Prisoner of Haven

23

Usha found a pair of breeches in the pile of clothing Aline dumped onto the bed. She ransacked another pile for a shirt to fit.

“And hose,” she muttered.

Safe-house clothing, the gear Aline sent forward to supply the houses where refugees might spend a night along their path away.

Hose dropped from Dez’s hands. Usha snatched them gladly and looked around for shoes.

“Boots,” Dez said, dropping those down, too.

At the window, Aline paced restlessly. Usha looked up and warned her friend back from the window.

“He’s all right,” she said. “Madoc has been taking care of himself for a long time. He’s not about to forget how now. Keep away from the window.”

Aline protested. “It’s not as though people know I’m the head of Qui’thonas and could point me out to a dark knight from the street.”

Usha gathered up her borrowed clothing. “Aline, you don’t know what Sir Radulf has learned since last night. No one knows ... no one knows what Loren has guessed.”

Aline turned from the window, her green eyes bright, her homely face softening with sympathy. “Usha, would he tell Sir Radulf if he guessed?”

“Can’t take the chance,” Dez said before Usha could answer.

“Won’t take the chance,” Dunbrae agreed. He glanced out the window at the color of the sky and the thinning light. “Madoc better be here soon. He could have gone to Steadfast and back three times by now.”

Unspoken among them was the fear that Madoc had gone to Steadfast looking for Usha and was not able to return.

Usha wanted to say that Loren wouldn’t betray her, no matter what he guessed or knew about her or about Qui’thonas.

“I don’t know,” she said, carefully around pain. “Loren thinks I killed his daughter. He thinks I’m a doom-weaver.” She laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “As if I couldn’t paint a better fate than this.”

Glances passed between Aline and Dez.

Dunbrae cleared his throat with a rumble and said, “All right then. Madoc knows where to meet. He’ll be there if he can, but we have to be ready to go when the light fails.”

He returned to Aline’s desk and the work of destroying her papers and ledgers. By Aline’s order, nothing must remain in Rose Hall to implicate anyone who ever worked with Qui’thonas. Her servants would know in the morning that she was gone. They would be guiltless of her vanishing. Usha took her borrowed clothing into another room and quickly changed.

When the light was gone from the sky, they were ready. They slipped quietly out of the house and into the garden. Madoc hadn’t returned, and Usha felt a gathering of grief when she looked in Aline’s eyes.

Dunbrae pointed to the shed and cocked a lean grin. “A fine set of tunnels down there, Mistress Usha. A bit muddy these days, but there’s a—”

Color drained from his face. His cheeks went ashen. Like winter suddenly fallen, terror washed through Usha, fear so strong she cried out as though in pain. Dez shouted, Dunbrae cursed, and in the sky a dragon appeared with the suddenness of lightning. A gout of flame shot from between the beast’s fanged jaws. Usha lunged for Aline and dragged her out of the way as the shed burst aflame. They staggered away from the fire, the two women still in the grip of dragonfear. Trees caught fire as the dragon dipped down then soared high, wide wings fanning the flames and running shadow on the ground.

Howling curses, Dunbrae punched Dezra’s arm. “Let’s get ’em out of here!”

For her part, Usha didn’t need anyone to get her out of there. She only needed to know where to go. When Dez cried, “Follow me!” Usha grabbed Aline’s wrist and ran.

The dragon circled, stirring fear in Usha’s heart as though it were stirring a cauldron. She ran after Dez, yanking Aline along with her as they scrambled across fences, through alleys, into dry stream beds and ponds scummed with foul smelling algae. They ran like ghosts through Haven’s back alleys and forgotten paths, while overhead two dragons circled.

Mounted knights thundered down the streets, and once when they stopped to catch breath, Usha looked back to see the whole quarter of Haven where Rose Hall stood on fire. Flames rushed up into the sky, and billows of black smoke painted out the stars.

“It’s like Haven falling all over again,” she said.

“Haven hasn’t finished falling yet,” Dunbrae said.

Usha ran on, following Dez, picking up Aline when she fell, climbing to her own feet when Aline thrust down a hand to help. Always Dunbrae was behind, keeping their backs. She had no idea where they were, she could only trust Dez and Dunbrae. Smoke filled her lungs, she ran gasping and coughing. Cries of fear and anger rang from the wider streets as people ran to get home and see to family or goods, or fled from burning houses. In the back alleys and narrow lanes they ran, people were seldom seen.

Usha ran bent over, trying to breathe, trying to shove away dragonfear and the terrible need to fall to her knees. That never got better, but the farther they got from the fires, the easier it became to run.

They stopped again, and Usha leaned against a stone wall overrun with briars. She hardly felt the sting.

Aline said, “Look,” and pointed to the roiling sky. White fire flashed out of a cloud—a black dragon dropped down, circling.

They dropped to the ground and huddled in the shadow of the wall, burrowing into the bramble hedge until they bled from the scratches.

“It’s gone,” Usha said, wiping blood from her cheeks and hardly feeling the sting. She didn’t stop to wonder how she knew. It was simply that the terror had lessened.

They went that way for what felt like hours—stumbling, ducking into shadows, tumbling into noisome gutters and alleys. In the dim light Usha began to recognize the quarter of the city they were in. Farther east lay the garden where she and Dez had seen the three hanged men—the first bitter, brutal sign of Lady Mearah’s reign. The ground sloped down, running toward the river and the wall that once kept proud Haven safe from predators and now made the city prisoner of the dark knights.

Dunbrae came up from behind to tap Usha’s shoulder. “Wait here.” He glanced at Aline. “Both of you.”

He slipped forward into the darkness to speak with Dezra. A moment later, the two parted. The night was hot, yet Usha shivered. Aline put a hand on her arm and whispered, “They’ll be fine. We’ll take this time to catch our breath. They’ll be back before you know it.”

So they were, and they came from behind.

“No guards at the river gate,” Dez whispered. “None on the walls.”

Dunbrae growled. “Damned knights should have every way out nailed up tight. I don’t like this.”

“Me either,” Dez said, “but I’m not liking the idea of running back into the city any better.”

No one argued, and Usha said, “I can’t imagine he’s left this one way open in hopes that we’d run straight here to it and be caught by lurking guards.” She looked back at the burning sky. “Something else has Sir Radulf’s attention right now.”

“Wouldn’t mind knowin’ what that is,” Dunbrae muttered.

Dez snorted. “Yeah. We can send someone a letter asking once we get home. For now, let’s get home.”

Usha followed Dez. Aline and Dunbrae came next as they slipped through the shadows to the river gate. Like all the gates of Haven, this one was two broad oaken doors that would swing wide against the walls to allow unloading ships and carting good into and out of the city. It had a smaller door or wicket at ground level, and Dez led them right to this. With Usha and the others looking out for guards, she unbarred the door and swung it open. The docks and wharfs of Haven lay before them, and it seemed to Usha that the stars shone brighter for the gate having been opened.

They slipped out the wicket and ran along the outside of the wall, hugging shadows until they came to a shabby street of tall warehouses. Running now, they skirted piles of rubbish, then stacks of lumber in the shipyards where the river spread out before them like light flashing, wide and bright.

Usha looked back and saw the wall like a thick, looming darkness. Smoke hung over the city, driven by the wind. No dragon flew, though Usha saw flashes of orange under the black smoke.

“Is he burning the city?” Aline whispered.

Dunbrae shook his head. “Not by the look of it. I don’t think he’s even burned very much of it.” He caught Aline’s eye and nodded sympathy. “Rose Hall, mistress. That’s gone fer certain, and likely the homes of yer unlucky neighbors. That about it.”

“It’s enough,” Usha said bitterly. She paced the riverside, looking up and down the current She felt a prickling between her shoulder blades. “There are no guards. Why not?”

From the darkness behind them, a low voice said, “Because I told Sir Radulf where you were, and he needed his men there.”

Usha whirled to see Loren Halgard walk out from behind a stack of lumber. She had seen him white with grief and pale with rage. She had never seen him like this—hollowed. Usha took a step toward him.

Dezra’s sword hissed from the sheath, the blade running with starlight.

The high song of steel answering steel screamed on the night. Aline cried out as Madoc Diviner’s sword checked Dezra’s.

“Madoc! You’re safe! I—”

Out of the corner of her eye Usha saw Dunbrae get between Aline and the steel.

“Put up your sword, Dez,” Madoc said.

“Not while I’m among traitors,” she spat.

“Dez,” Usha said, “stand down.”

Without moving her head, Dezra cast a scornful glance at Loren. “You heard him. He put Sir Radulf onto us.”

Dezra held, Madoc wouldn’t give, and a large, knob-knuckled hand closed firmly over the cross where the blades met.

“Put up your sword, Madoc Diviner,” Aline said.

Her command hung for a moment unanswered, then Madoc bowed like a knight heeding his lady’s will and put away his steel.

“Lady Usha,” he said, “Loren did not betray you. There are some things you need to know.” He looked past her to the city, the smoke, and the fire. “And you don’t have long to learn them.”

Usha’s heart was like a storm sky. Feelings flashed like lightning as she watched Qui’thonas mount its last rescue. At Aline’s order, Dunbrae, Aline herself, and Dezra went quickly and quietly downriver, looking for what Aline ominously named the doorway to the eastern catacombs. To her question and Loren’s, Madoc gave only an evasive answer. Usha didn’t press.

“And no time for that anyway,” Loren said.

He put an arm around her waist, walking close beside her in the shadows while Madoc loped ahead. Warehouses lined this part of the river, casting shadow out to the water. In that darkness, the mage ran like an outrider.

The sky above Haven glowed red. Usha felt a shudder of dragonfear as one of the great winged beasts flew near. Loren’s arm tightened around her as though he felt it too.

“My love—”

Usha’s pulse quickened to hear him speak the endearment she thought she’d never hear again.

“My love,” Loren said, “you’re being hunted.”

“I am? But... Qui’thonas—?”

“Yes, they know about Aline, too. It’s why they descended on Rose Hall so quickly. The man Sir Radulf tortured—”

His face went white. One eye on Madoc as he slipped in and out of shadows, Loren told the tale of Rowan’s treachery.

Anger mingling with sorrow, Usha said, “But how did you know this? Loren, you said Rowan was killed.”

“He was. Madoc told me he was hanged on the idea that if he betrayed one master, he’d betray another. Sir Radulf took the information and killed the messenger.”

Again, the shiver of dragonfear; this time stronger. Loren moved Usha deeper into shadow and pressed her against the silvering wood of a tumble-down shed. From the sky, no one would see her. From the other side of the river, she would be invisible. Over his shoulder, Usha saw the sky. No dragon flew there, but one was near. Across the river no one moved, no mounted knight or foot soldier.

“How did Madoc know about Rowan?”

Loren’s answer startled her. “Sir Arvel told him.”

“But—”

Arm around her again, Loren led her downriver. “The knight isn’t all you imagined him to be, Usha. Madoc says Sir Arvel is a man who can play both sides of the street—and patches in the middle if those suit him. Sir Arvel is one of his best informants. Not for ideology or because he thinks the dark knights have the right of anything. Sir Arvel likes to live well; simple as that. He never seems to earn enough from his service to his master’s cause.”

Usha shook her head, remembering how Dez had railed against Madoc, the man who served no master but his own need. What would she say about Sir Arvel of Kinsalla? Usha didn’t like to think about it.

Small figures emerged from the shadows far down the river. Two went together—Aline and Madoc, surely. They ran, quickly but not as though pursued.

Loren whispered, “Usha...”

Usha, it’s time to go. Usha, it’s time to say good-bye. He didn’t speak those words, yet Usha heard them, the understanding of parting breaking over her suddenly.

“Loren, I don’t—”

He shook his head. “You have to go. Right now.”

As though to underscore his insistence, the sound of shouting and the thunder of horses swelled. Knights galloped through the city, and the cold terror of dragonfear touched her heart again.

“They’ve found out that Aline is gone from Rose Hall, Usha. They might have learned you were with her.”

“You said you told Sir Radulf where to find me.”

“I did.” Loren’s was a rueful smile. “He’s probably figured out by now that you’re nowhere near the gate to the Seeker Reaches.”

The thunder of horses sounded closer, crashing down the narrow alley to the wharf. Usha stepped out of the shadows then turned back swiftly.

“They’re here! Mounted knights!”

She looked again and saw a banner flying from the top of a lance. No one carried a banner in Sir Radulf’s talon but one knight. Lady Mearah separated from the troop and sent her mount plunging out onto the river bank.

Down the strand, Madoc stopped, and Dunbrae turned. Words passed between them, drowned by the thunder of hooves. Dunbrae turned back toward Aline. He would never leave her. Madoc would never permit it.

Lady Mearah made for Madoc standing alone at the waterside. A sharp cry rang out—

“Madoc Diviner!”

Madoc turned, sword in hand. Loren tried to push Usha deeper into the shadows. With a cry, she pulled away. Lady Mearah passed by, mud flying from her horse’s hooves. Light of the fires in the sky tipped her sword red. Lady Mearah gave her black mare the spur and it surged forward.

Usha broke away from Loren, shouting Madoc’s name. If he heard, he didn’t move. He stood alone at the waterside, his back to those who’d fled, his sword gripped in two hands to face the dark knight bearing down on him. In a spray of water and mud, she pulled her mount to a halt, and the beast went back on its haunches. She leaped to the ground, and Usha ran as fast as she could toward them.

The horse backed away, well trained and getting out of the way of battle. Usha caught dangling reins and before she could think what to do with them, Loren snatched them from her hand.

“Wait here!” he snapped.

She barely gave him a glance, and she certainly didn’t wait there.

“Madoc Diviner,” the lady knight said, her voice cold, “I charge you with the death of the dark elf Tavar Evenstar.”

Madoc shook his head. “Haven’s better without him, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Word out of the Grinning Goat sent him to his death. Not your word?”

One bright glance flashed between Madoc and Loren, Usha didn’t have time to decipher it before the mage lifted his sword to meet Lady Mearah’s challenge.

The belling of steel on steel rang in the night. Usha saw at once that though skilled, Madoc was out-matched—in weapon and reach. He held his own for several moments, and nimbleness saved him twice from having a hand cut off. His sword clashed against Mearah’s breastplate and did no damage. He ducked away from a killing thrust and in the same instant, Usha heard Loren curse.

Madoc slipped in the mud and went hard to his knee. Lady Mearah lifted her sword like an executioner’s axe.

Usha yanked the bridle reins from Loren’s hand and slapped the horse hard, yelling, “Hei! Hei!”

The horse plunged forward, tumbling Lady Mearah. Madoc rolled aside, into the muck at the water’s edge. Usha saw his eyes go wide, then his sword flashing up, turning end over end as he threw it.

He’s mad!

Loren caught the sword. He stepped past Usha with the kind of calm found at the eye of a terrible storm. Madoc nodded to her, and she stepped aside. The lady knight reached for her sword, and Loren’s boot came down hard on her wrist.

“My lady,” he said, his voice cold and hard. “You murdered my daughter.”

Lady Mearah’s face when white. On her knee, the sword grip still in her hand, she said, “Fight me then, Loren Halgard.”

Usha drew a quick breath to protest—saw Madoc’s face—and kept still.

“I will not fight you, lady. I will treat you as you have treated others.”

Dark eyes wide, Lady Mearah tried to rise.

Before she could, Loren took a pace backward. His daughter’s name on his lips, Loren Halgard wielded Madoc’s sword against Haven’s executioner as a headsman’s axe.

He wielded well.

Silence fell on the riverside, hard and heavy and disorienting. Madoc looked at Loren, got some signal Usha didn’t catch, and jogged off down the riverside where Aline and Dunbrae had gone.

Usha turned from the headless corpse of the lady knight. Streaks of blood made the foam at the water’s edge red. Her stomach rebelled. It was all she could do not to vomit.

Loren took her arm, and she turned, pulling away. “Loren, you must come with me.”

“No.” He put a finger on her lips.

“But—”

“No. I’m in no danger. Or I won’t be soon. I can’t come with you. Usha, you were right when you said I must take a stand. I didn’t do that when I could have ... should have. I retreated. I bargained—” His voice broke. “I bargained my daughter for what I convinced myself was peace. I am the one who—”

“Hush!”

He looked at the body of the woman he’d just killed. “I am as responsible for Tamara’s death as she is. I gambled her life, and Tamara lost. She died because the dark elf who was Mearah’s lover died on a mission to thwart Qui’thonas.”

“I... I don’t understand. Why?”

“Madoc didn’t betray the dark elf. Sir Arvel did, and he’s one of Sir Radulf’s men. So ...”

“Oh, dear gods,” Usha whispered. “And so Lady Mearah took revenge on Sir Radulf by killing Tamara.”

Loren nodded. “But it’s also true that my daughter died while she was trying to warn Qui’thonas that Sir Radulf knew about them. She died in a good cause—a better one than I served. She won’t have died in vain.”

It would take a bit of time, he said, for things to calm down. Sir Radulf’s revenge for this night’s work would be brutal. “He never loved Lady Mearah, but he won’t allow the death of a dark knight to go without punishment. He no doubt thinks I’ve learned my lesson already. If he doesn’t, I will show him I have. He won’t find me anything but cooperative, Usha. He will find me a cowed man, well chastened by my daughter’s death and ...” He touched her cheek. “And my lover’s disappearance. But when things settle, Sir Radulf will find that he has not killed Qui’thonas. What Aline Wrackham funded, I can fund. What Madoc Diviner could do, Sir Arvel can do.”

“Sir Arvel is not trustworthy.”

Loren snorted. “That much I know. But I’ll have Dunbrae at my back.”

“It’s all planned out?”

“Sketched, anyway, on the run and in hot blood. But it will work.”

The leave-taking broke over them like a wave. Madoc was a dim figure downriver, waiting.

“Go,” Loren said. “This is how it is for us now, love.” He smiled, she thought there might have been a touch of bitterness in it. “This is what you shaped for us when you first challenged me, that day in Lorelia’s garden.”

Sharp in memory, Usha saw that day again. Lorelia and her guests, a knight and a lovely girl with white roses in her midnight hair. The memory clutched at her throat, tightening it with unshed tears.

“Loren, remember that Tamara made choices, too.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, like storm. “I took all her choices from her.”

Usha took his hands. They were cold. “Then who made the choice to try to warn Qui’thonas? Tamara did, and it was as bravely done as any deed a poet could sing of.”

He kissed her, the kiss thrilling on her lips, in her heart. He gathered her into his arms, and he held her until she was sure she would never forget the rhythm of his heartbeat.

His voice ragged, Loren whispered, “Go.”

Usha went, running down the riverbank to Madoc and Aline. She went, gasping farewell to the dwarf Dunbrae, ducking into a small cave, and stumbling in the dark and a rain of tears.

After a time, the little cave grew wider walls and a taller ceiling. Madoc reached behind a boulder and brought out brands and rags for torches.

“This is Qui’thonas,” Aline said. “We keep our paths lit.”

In her voice Usha heard both pride for what she’d helped keep alive and sorrow for leaving it.

Madoc held his torch high. Aline lifted her brand to his. Their lights flared brightly, and Usha followed her friends through a maze of arched vaults where the ancient dead lay in deep burial niches—the forgotten of Haven.

“It’s the road home,” Dez said to her.

At last, it was. Usha looked over her shoulder. They had taken many turns and switchbacks, and she thought she should ask Dez how she knew the place, how she knew where to go and how to keep from being lost, but she didn’t ask. Dez would say—or Aline or Madoc—this is Qui’thonas.

And so Usha simply looked back, for as long as they would be still and let her. Then she went on, trying to hold on to the faint warmth on her lips, the memory of Loren’s last kiss.

The road wound ahead of Usha, the familiar curves, the hills, the sunlight falling between the branches of the trees in great golden dapples. Dressed in her borrowed clothing, she walked beside Dezra. They were quiet—the silence of weariness, the silence of uncertainty.

Once Usha said, “I look around me, and it seems like I’ve come from one world into another. I think about Haven, the trapped people ringed round by walls and kept prisoner in a city that was once their home ... Dez, it’s hard not to think it was a nightmare I’ve just awakened from.”

“I don’t think our time in Haven was a nightmare,” Dez said. “I feel every day of it in my bones.”

Ahead, Aline topped a hill, Madoc close behind. They stopped, waiting for their friends to catch up.

“They’re going now,” Dez said.

Usha nodded. Not to Solace, for Aline wanted to go down to Schallsea, and Madoc thought it would be a good idea. He’d said nothing about his family, though Usha knew that the mage’s brother lived there, perhaps a sister as well. A good idea to Madoc these days was any idea Aline had.

“I can’t say I thought this would ever happen,” Dez said, watching the two at the top of the hill. “First time you told me their story ...” She shook her head. “Well, it wasn’t promising.”

Usha smiled because what Dez said was meant to make her smile. She’d rather have walked in silence until it was time to make this next farewell.

“Lady Usha,” Madoc said when they came to the top of the hill. “It’s time.”

He bowed over her hand, a gallant in the guise of a down-at-the-heels mage. As though she were yet his patroness, he thanked her and told her he was ever at her service.

Aline’s sweet homely face flushed with emotion. “Usha, I will miss you.”

Usha took her hands and held them. Between the two something passed that had no words—a history of hope and sorrow and fear, and hope again.

The parting with Dezra was one of comrades in arms, and after Dezra said to Usha, “Down and over the next hill, we’ll see home.”

It was so—the chimneys standing proudly above the roof of the Inn of the Last Home. What would the place be like without Caramon? Usha glanced at Dez and saw her wondering.

“We’ve been gone a long time,” Usha said.

Dez nodded. “Not by the calendar, but a long time.”

They went down the last rocky slope toward the town in the vallenwood, and when they could see the smoke rising from the chimneys, Usha said, “Dez, Loren’s right. It was past time he took a stand to save what he loves.”

Dez waited, carefully quiet.

“And it’s past time I took a stand. Palin and I have to talk. I don’t know how things will turn out for us. I don’t know whether all the wounds we’ve inflicted on our marriage can heal. But if we’re both running away, healing has no chance at all.”

Her eyes on the inn, Dez said, “Do you love my brother?”

“I won’t ask forgiveness for loving Loren, Dez. Not of you or anyone. But Palin and I...” She shook her head. “All that’s gone wrong between us couldn’t hurt so much if I didn’t love him. Right now, I can’t say more than that.”

Dez looked down the road to the inn. Usha saw her thinking. She saw her struggle with something. Patiently, she waited, as she’d waited through the days and nights when Dezra fought in battles Usha could only imagine. As then, her patience was rewarded.

“You don’t have to say more than that to me, Usha. When all the questions pour down on us about what went on in Haven, I’m backing anything you’d like to say. Now come home, sister. Our family is waiting.”