never known existed. She felt like a phantom, a wraith ripped out of her body. She ran in darkness, a woman who had never gone anywhere unattended. Terror spurred her faster, even as she pleaded with fate to keep her from running into men with weapons who would escort her back home. Her stomach turned. If they knew where she was going, what she planned, the knights on watch who caught her would drag her bound and gagged to Old Keep.

A cat screamed outrage in the darkness. Another howled.

Tamara stumbled and fell hard onto slick cobbles. Pain shot through her knee. Her hands slipped in something foul enough to make her gag.

Something clattered against the fence beside her. A woman’s voice, ragged and shrill, screamed, “Damn cats! Shut up!”

Tamara staggered up and righted herself as panting breaths became sobs. She knew where she wanted to go, but she didn’t know where she was. The last time she’d been at the Grinning Goat, she’d gone in daylight.

Weaving from weariness, Tamara dragged breath into her lungs in rough, painful gasps. She didn’t know him, the man to whom she fled. Madoc Diviner they called him. Radulf had mentioned him once or twice. He’d said Madoc was a ragged wreck from the days the gods left Krynn, a fallen son of a noble family, a ruined mage who couldn’t find anything more to do than spy and listen and attempt to turn a profit from rumor and word.

Radulf said the mage had his uses, but not many. Better, for Radulf’s use, to put Sir Arvel into the bar, to glean what was true and what wasn’t from those who came to Madoc Diviner.

Tamara had a word for Madoc Diviner. Qui’thonas.

Images of blood and torment, the horror of a man driven to betray his friends, his cause, for the mercy of death pursued her. Qui’thonas must be warned.

Tamara sobbed. There had been traitors all around tonight. Radulf, her father ... and she had done a traitor’s work, too. She’d betrayed herself for a man unworthy of her. She’d eaten the dark knight’s food and draped herself in the silks he gave her. She had been ready to climb into his bed while Haven’s people hungered and died. If she could warn someone that Qui’thonas had been discovered, it might not be redemption, but it would be part payment.

The noisome alley ended in a garden fence, the slats split, the whole thing rickety and slumped across her way. Tamara scrambled up to the ragged edge, looked, and saw a shabby house, a little shed. Out of the darkness, a dog came raging. She cried put, jumped back, and the hound hit the thin fence. From the house came a cry and a curse.

Tamara turned, looking for a way back, and stopped, frozen. A shadow slipped across the ground some yards behind her.

The dog slammed against the fence again, and wooden slats cracked loudly. Tamara flung herself back and staggered against a pile of refuse. A rat skittered out from the shadows, a squealing, filthy gully dwarf in pursuit.

The shadow was gone as though it had never been.

Tamara found the Grinning Goat, coming at it suddenly and from the back where the narrow street, barely an alley itself, descended to the sad garden by cracked stone steps.

The sour stink of old drink and ancient frying grease crawled on the night. The barman, a dim figure seen through an open window, leaned on the bar, yawning. He looked up, a swift, predatory glint in his eye when she came in. In the dim light of guttering candles, he seemed to recognize her. She was Sir Radulf’s woman and off limits.

Tamara didn’t know his name, but he didn’t seem to care. He told her Madoc had been in earlier then gone out again.

“I don’t keep track.” He scratched his belly. “Stay here if you like. Madoc comes in, he’ll be here. He doesn’t, he won’t. Me, I’m here till the next watch.” He looked around and shrugged. “If you’re here after that, you’re locked in or locked out.”

Outside, the wind awoke. Refuse scuttled across the garden. The fresher air outside made the thick, rancid odors inside the tavern even worse.

“I’ll wait in the garden for a while,” Tamara said, but he had turned away, gone into the kitchen. If the barman heard her or cared, he didn’t reply.

Outside, clouds slipped across the sky, black between the stars, silver before the moon. Their shadows flowed like water on the ground. Tamara sat on a cracked stone bench, arms wrapped tightly around herself. The wind grew stronger, pushing the sky. Watching the shadows, Tamara laughed—a thin, harsh sound. They reminded her of Usha’s sketches, the terrible images of death and terror.

Tamara stood, restless. She paced the garden, listening to the night, the faraway sound of the river, the clop of a horse’s hooves a few streets over. Nearer, from one of the tumbledown shacks that staggered along the street beside the Goat’s garden, a child cried—the desperate, infant wail of hunger.

In the tavern, the barman stood by an unshuttered window. His eyes met hers then turned away.

A shadow spilled down from the street.

Tamara jerked her head up, heart slamming. She became aware of two things at the same moment—a woman’s eyes alight with anticipation and the cold kiss of steel across her throat.

Madoc stood on the first of the six stone steps down into the garden of the Grinning Goat. Behind him, Dezra halted.

“What?” she whispered, her voice barely heard.

They were old hands at slipping past the night watch, old hands at seeming to be invisible to anyone who would wonder what they were doing out past sundown. Madoc wouldn’t have known Dez was speaking if he hadn’t felt her breath on his neck. He nodded toward the garden. Something lay in the shadow of one of the crumbling walls. No light touched it; it was a darker patch of night.

The two of them smelled of sweat and river water, of smoky torches and stinking fish oil. Qui’thonas had taken no refuges out of Haven since Konal had been killed and Barthel captured. All three ways into the tunnel under Rose Hall had been collapsed. By Aline’s order, every member of Qui’thonas had been told to stand down. Tonight, Madoc, Aline, and Dunbrae had been exploring the catacombs. The old burial chambers were far more extensive than had been believed, and they were drier than the tunnels, though still so damp that torches sputtered.

Through the reek of that work, like a crimson thread in a black tapestry, Madoc smelled blood. The hiss of Dezra’s indrawn breath told him she did, too. She started to step past him, but he held her where she was with a quick gesture.

“We don’t know who that is, and we don’t know if he’s dead.”

“Not he,” Dez said. She pointed, and Madoc saw the wind ruffling dark, curling hair. “There’s a tryst gone bad, eh?”

Madoc looked around the ruined garden, into dark corners and beneath tangled arbors. Nothing moved. If an angry lover had done murder, he didn’t linger to look on his work. If a robber or ravisher had tried too hard to get what the poor woman wouldn’t give, he’d long fled.

Madoc went down the steps, noiseless with Dez a shadow on his heels. He saw the young woman’s face, her eyes wide in terror, but it was Dez who saw the pool of blood and the slit throat.

A shiver of recognition spun through Madoc’s head. “That’s Loren Halgard’s daughter.”

Dez started to say something. He grabbed her arm and turned her back toward the stairs.

“Find Usha. Go find her now.”

“Madoc, what are—?”

“Now! She’s in danger!”

He pointed to a small wooden placard near the dead girl’s knee. It was Lady Mearah’s writ, all to familiar in Haven these days. Black paint signed with the sigil of a bloody sword, it proclaimed the execution of a traitor.

“Find her. Get her to Aline. I’ll get Dunbrae.”

“But—”

“Meet me at Rose Hall.”

Madoc went through the city like a dark-eyed phantom, alighting on the doorsteps of his sources, every person who owed him favors, everyone he could intimidate into a guess or from whom he could wring a fact. He cared nothing about watches and curfew. He knew where the secret places were, the walls that seemed to have no way past—unless one knew where to look.

He woke butchers and basket weavers, money lenders and coopers. He came to them silently, through a window, a back door left carelessly unlatched. With a blackmailer’s cold eye, he held up their secrets, their shames, their broken troths. For the fee of keeping these quiet, he demanded what they might know of the night’s murder. In the end, he found what he needed from an old woman whose granddaughter he’d once helped in the matter of a blackmailing lover. With a whisper and a sly smile, she told Madoc that Lady Mearah’s lover had died in a recent fight between knights and the elves who’d lately been hung for trying to leave the city.

“A dark elf, him,” Madoc’s reluctant informant said. “The fair flower of milady’s eye—but not so much loved by the knights under her command. Not so much loved by Sir Radulf himself... so it’s said. Not that ’e had any light in his eye for the lady knight. Just didn’t like ’em gettin’ so comfortable together.”

Indeed, Sir Radulf hadn’t. Lady Mearah and Tavar were gaining followers among knights who would rather have sacked Haven outright and taken the loot back to Neraka and be done.

“The waitin’... that’s not settin’ so well with some of the knights these days, not so well with the foot soldiers. The dark elf died for a warnin’.” The old woman shrugged. “Looks like Sir Radulf’s woman died for an echo.”

Again, she shrugged. “It’s also said Halgard’s girl was happy enough about it all. Till tonight. So who knows? Maybe Sir Radulf killed her himself.”

To the question of why Tamara had been found dead in the garden behind the Grinning Goat, the old woman had no answer. Madoc’s belly went cold. He thought of captured Barthel and Dunbrae’s certainty that the man would withstand Sir Radulf’s questioning.

One road or all—they led to Tamara’s death at the Goat tonight, and to danger for Aline and Usha.

Madoc knocked on the door of Dunbrae’s house. Nothing stirred within. He tried again. Nothing. Dogs barked at the sound. In the house next door someone passed before a window, lifting a lamp, then blowing it out. A modest house, a modest street, and no one liked to see what was going on outside the window these days.

Cursing, the dwarf opened his door.

“Damn fool with all the racket! Get in here!”

The night breeze made Dunbrae’s candle gasp and dance. He sheltered it with his hand, demanding to know whose house was on fire as Madoc pushed past him and slammed the door.

White in the face, Dunbrae heard Madoc out. When the mage was finished, Dunbrae said, “Loren Halgard. He knows Mistress Usha well, doesn’t he?”

“Rather well.”

“But—”

The little flame trembled. Shadows wavered and did not settle as Madoc explained a connection Dunbrae didn’t see, one he had himself made, weeks ago while he and Usha sat at the Goat watching Tamara and Sir Radulf in the garden. Usha Majere—Aline’s friend, Dezra’s sister-in-law, Loren Halgard’s lover, and in her way Madoc’s own patroness—had touched each of them in ways that made their disparate enterprises work, revealing truth where truth was not easily found.

“Dunbrae,” said Madoc, his voice low. “Tamara was killed at the Goat, and they say she was looking for me. If this doesn’t lead Sir Radulf to Qui’thonas at the first step, it will put him there at the last. Where’s Aline?”

Dunbrae pulled on his breeches. “Home. Safe.”

“All right. Dezra’s on her way there.” Madoc looked out the window in the direction of Rose Hall. He couldn’t see it, and he wished he could. Suddenly, fiercely, he wished he could see Aline and know she was well.

Dunbrae looked at him, dark eyes grim. “It’s time to break camp.”

Madoc nodded. “You get to Aline and help Dez. You know Aline’s going to want to wait around to close things down.”

“She might want to,” Dunbrae said, grimly, “but I’m not going to let her.”

“Good. I’ll find Usha. And, please gods, she’ll be at Steadfast, or else there’ll be the trek through the city to find her.”

There was not much more to do than appoint a place to meet, and every moment spent doing that clawed at Madoc’s nerves. So much could still go wrong. So much might have already gone wrong and changed their every plan. It was as though he could hear a bell tolling or see sand slipping down the last curve of an hourglass.

“Dwarf,” he said, turning on the doorstep. “Whatever happens—”

Dunbrae nodded. “Aline gets out.”

Usha opened the shutters and let the scent of the wind and the river into the studio. Dawn brightened the sky. In the street a dog barked. From blocks away came the harsh clang of a bell—one of Sir Radulf’s criers beginning a round through the city. He would be announcing a death. These days the criers had little else to proclaim but news of executions.

Restless, Usha turned from the window. She’d wanted to walk from Steadfast to the inn. The morning was cool, the river smelled fresh, but in the end she’d allowed Rowan to drive her.

“ ’T’isn’t you Loren will be angry with mistress, if he finds out I let you go alone into the city.” The half-elf had said that smiling, but Usha understood.

Unable to settle, Usha wandered from one end of the studio to the other. She picked up brushes and put them down. She straightened a canvas lately primed so it leaned just so against the wall. She unpinned sketches from the wall and laid them out neatly on her work table. Time had come to sort them, toss out the old ones, and think about whether there would be new ones.

Here it is high summer, she thought, looking around her. High summer, yet the room had a feeling of autumn about it.

The sound of the crier’s bell faded. Usha’s restlessness increased. She gathered charcoal sticks and tied them neatly. She took up her brushes again, cleaned them one by one, though each had been tended after its last use. When they were clean, she tied them into bundles according to size. She did not return them to the basket. She took the basket and set it on the window sill, empty. She did all this as though she were a housewife preparing to remove from one house to another. The color of autumn deepened in her mood. She looked around for her paints, wanting to see the color she was feeling, umber or smoke.

A thunder of horses and carriage wheels erupted in the street below. Usha ran to the window in time to see Loren leap from his carriage. White in the face, his eyes like dark holes, he ran for the inn.

Usha left the window and flew to the stairs to meet him. Loren was there before her, like a force of nature, a fury on him Usha had never seen. He took her by the shoulders and shoved her back into the studio, cursing her when she resisted.

Shaken, Usha stumbled ahead of him. Once inside the studio, she flung away from him. Turning, her own anger matched his.

“Have you lost your mind? What’s wrong with you, Loren?” He took a step. She did not back away. Heart pounding in fear and anger, she pointed to the door. “Tell me what’s wrong. Or leave.”

The clang of the crier’s bell came closer. Usha thought it must be ringing only a block away now. The back of her neck prickled.

Loren looked like a man demented—eyes hollow, skin drawn tight across the bones of his face. His voice no more than a hoarse gasp, he said, “Tamara is dead.”

The breath left Usha’s lungs as though she’d been struck. She tried to speak. No sound came from her lips, and her heart beat painfully.

Loren pushed past her. When she turned she saw him at her worktable, sweeping charcoals and brushes to the floor, ransacking her sketches.

“What are you doing? Loren, get away from—”

With a bitter cry, Loren flung a sheaf of sketches at her feet. Cold, Usha bent to retrieve them, but she knew what she’d find. These were from the session she’d had with Tamara, the failed sketches. The dark strokes of charcoal writhed on the pages, unstable again. Wolf, raven, sword, they did the demon dance, never resolving shape.

“You killed my daughter, Usha. You told me—”

“Loren, no!”

He pointed to the sketches in her hand. “Look! You told me you would never harm my child. You told me if you worked with good will—” He grabbed the sketches from her, tearing one and crumpling the others. On the two halves of the torn sheet the images finally resolved—into a bloody sword. Lady Mearah’s sigil. “In the name of the gods what kind of will made that?”

“Not mine!”

She didn’t make the doom. She simply saw the doom. That’s what Usha would have said, trying to make him believe what he had never truly understood. He gave her no chance.

“My child would be alive today if it weren’t for you, Usha.” His face like a skull, white and hard, Loren said, “But she was murdered last night. Her throat was cut, her body found behind the Grinning Goat.” On a ragged sob, he said, “She was executed. Mearah’s writ left on her ... on her body.”

“Loren...”

He turned and walked away. The sound of his footfalls mingled with the clang of the crier’s bell as it grew fainter with distance.

Alone, Usha shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself but found no warmth. Her thoughts were all cold, of the child who had been wagered and lost. She wanted to weep, to grieve the dead girl. But the time for that would come later. Now it was time to find out why Tamara had been killed, why her poor body had been left at the Goat. She felt in her blood the tingle of patterns, shapes, and lines coalescing into some image of betrayal stretching farther than Tamara’s death. When she closed her eyes, she saw the image of a path, sinuous and fluid as a snake in motion.

Qui’thonas.

In the common room, Rusty leaned his elbows on the bar. He gave Usha a long look. He said nothing about what he might have seen or heard.

“You’re looking for Dezra,” he said.

“Yes.”

Rusty nodded. “Have a seat, Mistress Usha. Perhaps a cup of water, eh? I’m sure Dez will be around soon.”

He went to get the water and came back with it, as well as some toast. “It would be wise if you have something to eat.”

Usha accepted the toast and drank the water. It wasn’t long before Dezra came into the common room, eyes glittering, face flushed.

“You look like you ran all the way,” Usha said.

Dez crooked a humorless smile. “You look like you’ve been washed overboard and come dragging up from the sea. Happy to see you, sister.”

“Dez, I have to tell you—”

Dez held up a hand. “I probably know a lot of it already. Hard things were done last night.”

“Tamara...”

Dez’s face was set in grim lines. “It wasn’t an execution. It was revenge.”

“But for what?”

Dez hushed her with a gesture. The common room was empty. Even Rusty had gone to the kitchen. Still, Dez lowered her voice so Usha had to lean close to hear.

“Later. Now we need to keep our wits about us and move fast. We’re finding a road home, Usha. One more path away, and we have to do it pretty quick. We’re going to Aline’s now, in daylight, two sisters going to visit a friend. After that, things get different.” Dez took something out of the pouch at her belt, a wad of crumpled paper. “Found this blowing around on the ground outside. Yours?”

Usha smoothed out the pages, and her throat ached with the swelling of renewed sorrow. They were two of the sketches she’d made to start Tamara’s portrait. Loren must have thrown them away. There had been three.

On her way out the door, Usha looked for the other. It wasn’t to be found, and she could only imagine it had blown away.

Sunlight splashed golden across the wide desk, glinting from the neatly aligned nibs of quills placed precisely midway between two bottles of ink. Rowan put the wrinkled sheet of parchment carefully before Sir Radulf.

“I don’t know what it is,” said the half-elf, though he did. “I found it on the ground near the Ivy.”

Sir Radulf looked at the strange lines, like runes dancing. He didn’t touch the page. “Where the Majere woman is staying?”

Rowan nodded. “They say her work is valuable. It certainly is strange. I thought you’d like to know.” He hesitated, for he’d come to the place where treachery could betray him. What did the knight see on the page? A sketch of a dead girl’s face? The chaos of writhing strokes and curves? Or did he see something else?

“They say,” said the knight, “that more than image is created on the canvases of Usha Majere. They say that sometimes a truth is revealed.”

Rowan let his breath out slowly and said, “I’ve heard my master say so.”

The knight grunted. “Your master ... he doesn’t know you have this?”

“No. He does not.”

“Why did you bring it here?”

Why, indeed? Rowan didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t despise Loren Halgard. He didn’t consider him a hard master. He liked him, in fact. And yet—he had to admit it—Halgard had lost a hard gamble for power when his daughter refused Sir Radulf. It is with servants as it is with their masters. A man has to ally himself with power if he wants to prosper.

“Sir knight, some say it’s dangerous to speak the truth to power. I think it must be. Maybe, though, it is more dangerous to speak the truth about power. Usha Majere speaks the truth about power.”

Again, a soft grunt. “Good. You’ve done well to bring this to me, half-elf. Now tell me, what do you see in the images?”

Rowan’s blood raced, pounding in his ears. “I... see you, sir knight.”

Sir Radulf called out, and a knight came into the room. “Find the woman Usha Majere. Start with Loren Halgard.” He looked at Rowan, eyes narrow. “From what this fellow tells me, I think Halgard wouldn’t mind handing her over if he knows where she is.”

The knight saluted smartly and left. Sir Radulf touched the edge of the sketch with one finger, turning it around to show Rowan a different angle.

Rowan felt his belly shrivel as the images changed to become a portrait of his own death. He looked up. The knight’s face was cold and still.

“Sir ... ?”

A chill smile slid across that face, and two hard hands clamped down on Rowan’s shoulders from behind and yanked him to his feet. Rowan tried to turn to see who held him, but he could not move.

“This one has betrayed his master,” Sir Radulf said to the unseen knight. “Take him out and hang him.”