Smoke hid the moon, erasing the stars. Between one rolling billow and another, Usha saw broad swathes of flame as two red-scaled dragons soared above Haven.

Sight of them sent icy terror rushing through her.

They heard the sound of Haven’s fall-the roaring of dragons, the screams of terror, the bellowing of fire leaping from roof to roof. Usha fled beside Dez, running behind Dunbrae down alleys so dark the way could be found by few but a dwarf whose eyesight had been for generations bred beneath the mountains. Once, at the end of a narrow, dank alley, they stopped to catch their breath. Gasping, leaning against a cold, wet wall, Usha saw the river. It ran like a torrent of fire as it reflected the burning ship and the flaming piers.

It’s all gone, Usha thought, her stomach turning. She looked at Dez and saw a stunned look that must surely mirror her own expression. In one night, Haven is gone!

Prisoner of Haven

( Dragonlance - Age of Mortals, Book 4 )

Nancy Varian Berberick

Dedication

It’s my great pleasure to thank a group of talented Albuquerque writers who welcomed me to town and to their writer’s group: Pati Nagle (who writes as P.G. Nagle), Joan Saberhagen (who writes as Joan Spicci), Neal Singer, Alan Lattimore, Sally Gwylan and—always!—Doug Clark. Collectively, they are the Plot Busters, and without their excellent suggestions, good cheer and enthusiasm, Prisoner of Haven would not have taken the shape it now has.

Thanks also to Becca Clark and Jonathan Clark for giving me The Beauty of the Rain, the lovely album by Dar Williams. Until I heard this CD, Prisoner of Haven didn’t have a soundtrack, as most of my books do. Halfway through my first hearing of “Mercy of the Fallen,” not only did the book have a soundtrack, it seemed to me that I could hear Usha’s own voice in the lyrics.

Nancy Varian Berberick
Albuquerque, NM
January 2004

1

Usha Majere breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the high granite wall surrounding Haven loom ahead. In the hour after sunrise, the granite shone with the new day’s rosy light.

A welcome beacon, Usha thought.

Around her, several of the eight travelers who’d been her companions for the trip from Solace lifted ragged cheers, and the group halted as if by unspoken accord. Usha shifted her seat in a saddle that had become harder and harder each mile of the journey. Others did the same, the two sons of Hann the miller, the baker and his wife who traveled to visit their daughter, an old soldier called Dog along for the pay, and Reetha, a pretty half-elf who thought she would find better work as a seamstress in Haven than in Solace. Rising in their saddles to get blood back into their legs and posteriors, stretching kinked muscles in arms and shoulders and necks, they looked like a more hopeful lot than they had in the last few days of the journey.

Usha turned at the sound of a bridle jingling behind her. Dezra, her husband’s sister, had a positively jaunty air about her, her high spirits infecting her red mare. Dezra controlled her head-tossing mount with a firm hand and a soft word, then cocked a wry grin when she saw Usha settling uncomfortably again in the saddle.

“You’re going to be about as limber as a two-by-four once you get down.”

“That would be a distinct improvement,” Usha murmured.

“Ah, we’re almost there,” Dezra said, pointing. “Our luck held, and not a dark knight the whole way.”

With the forest behind, the road meandered through a small orchard, and out from there to bisect the recently harvested fields of wheat and barley. Beyond those fields lay Haven. Usha looked back to the road and the shadowed forest lining either side, then forward to the walls of Haven. The road between Haven and Solace had become a dangerous one, and the tales of travelers waylaid by the occasional opportunistic robber now mingled with tales of folk harassed by dark knights.

Usha settled the saddle bags across the little palfrey’s withers. Her fingers lingered on the one containing her small store of carefully wrapped charcoals for sketching and the little sheaf of parchment leaves.

“Let’s go,” Dez said, her voice loud enough to carry to the folks at the back of the group.

Usha tugged up the hood of her jade green cloak, settling to let her thoughts drift to the sweeping shadows of clouds on the road. She had an artist’s eye for shape and shaping, and in the shadows she saw dreams and promise. In her mind’s eye she transformed the shapes into the first brush strokes of a painting as yet without form or theme or name.

Dezra did not have eyes for the patterns that shadows made. A sheathed sword hung near her knee, a dagger at her belt, and a skirt’s hem did not hamper her. She rode comfortably in breeches and leather shirt, the heels of her boots the proper height to make a stirrup safe. As she had every day of the journey, she kept a hand near her quiver of arrows and an eye on the way ahead.

Usha watched Dezra’s eyes glance now and then to the right or left, once or twice over her shoulder. She knew Dez didn’t worry too much about robbers. No band existed in Darken Wood these days that was large enough to give a party of their size any trouble. But Dezra and the others who bore weapons worried about dark knights prowling the roads or lurking in the glens and on the forest heights.

“Like they’re measuring the place and getting ready to move in,” Dezra’s father had grumbled when he stood on the breezy porch of the Inn of the Last Home and wished Usha and his daughter a safe journey. As Caramon spoke the porch and the inn itself had swayed gently in the arms of the great vallenwood tree that housed it. Beyond the inn the other houses of Solace, perched in their own trees, did the same, a town sighing in the summer morning. It was a motion that had taken Usha some time to learn to appreciate as soothing. Neither Dezra nor Usha discounted Caramon Majere’s opinion. Few knew the risks and hazards along way between Solace and Haven as well as this old warrior turned peaceable innkeeper. Caramon had lived in Solace most of his long life. It was true enough that, whatever the dark knights’ motive—and who could think it was a good one?—the minions of the dragon Beryl often crossed the racing White-rage River into free Abanasinia.

Usha looked up at fleecy white clouds wandering across a sky the color of a robin’s egg. She wanted to feel a slender brush in her right hand, the weight of her palette of pungent paint in her left. She wanted to change a white canvas into that breathing blue sky and wind-shepherded clouds.

“Stop right there!”

The cry cut through the early morning silence, sudden and loud. Usha’s heart leaped into her throat. The miller’s son reached for a sword, but Dezra stilled him with a sharp gesture.

“You want to get us all killed? And what in the name of dark gods are you going to do with that down here anyway?”

The boy’s face flushed in embarrassment or anger.

Quietly, Usha said, “Put your weapon up, Beren. We’re all right.” She nodded, just as though she believed it, and Beren sheathed the sword with a great show of reluctance.

In the shadow of the Haven wall, before the stoutly barred gates of the city, the little party reined in their horses. Usha glanced at Dezra. They were not kindred spirits, these two, nor kin except by Usha’s marriage to Dezra’s older brother, but neither failed to understand the other. Be still, said Dezra’s gesture, a motion of her hand barely seen in the darkness.

You needn’t worry about that, Usha affirmed with a slight inclination of her head.

Usha’s mount sidled. Behind her, the jangle of bridle iron clashed with the sound of her horse’s distress as the rest of the travelers contained their restive mounts. With a firm hand and soft whisper, she soothed her palfrey. Her hand steady on the reins, she looked up, trying to see who had called down to challenge.

“Oh, Dez, he’s a boy.”

Dezra crooked a grin and lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun.

“Who’s that?” she called. “Rinn Gallan, is that you shouting loud enough to wake the dead?”

Silence, like the pause between drum-beats, and the guard called down: “Dez? Dezra Majere, is that you?”

Usha let go a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Yes, and is that such a surprise?” Dezra snorted. “Don’t I always come down to Haven this time of year to get your uncle’s hops before anyone else can? What would my father’s ale be if we made it with any but good Haven hops? Nothing worth talking about. Now, open the gates and let us in, Rinn.”

The boy vanished from sight. Usha exchanged a relieved smile with Dezra as they heard his voice from behind the walls. “Open!” he shouted. “Open to friends!”

Someone cursed the weight of the great oaken beams that made the bars and shouted to others to “get over here and put yer backs into it!”

Usha lifted her face hoping to catch a breeze off the river, but the morning air was still. She was hungry, and she longed for a bath to soothe the aches of the journey.

The trip from Solace to Haven had seemed like a good idea last week. “Come with me,” Dez had said. “Haven is a fine place to be this time of year. Kern the baker and his wife are going down, the miller’s boys too, going to fetch two new wagons for their father. For the company of me and my sword, they’ll carry back what I buy for the inn. And I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing old Dog to take his sword down from the wall and come along for a chance to tour the wine shops and taverns. We’ll go get the inn’s supplies for this year, a fine little party of convenience—and have some fun.”

She had not said Usha looked like a woman who needed some time away, even a little fun. Around the Inn of the Last Home no one actually said that, though they all thought so, from Dez herself, to her sister Laura, to their father, dear old Caramon. Saying so would have meant talking about Palin, Usha’s husband long gone from their home. No one liked to talk about that, certainly not Usha whose fears for Palin’s safety mirrored those of his family.

About her private fears, Usha gave not the least indication—that her husband’s prolonged absence, the latest of several, each parting made after bitter quarrels, meant a more personal trouble between them.

And so Usha had been glad to go to Haven with Dez and their friendly little “party of convenience”—or she had been when it seemed they would accomplish the journey quickly. Now, after days of delay caused by the broken bridges and blocked roadways of a road fallen into disrepair, after nights listening to the sounds of the forest and hoping they were not hearing the sounds of bandits or dark knights roaming, the idea of a trip to Haven had lost its luster.

“Ho!” a rough voice called. “Beware the gates!”

Usha backed her little mare, Dezra did the same, and those behind them moved off the road as the broad oaken gates swung outward. One of the gate wardens waved the riders in, and the others surged ahead, leaving Usha and Dez behind as they went to search for inns. The baker and his wife bade them warm farewell, and the sound of their horses faded into the voice of the city as it rushed to meet them. The shrill calls of children mixed with the groan of wagon wheels, the snarling of yellow dogs, and housewives emptying slops out the windows of the shabby little houses huddled inside the walls. Beyond that was a deeper murmuring, like the rise and fall of the sea too distant to make its voice heard here.

Rinn Gallan, freckled face burnished by the sun, red hair thickly curling, greeted Dezra gladly. “Sorry about all the hollering, Dez. It’s hard times on the wall these days, what with them dark knights slinking along the roads and sniffing around Haven itself. Let ’em stay in Qualinesti, I say. Let ’em leave us honest folk alone.”

“Honest elves might have wished as much before the dragon came, Rinn, my friend. But I hear you. Too many strangers on the road. We worried, too, coming down from Solace.”

The boy shrugged. “Everyone’s worrying. But it’s good to see you, Dez. There’s a place at the High Hand Tavern fer ya, same as always and—” He stopped, round blue eyes growing rounder when Usha turned back the hood of her jade cloak. “Lady Usha,” he said, his voice hushed with awe.

Usha knew the hush would be followed by the small intake of breath. Sometimes it was for her, the golden-eyed woman whose hair curled in silver locks around her face and neck—not the silver of age, but an ageless silver even the fair elves had been known to envy. There, with the daylight still new in the sky, she glowed like a fresh-faced maiden and not a woman who had been long years married and the mother of grown children. Sometimes the hush was for her beauty, and sometimes because the person knew of her husband.

Rinn stammered, “It’s… it’s been a while since we’ve seen you here.”

Usha didn’t remember the boy, not his name or his face. It had been longer than “a while” since she’d been to Haven. Perhaps five years or more, and this youngster, with hardly sixteen years to him, would have been an urchin scrambling in the streets then. Still, she smiled and greeted him, bracing for the next question.

“How is Lord Palin?” Rinn asked. “We don’t much hear about him in Haven these days. Is he well?”

Lord Palin. The son of an innkeeper, Palin Majere had been ennobled for his deeds of courage and magic thirty years before during the Chaos War and for his subsequent leadership of the order of White Mages. His wife had been ennobled by her marriage to the great mage. That same great mage who had not graced hearth and home in many months, nor spoken or delivered the merest word to explain his absence.

Dezra stepped briskly into the answer Usha couldn’t give. “My brother’s been away, Rinn. We think he’s working to heal the broken magic, but… well, we don’t know more than that.” She glanced at Usha, who added nothing to the time-worn family justification. “Well, these years after the gods leaving haven’t been an easy time for mages. Or any of us.”

“That’s truth, Dez. Ain’t but a mage or two left in Haven with the will or the way to work magic anymore. It’s all like a lamp run too low, flickerin’ and spittin’ and doing hardly anyone any good. Poor fellers. Must be hard to fly so high in the hands of the gods, then fall so far when gods up and walk away.”

Then, realizing that he was speaking pityingly of the great mage to Palin’s own wife, Rinn cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing as his young voice betrayed him only a little by breaking.

“But since bad news travels fastest, I guess you can say no news is good news.” Rinn shrugged. “Welcome to Haven, Lady Usha. And I’ll tell ya, it won’t be no easy goin’ in the city this morning.”

Curious, Usha would have asked why, but beyond the boy’s shoulder she saw the answer. A thick crowd clogged the winding road into the city proper, at their head came two rows of riders, six mounted men in the blue and silver livery of Haven’s lord mayor, and after them the same number of soldiers in like colors, their chain-mail burnished, their weapons gleaming.

“A good showing,” Dez murmured. “Who do you think it is?”

“No idea,” Usha said.

The two watched as several carriages came into view—gleaming harness, proud horses, a footman or two to show the folk coming to watch how the wealthy attended a funeral. Usha looked back along the line of the procession and saw people standing on either side of the road, the lines extending far back into the city proper. Humans and dwarves, a few elves, and a minotaur, head and shoulders over the rest. Here, then, was the source of that sea-like murmur they’d heard when the gate opened.

“Who has died?” Usha asked, but Rinn was already scrambling up the nearest ladder in answer to a sharp order from above to return to his watch.

Dezra shrugged. “Someone important enough to bring out the city.” She jerked her head at the procession. “All this is going to keep us here a while.”

The wealthy passed, and the coffin came into view. It was richly carved, covered with a many-colored tapestry, and carried on a broad bier by four stout servants. The woman riding the widow’s darkly-dressed horse came closer. The horse shook its head, disturbing the rider. She moved for balance and her veil slipped aside, displaying her face to the crowds come to honor grief or gather gossip. The parted veil showed a long bony face, like a horse’s someone once said, with teeth which, while white and even, were quite prominent. The skin of her face and neck was as red as though it had been flayed by a sea-wind, and thickly freckled.

“Aline!” Usha breathed.

“Who?”

“Aline Caroel.”

Dezra’s frown still said, “Who?”

Usha glanced at the bier and corrected herself. “Aline Wrackham.”

“Wrackham. That name I know. Huh.” Dez watched the coffined remains of the wealthiest man in Haven, arguably the wealthiest man in this part of Abanasinia, pass by. “That’s not good. There’s going to be a lot of scrambling around in the counting houses if the widow calls in Wrackham’s debts. You suppose she’s as tight-fisted as her husband?”

Usha shook her head. “She is not.”

“You sound like you know her.”

“I do. She married Lir Wrackham because of… because Palin and I asked her to.”

Dez’s eyes widened. “The story gets better and better. My brother never told the family about you two being matchmakers.”

Usha shrugged. There was much Palin hadn’t talked about in the past few years. “Have you heard of Qui-thonas?”

Dez had, but as most people, she knew Qui-thonas only by rumor. The word was Elvish for “the path away.” And, like many, she’d heard whispered tales of a secret organization that helped elven refugees out of captive Qualinesti and saw them safely to freedom in Abanasinia.

Her curiosity piqued, Dez glanced at her brother’s sister. “I’ve heard it’s run by Laurana, the Qualinesti Queen Mother.” She pulled a wry smile. “And I’ve heard it’s funded by humans in Abanasinia.”

Usha watched Lir Wrackham’s widow riding by. “The truth lies somewhere in between, but that woman has fed both the spirit and the purse of Qui-thonas. She gave her life to it, her youth and her heart.”

The line of mourners passed, winding away to the part of Haven where the cemeteries lay on the high ground away from the river. Usha watched it go, thinking how Palin had asked for her help when Qui-thonas was in danger of falling apart. He’d told her no one could ensure that the mission—“The marriage,” Usha had corrected him—would go well the way she could. “You are magic,” he’d said to her, not only then, but later, at night when she went into his arms.

They had been hopeful then. She and her husband had still been lovers, then.

Usha watched the last of the mourners go by until Dezra jogged her elbow, inclining her head toward a tall young man at the edge of the crowd. He wore much-mended clothing, and his boots were scuffed and worn at the heels. He kept to the back of the procession, hanging around the rougher edges of the crowd.

“Looks like he’s up to no good,” Dezra murmured.

At first glance, Usha agreed, thinking he was a pick-pocket looking for a mark in the crowd. A second, closer look and she saw past the beard and the shabby clothing to the high-boned shape of his face, the aristocratic hook of his nose. In that moment, the young man’s intense brown eyes met hers, and Usha felt a shiver of recognition.

“I thought him long gone from Haven.”

The crowd thinned, onlookers drifting back to their homes and businesses now that the grieving and gaudy were gone. Dezra urged her mount forward into the narrow street. “You know him, too?”

Usha looked over her shoulder, but the man was gone, vanished into the shadows of a high wall or down some secret alley. “He is Madoc ap Westhos,” she said. “They called him Madoc Diviner, in the days of magic. He accompanied Aline on her wedding journey from Solace.”

“To guard the bride?”

“And to make sure a wedding gift arrived for the groom from Palin and me. I’d painted a locket portrait for Aline to give her husband on their wedding day, for she was to marry a cold, old man.”

The narrow city street widened, on either side stretches of greensward and garden replaced taverns and humbler homes. Beyond, they saw the high stories of the houses of the wealthy and powerful, balconies on high, broad gardens surrounding. Amid them all, the Old Keep, a tower of granite, rose over the city. It had been built by dwarves from Thorbardin to defend Haven, long ago in the days when pirates ran up the river and lordless folk swarmed in from Darken Wood to raid. Still the proudest building in Haven, Old Keep now stood as an armory for the citizens who kept watch on the walls.

“So,” said Dez, looking around now for the High Hand Tavern. “Your friend Madoc carried a bride and a gift to Haven. Never left, eh? Well, some people don’t. The city’s not for me, not for long, but some people like it just fine.”

“Not Madoc. Madoc is—or was—the kind of man who stays long enough to build up a tavern debt, and never long enough to pay it off. But…”

“But?”

Dez turned her horse’s head down a shaded lane, and Usha followed.

“You know how some of my paintings are just… paintings, and some are… more?”

Dez nodded. Most people who knew Usha knew that her reputation as a portrait painter was well deserved. Some knew there was more to her art than mere portraiture, something mystical, enchanting, and not wholly akin to the gods-given magic of mages like Palin Majere.

A thin youngster, all legs, skinned knees and pansy blue eyes called to them from the doorway of the High Hand. She shouted something about how her father had been expecting Dez some days ago. “But yer room’s all ready, just like always.”

Dez waved acknowledgement, but absently. The girl in the tavern doorway hopped out into the dooryard as the two women stopped. While Usha and Dez dismounted, she held the reins of each horse.

“This portrait wasn’t just a painting,” Usha said, handing her palfrey over to the care of the landlord’s daughter.

Dez cocked a grin, understanding. “A love token to charm an old miser? Nice. How did it work?”

Usha said nothing for a while, recalling the intense, starved look of Madoc Diviner’s dark eyes. “Very well,” she said at last. “But it worked on the wrong man.”

2

Late day sun felt hot on Usha’s arms and neck as she stood to look at the mullioned windows of Lir Wrackham’s house. Light danced over the rippled glass—four windows of glass!—in imitation of light on the surface of the river. Lir Wrackham had been a wealthy man to have that many windows of glass. As far as Usha knew, there was no glassblower in Haven capable of doing work of greater complexity than cups and candlestick holders. Aline’s husband must have had these windows imported at enormous cost, perhaps from as far away as Tarsis.

The street was quiet. At first Usha thought it was dozing in the sun, most folk keeping indoors for the shade. That might be so in this part of the city where the wealthy had others to work for them, but few servants were to be seen. A black-bearded dwarf wearing a forgeman’s soot-stained leather apron stood across the street talking with a young human woman who held a basket full of fat skeins of blue and white yarn. Usha felt his dark-eyed gaze slip over her then slip away. She saw no one else, nor had she seen much activity in the city as she’d walked from the High Hand Inn to the river and along the cool and willow-shaded paths to this comfortable enclave of Haven’s wealthy. It was a quieter city in the fading afternoon than it had been at dawn when Lir Wrackham’s funeral wound through the streets.

Usha didn’t imagine that whole quarters of Haven had gone into mourning, but when she and Dez had parted at the High Hand, Dez to make the rounds of her usual suppliers, and Usha to offer Aline her condolence, Usha had thought she’d find more than shadows on her friend’s doorstep. She looked up and down the street and saw no sign that anyone had come to offer the widow sympathy.

The house, half built of timber, half of stone, was much like others in this part of Haven, but Usha knew it at once for Aline’s. “You’ll know Mistress Wrackham’s house by the roses,” the landlord at the High Hand had assured her. “That place is a’climb with roses. Rose Hall, the old man called it. Just like he was some nobleman tryin’ to keep his castles and estates in order.”

It was indeed a’climb with roses. The vines and canes reached up the stone foundation, the walls of the bottom floor and up to the timbered second floor upon fanned trellises, red and white entwined as high as the second story. Close to the street, a well-kept bed of peach and ivory-colored roses embraced the front of the house, stretching the length of the short block that began at River Way and ended at Wrackham Street. The beds had been recently watered and the air still smelled of the rich fragrance of wet earth. Usha sipped the scents as though sipping wine. Across the street the woman with the basket on her hip laughed, and the dwarf chuckled as he toyed with a ring on his finger. He slipped another glance Usha’s way.

Well enough, Master Dwarf, she thought. You see me, and I see you.

Smiling, she nodded gracious greeting then turned and climbed the three stone steps to Aline’s door. She did not wait long on the doorstep before a housemaid came to answer. Her name given, Usha was shown to a small room off the entry hall and made comfortable while the servant announced her. Seated beside a window, this one unglazed and open to the air, Usha looked out upon the street. The woman with the yarn basket was gone. The dwarf stood a moment looking at Rose Hall. He tugged his coal-black beard, as though considering a choice, then took a seat upon the bottom step of the house opposite.

“Ah, Dunbrae,” said a voice from the doorway. “He keeps a close and faithful eye on me, doesn’t he? Usha, it’s good to see you.”

Thick and rough, the voice. Madoc Diviner had once described it as being like that of a half-grown boy with the ague. The voice as unattractive as the speaker, the homely girl no young man would look at twice had hoped to study with clerics and bards and spend her life in poetry and scholarship. It was not to be.

“Aline.” Usha rose. “How sorry I am to visit under such sad circumstances.”

“You are kind,” Aline said, stepping around the possibility of her own sorrow.

They had not seen each other in several years, not since Usha and Palin had sent a grimly determined young woman down the White-rage River to her marriage. The marriage would ally the wealthy merchant houses of Caroel and Wrackham, giving the latter access to the long and cherished relationships Aline’s grandfather had in Abanasinia’s merchant and shipping communities. In return for Gault Caroel’s granddaughter and his business contacts, Lir Wrack-ham would continue to fund Qui-thonas, an organization suggested by Laurana, the Queen Mother of the Qualinesti elves and devised by Palin and Usha to rescue the growing number of elves determined to flee their homeland. It had been funded by Gault Caroel himself, until his coffers ran dry. With Aline’s marriage, the effort would continue, and those who simply wanted to flee to peace could do so.

Wrackham had not reneged on his bargain. His bride had come to him, as promised, but he never caught sight of the magical portrait. On their wedding night the locket remained with Madoc. “For no one will love me as you will,” Aline had said when they parted. “No one will ever have the chance, and no matter if I am unhappily wed.” But she was not unhappy in her marriage. The shrewd old merchant had not only a keen eye for business but one that could quickly uncover a person’s character and spirit. In his own way, Lir Wrackham became enchanted. He’d been pleased to give his wife anything she asked for. Aline, who had all her young life believed passionately in the ideal of elven freedom and the freedom of all Krynn from the hateful dragons, had asked for Qui-thonas.

And so Lir Wrackham had not been enspelled by Usha’s magic. Madoc Diviner had. By the mage’s account Aline had gone only reluctantly to her wedding after that. Usha had never heard Aline’s account. Standing now in the oak paneled reception room, among treasures and artwork from distant lands, she wondered what that account would sound like.

Aline held out her hands—large hands, knob-knuckled and brown as those of a farmer’s wife. “By the departed gods, Usha, you never age a moment, let alone a day! You are lovely as ever. But I’m surprised to see you here. I’ve known that Palin’s sister comes to Haven for supplies for the family’s inn, but…” She trailed off when Usha offered no explanation. “Well! It’s good to see you. Will you come and take a glass of wine with me?”

Despite the heat of the day, Aline’s hands were cold. Usha pressed them between hers as she would have her own daughter’s. “Yes, I’d like that.”

But having offered, Aline did not herself seem interested in the golden wine or tempting poppy seed cakes brought by a servant to the high-ceilinged, airy room where she did her best to make her guest comfortable. She poured wine into pale blue goblets, then barely moistened her lips. She served cakes and honey but did not taste them. She paced up and down the length of the richly woven carpet of black and red Tarsian wool while Usha tried to do justice to her hospitality. In these dragon days such carpets as this one, the work of a year or more of a weaver’s life, were worth a king’s ransom. But Aline might as well have been pacing rushes freshly flung from the fields to a cottage floor for all she seemed to be aware of the thickness of wool beneath her feet.

“Aline,” Usha said, setting down her plate and moving her wine glass away from the table edge. “You seem…”

Aline turned, her long face pale but for two spots of bright red over each cheekbone. “I feel like I could jump out of my skin. I’ve been like this all day. Please—” She managed a smile, an apologetic shrug. “Come walk in the market with me. This house is stifling.”

Outdoors, Usha found the air cooler than before. A fresh breeze was coming off the river. Aline sighed almost contentedly. She had been all day indoors, receiving those who came to offer condolence on Lir Wrackham’s death, deflecting the too-close questions of others who came to ask whether the rich man’s widow lacked for anything.

“These,” she said with grim irony, “are the thoughtful souls who will soon be asking whether the widow lacks for company. Or, more likely, someone to help her spend her inheritance. I’ll have a flock of suitors before long, Usha.” She pushed her thin brown hair away from her face. “Imagine that. An hour ago I shut the doors on them all and gave the servants instructions to let no one in.” She brightened. “But when the housemaid heard your name… well, Majere isn’t a name to be turned away, is it?”

Usha put her arm through Aline’s as they walked along the quiet street. She glanced right and left, but saw no sign of the dwarf Dunbrae. The breeze off the river drifted fresh through the city, and the nearer they went to the market, the more folk they saw. It was late afternoon when canny housewives sent servants or went themselves while the vendors considered their sales for the day and whether it was better to sell what was left at lower prices than to pack up their wares again.

They walked most of the way in silence, Aline with a look that reminded Usha of the drawn expressions of people she’d seen about the city. It wasn’t until they came to the edge of the great square that had for generations served as Haven’s chief market that Usha felt the sense of a living, breathing city asserting itself. The place was a riot of color, harvested yellow wheat, limes and oranges brought by ship from distant lands, peaches and strawberries grown right here in Abanasinia piled high on farmers’ tables. Women balanced laden baskets on their hips, their clothing summer green, sky blue, and sandy or brown as the river’s edges. But those who had children kept them in tow, and the restless little ones danced and skipped impatiently, longing to race through the market chasing each other.

Usha lifted a silk scarf the color of twilight and listened to it whisper through her fingers, then another the color of brown chestnuts. She purchased them and declined to have them wrapped or sent. With swift, practiced gestures she tied the brown silk loosely around Aline’s neck. “The very color to make your green eyes like emeralds.” She used the other to bind her long silvery hair back from her face and keep it from the tugging fingers of the wind. They moved on, passing the booth of two young people of the Plains, a man and a half-grown girl who offered the beautiful feathers, for which the Plainsfolk were known, and quills for beading and decorating leather work. More than one person stopped to watch them as they moved through the market, the homely young woman, often recognized as Lir Wrackham’s widow, and her ethereally beautiful companion rumored to be Usha Majere.

Comment and whisper followed them, murmured speculation about what Palin Majere’s wife was doing in Haven, about whether the great mage himself were in the city. They went on through the market, Aline pointing out the stalls of jewelers and weavers, of pot throwers and chandlers. They stopped at the stall of a portly fruit-seller who was flapping his hand to keep flies from a gleaming pile of strawberries. His stock was not much in need of replenishing, his mood grim.

“It’s been quiet like this for days now,” Aline said. “I think poor Lir’s funeral was the noisiest thing in two weeks. Most followed along for diversion.” Her eyes darkened and she shrugged as though to dismiss a troublesome thought.

Usha wondered whether Aline had seen Madoc at the back of the crowd. She almost asked, but folded her lips upon the question best left for later.

Aline said, “Mostly we listen for news from the road and the river.”

“Dark knights.”

“Yes. Did you and Dezra have any trouble on the road?”

“No, but we worried about it. Dark knights lurk all over the road between here and Solace, not making trouble yet, but making their presence known. I’ve heard that the green dragon is looking this way. More tribute to be had here than from poor ravaged Qualinesti, they say.”

The breeze quickened, making the awning over the fruit-seller’s stall flap and ripple with a sound like distant thunder. Usha cast a glance at the sky, the blue dome arching over the city and the river shone cloudless.

“More tribute for green Beryl,” she said, “but that’s not the only concern.”

Aline’s eyes darkened. “I know. If Beryl is sending dark knights into Abanasinia, that means she’s ready to challenge Malys.”

It could mean little else, for the pact between the great dragons who had savaged Ansalon’s native dragons and divided the spoils between them in the Dragon Purge was that each would hold its own territory and not try to upset the balance of power between them. That was the pact. In truth, any dragon who could, would amass whatever territory it was able to. Among the dragons, the true contest always lay between the most powerful and devious, green Beryl and red Malys.

“I’ve heard people say,” Usha said while a woman and her impatient child selected a basket of peaches, “that Abanasinia could find itself a sudden battleground. What do you—?”

Quick as a kender, the little boy danced away from his mother, laughing as she lunged to grab him and missed. He spun around to elude her grasp and ran right into Usha. She caught him when his mother’s frustrated cry rang sharply. He wriggled out of her grasp and pushed her back into the table in front of the fruitseller’s stall. Peaches tumbled onto the dusty earth, and strawberries followed in a fountain of red sweetness. The exasperated mother, offering harried apology to Usha, snatched her child out of the mess and out of the market as the fruitseller rounded on Usha with snarling curses.

“Damn it! Isn’t it enough that I can’t sell the damned peaches or strawberries these days? Now look! Ruined!”

Usha and Aline scrambled after rolling peaches, keeping their skirt hems away from the dashed strawberries. To mollify the red-faced seller, Aline bought some strawberries, blueberries, and peaches.

“Please have them sent around to my house,” she asked, counting out the price of the fruit from the coins in the silken pouch at her girdle. She gave him directions. The man knew her at once and fumbled some words of sympathy as he assured her the fruit would be in her kitchen before she herself was at her front door.

At the end of the day, in the failing light, Usha and Aline walked side by side in silence, enjoying the cooling air. When they’d gone so far as to see the roofs of Rose Hall, Usha asked the question that had gone unanswered after the cascade of falling peaches interrupted their conversation.

“Aline, do your people in Qui-thonas have any news about the plans of the dark knights, or perhaps of Beryl herself?”

Aline walked on, her head tilted, as though she were thinking. Then she stopped and when she turned, Usha saw deep sorrow in her friend’s eyes.

“There is no Qui-thonas.” Aline’s voice dropped low, though nothing moved on the street but shadows. “Not anymore. No elves have come out of Qualinesti for some time now. I don’t know what’s happening there. No one does. I used to hear by various ways how they fared in the forest. No more. It’s as though a door has been shut and nailed tight. I can’t send my people to rescue elves who aren’t there. The departed gods help Qualinesti now. We cannot.”

The sky tinted to deeper blue in the east. Over the river the sun hung low.

“Tell me, Usha, how is Palin? Is he well?”

“As far as anyone knows.”

Aline glanced at her sideways. If she drew conclusions from the undertone of bitterness in Usha’s voice, she said nothing more. The two went on in silence, and at the door of Rose Hall Aline said, “Can I send you back to the High Hand in my carriage?”

“Thank you, but no. The tavern is no great distance, and I enjoy a walk in the evening. But…Aline, don’t disband Qui-thonas yet. Don’t send them all away.”

“Not yet,” Aline agreed. “I’m in touch with them, but we’ve let the safehouses go back to being mere homes. The secret ways from the river to the city are no more than deer tracks now.”

They spoke for a little while longer, but not of refugees or threats. Aline did not mention Palin, and Usha did not ask about Madoc.

A motion in the shadows gathering between the houses caught Usha’s eye.

“Dunbrae,” Aline said to Usha. “You’ve met.”

Usha shook her head. “Better to say we’ve seen each other.”

“Good, then. Qui-thonas will see you home. Good night, Usha. Come and see me tomorrow and we’ll talk among the roses while Dezra finishes her business.”

“I will.”

When the two parted no sound came from the shadows, not the scuff of a boot on cobblestone, nor the slightest breath indrawn. But like a shadow himself, Usha sensed the presence of the dwarf Dunbrae as he followed her through the streets of Haven, a silent, unseen watcher to see her safely to the door of the High Hand.

“Look,” Dezra said, thumping her boot heel onto the bench at the opposite side of the scarred plank table. “I know what I’m talking about.”

Usha glanced at the dusty boot and resisted the impulse to tug her skirt away. But for an uninterested barkeeper and the eternally distracted gully dwarf who emptied spittoons, they were alone in the common room of the High Hand. Many of the inn’s rooms were taken—they’d been glad that the landlord had kept one for Dezra—but the mood of the place was quiet, people gathering only at meal times and then drifting back to their rooms. It had been so for three days, and each morning Usha was glad to leave the place, to go walking in the city or by the river, alone or with Aline. Walking, Usha tried to unravel the painful knot of frustrations that had driven her from Solace and her empty house. She had little success. None, if she were being honest with herself. The old questions about Palin, about their increasingly arid marriage, haunted her. She could not drive them off with anger or by ignoring them, nor could she hide from them behind pleasant diversions.

Since the morning she’d awakened to find Palin gone, Usha had found no comfort in Solace, and in Haven no refuge from her doubts.

Each evening, Dez would return, kicking her own frustration into the nearly empty common room ahead of her, no closer to fulfilling her mission of ordering supplies for her family’s inn.

“I’m telling you, Usha, something’s wrong.”

Dezra shifted in her seat, her frown deepening to a scowl. She moved to slip her dagger from its sheath, then caught the barkeeper’s eye and resisted the impulse to mar the table more. She reminded many people of her infamous aunt, the dragon highlord Kitiara. Golden of hair and skin where Kitiara had been dark and pale, still Dez recalled the fabled highlord in face and form. Caramon, her father, didn’t like to think so, but Dezra had grown up on stories of Kitiara uth Matar, Caramon’s half-sister. The warrior had ruled nearly half the continent of Ansalon before the War of the Lance ended. It was not in Dezra’s nature to seek or embrace the darkness as Kitiara had, but no one doubted that Dez had inherited her aunt’s fierce and restless spirit.

Across the room Banlath the barkeeper sent the gully dwarf to clean the kitchen while he continued wiping the gleaming oak bar, polishing the wood till it shone. He whistled tunelessly through gapped front teeth and did not seem to be paying attention to the two women sitting alone and talking. Still, Dez lowered her voice and dropped her foot from the bench to lean closer to Usha.

“I come here every year. You know that.”

Usha nodded as she finished the last of her supper, a plump patty of flaked fish seasoned with spices and herbs.

“Every year,” Dez said, “I go to Rinn Gallan’s uncle to order the hops, and I go to Varal Kamer for the wine from his own vineyards—even the white my father says isn’t as good as the elven stuff.” She snorted. “But who can get elven wine these days? Probably not even elves.”

“And dwarf spirits,” Usha said. She’d heard the litany before. “I know, Dez. So, what’s wrong?”

“No one has any. Rinn’s uncle knew I was coming from the first day I arrived. From what Rinn said when he saw us, we were expected and welcome. But now—and suddenly, if you ask me—no one has anything. No hops, no wine, and for some reason, in this city where hill dwarves have lived for gods only know how long—” Again, Dez’s boot heel thumped on the bench—“not a drop of dwarf spirits to be found. Or,” she said, darkly, “none to sell. Whatever farmers are selling in the market, the serious merchants seem to have nothing.”

“All your suppliers?”

“Not just mine. Everyone’s! You can’t buy flour in any great quantity, nor grain or seed either. The poulterers aren’t killing their chickens, and shepherds aren’t bringing their flocks in from the hills.”

Listening to Dez was like watching shadows begin to coalesce into an ominous image. “They’re stockpiling. Aline says they’ve been edgy here all summer. We’ve seen that since we arrived. Who wouldn’t be with the air full of rumors about Beryl moving dark knights around? But edgy is one thing…”

Dez nodded. “Stockpiling is another.”

Usha looked over her shoulder at the barman and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Aline tells me Qui-thonas has heard nothing about an impending attack, but… people decide to hoard for two reasons, don’t they? Either they’re afraid. Really afraid. Or they’re hoping to make a tidy pile of coin once a shortage sets in.”

“Or both.”

Outside the sky had gone dark enough for stars to shine. They heard the cry of a watchman on the city wall, faint and distant. Closer, the clop of a horse’s hooves and the murmur of its rider as they passed by the tavern door.

“Usha, let’s get out of here. Something’s up. Something’s going to happen.”

Usha felt it, a creeping sense of doom like the stillness before a storm.

“First thing tomorrow,” she said. “We can come back later—or find what we need somewhere else and let people remember this as the year the ale wasn’t as good as usual at your father’s inn. Much better than remembering it as the year we went for a trip to Haven and never came home.”

It did not take them long to pack, and Usha paid the landlord his due while Dez saw that their horses were fed an extra measure of oats. They would not take time for those things in the morning. They wanted to be at the gates when the sun rose over the river.

Seated high upon the back of his black dragon, Sir Radulf Eigerson, the knight known as Red Wolf, took his talon of dragons across the night sky. The Qualinesti Forest was a vast darkness below until, surging lower over the White-rage River, they left the elf kingdom and entered the Free Realm of Abanasinia. At Sir Radulf’s command, with the moon behind them, the six red dragons dropped over the river and followed its gleaming waters through Darken Wood until the walled city of Haven came into view.

Sir Radulf pumped his fist twice, and the talon separated into three parts, sailing out ahead of him. A word of command leaped from his mind to that of Ebon, his great black dragon. The beast’s spiny crest rose—dark, killing joy gleamed in her eyes. With a powerful thrust of her wings, Ebon flew higher and circled the city in wide loops. From this height, Sir Radulf watched as his six knights took their red dragons into a long-practiced maneuver. Two at the north end of the city, two at the south, and the third pair soaring over the center of Haven, the dark knights set their dragons to work.

Great gouts of fire poured from enormous, fanged jaws. Mounted upon high-backed, tall-fronted saddles hung with weapons and chased with silver, encased in armor as black as the hide of the talon’s leader, a half dozen knights guided their beasts in carefully coordinated flight, igniting roofs, destroying a tall-masted ship moored at the riverside and setting the wooden piers alight.

Tracing the brilliant line of flames racing along the waterfront as the piers burnt, Sir Radulf urged Ebon lower, the better to watch his talon at work. The red dragons’ wide, leathery wings beat the air with a sound like thunder.

Connected one to the other in heart and mind, the knight felt Ebon’s wild surge of bloodlust, her fierce urge to be with her comrades at the killing. He had some sympathy for the dragon’s feelings, but Sir Radulf held the beast back. He would not give in to that kind of thing himself nor allow it in his knights; he would not permit it in the dragon. Savagery was for foot soldiers, draconians, goblins, brutes, and those humans who hadn’t the skill or wit to be more than battle fodder.

Over the river, one red broke ranks with his partner. The lady knight Mearah sent her dragon lower to set alight a line of piers on the side of the river where the tall houses of Haven’s wealthy sat upon brooding clifftops. She was a fierce one, Lady Mearah, the daughter of an old Solamnic family who’d found her warrior spirit needed the kind of fire that had become nothing but ember and ash among Solamnics. Lady Mearah warmed herself at grim fires and rumor said her kin referred to Lady Mearah as the fallen child. In her hands, the operation she and Sir Radulf had so perfectly envisioned and planned was now being faultlessly executed. It would win the praise of their masters in Neraka, perhaps the approval of the green dragon herself.

And so Sir Radulf would allow nothing to interfere in its execution. To him, smiling thinly behind the black mask of his helm, the sounds of terror drifting up from the ground were not a call to join in a slaughter. They simply meant that all was going as planned.

3

Usha woke suddenly, Dezra’s voice cutting through the haze of sleep. “Get up, Usha! Fire! Get up!”

She scrambled out of bed and dragged on her clothes. She heard screaming from the street and smelled smoke. It came in through the window on a choking gust of night wind, and it came from under the door as well. Someone pounded on the door, yelling, “Get up! Get out!” and ran on to hammer the same warning at another door, then another.

A woman ran screaming down the corridor. “Oh, gods! The roof is on fire!”

Dez flung herself away from the window, eyes glittering, face pale in the moonlight. “Dragons!”

“Come on, Dez!” Heart pounding, eyes streaming tears from the smoke, Usha yanked open the door. More smoke poured in. There was another floor of rooms above them. She heard the crackling of fire up there but saw none on this floor yet.

Dez had already grabbed her bow and quiver. She belted on her sword running. All else they would leave behind.

Eyes stinging, they plunged out into the dark corridor. They tried to find the crossing passages that led one out to the garden and the common room. A young woman bolting out of her room collided with Usha, shoved her aside and ran on. Someone else dragged Usha up to her feet and thrust her forward, urging her to follow the people only dimly seen ahead.

“Usha!” Dez shouted, far behind.

Usha turned, but she could not see Dezra and the terrified people in the hall swept her onward.

“Go to the garden, Usha! Don’t go—!”

But she had no choice of where to go. The panicking people swept her along, pushing her to the crossway and into the passage to the common room. She heard the first screams when she stumbled across the threshold, and the stench of burning flesh came in a sickening wave on a billow of smoke. A keg of volatile dwarf spirits behind the bar had ignited. Flames flashed to candles and stacked firewood, then to chairs and tables. The common room became an inferno.

A howling figure staggered across the floor of the wide room, clothing aflame, hair afire. A woman ahead of Usha screamed, a child wailed in terror, and Usha turned from the sight.

She put her back to the doorway, thrust her arms out before her and cried, “Stop! Go back!”

Her voice, clear and sharp, halted the boy who’d been behind her. His father stumbled into him and tried to reach over him to shove Usha aside. She grabbed his wrist before he could grab her shoulder.

“Stop! Look!”

He didn’t have to look. The agonized howling and the stench of burning flesh told him everything. His eyes went wide, shocked and comprehending. Behind him others staggered. Some stumbled and fell.

“We have to go back!” Usha said, raising her voice to be heard, striving for calm and grateful that she’d at least managed to keep her voice firm. She put the hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked past him to those milling behind, clogging the corridor, elbowing each other and cursing; all frightened by the roar of fire. “Go back to the garden!”

A man she couldn’t see shouted, “There’s dragons out there! I saw ’em from the window. Hundreds! I saw ’em in the sky!”

Panic rose to near hysteria, cries of fear became screams of horror at the thought of hundreds of dragons over Haven. Waves of heat rolled past her, over her, and Usha shouted him down. “There can’t be hundreds! There is fire in here! Go back into the garden! Go!”

They turned, first those farthest from her, now closest to safety. Turning, they became the same kind of force that had carried her along the passage to the common room, strong and terrified and almost without mind. The father and son nearest her, once first were now last and they shoved and pushed to get to the garden. Usha went in their wake, and it wasn’t long before she felt the cooler air of outdoors. She tumbled out the door and staggered into the bricked courtyard that framed the inn’s garden. Long wooden tables and benches filled the space. No one stopped to rest. All flowed out of the broad gates into the street. Next door, the inn’s stable rang with the clatter of hooves, the screams of panicking horses, the shouts of men and boys trying to get them into the streets and away from the fire.

Usha ran for the gates, but a hard hand caught her elbow, holding her. She pulled away, then stopped when she recognized the dwarf Dunbrae. He pointed up to the dark space of sky between the inn and the stable. Smoke hid the moon, erasing the stars. Between one rolling billow and another, Usha saw broad swathes of flame as two red-scaled dragons soared above Haven.

Sight of them sent icy terror rushing through her. She stiffened her knees, not permitting them to tremble or buckle. “How many?”

He shook his head, lips twisting into a wry, humorless grin. “Enough. Come with me.”

Usha shook her head, looking around wildly for Dez. “I’m not alone! I have to find—”

Dunbrae pointed across the garden. Near the gates Dez stood, shifting from foot to foot, scanning the faces of the people running by her. The dwarf whistled sharply, and Dez turned, her face alight with relief.

Dunbrae gave Usha a forceful push. “Now let’s go.”

As they ran, the two women following Dunbrae along streets Usha didn’t know, they heard the sound of Haven’s fall—the roaring of dragons, the screams of terror, the bellowing of fire leaping from roof to roof. Somewhere, Usha had lost her shoes. Her naked feet hurt when she ran. She stumbled on the hem of her skirt then clenched the material in her hands out of her way. She fled beside Dez, running behind Dunbrae down alleys so dark the way could be found by few but a dwarf whose eyesight had been for generations bred beneath the mountains. Once, at the end of a narrow, dank alley, they stopped to catch their breath. Gasping, leaning against a cold, wet wall, Usha saw the river. It ran like a torrent of fire as it reflected the burning ship and the flaming piers.

It’s all gone, Usha thought, her stomach turning. She looked at Dez and saw a stunned look that must surely mirror her own expression. In one night, Haven is gone!

Aline put a cup of tea on the table beside Usha. The steam rising smelled faintly of apples and lavender, but the soothing fragrance didn’t draw Usha from the window. She’d been there much of the night, hardly moving from the cushioned seat since Dunbrae had brought her and Dez to Rose Hall. Though Aline had made bedrooms ready for them, neither Usha nor Dez had taken advantage of them. With Aline, they’d spent the rest of the night in a high room, watching the taking of Haven, ready to flee if they must and hoping that the battle would not come sweeping down on them.

It had not.

The dragonriders fought at the wall, handily defeating Haven’s militia made up of farmers, shopkeepers, apprentices, and a few doughty dwarves from the smithy district. The dark knights had thrown open the gates to admit a column of foot soldiers, and Haven had fallen before dawn. Now, with morning shadows beginning to grow long, Usha could not take her eyes off the sooty sky.

“I thought Haven was gone,” she said. “When Dunbrae came for us, I saw dragons in the sky.”

“Haven isn’t gone,” Aline said. “She’s hurt, though.”

Dezra, hands clenched into tight fists, paced the carpeted floor, her boot heels muffled, her stride silent. She had said little since they arrived at Rose Hall, but her restless energy filled the room.

Grimly thoughtful, Usha said, “Haven is more than hurt, Aline. She’s occupied by a foreign army.”

“Yes, and that’s why I want you and Dez to get out of here. Now. This morning. I have horses for you.”

Dez stopped pacing. The stillness drew Usha’s attention.

“People left the city at first light,” Dez said. In answer to Usha’s questioning look she said, “One of the boys in the kitchen told me. One or two families, a couple of lone men and women, some on foot and others on horseback. The knights aren’t closing all ways out. Yet. Aline’s right. We should leave. Now.”

Usha was not inclined to argue. The chancy paths of Darken Wood seemed more appealing than winding streets in a city occupied by the green dragon’s knights. Impulsively, she said, “Come with us, Aline. Once he hears what you’ve done for his daughter, Caramon Majere will see that you have shelter at the Inn of the Last Home as long as you need it.”

Dezra added her agreement, but Aline shook her head. “No. Thank you, but not now.”

“Aline—”

Green eyes sparked, the only thing to speak of the stubbornness few would have thought quiet Aline possessed. “This is my city, Usha. Haven is my home. I wasn’t going to leave after Lir died. I won’t leave now. Look.”

Outside the window a pair of red dragons swung in broad lazy circles, wings wide as they sailed low over the smoky city. In the south part of Haven fires still burned. Unlike the fine houses where Rose Hall stood, houses in the poorer quarters did not have slate roofs. Neither did the buildings of the warehouse district, but nothing burned there. Even the pier the knights had fired last night was far enough away from the storehouses to have made a good threat while presenting no real danger.

“Someone made a very careful strike last night,” Aline said. “It’s meant to terrify the city, while leaving most of our assets unharmed.” She shook her head. “I’m in little danger, I think. Certainly nothing our friend Dunbrae can’t protect me from. But you and Dez…”

“Are getting out of here,” Dez finished. “Come on, Usha. The High Hand is in ashes, and everything we brought with it. We have nothing to pack, and by Aline’s grace two good horses. Let’s go.”

Aline’s assertion of her own safety was mostly bravado, but her determination to remain in Haven was unshakable. In resolve, she didn’t look less homely, but somehow regal.

Usha embraced the young woman warmly, begged her to take care of herself, and went out to Rose Hall’s stable with Dez. A half-grown boy stood in the shade of the stable roof’s overhang, holding the reins of two saddled mares. His face was smudged with the soot of ashes drifting down over the city, his eyes wide and white.

“Will you be leaving soon?” Usha asked.

“No, lady. Me ma an’ me sis is here.” He looked up at tall Rose Hall already being covered in a lace of gray ash. The boy looked for only a moment, then he thumped his chest once, proudly. “I’m stayin’ to take care of me own.”

Another time, Dezra might have laughed and good-naturedly called the boy a fool for thinking he could protect his mother and sister from green Beryl’s knights. Now Usha silently blessed Dez for what she did say as she took her horse from the boy and swung into the saddle.

“Good lad. You keep an eye on them. Don’t look for trouble, and your family will be fine.”

The boy’s cheeks flushed. He held the stirrup for Usha to mount, and the shadow of a dragon slipping along the ground passed over them. Usha could just hear the tremor in the boy’s voice when he wished them a good journey.

Usha and Dez rode along the streets where gardens drooped beneath ash. They couldn’t smell the roses for the dry stink of burning. Beyond the tall houses of the wealthy, high above any other structure in the city, Old Keep rose. Their way took them near its grounds. Soldiers of the dark army guarded the place, knights on horseback patrolled, their chain mail shimmering in the light, their blades sheathed, their lances couched, and all on prominent display.

“Look,” Usha said, pointing to the tower.

Dez cursed. Upon the tower’s top, the flat granite roof where the defenders of Haven had once stood to keep watch for pirates, a black dragon sunned itself. It raised its wings, preened a spiky crest, and stretched its neck to bellow at the sun. Sunlight edged the countless black scales of its hide, sliding along immense muscles, glinting from the tips of fangs. So close to the creature, Usha’s blood went cold and her knees weakened so that it was hard to grip her mount. Dragonfear wound through her, like a cold snake in the belly.

No other dragon was near Old Keep, not on the ground or in the sky. Usha imagined that no other dragon would dare infringe on this one’s territory. The proudest building in all Haven had become a dragon’s lair.

Past Old Keep they joined a throng of men and women. Some were afoot, others on horseback. Those with children, elders, or the infirm pushed high-wheeled hand carts. Usha looked for a way around the swelling crowd. She found none. In this part of Haven, the best roads were crowded on both sides by houses and shops; the lesser ways were often no more than narrow streets that opened into smaller lanes or ended in shabby garden fences. At every intersection, black-armored knights on tall horses, or soldiers afoot with pikes, lances, or swords kept close watch on the procession of hopeful refugees.

Usha nudged Dez to show her that now and then a knight or a pair of soldiers fell in with the crowd. They did no more than create breaks in the flow, but it was enough to turn back the faint of heart.

“No way the knights are going to let all these people out,” Dez said. “They might have earlier, but it looks like they’ve decided too much of Haven is on the march now.”

They’d come to the city wall and the stout gates that opened on the road from Darken Wood. Two figures stood on the watch walk. Each bore long pikes, though neither was geared as a knight.

“Two of the foot soldiers,” Usha said. The wood of the wall bore dark stains she hadn’t seen when they’d entered the city. Her stomach clenched when she realized this was blood, lately spilled in Haven’s defense. “I wonder who is left of Rinn and his friends.”

Dez grunted but did not speculate.

The crowd was indeed thinning behind them, and ahead it had stalled. Someone shouted, “Look!” and a murmur washed through the throng. Usha rose in the stirrups to see a knight in mail stride out of the northern watchtower. He held a black helm under his arm and used a pair of padded leather greaves to slap dust from his breaches as he walked. He spoke to one of the men, and both put aside their pikes and strung their bows. One looked outward over the forest, the other looked inward to the people milling at the gate.

“Well, he’s a handsome fellow,” Dez said. “You think he’s setting up as the new lord mayor?”

Usha hushed her with a gesture as the crowd’s murmuring settled. The knight looked over the crowd, their faces turning up to see him.

“Hear!”

A baby wailed in its mother’s arms, and a mule brayed somewhere behind Usha and Dez. All else was still.

“By order of Lord Radulf Eigerson, knight and commander of the army serving the green dragon Beryl, you are commanded to return to your homes.”

A sharp voice lifted from the crowd to Usha’s left. She turned to see a lanky young man standing nearby, his arm around a girl of about the same age. The girl had a bundle in her arms—the wailing infant from a moment ago.

“Ain’t goin’ home, Sir Knight,” the young man shouted. Usha saw his face go pale when he looked at the blood of Haven’s defenders on the wall. Still, he was not cowed. “You go tell your lord we’re leaving Haven!”

They were only three on the wall, behind the crowd the mounted knights and foot soldiers were not in sight. Usha looked a question at Dezra, Where did they go? Dez shrugged uneasily.

Emboldened, the young man looked around him at the others gathered. “We’re free men of Abanasinia. We damn well go where we like!”

Angry muttering swelled like a wave rolling on the ocean, agreement washing up against the closed gates.

On the wall, the archers drew and let fly. Two arrows wasped through the air. Beside Usha, the woman with the child screamed. In the ground inches from the toes of her husband’s boots the two arrows hummed, quivering. Usha’s horse snorted and danced back. She felt it gather itself to rear and leaned forward as Dez leaned across the little distance between them and took hold of the reins.

“Now,” the knight drawled, “I have orders to leave as many of you alive as I can. But it’s up to me how many that turns out to be. Hear again! No one leaves the city without a pass, and no one gets a pass from anyone but Sir Radulf.”

He nodded in the direction of the Old Keep. Many turned to look, as Usha did, and saw the black dragon sunning itself on the granite root of the tower.

“As far as I know, no one’s getting a pass just now for love or money. That might change, it might not.”

Three red dragons sailed the sky high over the crowd, their riders gleaming in black armor. Helmed and faceless, they patrolled this quarter of the city in wide rounds.

“No need for knights on the ground now when they have knights in the sky,” Dez said.

Dragon shadows spun across the ground and the white faces of the people below as the knight on the wall shouted, “Now disperse! Whoever I find still here by the time those dragons turn round again will die.”

The knight tipped his head. Two more arrows flew, this time over the heads of the crowd. People cried out, some in anger, some in fear, and the crowd melted away. Last, Usha saw the face of the young man as he guided his wife away from the wall.

“He’s ashamed,” she said to Dez, lowering her eyes so as not to meet his.

Dez nodded. “And really angry. Sir Radulf, who ever he is, will want to be careful of that.”

Usha turned to question.

Dez shrugged. “It can’t be a good thing for the commander of an occupation to have angry, restless people to control. Come to that, though, it’ll be worse for the people than the knights.”

They rode in silence for a while until Usha turned down a quieter road leading away from the wall.

“Where are you going?” Dez asked. “Back to Aline?”

“No,” Usha answered, and with a certainty that surprised her. “I don’t want to impose on Aline for who-knows-how-long.”

“Nice enough idea,” Dezra said dryly. “Rooms at inns cost money. I’m willing to pitch in all the money I had for supplies. You might remember, though, that after last night we have no inn to stay at.”

Usha ignored the irony. “Then we shouldn’t waste time finding one. Everyone who had been at the High Hand will be looking for another place to stay. What inn did you like when you weren’t staying there?”

Dezra said she liked a few, but only to look at. “I’ve always stayed at the High Hand.”

“All right, then,” Usha said, turning down another narrow lane.

Ahead was a whitewashed stone building, long and low in front, with a second story rising in back. Ivy covered its walls making a green tapestry of sunlight and shadow. Near a curve in the lane where the path to the inn’s dooryard began stood a sign painted in white and green: The Ivy.

Usha pointed. “I like that place.”

Dez eyed it up and down, the chimneys, the green-cloaked walls, the long, low front that surely held the common room. A second story rose up in back. The kitchen was safely off to the side, and a stable in back. “Very nice, but this isn’t a shabby part of town. What money we have won’t last very long there.”

Usha smiled, and it felt like the first time she had in a long time.

“Don’t worry about that, Dez. Now and then people get lucky and things work out all right.” She turned her horse’s head down the path to the Ivy and said over her shoulder, “All things considered, don’t you think we’re due for some luck just about now?”

4

Sunlight poured through the open windows of the Ivy’s common room, making the polished oak table and benches gleam like gold. Usha looked up from breakfast to see Dez at the bar speaking with the landlord. The men near her stood restively, some talking, others brooding. At the tables, women gathered with their children. These were the caught, visitors trapped in Haven when the dragons came.

“No news; and nothing from Aline,” Dez said when she rejoined Usha. “As far as anyone’s heard, nothing has changed in the city. No one’s coming in and no one’s leaving. Only thing new is that there’s a curfew. No one’s to be on the streets after dark without good reason or a pass from the commander of the occupation.” She made face, as though the word was bitter in her mouth. “And so we’re stuck here, cheek by jowl with every stranded traveler in Haven and spending a fortune for a room my father wouldn’t consider a closet.”

Breakfast sat untouched on the table before them. Dez had pronounced the eggs barely fresh, the size of a hummingbird’s, and sold for the price of pearls. Usha had to agree. A merchant city, Haven had risen to the challenge of shifting market forces and was beginning to lick its wounds while the occupation kept all customers conveniently within the city walls. Throughout the city, frustration with costlier accommodation crossed paths with each rumor about passes out of Haven. This had been discussed endlessly in the common room last night, and no one saw any reason for the topic to fail to occupy people again today. Outside, boys in ragged breeches, patched shirts, and bare feet jostled each other in the dusty dooryard. Here the young among the businessmen of the city gathered, one troop in the small army of children haunting the dooryards of inns and taverns of Haven. For a bronze coin, any of them would carry messages throughout the city for stranded travelers, those like Dez and Usha who’d come on business in the days before the dragons descended. As in every inn throughout Haven, humble or high, those facing raised rates for room and board with thin purses sent pleas for lodging to friends or family. Others hoped to get word out of the city to those who must be despairing of their safety.

As soon as they’d found a room at the Ivy, Usha had let Aline know where they were, and Dez had tried to get word out of the city with no luck. A letter to her father to assure him she and Usha were well had not made it out of Haven, and it had not come back to them. The boy who’d carried it said knights were taking all letters, reading all, burning most, and keeping some.

“Yers got read and then it got burnt,” he told Dez, who was not reassured.

Immediately after, Usha sent a runner with another such letter, this time telling him to give it to the folk at Rose Hall. She’d enclosed it with a note of her own, short and to the point: Dez’s family will be frantic. Can you help? She believed that if Aline knew a way to further the letter along the way to Caramon in Solace, she would. But the boy had gone on that mission yesterday and returned with the briefest of messages: Go no where! Wait.

Usha waited. Dez waited with less patience than she, but by this morning no one had come with further word from Aline.

Dezra shoved her untasted breakfast away. “I’m sick of milling around here like sheep in the slaughter pen.”

At the words “slaughter pen” a woman at a table near the door looked around, alarmed and gathering her children close.

“Hush!” Usha whispered. “There’s no use scaring everyone in sight with exaggeration.”

Dez snorted. “I’m not sure how much of an exaggeration it is.”

Out the corner of her eye Usha saw the innkeeper come into the common room from the kitchen. Shaped like a dumpling, freckled and bearded, and called Rusty by all for his ginger-colored hair, he came to her table, two pieces of paper in hand.

“Lady Usha,” he said, inclining his head but managing not to bow.

She raised an eyebrow. Usha would not be addressed as “Lady Usha” in Haven. She had never liked the title, considering it something that tagged along with her husband’s title Lord Palin. She preferred the simple title most Abanasinian women enjoyed. In Haven, she was Mistress Usha.

The innkeeper corrected himself. “Mistress Usha, two missives have arrived for you.”

Dez managed to swallow a smile at the annunciation of the arrival of missives when mere notes had come. Usha nodded graciously. Rusty blushed to the ears and dropped the two notes, one crisply folded so the neat inscription showed, the other somewhat wrinkled and marked with the rings of someone’s over-full ale cup.

“A rascal came last night to give you this,” he said, nodding to the latter. “He said to tell you that you’ll find help if you need it at the Grinning Goat.” He snorted. “The Goat’s no place for a lady to go. Ignore it.”

Curious, Usha, said, “Who was the rascal?”

“Madoc Diviner,” the innkeeper said. “Used to be a mage, in the days when you could count on magic working. Or so they say. Calls himself an information broker now, and that’s true enough. He’ll get information for anyone. For a price. You ladies stay away from him. He’s no good.”

Dez pricked up her ears at this description of Usha’s old friend, but Usha herself smiled and thanked the innkeeper for his trouble. Madoc’s note was sealed with a blue wax seal, the impression a heron in flight. Curious, Usha scanned the page and found a second wax seal above one penned line in a neat hand: Send this seal if you need me.

Dez raised an eyebrow.

“Offering help if we need it,” Usha said. Careful of the seal, she tucked the note into her belt and turned to Aline’s note.

Usha,
I could find no way to send Dezra’s letter on. I will keep trying. I’ve told Rusty that I will hack your debts.
The page enclosed will affirm the same to anyone you show it to.
Use it as you will and don’t think more about it.

— A

Dezra’s eyes grew wide when she saw it. “It’s… gods! It’s as good as a letter of credit. Usha, how much money did old Wrackham have that his widow can be so generous?”

“Aline would be generous with her last coin,” Usha said, moved. “It’s good to know she’ll be there if we need her, but I’m going to make sure we don’t have to.”

“Nice sentiment,” Dez said, unimpressed. “But at the rates they’re charging here and everywhere else, we’ll be out of money soon.”

Though she would not impose on Aline’s generosity, her friend’s openhanded offer spurred Usha to action. She consulted for some time with the landlord, and by noon the innkeeper had their belongings moved from the little chamber Usha and Dez had occupied the night before to an even smaller one across the hall. The room appeared to have been part of a larger space, one that might well have been portioned into smaller rooms to increase the number available to rent. The only windows the tiny chamber had faced north to an even, cheerless light, one high up and another, narrower one squinting out onto a corner of street below.

“And the virtue of this move?” Dez asked, looking around the chamber from which all furniture but two small beds had been removed. Their gear, such as it was, lay piled between the beds making the place look more like a store room than a bed chamber.

“I’m going to have a studio,” Usha said, spreading her arms as though embracing the idea. “Dez, the light in here is perfect.”

“Such as it is,” Dez muttered.

Usha nodded. “It’s north light, perfect and clear. That’s what I’ll need if I’m going to support us by painting.”

Dez’s expression went from puzzled to skeptical. “I don’t think people are in the mood for buying portraits or landscapes or little lockets with a child’s adorable smile captured in miniature.”

Usha was not discouraged. She paced the length of the room then stepped out the distance between the doorway and the far wall. None of that took very long to do, and it seemed to her that the room had grown suddenly smaller since she’d looked at it with Rusty only a few hours before. Still, her course was set.

“I’ve been supporting myself very nicely with my painting since Palin decided he’d rather spend his time away from home. When things settle down, I can support us here, too.”

Dez looked for a moment as though she would flare in her brother’s defense, then kept still on the matter.

“Have at it, Usha,” she said. “If you like, I’ll go around with you while you figure out what supplies you need and where to get them.”

Looking around the space that had, in her mind’s eye, already become her studio, Usha gladly accepted the offer.

All that day and evening the two spent learning where to find the suppliers of such things as Usha needed.

The next morning, Usha went out with energy, ready to begin assembling her studio.

“I will mix my own paints,” Usha said, “of course.” She shot a glance at the leaden sky, hoping the clouds would lift. Nothing of what she wanted to purchase today could be delivered if there was the least risk of rain. “Some like to have an apprentice for that kind of work, but I’ve always liked doing it myself. There are a lot of components to buy—the base, the oils and pigments for all the colors. It’s going to be very expensive.”

Dez shrugged. “Not a problem. I haven’t dealt with the sellers of paint, but whether we’ve done business together or they’ve only heard of me, there is hardly a provisioner of anything in Haven who doesn’t know he’s in for a serious time of bargaining when I walk in the door.”

“It is what I hoped,” Usha said, flashing a smile.

In Haven, the center of Abanasinian commerce since after the Cataclysm, in that Lord City where generations of men and women built empires of commerce and waged battles in the counting houses whose outcomes were known to few and affected people far beyond the stout gates of the city, dark knights manned the five watchtowers and the walls.

Eight days had passed since the city fell. Red dragons patrolled the sky, wheeling in long lazy circles over the river and the city. Word had gone through the streets and byways like fanned fire that the name of the commander of the occupation force was Sir Radulf Eigerson, and that he had met only once with the Lord Mayor and his council. It was said Sir Radulf had laid down the law at that meeting—literally—by using his dagger to nail a copy of his official writ to the oaken table that had served generations of Haven’s wealthy. The Lord Mayor and his advisers came away with the chief point of the writ, that the person to reckon with was Lady Mearah of Palanthas.

“A lovely woman,” the rumors said of her. “Delicate beauty, alabaster skin, hair like a spill of midnight sky.”

And a woman whose reputation for ruthlessness followed like a shadow.

The lady knight used no family name, and that was not a thing for wonder. She was a fallen child, a daughter of Solamnia who had turned away from her noble heritage to dark armies. Sir Radulf’s name caused a stir, for that knight was otherwise known as Red Wolf, a battle name gained on war grounds and well earned. Mention of Lady Mearah of Palanthas raised a different kind of murmuring, for it had been heard since the fall of the city that here and there folk had been taken into the custody for unspecified offenses. Few came back. Those who returned had nothing to say, and they met no one’s eye. Terrified, perhaps, or ashamed. Or both. Those who didn’t return were executed as traitors by Lady Mearah’s order, their bodies dumped unceremoniously—and very publicly—outside the low stone wall enclosing the city’s cemetery.

“That one,” the people said in the taverns and around the home hearths, “that one is going to be curse the dragons brought.”

People said so, yet in Haven life went on as householder, taverner, wealthy merchant, lord, and humble servant adjusted to the changes. They were Haveners after all. They lived on a river whose capricious moods could get dark indeed. They were hearty enough and had been for centuries. They could manage with mounted patrols of knights manning all the major intersections. They’d survive the flood of foot soldiers that poured into Haven on the third day to join the dragonriders in guarding the city walls.

Among those lower ranks were at least a dozen goblins, but most of the soldiers were humans, men and women hardened on battlegrounds all across Ansalon. They kept to their barracks in the lower floors of Old Keep, and for the most part they kept out of trouble. This was not to be wondered at. Two of the corpses who appeared by the cemetery wall had been those of occupation soldiers.

Haveners could survive these, and Haveners could manage, though some quarters their city smelled of the burned wharfs. But it also smelled of baking bread and tapped ale kegs, of the river and the particular scent that lingers in the air as the summer grows old and thinks of turning to autumn.

Usha cast an eye on the leaden sky then glanced at Dezra who wore her doubts about their mission plainly on her face.

“This is going to turn out to be no kind of day to be buying things like sacks of powders for your pigments and dyes and all the other stuff you need.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t order them and have them delivered when the weather is of a mind to cooperate,” Usha said.

It didn’t. The only thing that would prevent that would be the unavailability of such things as wood for an easel and palette, martin fur for brushes, and all the components needed to make paint—an arcana not as dangerous as any a mage might practice, but certainly as complex. Much depended on being able to find what Usha needed, what she’d gambled their dwindling resources on finding. If she lost the gamble, she’d be going to Aline with a begging hand, and Usha was determined she wouldn’t do that. She’d taken care of herself before. Times were harder now, but her willingness to take a chance was no less keen.

And so, yesterday Usha had sat in conference with Dez and a very willing Rusty to learn where she could find such things as lime, azurite, and red porphyry. And where should she go to get good blades for scraping, a mortar and pestle for grinding? Who had the finest walnut to make a palette? There was more—linen, canvas, easel, two kinds of oils… her list of supplies was longer than her arm, and her list of possible suppliers a good deal shorter. Usha would not be daunted, but that night counted out the all the money she and Dezra had (not much, and becoming scarce). In the morning, she told the innkeeper she’d be pleased to pay for their room by waiting tables.

“I’ve pitched in at the Inn of the Last Home when Caramon needed help.”

She’d shot Dez a narrow and meaningful glance that resulted in Dezra offering to work behind the bar.

For a moment Usha thought he’d take her up on it, the look of sudden delight that crossed his round face spoke clearly of how much he’d enjoy spending the day working with a woman whose beauty still left him stammering and sighing. But in the end, he told her he’d have none of it, saying he’d rent the room to them on a monthly basis with the rent not due until month’s end, nearly four weeks away. For his trouble, as he said, he’d tack a small surcharge to the rent. For the sake of being able to husband their resources for a while by not having to pay on a shorter term basis, Usha and Dezra accepted the offer and went out to look for the parts and pieces of a studio and the myriad ingredients of paints.

They walked for a time in silence. In the streets around the Ivy, they encountered the obvious evidence of Sir Radulf’s occupation. A dragon in the sky flew lazy circles, at the major intersections knights made themselves evident, and upon the encircling wall others of Sir Radulf’s men stood watching inward and outward. Now and then from a tavern the rough sound of soldiers’ voices spilled out. Usha noticed more people on the streets than since their abortive attempt to leave Haven. Haven coped, but no one relaxed. Men and women looked over their shoulders, children seemed subdued, and when people laughed their laughter sounded forced and shrill.

On a narrow lane, where the air still carried the smell of week-old burning, Usha stopped, looked up the street and down, then pointed north and to the other side where a simple sign hung above a door proclaiming it a carpenter’s shop.

Dez hopped across a trickling gutter while Usha, mindful of her skirts, went farther to step carefully along a plank laid as a make-shift bridge. As they walked they caught the clean scent of sawdust and freshly planed wood drifting beneath the darker odor of smoke.

“We start here,” she said. Suddenly she laughed, anticipating the delights of setting up her studio and preparing to work again. She had not a single commission or even the promise of one, but still her heart lifted and her blood seemed to sing differently in her veins. “And by the time the day’s over, Dez, we’ll have made a good start at getting me a studio.”

They made the rounds of the merchants’ quarter, those narrow and winding streets that bordered the market square. They visited mageware shops for much of what would be needed for the paints, for the resources of field and forest and earth were sometimes used by both mages and painters, though for very different purposes. They spent an hour with a woman who made brushes, and though her brushes were themselves too expensive, she was willing to sell them a bundle half the size of her small fist of long, soft hairs from a marten’s pelt. They found a palette, a dwarf who would sell them the oils Usha needed, and finally they stopped at the shop of Pryce Davil, Purveyor of Pigments and Dyes.

“But—” Dez said.

“Oh, we’re not here to buy pigments or dyes. I’ve heard all day that here is where we’ll find the best canvas and linen. They say the owner is a young widow. Her husband left his business to her in trust for their daughter.”

In the shop of Elenya, the widow of Pryce Davil, Purveyor of Pigments and Dyes, Usha met an enthusiast. There, Dezra reluctantly garnered an education on the suitability of linen or canvas, the making of the perfect mixture of the primer called pa’ressa—what Dez at once began to call “that awful smelling goo you smear all over a nice fresh canvas”—and seven different ways to see red.

“Well, it isn’t goo,” piped a voice from the doorway leading out to a garden. Dez looked around to see a small girl frowning very seriously. “It’s pa’ressa. Mother mixes it all the time, and real artists know that it comes from a secret recipe that elves made up a long time ago.”

“Does she? And does it smell awful all the time?”

Scrunching her nose, the girl nodded. “It smells terrible.”

The child’s mother looked up as though to shoo the girl away, but Usha said, “I think I’ve ordered all the canvas I need for now, and I only want enough linen to use for miniatures.” She winked at the little girl. “And she’s no trouble.”

“None at all,” Dez agreed. She looked out the back door and saw that the sky had made no decision about rain. To Elenya she said, “If you like, I’ll come and work out the numbers with you, and then we can talk about when to have it all sent to the Ivy.”

“My name’s Gussie,” said the girl, after he mother and Dezra left.

“I’ll bet Gussie is short for Altheguslina,” Usha said.

Gussie’s eyes went wide. “It is! How did you know?”

“That’s a Qualinesti name, and I know a few. How is it your mother gave you an Elvish name?”

Gussie shrugged. “She didn’t, my da did. He liked them, the elves. But he died.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. He left you with a very nice name, though. Do you know who Altheguslina was?”

Gussie nodded. “An elf lady who liked rabbits.”

That was the short of it. The long of it was that Altheguslina had been an elf-mage who, in distant times, changed a small army of advancing goblins into a springing leap of rabbits. It seemed the child’s father hadn’t gone into that much detail about legendary elf-maiden Altheguslina of Lealnost who was not a very good student of magic, but who did recall one spell in time to save her little village.

“I had a bunny once,” Gussie said. “But he died, too. Like my da. A dog ate the bunny. My da got sick.”

Usha held out a hand, and the child came shyly closer. “I’m sorry,” she said, “about the bunny and your father. I know it must make you very sad.”

Gussie shrugged, but she tucked in her lower lip. “How do you know?”

“Well, I know.” Usha picked up the girl and set her on the counter where she and Elenya had been drawing up a list.

“Did your da die?”

Usha’s throat tightened around an old grief she didn’t often allow herself to remember. Her father had died, and her mother, too, soon after her birth. She’d been taken into the care of the mysterious Irda, and she hadn’t learned even that much about herself until she was a young woman. The great pain of not knowing her kin was something she’d let no one see but the husband who now seemed to be tiptoeing out of her life.

Usha, my Usha, Irda-girl!

So Palin used to sing to her in the first years of their marriage, but she was no daughter of the Irda. She had been raised by them, a magical folk whose personal beauty surpassed anything a poet could dream. She’d lived with them until the time of their vanishing during the Chaos War. She had loved them and perhaps breathed some of the magic that was so unlike the vanishing magic of Krynn, a magic that made the Irda unlike any other race. But she was not one of the Irda. Usha was a mortal woman, a human woman. So the Irda finally told her. It had helped, somewhat, to know she wasn’t simply an ugly and untalented Irda. It hadn’t helped to know herself a kinless orphan.

Usha picked up the stub of a charcoal stick she had used to write out her list of paint components and turned over a clean sheet of parchment from the stack of scraps on the counter.

“Yes,” she said, answering Gussie’s question. Her hand moved swiftly, the charcoal rendering stroke and stroke, her eyes on the girl. “My father did die, and my mother, too. I don’t know if I miss them because I never knew them. I do have two children, though, and I love them very much.”

Gussie’s eyes lighted. “Where are they?”

“Oh, I don’t know for certain. My daughter is a knight.”

Gussie gasped.

“But she isn’t a dark knight. She wears the silver armor of Solamnia. My son is an alchemist.” She made a face to imitate Gussie’s of earlier, scrunching up her nose and squinting her eyes tightly. “And some of the things he makes smell really awful!”

Gussie’s laughter pealed through the shop. Usha smiled and—stroke and stroke upon the parchment—her eyes never left the child.

“Will your daughter-knight come and save you?”

An arc, a curve, a plump cheek, a spill of curls. The charcoal whispered the magical words to the parchment that are common tongue to every artist.

“I’m sure she would want to come rescue me if she knew I was here. She doesn’t, though. She thinks I’m home in Solace.”

“What about her da? Won’t he come and get you?”

Behind her, Usha heard a footstep, and Dez said, “He would if he knew. But he doesn’t know we’re here, either.”

The moment chilled. Usha said nothing but looked away and worked closely on the sketch, then looked at Gussie again.

“I’m not too worried. I’m making friends here in Haven, and I’ll be all right till I can go home again.”

She took up the sketch and showed it to her subject. Gussie clapped her hands in delight to see a picture of herself sitting on a garden bench with a basket of lettuce on her lap. She jumped from the counter to fetch the picture, but stopped when Usha pointed toward the door.

A rabbit, looking slightly confused, sat on the threshold, just then lifting her paw to scratch behind a floppy gray ear.

“Magic!” the child cried.

Of a kind, Usha thought, looking at the charcoal sketch.

Lines and curves had changed, shifted, and little girl with the basket of lettuce on her lap had become a lovely young woman in elegant white mage robes, smiling with Gussie’s bright eyes at a rabbit sitting on her knee.

The rain that had threatened all day began to fall in fat drops when Usha and Dez were a long block from the Ivy. About then, the two spoke for the first time since leaving the pigments shop.

“Your brother,” Usha said, “is fortunate to have someone to come so quickly to his defense before defense is needed.”

“Why shouldn’t I defend him?” Dez bristled and shot Usha a narrow glance. “He’s your husband. Why shouldn’t you think he cares enough to worry about you?”

“Recent history,” Usha said, “speaks rather loudly on that score.”

The rain fell harder, like needles on the skin. The only people they saw were those scurrying to get indoors. Silence between the two grew colder. When they reached the Ivy, soaked to the skin, Dez walked in the door trailing water and ordering ale. Usha went up the stairs to their room.

The room seemed a bare, tiny place in the gathering gloom. She’d replaced the clothing she’d lost in the fire with two sensible skirts, blouses, hose, another pair of shoes. They lay on the bed, looking like someone else’s clothing. Thinking herself petty, even as she felt it, Usha missed her closet at home, the neatly hung skirts, folded blouses and gowns both common and festive. She lifted a hand to her ear and missed the weight of earrings.

“It is home I miss,” she whispered. She missed more than that. She missed Palin. But she would not frame the feeling in words, let alone whisper it aloud.

Rain drummed against the shuttered windows, and shadows lurked in the corners. Usha lighted the lamps, but she was little cheered. She did not speak with Dezra again until morning when they came out of the inn with most of the other guests and much of the staff to hear what was being cried in the street.

“Hear!” shouted a small man who walked before a chain-mailed, mounted knight. The small man rang a big bell loudly. “By order of the commander of the occupation, Sir Radulf Eigerson”—Clang! Clang!—“the city of Haven will be ruled as ever”—Clang!—“by the Lord Mayor and his Council!”

He lifted the bell to ring again, then felt the knight’s horse nudge him in the back and he muffled the brass with his hand.

“The Lord Mayor and his Council will be guided by Sir Radulf Eigerson. Haven’s system of magistrates will be disbanded. The people will not carry weapons. Breach of this order will be considered the high crime of treason. In all criminal matters, including breach of Sir Radulf’s orders and Haven’s peace, justice will be meted out by Lady Mearah, adjudicator for Sir Radulf. Milady’s justice will be swift, and it will be fair.”

In the gathered crowd a murmur of anger and fear rose, then fell as the crier shouted that the people of Haven were to go about their business as usual. Then he and the knight passed on along the street, the clanging of the bell resuming as they turned a corner.

“The high crime of treason.” Dezra laughed. “Against what? Good sense? And not a word about loosening control of the roads.”

Usha shook her head. “And nothing about passes.” She looked out across the road, up to where Sir Radulf’s soldiers walked the walls. “It’s like being in prison.”

Dez snorted. “He can’t keep a whole city imprisoned. He’s got to know that will get him a population boiling to get out. And he can’t keep the merchant fleet in the harbors, or he’s got nothing to send back to his masters. Sooner or later, he’ll open the river gates and let the captains man their ships. He’ll let them go—with armed knights aboard to make sure they come back. It’s wealth Sir Radulf is here for, nothing more. And granting passes so a few merchants can come and go on the roads again will take the pressure off a restless population.”

“I don’t see why he should let merchants go,” Usha said, “and think they’ll come back again.”

A grim smile twisted Dezra’s lips. The sight of it chilled Usha.

“Dez, what… ?”

“A man might not come back for his business once he’s left it. But he will come back for his kin.”

In the distance, Usha heard the ringing of other bells and imagined she heard the voices of other criers as news of Sir Radulf’s orders went through the city. The two women met each other’s eyes for the first time since their dispute.

“Hostages, Dez? Against the return of the merchants?”

“I’m no commander of knights.” The moment stretched out in silence, then Dez shrugged a little. “But that’s what I’d do.”

5

With a parcel of bread, fragrant and still warm from the ovens, under her arm, Dezra threaded the narrow alley between the high south wall of Rose Hall and the stable of Aline’s near neighbor. Worn by years of rain, the path wound a little and dipped unevenly at inconvenient places. She knew every dip and swerve of the short cut between Wrackham Street and the side door of the bakery Dalan Forester ran with his brother. She’d taken it for the past several nights and, like a new path through a thick forest, it became quickly familiar.

Dezra had discovered the route by chance the day after the dragons came, for as soon as she could separate from Usha and Aline, she’d gone to see how Dalan and his brother had fared.

“Well enough,” he’d told her, sweeping her into a bear’s hug and lifting her off her feet. He’d smelled of fresh bread and smoke. His arms were thick and strong from carrying sacks of flour and cords of wood.

His brother had snorted at Dalan’s understatement, but Dez heard relief in Rolf’s voice when he said, “He’s doing better now he sees you. We worried, Dez.”

He’d said no more and left the lovers to their reunion. And a fine reunion it had been, Dez thought now, slipping through the shadows. That reunion, and the ones that followed. While she was happy to make the ride to Haven each year for the Inn of the Last Home, Dalan was Dezra’s prime reason for returning to Haven each summer’s end. Had been for the last five years. A man happy to welcome her, sorry to see her go, and glad to have her back in her own time. In Dezra’s estimation, there could be no better sort of lover. The thought that he might have been killed in the attack…

She shook her head, unwilling to dwell on fears not realized.

The narrow alley curved against the lay of the stable yard. Dezra kept her mind on her way. It was not an unguarded way. She crooked a smile, not by any means. The dwarf Dunbrae held it. Aline’s faithful watchdog. His fangs were sharp enough, Dez knew, and they wouldn’t flash at her. But she was in no mood to stand on the corner and talk. She was tired, feeling a shadow of loneliness trailing behind her, and wondering whether she should have spent the night in Dalan’s bed after all and simply gone back to the Ivy in the morning.

But no. She never had before. No reason to start now, just because Dalan had it suddenly in mind that the way back was too dangerous. Dez had laughed at that, then bristled when he pressed his case. What were a few knights clanking around the city to her? They were easy enough to avoid. She’d kissed Dalan goodbye and stopped at the door to the bakehouse behind the shop where Rolf was carefully removing trays of loaf pans from the fiery maws of two round ovens. They spoke for a moment or two in the hot, bright room. She helped herself to a warm, crusted loaf of dark bread at Rolf’s invitation and slipped out the door and into the chill of night’s darkest hour.

Dez stopped in the shadow of the hedge of sharp-leafed firethorn that marked the boundary between Aline’s property and her neighbor’s. Moonlight illuminated the night, and she saw Dunbrae walk into the pool of shadow at the mouth of the alley. Dez could just make out his motions as he lifted his head, like an old dog finding news on the wind.

When he went perfectly still, so did Dezra.

Dez breathed silently through parted lips. In the cloaking shadows Dunbrae had the look of a man brought to alert. He had a little magic, a fine onyx ring purchased in Palanthas that would allow him to know a person’s intent, and he seldom failed to use it.

And if it’s me he’s head-cocked and listening to, he’s about to laugh and wave me through.

Dunbrae touched the helve of the throwing axe at his belt, as a man does who is making sure of his weapon. A chill of warning skittered up Dezra’s spine. Out the corner of her eye she saw figure slip into the alley between her and the dwarf. A cat yowled behind the stable. The intruder whipped around, and Dezra saw he was an elf. In the moonlight, his face shone skull-bright.

The elf’s back to him, Dunbrae stepped a little out of the shadows, then back. Seen, recognized, and known for a friend, Dezra set down her parcel of bread, making no sound. She took a long knife from her belt. The elf was between them, and since they were on Dunbrae’s ground, Dez let him make the challenge.

“Evening, sir elf,” he said, in a most conversational tone.

The intruder turned again, a long knife glittered in the moon’s light.

Dunbrae had his axe in hand, his arm cocked for throwing. Moonlight glinted from the steel’s edge.

“How can we help you?” said the elf.

We?

Something moved behind Dunbrae. We, indeed! The elf had a partner. In the moment she realized it, Dezra let fly her knife.

The dwarf’s eyes grew wide and dark with surprise as her knife whistled past his cheek, nearly nipping his beard. He turned when he heard a curse and a cry and saw the dead man fall. The elf lunged for Dunbrae, who ducked and turned, thrusting the helve of his axe between his foe’s ankles. The intruder dropped hard. Dezra covered the distance between them with two long strides and dropped to pin him, her knee between his shoulder blades.

“Your companion is dead,” she whispered. “Tell us who you are, or you follow him.”

The elf writhed beneath her weight but did not speak.

“I’ll tell you who he is,” Dunbrae said. “A dark elf, working in the pay of the occupation.”

Dezra grunted in surprise.

“Ah, you don’t see too many of them, eh? For all the tribes and nations of elves there are, there’s not a great lot of disgraced elves roaming around. Good for bad jobs, though.” He kicked the dead man over onto his back. “This one’s no elf, but there’s no doubt he was in Sir Radulf’s pay, too.”

Dezra cocked her head. “Why is he paying disgraced elves and—” She jerked her head at the dead man—“that to… to do what?”

The dwarf shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve been chasin’ the knight’s hirelings away from here since the occupation began. Sir Radulf has been making the rounds of all the wealthy and powerful in Haven. Mistress Aline was one of the first he came to see. He takes great care to request an appointment, all proper like. He shows up with a mouthful of flattery, drinks her wine, and leaves with all good words about how cooperation will make everyone happy. Then he puts spies in her garden’s shadows and sneaks in her alley. They see me, I see them, and that’s usually enough to get rid of them. Tonight…” He looked at the dead man and spat. “Tonight, we all got unlucky.”

Dezra pulled her knife from between the dead man’s ribs and wiped it clean on his beer-stained shirt. “So, then, what do we do with this one?”

The elf looked from one to the other, his face calm.

Dunbrae shrugged. “Tie him up and leave him where he can be found. He can report his failure to the knight or try his luck at getting out of town.” In the shaft of silver moonlight Dezra saw the skin around the elf’s eyes tighten. He was afraid. “Like I said, tonight we all got unlucky.”

“And the body?”

“Ach, that. From watchman to trashman, all in one night. I have to get rid of it.”

Dezra’s laugh was low and grim. She took a few long strides and snatched up her small sack of bread. In the bloody alley, the scent of fresh bread hung strangely on the air.

“On errands to the baker so late at night?” The dwarf asked, carefully not mentioning curfew.

Dezra raised a brow. “Funny, you don’t look like my father or brother, Dunbrae.”

She said this lightly, but Dunbrae understood it for a warning not to inquire further into her reason for being so late abroad.

“Lend me a hand cleaning up here?” asked the dwarf.

“That I will.”

Dunbrae showed her to a noisome part of Haven where they could leave the body of Sir Radulf’s luckless servant. The dark elf, who by all Dezra could see of a face growing paler by the moment, felt far more bereft of luck than his late companion. Him they left at a crossroad where a patrol of knights was sure to find him.

The grim work complete, Dez followed Dunbrae back to Rose Hall by winding ways and darkened alleys. When they passed the back garden of the shabby tavern known as the Grinning Goat, she stopped, but only for a moment as she recognized the dark-haired young man bent in conversation with one of Sir Radulf’s knights. Dunbrae said nothing, and Dez didn’t doubt that he noted both the men in the dilapidated garden and Dezra’s own surprise to see that Madoc ap Westhos—Usha’s old friend Madoc Diviner—was one of them.

When they were past there, Dezra said, “You asked why I’m out and about tonight. An errand to the baker, yes.”

A light twinkled deep in Dunbrae’s dark eyes. Dez ignored that.

“But more than that. I’m tired of hanging around the Ivy, tired of being trapped in this city and not being able to do anything about it.”

Dunbrae grunted. “You thinking I might know a way out of the city? Well, I know plenty of them, and they’re all watched and shut up tight.”

Dezra said no more.

They walked on in silence, threading the back ways and the alleys until they were again in the shadows pooling around Rose Hall. In the high part of the house, but not where the glass windows were, a line of light edged the window sills. Aline Wrackham was up and pacing.

“Been like that for days now,” Dunbrae said, jerking his bearded chin at the window. “Ever since the knight came calling.”

Dez nodded, but she asked no question. With Dunbrae, she knew, this was the only way to an answer.

“She’s up thinkin’,” the dwarf said. “Damn knight. She’s makin’ plans I thought she’d never make again. Ach, not that she tells me what she’s thinkin’ and feelin’ and plannin’. I know, though. I’ve been part of… it since the start.”

Qui’thonas! The word Dunbrae didn’t speak sang in Dezra’s heart, like a bowstring plucked. The resonance surprised her.

“Now you’d best get back to the Ivy,” the dwarf said. “And don’t get into too much trouble, eh?” He glanced up at the high window and the shadow of Aline Wrackham, pacing. “I think I might be wanting a word with you, one of these days soon.”

Dunbrae said no more and they parted, each on their own path again.

“My dear,” sighed Lorelia Gance, sweeping into the room where Usha and the woman’s two little sons had been spending two hours to complete what should have been a half hour’s work. “I just don’t know how you can stand the heat in here!”

“Ma!” shouted one of the boys, dark haired Kalend gathering to leap off the stool where he’d been squirming.

Usha fixed him with a warning look. He scowled at her but stayed where he was.

“I’m doing fine, Mistress Gance, and nearly finished.”

As she sketched, Usha glanced from Lorelia to the sons, struck again by how much the children looked like their mother. The boys, she was sure, would become stocky men, broad shouldered, stubborn-jawed, the kind of men to whom foursquare was a natural stance. The wife of Haven’s leading council member, Lorelia was a short, stout woman, with large, capable hands and, no matter that the skirts of her gown hid it, a stance that spoke of a woman who would be hard to budge if she didn’t want to move. The family’s wealth would compare well with Aline’s, but unlike Aline, Lorelia wore her riches like a badge. Jewels adorned her fingers, her neck, and even the pins that held the fanciful arrangement of her red hair in place.

“Let us out of here, ma,” whined the younger child. “She makes us sit here and sit here.”

Lorelia laughed, as only a woman can who is utterly charmed by her offspring and cannot imagine that everyone else isn’t as well. “Sit a little longer, my loves. Let Mistress Usha make her sketches, then you can go and run.” Their eyes lighted, two mouths popped open to yell for joy. “But not in the streets.”

Eight-year-old Thelan, who’d sighed, now huffed. Nine-year-old Kalend fell into sullen silence.

“They are a handful,” Lorelia said fondly. “When you are finished, my dear, won’t you come into the garden? I’m entertaining a few people.” She smiled. “It will do you some good to let me brag about you in front of people who might be inclined to hire you.”

Usha’s back ached. She’d had been on her feet for hours. The upper room was stuffy, and all she wanted was to go back to her tiny studio and begin the work that would earn her enough money for her and Dez to live in their imposed exile. And yet, the thought of sitting in a shady garden among people who might well offer other commissions was not to he resisted.

“Thank you,” she said to Lorelia, “it would be a pleasure to meet your guests. I’ll join you shortly.”

I hope.

Their mother gone, the boys began to fuss, and Usha summoned yet more patience. She could hold onto it for as long as needed, for the commission to paint a portrait of Lorelia Gance’s sons had been exactly the work she’d hoped to get. It had come rather soon after her decision to outfit a studio. At first Usha thought she’d seen Aline’s hand in this, but Lorelia had come to Usha on her own, having heard that Usha, who had reputation as a portraitist, was—“Unfortunately, of course, my dear!”—trapped in Haven. The woman had such a blunt and honest way with her that Usha couldn’t imagine she’d dissembled when she’d said that she certainly knew who Aline Wrackham was—“Poor thing, and her a newmade widow right before the city fell!”—but she had not seen Aline since Lir’s death. With the retainer Dez suggested she negotiate, Usha had managed to pay the bill at the Ivy and keep a modest amount after.

Usha looked over her easel at the boys and winked. Thelan smiled, then swallowed it, seeming to remember he was angry at being trapped indoors with her.

“Almost finished,” she promised. And she was, thanks to all the gone gods! Despite all the wriggling and protest, she had a small series of sketches of each child and wanted only this one of the two together. In another moment, she released them and laughed to see them tear out of the room in a clatter of heels and a roar of delight.

Having made grateful use of a pitcher of cool water, a deep basin, and a stack of linen towels, Usha followed a young housemaid into the garden nearest the house, a long rose arbor so thick with blooms that they shaded the little stone tables and benches beneath and just allowed a glimpse of a small grove of apple trees at the western edge of the garden, and of the kitchen garden on the eastern side.

Lorelia Gance’s house had been in her husband’s family for generations, and it wore its history easily. The part facing the street was made of stone, and the steps leading up to the broad oak door were shallow in the tread. Here was the oldest part, and Usha thought it must have been a long time ago when this building was small kin to the Old Keep on the hill above the river, for the marks of generations showed in the shallow depressions worn into the stairs. Over the years, the family had added rooms and floors, some of the additions half-timbered, the most recent all of pinewood but for the foundation stones any sensible person used who lived near a river. Over the years, as the house grew what was a broad, upsweeping orchard running almost from the dooryard of the oldest part of the house to the crest of the hill above the river had become gardens as much of the orchard land was sold off to others. Of outbuildings, there was only a stable now.

Under the arbor the air was not very much cooler than indoors. The little stone tables and benches were warm to touch, but the fragrance of sun-warmed roses charmed. Usha had expected the garden to be loud with Lorelia’s whooping sons, but their voices came only faintly from the stable. She looked around, wondering where she must go to find Lorelia and her guests when a long-legged man walked into the arbor from the orchard end. He wore his yellow hair cropped short, sunlight darted off the black mail he wore over an open-necked black shirt and glinted from the jeweled pommel of a sword riding in the scabbard at his hip.

No man but a knight or soldier of the dark army wore weapons openly in Haven.

Usha’s heart thumped hard in her chest. She turned to slip back into the house then stopped when she saw a young woman walking beside the knight, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm. The girl laughed at something he said, a pleasant trill. His own laughter followed close upon it, a short, sharp bark. Shuddering, Usha knew the knight must be one of Sir Radulf’s men. Yet the girl, fresh and sweet as one of the tiny white roses she wore in her raven hair, seemed perfectly comfortable on his arm. Lorelia walked a little behind the two, head low and talking to a well-dressed man in his handsome middle years. His boots had the look of well cared for leather, his breeches were of wool and slate colored; his shirt of white broadcloth, open at the throat and wide sleeved. In his ear a diamond stud glittered. Dark haired, as the pretty young woman, he had more the look of Lorelia’s kin about him—straight-backed, long-jawed, and purposeful.

These were Lorelia’s guests.

Lorelia looked up in response to something her companion said, let go his arm and hurried to Usha. “My dear! There you are.”

The knight’s sharp glance fell on Usha, and he cocked his head, curious. His companion stopped. Unless he wanted to break her hold on his arm, he could go no farther without her. Usha smiled, recognizing the young woman’s move. If he was a courteous knight, a girl’s escort must stand if she did. And stand she did, for the girl with the rosebuds in her hair did not see a woman twice her age or more. She saw Usha, Irda-raised and surpassingly lovely, who looked no more than a young woman herself. The girl had no mind to let her knight come closer till she knew whether Usha was a threat to his attention.

Lorelia made introductions. “This is Mistress Usha Majere of Solace. You have heard of her, of course. She is a well-known portraitist, and she is painting my Thelan and Kalend. It’s very exciting and fortunate to have her. The first in the city to engage her service, I’ll have you know.

“My dear,” she said, putting her hand on Usha’s arm and drawing her closer to the others. “Here is my cousin, Loren Halgard.” The man she’d been walking with inclined his head in a small bow. “And his daughter, Tamara,” whose eyes grew distant, as though she were bored, “and this is Sir Radulf Eigerson.”

Usha made herself smile as the knight bowed over her hand with grave civility.

“Mistress Gance speaks highly of you, madam, though in Neraka, where I was lately stationed, we have not heard much about you. I look forward to learning more.” His blue eyes were sharp and cool. The hair rose on the back of Usha’s neck. “I do know of your husband, Lord Palin, however. But I did not hear that the head of the Order of White Robes is in Haven.”

The Order of White Robes no longer existed, as the knight well knew. Magic barely existed. Usha understood the barb and would not acknowledge it. Head high, her own look as cool as the knight’s, she said, “That’s because he is not in Haven, sir.”

“And not likely to make a sudden appearance to deprive my city of his wife’s charm and talent?”

Loren Halgard, till then silent, stood a little straighter, as though to raise objection to Sir Radulf’s characterization of Haven as his city. The line of his jaw, rather like the stubborn jaws of his two nephews, hardened. However, he said nothing, nor did Lorelia. It seemed Tamara, her eyes on the knight, couldn’t have cared at all.

Usha shrugged carelessly. “If it were likely, sir, Palin would have been here by now, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But we are, and you needn’t worry. Unfortunately, the state of my husband’s magic, gods-given or wild, is no better than that of any mage you might yourself employ.”

Voices on the path from the house warned that servants were coming. The scents of wine and fruit and cold meats hung to entice. Fluttering, Lorelia slipped between Usha and Sir Radulf. The knight bowed again and followed Lorelia as she ushered her guests toward the tables. Looking down her pretty nose, Tamara Halgard followed the knight. Usha shook her head, amused.

“Well,” said Loren Halgard, “they are a handful at that age, aren’t they?”

Usha nodded. “Indeed, they are. Though ‘a handful’ wasn’t often the way I described my own daughter. When she was your daughter’s age Linsha was… something more than a handful.”

Startled, Loren said, “Your daughter? Surely not? Why Lord Palin is a man of—” He stopped, tried to back carefully out of enumerating Palin’s many years.

“Lord Palin is my age,” Usha said, laughing at his confusion. “We are strange people, we Majeres.” She raised a brow. “Some of us stranger than others.”

Loren had the good grace to smile, then to offer his arm. “May I escort you to dinner, Mistress Usha?”

Between one word and the other of that invitation Usha thought she heard him begin to say “Mistress Majere.” If he recovered, he recovered well. She did not take his arm, but she accepted his offer. Watching Tamara and the knight, she said, “Your daughter is lovely, sir.”

Loren nodded. “Lovely, indeed. The image of her mother.”

“She must have been very beautiful,” Usha said.

“Yes, and not with us long. My wife died the year after Tamara was born.” He shrugged as though to dismiss old pain. “If it weren’t for Lorelia, I doubt I’d be seen outside my door unless on business. But—” he winked a smile—“my dear, she’s very good to Tamara, and she yanks me out the door from time to time, too.”

Gentle breezes ran through the rose arbor, cooling the afternoon. One could almost imagine this was a summer’s day like any other before the coming of Sir Radulf and his dark knights. Lorelia’s servants attended her guests unobtrusively. The sound of muffled traffic drifted over the garden wall—the clop of horses’ hoofs, the creak of a carriage wheel; once the soft, musical voices of two elves in conversation as they walked by. Usha lifted her head at that, for she had seen very few elves since arriving in Haven. Hardly any of those who had fled the Qualinesti forest with the help of Aline’s Qui’thonas remained so close to their imperiled homeland long enough to do more than find other places to live, often moving east to Solace or beyond. As she looked up, so did Sir Radulf, and their eyes met then glanced away.

“He is still considering your husband,” Loren said quietly.

“Do you think so?” Usha refilled their goblets from the bottle at their table. Blond wine the elves called one of their whites. This she poured was not elven, it was not blond, but to the lips of those who had never tasted wine from Qualinesti’s vineyards it must surely be counted good.

“He is wondering if Lord Palin is in Qualinesti,” Loren said, “or if he is somewhere else, soon to appear in Haven. I doubt he’d want that.”

Usha sipped the wine. “I don’t think he has to worry. Palin might be in Qualinesti, or he might be somewhere else. I am not privy to all his motives, and he doesn’t leave an itinerary. But Palin is not in Haven, so Sir Radulf can rest easy about that. His city is safe from my husband. Or anyone else who might challenge him.”

Loren raised an eyebrow. “You sound as though you think someone should.”

She did think so, though she hadn’t said it to anyone before now. Of the two of them, Dez had been the impatient one, restless captive in a captive city. Till now Usha had been spending thought and energy keeping them housed and fed. But now, her eyes on Tamara just then allowing the knight to lift her hand to kiss, Usha said, “The Lord Mayor and the Council don’t seem to put up much resistance. At least in Qualinesti they tried.”

Loren’s face flushed with sudden anger. “In Qualinesti they had no more choice than we do. Some escaped. Most did not. There is a rebel leader rising up now among the elves. Some runaway servant girl who thinks she is a warlord.” He shook his head. “Maybe she’s killed a few knights and will kill a few more. No doubt she is a pretty hope, but in the end she’ll be killed herself. The dark knights are the power, Usha. Men like Sir Radulf stand like stone, and all resistance breaks on them like waves at the foot of a cliff.”

In the shadow behind the arbor wall, Sir Radulf took Tamara’s hand once- more. He turned it palm up and kissed her more intimately than before, his lips brushing the tender skin of her wrist. The girl did not resist. Usha couldn’t see from this distance whether she blushed or not, but she could hear Tamara’s soft laughter.

“Why do you let him lay hands on your daughter?”

Again, Loren’s face flushed. “He does nothing improper. He pays her court.”

“Let us hope he pays her better courtesy than he did ‘his’ city.”

Loren sat quietly for a long moment, the muted sounds of the city slipped past the walls. Usha realized that Lorelia had left the gathering a little while before, trusting her guests to her servants or each other. From the stable the sounds of children laughing drifted, then one of the boys burst out into the sunlight, running; and so she knew where her hostess had gone.

“Usha,” said Loren. “Look at my daughter. She’s of an age to be married soon.”

She was. A lovely girl on the brink of womanhood, smiling into the chill blue eyes of a man who held her hand as though, should she ask, it would be he who decided if he let it go or didn’t. In her father’s voice, Usha heard quiet anguish when he said, “You can guess what will become of her in an occupied city. She’ll be prey to every knight or foot soldier. If they think she has Sir Radulf’s protection…”

“If they think so,” Usha said, “and if she keeps his interest. It’s a risky gamble, Loren.”

“Everything is a risky gamble. Half my ships languish in the river. Those still abroad have heard news of Haven’s fall and their captains will find safe harbor for a while. The Lord Mayor cooperates with the occupation. My cousin hosts the commander at her husband’s request, for the Council will show him a good face. And I will cooperate with Sir Radulf, as most of the merchants and the wealthy will. I hate it, but it means one day soon my ships will go down the river to the sea again. I’ll make money, the knight will tax us, but not too much, for he won’t want to choke a good source of tribute for his masters.

“There will be passes soon, Usha. The Lord Mayor and others, we continue to talk to Sir Radulf, and he doesn’t turn us away.”

Now it was Usha’s turn to sit silent, but only for a moment. During their conversation they’d spoken of Sir Radulf, but they hadn’t spoken of the other knight, she to whom Sir Radulf had given the power to judge the accused and levy punishment.

“It all sounds… so benign,” she said, her tone belying her words. “And yet there is the Lady Mearah.”

Lady Mearah. She of the pale skin, the whip-thin frame and midnight hair. She who carried her own banner, though no other man or woman of Sir Radulf’s army did. Red sword on black silk, her banner told anyone who knew Solamnic heraldry that she was of a noble Palanthian house—one that had long made honorable the red sword on purest white silk. Some in Haven said that perhaps it amused Sir Radulf or his masters to let a dark knight parade her betrayal of her own knighthood for another. Others wondered whether the Lady Mearah had the power, despite how things appeared, to make such a choice unmolested and without anyone’s approval.

“There is the Lady Mearah.” Loren’s were the eyes of a man withdrawing. “And order must—”

“Order must be maintained, yes,” Usha said dryly. “The occupation would have a great investment in order being maintained.”

Loren leaned across the little stone table, his expression never thawing. “For the sake of the people, yes, it must. Other towns have resisted the knights and their dragons, and they have been laid waste. There will be order, and things will get back to normal, or as close as can be managed. In Haven, there will be peace, of a kind.”

“Peace? How can you say that? Look around you.” She dropped her voice to a scornful whisper. “There is a dark knight in your cousin’s garden and he’s pretending to pay court to your daughter! They tried cooperation in Qualinesti, Loren. Look what it got them! A kingdom only now waking up to understand that it is tumbling into ruin.”

Loren jerked his head, a nod to say he knew this. “The fate of the elves doesn’t have to be Haven’s. I’ll do whatever I can to soften this terrible time for my city.” Tamara’s laughter sang like bells under the rose arbor. “And for Tamara. These are my people, Mistress Usha. Tamara is my child.”

A glint of challenge sparked in his gray eyes. As he had not flinched from her disdain, neither did Usha flinch when he said, “You are a mother. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“I would not let—” Almost Usha said, “I would not let her jailor lay hands on her. I would not gamble for her safety with her future.” But she didn’t say it, for though she knew what was right, she did not truly know what she would do.

Silence lay uncomfortably between them, then Loren’s hand moved as though to reach for hers. He touched her fingers.

“It seems we can’t agree, but let it only be on this matter. You’re a stranger in Haven, and you must be tired of the fare at the Ivy. Come have supper with Tamara and me one evening.”

Usha moved her hand. Her voice cool, she said, “Sir, I have not said I am staying at the Ivy.”

The memory of his touch remained, ghostly, on her fingertips, and Usha did not remind him that she was a married woman. No mention of her husband was made by either.

“No, you haven’t said so, but my cousin has, quite a few times since you agreed to paint the portrait of her sons.” Loren’s voice softened. “Come to supper one night, will you?”

“You’re very kind, but I must decline.”

He accepted this and pressed no further.

On the way back to the Ivy Usha did not think of him at all. During the evening while she waited for Dez to return from wherever she’d gone, she thought of Loren Halgard not even once.

In the morning Usha woke early, the scent of the river coming into the room on a small breeze. Dezra was gone, her narrow bed either unslept in or made up by her own hand. A longing to walk by the water in the shade of the overhanging willows took her, but the river and the willows lay outside the wall, and each of the small gates out of the city to the water was manned by a goblin in battle harness or a pair of human soldiers. Still, the morning was fresh and the sky brilliant blue. Usha went out, walking toward the wall and the river she could hear and smell but not see. She stopped at some distance from the goblin leaning against the gate. It laughed deep in its throat and leered at her. She ignored it as though it didn’t exist and looked for what she could see over the wall.

The wind fluttered a blue pennon hung from the top of a tall mast. Gray gulls skipped in the sky around the bellying curve of the topmost sail of one of Haven’s merchant ships. Usha looked along the line of what she imagined must be the river’s course and saw other ships, most known by small pennons or the tips of wooden masts. Each one, she knew, was occupied by a crew of Sir Radulf’s men. Haven’s famed merchant fleet tethered until the dark knight freed them again.

It would have to be soon, as Dez had said, or else the knight was wasting men and time and resources. His mistress was a greedy green dragon who would not wait patiently for this occupation of Abanasinia’s wealthy trading port to bear fruit. Sir Radulf would have to free the fleet from the wharfs and send them out with a closely guarded crew. Usha’s heart lifted at the thought of the proud ships flying, their white sails bellying with wind. They would sail past the stone bridge that spanned the White-rage River between Haven’s Vale and that part of Darken Wood that was sometimes thought of as Haven’s and sometimes not. Freed, the ships would fly with the prevailing winds and currents all the way to the Newsea.

Shading her eyes against the sun, Usha looked over the high wall of Haven to the sky and imagined all the ports the ships would visit. Her heart ached, for in imagination, the voice of the river became the sound of the sea and the wind in the sky. These were the sounds of her childhood. Sometimes they were still the sounds of home.

Standing there, she wondered which of the tall-masted ships were Loren Halgard’s.

6

Morning sun streamed into the common room of the Ivy, flooding past the open doors and shutters thrown wide in hope of a breeze. The clop of horses’ hoofs on cobbles mingled with the chatter of the enterprising urchins in the dooryard. Someone yelled, “Yaahhh!” in a high childish voice, mocking. A horse snorted, a harsh voice cursed.

Usha looked out the window and saw two knights riding by, armed and lightly armored. Heads high, they ignored the children. The disdain of Sir Radulf’s patrols played out this way each morning, noon time, and from time to time during the day until curfew.

Usha sat alone, for early risers had eaten and gone out to find cooler precincts to do what they could to relieve boredom and frustration. Dez still hadn’t come down to breakfast. Passing by her closed door, Usha had heard the soft sound of a sleeper’s breathing.

You’re becoming an owl, sister, and I wonder where it is you go.

Dez hadn’t come in before curfew last night. She had not done so lately anyway. She hated the rule and counted it a mark of pride to flout it whenever she could. Usha’s best guess was that she went to a lover. Dez was an intensely private person, one who’d spent a good deal of time in Haven over the years, and the fact that no one knew the name of any man Dez was attached to didn’t mean such a man didn’t exist.

Usha didn’t remember hearing Dezra come in at all, before curfew or after, and she herself had been long awake, as she had been each of the three nights since her conversation with Loren Halgard. Each night she lay thinking about the hope of passes out of Haven. Her contentment to work and be able to pay for their keep until Sir Radulf’s grip on the city loosened had evaporated like mist in the morning sun. Memories of lovely Tamara Halgard troubled Usha, as did the cold-eyed dark knight who plainly believed that for the fee of a few days or weeks courtesy the girl would tumble into his hand if he wanted her. She couldn’t help remembering the girl’s father, whose voice had betrayed his anguish while his words had spoken of a bow to bitter necessity.

She wanted nothing more than to get out of Haven. She didn’t know where she would go—home to the empty house in Solace with memories of bitterness and anger lurking in the shadows, or somewhere else. But she could think of that later. Now, she simply wanted to go.

Boot heels clattered on the stairs then across the wooden floor. Usha looked around to see Dezra striding toward the bar.

“Rusty!” Dez called into the kitchen. “Breakfast, eh? But not much.”

When the innkeeper stuck his head out the door to acknowledge the order, Dez sat opposite Usha and yawned mightily.

“What are you doing here?” Dez asked over the sudden clatter of pots and crockery from the kitchen. “I’d’ve thought you’d be working on the portrait of the Gance boys. You’ve been nothing but hot about that job since you got it.” Dez eyed her keenly. “What? Not so happy about it anymore?”

Usha shrugged. “Happy enough. But not so happy to be quite this transparent.”

Dezra’s laugh rang through the room. “Usha, your expression is as transparent as the modesty veil of a Palanthian eldest daughter a year past marriageable age.”

Usha couldn’t help her smile. “I’ll be at the easel this afternoon. But this morning I want to go walking by the river.”

Dez snorted. “You’re not going to get very close to it.”

“Close enough to smell it.”

And to see the tops of masts and the occasional tip of a sail. Close enough to remember what it was like to move freely.

“Want company?”

She did not, though she didn’t quite know why, or perhaps wouldn’t admit the reason. And so Usha accepted her sister-in-law’s offer.

The river gate where Usha had earlier gone to be near the water and think of home opened—when it did open—to a stretch of river where housewives and servants used to take their washing. It had a broad grassy bank, tall reeds growing in waving clumps with plenty of stones for rubbing out stains. It was a place where girls flirted with handsome young men, dockworkers, sailors, and sometimes the chandler’s lad bringing candles to sell. Older women sat on the bank, watching the clothing stretched out on the rocks to dry in the sun, keeping an eye on the children and making sure none tumbled into the water. From there, the bank wandered upstream to a series of willow-shaded walks from which led paths back into the city through small gardens held in common by the people of the district, and swathes of grass where sheep could be folded or horses pastured. Above these stood the houses of the wealthy—some the expanded towers and four-square stone fastnesses of Haven’s earliest days, built in the years before Old Keep became an armory and ceremonial meeting hall. From these, the city had grown and the wall had receded, putting the wealthiest folk of Haven on stony hills above the river and the business districts of the city.

Usha wanted to go out to the river and walk along the shady waterside until the call of fragrant, cool gardens became too strong to resist and called her back to the city. That was no longer allowed.

“We can walk to the gardens from inside the wall,” Dezra said, “and still get a whiff of the river.”

After a short walk through Haven’s streets still bustling and humming, Usha noticed that the streets and byways closer to the river were quieter. Fewer people walked along the streets than had the first time she’d come there. The businesses that depended on the merchant fleet—the rope-maker, the chandler, the cooper and carpenters—had no work to do. No captain had been allowed near his ship, and no crew had been aboard since the start of the occupation. Goods and materials sat stacked in warehouses. Watchmen and restless owners prowled the aisles and brooded on their stores, but the district was quiet, nearly deserted.

Usha and Dez passed by a rope-maker’s deserted yard, crossed the way, and caught sight of a white froth of blooming bushes up the hill. They made for it and soon were among the crowds again.

“I heard Rusty telling someone yesterday that the plan is to get the fleet manned to Sir Radulf’s standard,” Dez said.

“I suppose that means with knights and goblins and foot soldiers.”

Dezra nodded. “Likely a knight aboard each ship, and a lot of the crew pulled from the ranks of the army. That’s as much to make the sure ships come home as to ward off any raid by Solamnic knights. Ten or twelve days and no word from Haven. You can be sure the Solamnics know what’s going on and are planning something.”

The speculation didn’t cheer Usha. She’d heard something like this often before, a version of what the Solamnics might be planning with each meal, in fact. She knew enough about Solamnia’s fabled knights to know there weren’t enough to spend on an assault on walled Haven. Even if there were, they’d never prevail against dragons.

They came to the last street but one before the river and caught a glimpse of one of the gates in the gaps between a sail-maker’s tidy stone hut and a tavern with a recently painted sign having something to do with a dog and a bird with improbably large eyes. The gate, like the others in the wall, had a pair of stout doors wide enough to let through wagons or carts. Normally manned by citizens in the two watchtowers on the wall, the gate was held now by Sir Radulf’s men.

“Anyhow, Solamnics or not, the fleet could be sailing down to the sea in another three or four days.”

“According to Rusty,” Usha said, wryly. In the sky, gulls cried, their voices like the creaking of a ship’s masts. “Who knows a good bit of what’s going on in Haven.”

“Well, he should.” Dez shrugged. “He’s an innkeeper, and his ale isn’t bad. Like my father says, news comes in and sits down for a drink from time to time.”

In this way, quietly talking and keeping to inhabited streets, they passed two river gates, each warded from the wall and on the ground. The streets were lined with small homes, each with a bit of garden in the front. One of the streets lost its cobbles and turned into a dirt path that led into a sunny, rectangular common garden nearly hidden behind the houses. The regular, neat rows of plantings marked out the plots of the common ground held by different families in the district. Some were filled with flowers, others with herbs. One was home to three apple trees, and this was larger than the others. So old and hoary did the trees seem that Usha could only imagine the plots had grown up around the trees; perhaps these were all that was left of an orchard. The far end of the common was hedged with tall bushes called moonglow, their tops and sides blooming with the carpet of tiny white flowers that gave them their name. These Usha had seen from below, and now she caught their sweet scent and started into the common.

Usha heard the child’s terrified shriek before she saw him.

A flash of white face and streaming black hair, and a small boy ran toward them from the shadows behind the little clump of apple trees. He hurtled between them, and Usha instinctively turned to go after him, chasing back along the path to the street. She caught sight of the child again and her initial fear that he was hurt vanished. No one could run that fast if he were seriously injured. Stopping to catch her breath, she saw him once more, something white and frightened vanishing into the alley between two houses. On her way back, she found Dez standing at the feet of the apple trees.

In that one stark moment, Usha realized that the harsh cries of ravens had drowned the creaking of gulls.

“Go back,” Dez warned, but it was too late.

“Oh,” Usha said, her hand to her mouth, her stomach roiling.

In the dimness beneath the trees, dark figures swayed on the branches. She could not look away from them, the hanged dead with their eyes protruding, their tongues gone black and swollen, and each with a look of horror on his face that death could not erase. The branches bobbed under their weight. Unripe fruit littered the ground beneath their feet. Two human men and what seemed to be an elf. What seemed to be an elf; it was hard to tell. The poor creature had been savagely beaten and—

“Damn,” Dezra whispered.

—and tortured.

Regretting her breakfast, Usha steeled herself as Dez went closer to the hanged. She stood before the elf. All color drained from her face. Usha saw the reason. Around the elf’s neck someone had hung a wooden board painted black. Upon it were painted two lines in white, like an evil poem: Swift Judgment. Swift Justice. A red sigil, a shape like a sword, was neatly printed beneath—the mark of Lady Mearah’s justice.

Dezra turned, and her green eyes blazed like fiery emeralds.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, her back firmly to the nauseating sight.

Usha didn’t argue, and neither said a word until they were again in the heart of the city.

“That’s Sir Radulf’s work,” Dez said. She said nothing more for a moment, then, “Usha, I remember the stories you and my brother used to tell about the Chaos War and—” She shook her head. “I know they were true, what you and Palin said about the things the dark knights did.”

Usha listened in silence, remembering. When Palin had been a young man and Dez only a child of ten years, he used to tease his little sister with tales of the dark knights, until he realized it was not childish delight in fright-tales he provoked in Dezra but anger at the injustices the stories portrayed. After that, he had not thought it good or wise to make a joke of such passion.

“I hear stories out of Qualinesti,” Dez said. “Like anyone does. And I’ve had my battles, seen some things. But…”

She turned and looked back, then quickly away.

Usha thought she saw something in Dezra’s eyes akin to that childhood anger, but deeper, much deeper. It vanished before Usha could be sure.

Dezra drew a long breath and started out again toward the city. “They hang murderers. I suppose they do that anywhere. Those weren’t murderers hanging there, Usha.” She paused. “Or most of them weren’t. I don’t know about the elf, but the two men were brothers. He—” She stopped and cleared her throat softly, then changed the pronoun. “They had a bakery a few blocks away from the market. People came from all over to buy their bread. Whenever I came to Haven that used to be my first stop. Last time I was there they were talking about how they’d decided to leave the city.”

Her initial horror turning to disgust, Usha said, “Sir Radulf’s criers said his judgments would be swift.”

“No. They said Lady Mearah’s would be. He’s not getting his hands bloody. Not yet, anyway.”

They walked again in silence till the sounds of the city overrode the cries of ravens and gulls. The rumble of wagon wheels, the shout of a child from an open window, rough voices of a group of men arguing outside a tavern, cold ring of a knight’s chain mail shirt… these did nothing to erase the terrible thing Usha had seen.

“Dez,” she said, as the chimneys of the Ivy came into sight. She was careful not to sound very curious or even gently sympathetic. Neither would be a key to Dezra’s confidences. “Did you know one of those people well?”

Dezra’s strides grew longer, her pace quicker, and so her gruff words came back only muffled when she said, “Don’t talk to me about it, Usha. Don’t.”

Usha had her answer.

A red dragon flew high over the city, its rider’s armor gleaming in the light of the full moon. Usha sat watching it, her seat the stone wall separating the garden of the Ivy from a narrow length of land belonging to the potter on the north side. A silvery brook ran down that strip, fresh and shining in the moonlight.

Dezra leaned against the post of an arbor, darkly silent as she picked leaves from the rose canes. Here in the garden behind the Ivy, the roses were of the variety known as First Love, early blooming flowers whose leaves were becoming weary as their petals fell away. Soon only the dark red hips would speak of the season’s bloom, and all the arbors would belong to honeysuckle and wisteria.

Out in the street a sharp voice called and another answered—a patrol of knights beginning its turn at watch. Usha listened. Dezra scowled. The patrols had been doubled since last night.

As though it were the topic of conversation (but there was no conversation at all, only silence,) Usha said, “It has been too hot today.” She scattered a handful of dried petals with a breath.

The clatter of the cook and his boys cleaning the kitchen sounded as though it came from far away. In the common room the fire burned low. The night was warm and close, and no one wanted to make it hotter. Though the air was cooler in the garden, Dezra and Usha sat alone in the deepening dark. The news of the three hanged men had flown through the city by noon, faster than fire before the wind. No one who stayed at the inn ventured out of doors tonight. Usha would have wagered the case was the same throughout Haven.

Just as walls could not contain Dezra’s restlessness, they could not contain Usha’s anger at the idea that anyone (she did not shape Loren’s name, even in her thoughts) would consider appeasing or cooperating with a brute like Sir Radulf Eigerson. No reason could be good enough.

“They are mad here,” she said to Dezra. “Every one of them. If they think things won’t go as horribly in Haven as they are going in Qualinesti…”

She spoke in a low voice, for while they were not actually breaking curfew as they were not abroad on city streets, they were keenly aware of the dragon above and the pairs of mounted knights patrolling the city streets.

Dezra ran a finger around the frothy rim of her beer mug and looked up at the wheeling dragon and its black-armored rider.

“Like a cockroach riding a red lizard,” she said. She got to her feet and stretched. “I’m going out.”

Usha stared. “Where?” She pointed to the sky, and Dezra’s bark of laughter startled her. “Dez—”

Dezra turned. The look in her green eyes said she’d come to a decision. “There’s no official way out of this damned place. They prate about passes, and on every corner I hear those passes will go only to people on legitimate business, pack traders and the like. Those will go only to people who can prove they’ve been doing business outside of Haven before the occupation, and they’ll cost a person’s firstborn for a hostage to insure his return.” She sneered. “And whoever doesn’t like that arrangement can pay half a fortune to some lowlife parasite for the chance that they’ll be shown a safe way out.”

“I’d take that chance,” Usha said. She scattered another handful of rose petals and watched them tumbled along the stone fence before a small breeze. “I’d try it.”

Dez stared at her, and it seemed to Usha she was caught between laughter and honest curiosity. “Are you serious? You saw what they did to… the bakers and the half elf.”

“I saw, and I want to get out of here, Dez. I’m earning money from my painting. There are two more commissions waiting for me when I want them. One’s small, but the other is a good one. With it alone I could move my studio into another room, pay Rusty for both our rooms, and still have enough to be able begin saving for passes. Don’t do anything rash, Dez.”

She said it, and she saw by the thrust of Dezra’s jaw and the stiff line of her shoulders that Dezra would not be advised. That look make Usha’s blood chill. They were a stubborn clan, the Majeres, come by it honestly from their hard-headed father and their mother Tika, the woman who adamantly insisted on her right to follow him to war. Dezra had inherited her full share of that stubbornness. She’d lost someone to Sir Radulf. That much Usha guessed. And she’d guessed with good clue when she remembered the soft break in Dezra’s voice when she’d spoken of the men who’d sold her bread. One of them had been more than an acquaintance. Usha had been expecting talk of vengeance. She had not expected talk of finding a way out of Haven.

“Please, Dez. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Foolish?” Dezra’s voice was no louder than a whisper, and it carried all her anger and grief on it. “Foolish would be going after that bastard knight and sawing off her head with her own dagger. Not that it wouldn’t feel good. No, I’m planning to be sensible. You said it yourself, Usha. They’re mad here in Haven. Well, there’s no need to stay in a madhouse full of murderers when I can find—”

The watch came around again, their horses snorting, bridle iron jingling. In the street the clop of hoofs paused, the conversation of the riders ceased. They started on again, and Usha leaned forward, her voice barely a whisper.

“Dez, what are you talking about? There is no way.”

Dezra tossed her head. “There used to be. There used to be all kinds of secret ways out of Haven.”

“Into Haven,” Usha corrected. “And Aline has abandoned them.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. She’s a crafty woman, your friend Aline Wrackham.”

Usha raised an eyebrow. “Dez, do you know something?”

Dezra hesitated the barest moment before she shook her head. “No. Qui’thonas sleeps. Aline said she was abandoning it, didn’t she? But that doesn’t matter. I don’t need Aline or Qui’thonas. If they’ve abandoned the old routes, so be it. But they can’t have obliterated them. Not all of them. There hasn’t been time for that. So, what once led in can now lead out.” Dez flashed a mirthless grin. “And if I can’t find those ways, no one can.”

She came closer. Usha felt her determination quivering in the air between them.

“Usha, listen. It’s crazy not to try to leave if I can get us out.”

It would be crazy, and just as crazy to think of sneaking past tightened patrols in the city and circling dragons. But, stubborn they were, those Majere children. Usha had been married to one for many years. She was the mother of two others. If she’d learned anything, it was not to make a Majere feel obliged to become a wall to bang her head against.

“Go,” she said, then she caught her sister-in-law’s hand. “But be careful, Dez. Don’t do anything—”

“Rash or foolish?” Dezra flashed a bright and dangerous smile. “Too late. That’s just what I’m off to do.”

The dwarf Dunbrae stood just inside the doorway of the high chamber Dez knew from the night Haven fell. He’d brought her there with Usha. At Aline’s bidding he’d seen them safely through the embattled city. Now he watched her with eyes slightly narrowed. Dez didn’t think she saw mistrust there, but she did see uncertainty. Dunbrae had found her nosing around a quarter of the city where the knights had spread their watchmen thin, a warehouse district that had once been busy with ships loading and unloading and now stood quiet, as though with breath held. Dunbrae had been watching that place himself, for he knew most of the weak points in Sir Radulf’s perimeter.

“Just keeping up,” he’d said, and then he’d invited her to go with him to visit Aline Wrackham. The invitation had been politely offered, but Dez didn’t think it could have been easily declined. And so, curious, she’d followed him to Rose Hall, where she’d been courteously received, offered refreshment, and stood now waiting to hear the reason for having been waylaid.

The door to the corridor closed softly, Dunbrae was gone.

“Waylaid,” Aline said, musing. “An interesting word. You could have been killed if any of Sir Radulf’s men saw you out so late after curfew.”

“I could have been. But none did.”

“I’d say that was luck, wouldn’t you? Three men are already dead from being caught out.”

Whatever cocky reply Dez would have given vanished from her lips. She saw again the three hanged men, Dalan Forester, his brother Rolf, and the dark elf she and Dunbrae had left tied up at a crossroad.

“You lost someone to that hanging. Didn’t you, Dezra?”

Dez didn’t bother to ask how Aline knew. Lir Wrackham’s widow had been long in the business of knowing things others didn’t. Simply, she said, “Did you know him?”

“Dalan? No. Nor his brother. I knew of them, and I’ve heard that…” She chewed her lower lip; working the tender flesh till it grew slightly red and swollen. “I’ve heard they were good men.”

Dezra’s nod of agreement was no more than a short jerk. “I knew them. I knew Dalan. He was—”

No. No, this wasn’t going to be a sodden interlude of women sharing confidences and baring heart and soul in a rush of grief. It wasn’t Dezra’s way. She stiffened her spine and shook her head when Aline proffered a tray with fussy little cakes and steaming cups of some fragrant tea. Her throat tightened suddenly. Those were “granny confections.”

Dalan had called them that. She heard his voice in memory, the words as clear as though he were speaking them now. Granny confections, the kind you give to your grandmother when she comes visiting, or the kind she makes for you. Sweet and airy, and you’re hungry an hour later unless she lets you have half the tray. We sell quite a lot of them around festival times… when most people’s old grans give out from too much baking.

And then he’d popped one into her mouth, laughing as the honeyed icing stuck to the corners of Dez’s lips. They’d taken a whole tray upstairs to his chamber with them, leaving Dalan’s good-natured brother to make up the loss.

“I knew him,” Dez said, speaking almost before she could stop herself. “He was a good man. He was a baker. With his brother. They were…” Her words ran out. “They were good men.”

Though the soft look of sympathy didn’t leave Aline’s eyes, her head came up, just a little, like one who hears something more than is being said. “You knew him very well, didn’t you?”

“I knew him some.”

“More than that. Oh,” she said, answering Dez’s frown. “I know what a woman’s face looks like when she’s lost a man she loves.” She cleared her throat, a small sound. “I see it often in my mirror.”

The hour was late, the night warm in spite of that. The muffled sounds of the watch passing by Rose Hall drifted up, only slightly disturbing the silence between the two women. Then Aline sat a little forward.

“It’s all over the city that Dalan and his brother were trying to get out of Haven. What about the dark elf?”

Dez, in no mood for games, said, “You know about him. Dunbrae told you.”

Aline covered one hand with the other, as though trying to keep them still. She arranged each finger with careful precision, one on top of the other. Still, they looked too big where they sat on her lap. Everything was too big about her—her hands, her feet, her nose, and good gods knew, her long face. This was the woman Madoc Diviner had fallen in love with, enspelled. And this was also the woman Lir Wrackham had fallen in love with from the urgings of his own heart.

“You’re right,” Aline said, “and it was wrong of me to pretend I don’t know. Dunbrae did tell me about your exploit, and now I’d like to talk to you about it.”

In the tiny room that served as a bedroom for Usha and Dez, as well as her studio, Usha lighted two tall pillar candles. She took a freshly prepared canvas from the three leaning against the wall and held it for a moment, the weight well-balanced and not unwieldy for all that the canvas was a wide rectangle nearly as high as her waist. In the golden glow the recently scraped pa’ressa, the primer coat, no longer reflected light as though it were thin ice. Outside, the air was still. The breeze that had wandered listlessly around the garden when she sat talking with Dezra had fallen soon after Dez was gone.

Made restless by the events of the day, by the half hope that Dez would find a way out of Haven and the full-blown fear that she would fall afoul of Sir Radulf’s knights and Lady Mearah’s justice, Usha had come into the inn, ignored her bed, and paced around her cramped studio. Not eased, she prepared the next morning’s work by pinning her sketches of Kalend and Thelan to the walls. Some she put where the morning light would touch them, others where the moon’s would light them out of the darkness. She never worked by moonlight—who could?—but she thought by moonlight, and moonlight seemed to rouse in her soul that intuition all artists had to one degree or another, the instinct of knowing how to see patterns, to understand how and why they went together, why they seemed to wander away only to come back again to make something startling in its beauty, its passion, and sometimes a thing very near to perfection.

Usha set the canvas on its easel, now no longer dark-dusty from charcoal but polished and gleaming. On impulse, she blew out the candles. As from a distance, she heard the night noise, but something else had her attention, for each sketch peered out of the darkness, each face white and alight.

There was Kalend with an imp’s gleam in the moment before he punched Thelan’s arm for making rude noises. She smiled, remembering the mischief, more amused than she had been at the time. Beside that freckled face was a sketch of the two boys together. In it, they were icons of fraternal solidarity and good will. They looked like their mother. Usha thought, suddenly, that Kalend looked more like Loren Halgard, their uncle. The same strong jaw, and a tilt to his chin that reminded her of Loren on the afternoon he’d argued that he would do anything to protect Haven, and everything to protect his daughter.

Kin defending kin, father and daughter, brothers…

Soft, Usha said, “Ah, yes.”

Though they had run screaming out of the room like vengeful goblins moments later, at the instant Usha had made the last line, the two boys had been still enough for her to produce this sketch, this image of the trustful companionship that bound the two brothers. This sense of solidarity, of kinship, was what Usha must reproduce.

She found her way into her work, and as she unpinned that sketch from the wall and set it on the table near the easel, she became aware that the tensions of the day had melted. She could go to bed now and rest, if not sleep. She could wait for Dez to return and trust that her sister-in-law’s heart would not outrace her sense, that Dez would go carefully after what she wanted.

The moon had moved across the sky. Time had passed. On the stairs Usha heard the sound of quick steps, and they turned into the hall.

Usha struck flint to steel and lit one candle. The light flared. Shadows jumped and made the images in her sketches seem to cringe back. One fluttered to the floor and Usha went to pick it up.

Dez stuck her head in the doorway. “Usha.”

Her voice thrilled as it always did when she had something exciting to tell. Usha waved her in and bent to pick up the fallen sketch. In the dancing light of the candle’s flame she saw it was one of Kalend perched on his stool.

“Usha, Aline—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She isn’t giving up.”

7

The upper room at Rose Hall where Usha and Dez had taken refuge the night Haven fell had changed substantially in the weeks since Usha had last been there. Aline had removed all the furniture but for a few blocky wooden chairs with deep seats and high arms. A long oak table now served as a desk. Other than these things and a few objects that had once decorated a small desk or the tops of wooden coffers, the room was bare. Aline was transforming it into something else, something much like a commander’s austere field headquarters.

“And that’s what it will be,” she’d said to Usha when her friend showed surprise at the change. “People were murdered in this city. You saw them.”

Usha nodded, chilled when she recalled the hanged men.

“Those are my people, Usha.” Her eyes shone, her long, homely face flushed with feeling. “Maybe you’ll tell me I’ve only lived in Haven for a few years, but… no. You sent me here. I agreed to come here and marry an old man in the cause of a good fight.” She closed her eyes, and in that moment sorrow made her face lovely. “Qualinesti might be lost, but Haven won’t be. She is my city, and I can help her.”

My city. Her words in no way recalled the arrogant sense of possession Sir Radulf Eigerson’s had. Aline spoke with the quiet, intense passion of a woman speaking of her home.

I am proud of her!

Now, looking around the changed room, Usha thought it was a good place to hold a conference. High windows showed the street and broad stretches of sky above the river. She amended her thought—a good place to plan a resurrection. Qui’thonas would indeed live again. At the moment, though, the resurrection was proving harder than imagined.

Usha looked at Dez pacing up and down where the magnificent Tarsian carpet used to be, at Aline carefully unrolling a map on the table. Neither of the two spoke, and neither looked at the other. Dez was marshalling her arguments. Aline looked around for heavy objects to hold the corners of the map in place. This, or scenes much like it, had been going on for most of the morning, and in this particular lull between arguments, Usha sat in the deep window embrasure looking down on the street before Rose Hall.

Dunbrae sat comfortably enough on one of the steps leading out from Rose Hall to the street, nodding curt greeting to those who passed until a young man leading a long-legged red mare stopped to talk. Dunbrae seemed completely at his ease, but the young man shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, now and then casting a quick look up and down the street.

“Aline, if you even send word to Madoc Diviner, you’re making a mistake,” Dezra said, not for the first time.

Usha looked away from the street. Aline, her face calm, used an empty stone vase as an anchor for one corner of the map. She chose a fist sized rock for another and a heavy brass compass for the third. She looked around for something to keep the fourth corner flat. Usha reached behind her and took a brass candlestick from the window.

Aline thumped it onto the table with a decided bang, missing the edge of the map. “Dez, I’ve been picking men and women to work with Qui’thonas for a few years now. I know what I’m doing.”

“Maybe.”

Usha raised a brow but did not intervene. For the moment.

Outside the door, the voices of servants drifted by. Only a few were allowed near this room at the top of Rose Hall. All of Aline’s servants were trusty, or they would not be in her employ, but the fewer who knew that this room would soon be the headquarters of Qui’thonas the better.

“Aline, I’m telling you, the mage is not to be trusted.”

Of course, Usha would have intervened if the subject were not Madoc. She’d have appealed to the two women to reason calmly, to find common ground, to make the most of what their opinions had in common and build from there. On almost all subjects but Madoc Diviner, her appeal would have had a good chance.

Absently, Aline rasped a fingertip along the curling edge of the map. A slight flush crept across her long, unlovely face, her freckled skin looked mottled. “Why is he not to be trusted, Dez? Because the landlord at your inn speaks ill of him?”

“No, though he might as well; he’d be telling no lie. I saw—”

“Yes, you saw Madoc talking to a knight in the garden behind the Grinning Goat one evening when you were out after the curfew.” The flush deepened when Aline spoke Madoc’s name, then cold, dry irony edged her words. “Dumping bodies, wasn’t it, with Dunbrae?”

Dezra snorted. “We couldn’t leave the corpse in the alley, could we?”

Usha slipped from the window seat and straightened the candlestick on the last curling edge of the map. “All in all, Dez, you’ve been doing a fair bit of talking to people well after curfew yourself. Do you really have reason to doubt Madoc’s good will toward Aline because he chooses to do the same?”

“A dark knight, Usha.”

“Yes, who might very well have been talking to him about the weather, the price of ale, or—”

“Or thanking him for a bit of news he passed along.” Dez turned swiftly, making her appeal to Aline. “He’s an information broker. If you don’t believe me, believe someone you trust.”

The skin around Aline’s eyes tightened, as though she winced a little at the implication that she didn’t trust Dezra, yet she made no assurance.

“Dunbrae says Madoc Diviner can be counted on for two things,” Dez continued, “and one of them is that he cares for no one’s good but his own.”

“And the other thing is?”

Silence, then pacing. Usha waited, still and quiet, for she noticed that Aline’s fingers drummed a nearly silent rhythm of unease on the table.

“The other thing,” said Dez, reluctantly, “is that his information can always be counted on as good.”

“Well,” Aline said, “that doesn’t sound ominous.”

“Not so much, unless you remember you can’t always count on Madoc’s reason for giving the information.”

“You just said he cares for no one’s good but his own. Madoc’s good, then, must be the only reason he will sell information. To feed himself, to pay for his lodging… if I thought he were a man to care about such things, I would say to lay up wealth. If you know that, you can reckon your chances and gamble with him or not.”

“You’re too trusting, Aline.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I trusted him once before—”

“And look what it got you. Your enchanted gift enchanting the wrong man. Him.”

Aline’s face became still as stone, but it couldn’t cover the sudden flash of pain in her eyes. “You could say so. But if you do, you also have to say that Madoc brought me safely to Haven.” Her glanced flicked to Usha. “As he promised you and Lord Palin he would.”

In the silence fallen between the three, tension thickened in the room. Dunbrae’s voice came up to them, muffled by distance but sounding as though he were calling a question to someone. Usha didn’t turn to see, for the invocation of Palin’s name drew her into the heart of the argument.

“Dez,” she said, “Madoc didn’t betray Aline or her husband, though from what I hear, he certainly could have if he’d tried even a little. He is here now, and I see nothing in any of that to distrust.”

Dezra drew breath to say more. Usha stopped her with a gesture.

“Dez, if we were all to be mistrusted for speaking with dark knights, you wouldn’t be able to trust me now. I dined with one only a few weeks ago.”

Dezra shook her head. “You couldn’t help that. You were trapped into having to be in Sir Radulf’s company. And,” she said, “in the company of appeasers.”

“Lorelia is my client,” Usha said, and made no mention of Loren Halgard. But in memory she heard his voice, low and pained when he’d said he would do whatever he could to soften this terrible time of Haven’s occupation for Tamara. She is my child.

What would you do? he’d challenged. Usha still didn’t know how to answer.

“Lorelia’s husband is the chief counselor to the Lord Mayor. The battle they’re fighting isn’t the same as the one…” Her glance took in both women, one after the other. “As the one you two are getting ready to fight. Same war, Dez. Different battles.”

In a gesture much like one her father would make, Dezra dug at the floor with the toe of her boot, head down and thoughtfully gnawing on her bottom lip. Usha, who knew her well, knew she’d given over the argument. For the moment.

No one said more about Madoc Diviner, and Palin Majere’s name hung like a ghost in the room. The three women returned to the reason they’d assembled in the high room and began a serious discussion about what resources of the first incarnation of Qui’thonas were available, which needed refurbishing, and which would have to be abandoned or created.

“We are going out instead of coming in,” Aline said, crooking a sardonic smile. “But that’s about all that’s changed.”

Dez shook her head. Usha felt a small charge of tension in the room again, but Aline leaned forward.

“What?”

“A lot more has changed, Aline. The old routes have to be abandoned. You almost have to count on them being either compromised or—by the simple passage of time—changed.”

Aline nodded to tell her to go on.

“Routes aren’t the only resource that might be compromised. You have to check your people again, everyone you used before has to get another, very close look. Use Dunbrae. He’s been with you all along. He has a bit of magic to use, he’ll know what to look for, and—” she paused, acknowledging the irony of what she was about to say—“he can be trusted to know if anyone has changed his mind about where his loyalties lie.”

They spoke of those things and more. At last, Usha said, “I won’t be coming back here again, Aline. My work is among the people Dez calls collaborators. Some of them are, some aren’t, and some are my clients. It would be an odd thing if I suddenly abandoned the commissions I’ve tried so hard to get.”

Aline nodded gravely. “We won’t compromise your work. You won’t endanger ours. It makes sense. But tell me this. If you hear something we need to know…”

Usha took her hand. “Then you’ll know.”

Dez left first, but before Usha departed Rose Hall Aline asked her to wait.

“I defended him to Dez, Usha. But I haven’t spoken with Madoc about Qui’thonas. She dropped her glance, then looked up again. “I haven’t spoken with him in a long time, but I want—” Aline cleared her throat. “If I knew he would—”

“Shall I ask him?”

“Ask him to come along on another journey with me?” Aline smiled ruefully. “That’s what it would be if he agreed to work with me—another long and dangerous journey.” She looked up, and the woman who had all day been the stern commander of Qui’thonas looked like a young girl who dared not hope and yet dared to hope, all at the same time.

Dear gods, she still loves him.

“I’ll find him,” Usha said. “I’ll see if it’s safe to ask him. But if he refuses, you’ve let someone know a secret you dare not let go.”

“I trust you. If you think for even a moment that he’s unsafe, that he can’t be trusted… ask nothing.”

Usha left Rose Hall just as the shadows were lengthening toward dusk. She went back to the Ivy alone and didn’t see Dez until well after curfew. By that time, she’d written a letter, sealed it, and put it into the hands of one of the boys in the tavern’s dooryard. He was a tough youngster with a pugnacious swagger and a reputation for being able to take care of himself. Usha didn’t doubt that he’d be able to deliver her message to the Grinning Goat and be back in good time to make curfew.

In fact, she had her reply nearly an hour before the sun set and the sounds of the night became little more than the sigh of the wind, the river, and the ring of a knight’s mail or the chime of his horse’s bridle iron as the watch took over the city.

A pair of red-headed boys went racing past Usha, chasing a ball, their laughter skirling up to the deepening sky. Like many others, these had been released from their mothers’ fretful watching. It seemed to Usha that it had all happened at once, as though the mothers in Haven decided together that things weren’t so bad after all. Or at least not dangerous enough to keep the hands of restless children clamped in their own.

It lacked a few hours yet until Sir Radulf’s curfew, and Usha strolled through the market, enjoying the sound of voices, the bright colors of wares, and the rich scents only a market can weave. There weren’t as many vendors as she’d seen on earlier trips, but those who had goods to sell set up booths and plied their wares in the shade of wide, colorful awnings. Fruit sellers did a good business in melons and strawberries. Their produce seemed fresh and more plentiful than a small patch of garden in a neighborhood common would produce. Usha found that puzzling, and as puzzling was the savory odor of roasted lamb hanging in the air.

She complimented the fruit seller’s wife on her produce and asked, “How are the shepherds getting their sheep to market again?”

The woman shook her head. “They aren’t. The knights are doing that.” She nodded to the rosy apples piled up on her table. “These aren’t mine. They come from downriver. Sir Radulf sends his men to take what he thinks the city needs. But some things come in.”

“How?”

“Look,” said the woman. She pointed across the square and Usha turned to see. “Plainsfolk.” Her glance darting to one of the two mounted knights at either entrance to the square, near the river gate. The woman lowered her voice. “They aren’t from here. They came in last night. By special pass, or so I hear.”

One of the knights dismounted. He wore no helm but his dark, cropped hair glistened with sweat beneath the coif of his mail shirt. Their glances crossed. His smile was slow and insolent. Usha looked away and crossed the dusty market to where the sun-browned people of the plains had spread their blankets in the shade of one of the many elms bordering the river side of the square. Feathers of all sizes and colors lay pinned in bunches or singly to dun colored blankets. Round, flat-bottomed baskets, interwoven with feathers in colors and patterns signifying the weaver’s history and that of her family, held down the corners of the display, weighted with fat leather water bottles. Curious, hopeful, Usha drifted around the edges of the crowd gathering by their blankets. People were more interested in knowing how the Plainsfolk had gotten passes into the city than in buying their wares, and so no one was satisfied, for the Plainsfolk said only that they had gone to the gate the night before and were admitted.

“We waited outside the wall until last night,” said the eldest, a small thin man with hands gnarled by age to seem like claws. “When the moon rose, a man came to tell us we could come in.” He looked at his kinfolk and all nodded gravely to confirm. “But we must not stay longer than today.” He shrugged. “Others came in. People with fruit and vegetables, and some men who didn’t look like shepherds were driving a flock of sheep.”

Dry, quiet laughter rustled among the Plainsfolk, and Usha guessed that the shepherds hadn’t made a skillful job of their work.

“Your market feeds a large city, Mistress.” The old man’s eyes grew dark, his expression sober. “Hungry people are angry people.” He patted his belly. “Full people don’t make so much trouble. If you look, you will see. One time or another, at night some people come in, they set up here and soldiers are watching all the time.” He tilted his head, just a little, in the direction of the river gate. The crop-haired knight leaned against the wall, picking his teeth with a knife. “The Lady Knight knows who comes in and who must leave again, and so in the morning, they go, and soldiers show them the way out to be sure no one stays behind.”

A chill skittered up Usha’s spine at the mention of Lady Mearah.

“Did you camp in the market all night?”

The old man nodded, and he said it wasn’t so bad; but the woman beside him muttered that she couldn’t wait to leave. “I do not like Haven anymore. It is a jail.”

Usha thanked them, purchased a small basket to show her appreciation, and went to the west side of the square where the hill dwarves Henge and Scur had rented enough space to throw up a three-sided booth to display their wares . Brooches, rings, necklaces, and a very few small frames into which miniature portraits could be fitted glittered in the sunlight. Here Usha was to meet Madoc.

“Mistress Usha,” said Henge, jerking his head in a nod. She no longer wondered at being recognized. Confined within its own walls, Haven had become less a city than a small town. The news that she was in Haven had long ago grown old. Henge motioned her out of the sun and made room for her in the shade of his awning. “Looking for something in particular?”

“No. I’m waiting for a friend.”

She’d have said more, but in the center of the table she saw a little easel of polished ebony, only the size of her two hands spread. It held a small picture she had painted several years ago.

“Silver Flight!” she said. “I sold that in Palanthas.”

To Elonaral, a Qualinesti elf who’d been long in exile and missed the river that ran by his childhood home. Usha had painted while the elf sat talking to her, thinking he was only there to arrange the commission. But he didn’t speak only of business—in fact, hardly of business. He spoke of his home and the river, and his childhood. When he had finished talking, Usha had finished painting, and magic had been done. The exile breathed a heartfelt prayer to a vanished god for the health of an artist who could sit in a studio in a city surrounded by stony desert and give him once again the rush of the river and the smell the freshness of wind over its silver, running waters. Looking at “Silver Flight” was like looking out a window into his beloved homeland.

“How did you come by this, Henge? Did an elf sell it to you?”

The dwarf shook head. “Never saw an elf. But this is the second of yours I’ve been asked to frame. Yer work has come in demand. I was framing this one for a woman who says she bought it in a pawn shop in Palanthas, last year in the spring.”

Usha felt a pang of sorrow to think that Elonaral’s lot had grown worse.

“From the sounds of things, she paid a lot more than she rightly should have.”

With considerable delicacy for one of his blunt-spoken kindred, the dwarf did not say at what amount he’d have valued the picture. If he had been able to see what Elonaral had seen, the wonder of paint and magic Usha had created, he would have thought the woman had gotten it for a bargain.

“But her, she didn’t like the frame and came to me to have a new one. I thought a frame wouldn’t do. It belongs sitting on an easel. Having the taste of a gully dwarf, she didn’t agree. Being a man with good sense, I bought it from her.”

Usha gave him a hard look.

He scuffed the toe of his boot and said, “Nah, nah, mistress, don’t you be thinking I cheated her. Yer paintings are worth having, and worth being properly paid for.”

A shadow fell across the table, and Usha turned expecting to see Madoc. In the long, golden light of a day growing old, she saw Loren Halgard.

“Mistress Usha, what a fine thing to see you here.” Loren inclined his head, a gesture like a small, courtly bow, and when he looked up his eyes met hers. It was as though he held her by the hand. Usha wanted to look away, and she refused to do that. She’d seem like nothing more than a confused, silly chit if she did.

“This’ll be him then,” Henge said. “The one yer waitin’ on.”

Loren’s lips crooked in a smile, as though he were pleased to have someone think Usha had been waiting for him. She composed her face into an expression that made it very clear she hadn’t been. That didn’t seem to trouble him.

“I’ve been several times to Lorelia’s house,” he said. “Yes, I’ll admit it, hoping to see you there. But I’ve had no luck. And, look! I find you here.”

Henge cleared his throat, a rumbling sound like the earth thinking about sending boulders down a hill. “Should I keep an eye out for him? The one yer waitin’ for?”

“No,” Usha said. “No, thank you. I’ll see him.”

A customer called from the other side of the booth and Henge left, muttering about how the one Usha was waiting for might find himself out of luck if he didn’t step up quickly. To her annoyance, Usha’s cheeks grew warm and rosy.

“I’ve been working,” she said to Loren, hoping to distract him from the blush. When that sounded too blunt, she added. “On the portrait of your nephews. It’s progressed to the point where the work goes on in my studio now.”

“Well, that’s good news. Lorelia will be pleased.”

And from there, Usha thought, this conversation can go nowhere. Relieved, she turned away, putting back the easel and painting Henge had set down too close to the end of his table. Loren stepped closer and saw “Silver Flight.”

“That’s lovely.” And the wonder in his voice, a note akin to awe, spoke for his sincerity. “Do you know who painted it?”

Usha drew breath to answer but, absorbed in the painting, Loren didn’t notice.

“It’s like the water is moving, just like I can see it.” He cocked his head as though listening. “And actually hear it.”

The words touched her, for not everyone could see the magic in her work. Not everyone was meant to. It pleased her that Loren felt the magic she had made for the exile in Palanthas.

Even as she thought so, Loren shook his head. “No. It’s a trick of the light.”

He lifted the picture carefully by the edges. To Usha’s amusement he turned his head one way and then the other. He set the painting on Henge’s little easel, stepped back and squinted, then looked at her, his glance keen, as though he suspected a hoax.

“It’s a masterful illusion, I’ll say that. Like those portraits you see where the person’s eyes seem to follow you around the room.”

Usha smiled at his puzzlement as he lifted the picture again and held it at arm’s length, looking for the trick. He frowned, suspecting chicanery.

“I’m sorry,” Usha said, “but I did try to tell you. I am the artist, and I assure you, there is no trickery involved. Somewhere that river truly exists. The breeze does blow…” He touched the image of the running river very carefully, and Usha laughed. “And the water certainly flows. Just not here, or in this place.”

“It’s a real place?”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “Yes, and no. I painted the picture according to the memories of an elf who hadn’t seen his home in many years. The place is as real as any place in his memory.”

Looking utterly confused now Loren said, “But it exists. Somewhere.”

Usha nodded. “That’s right.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s magic.”

Around them the sounds of the market seemed to fade, the cries of sellers and the shouts of children receding. The sun slipped down the sky. A little breeze drifted from the river, ruffling Usha’s hair. She tucked escaping strands back into the twilight-colored silk scarf she wore today. When she dropped her hand from her brow, Loren caught it, gently.

Usha stood perfectly still, barely breathing in the moment when she should reclaim her hand and offer protest. She did neither, and when the moment passed, she breathed again, a soft sigh.

“Who are you, Usha, that you make such pretty fantasies?”

Without her will, Usha’s fingers closed around his. Past all the questions he could ask, he’d asked the one that had no easy answer. On most days, it had no answer at all for the woman who did not seem to age much past lovely youth, whose eyes shone mysteriously golden as no one else’s eyes had in all the world before; no answer for the woman who had never known the truth of her own history, not even the names of her parents.

Before she could deflect the question, a rough, familiar voice says, “Lady Usha’s paintings aren’t fantasies or whimsy, sir.”

Loren turned, annoyed by the raggedly dressed young man glowering darkly at him. “Be off, fellow. The lady—”

“—is a friend of his,” Usha said as she reclaimed her hand. “Madoc, it’s good to see you.”

Madoc’s expression did not lighten. Loren’s grew darker.

“Madoc Diviner is a friend of yours, Usha?” Loren glanced at Madoc, then dismissed him with a humorless chuckle. “The mage known for having allegiance to no one and nothing is a friend of yours?”

Indeed a friend, and one who’s face had grown lean, whose cheeks were unshaven but not bearded, and showed pale through the stubble.

“An old friend,” Usha assured Loren. Her voice held the suggestion of an edge that could grow keener. “I came here to meet him.”

Madoc’s smile became a sudden, cocky grin. Usha gave him a narrow glance and the grin faded, at least by a degree or two.

With a grace Usha appreciated, Loren bowed over her hand, told her he had enjoyed talking with her, and even managed a nod to Madoc before he took his leave.

Watching him walk through the crowded market, Madoc snorted. “Gods, Usha, I do owe you an apology for being late. How’d you get stuck talking to an old stick like Loren Halgard? Did he bore you silly while you were waiting?”

He said nothing of what he’d seen, Usha’s hand in Loren’s, but she didn’t doubt that keen-eyed Madoc, known for knowing, had marked it.

Usha’s narrow glance grew narrower, but her laughter was amused.

Across the market, tall and dark, the crop-haired knight pushed away from the wall beside the river gate. Usha felt his eyes meet hers then look away.

“Who’s that?” Madoc asked, sobering.

Usha shook her head. “No one. A knight. They’re the lords of the city now. Some of them get a bit bold. But enough of that.” She took his shoulder, turned him and gave him a little push. “We have some things to talk about. Take me to the Goat.”

8

The sun lay on the edge of the horizon, signaling the approach of Sir Radulf’s curfew, yet to Usha’s surprise the Grinning Goat rang with the laughter of dark knights bristling with weapons and arrogance, and the shrill voices of girls of doubtful virtue—or at least doubtful sense, Usha thought—who flirted with them.

“Does no one worry about curfew here?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Madoc drawled. “And I’ve been living up the stairs for nearly a year, somewhat less than a half owner of the place—but not much less, and—” he stopped, then mugged a wide-eyed expression of shock and surprise—“why, will you look at that! I’m a respectable businessman.”

Usha laughed, the young ne’er-do-well had always been able to charm her.

“We’re quite popular with the knights,” Madoc said as he held a chair for her. “The old Goat’s doing a fine business thanks to the occupation.” He shrugged. “And knights have to go somewhere to drink, eh?”

Usha glanced at the bar. Her eyes met those of a tall, burly knight who looked at her over the head of the dark-haired woman he held in his arms. The woman clung to him, drunk or laughing, perhaps both. He winked at Usha, flashing white teeth in a vulpine grin. Usha dismissed him with a look of chill disdain.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Madoc said. “That’s Sir Arvel of Kinsalla. We’re becoming quite used to each other here. I’ve known for a while that he’s one of Sir Radulf’s close men.”

Usha frowned, not understanding the term.

“A knight particularly close to the power in the occupation. He’s here often, drinking, listening, and playing with the girls. That last he gets to do often, as you see.” He nodded genial salute to the knight who fondled the woman in his arms and yet looked at Usha. “He’s a man with an eye for beauty, that one. Could get him into trouble one day.”

Usha thought just about anything in the Goat could get anyone in trouble. In the corners and shadows lurked men with the hoods of their cloaks pulled low to hide their faces, and damn the heat; women whose glances darted all around the tavern in looks that reminded Usha of flinching.

“Who are these?” she asked Madoc, nodding to the secretive men and the skittish women.

“My clients, some. Others soon to be. The ones who come all the way down here to the docks looking for information they’ve been unable to find. Where is the dissolute son, the runaway daughter? Where can I find the ruthless bastard who cheated my old father of all he owned? Or where can I find a man to do a shady job of work?”

A man to hand out a beating, rob a house, slip a knife between the ribs of the one who debauched an innocent daughter, a spy in the shadows…

Madoc didn’t say these things, but Usha heard them in his silence. She thought of the dark elf who’d died in the alley between Aline’s house and her neighbor’s stable.

“You know all these things, Madoc?”

The mage shook his head. “But I can find out anything. I know the people who know—or who might know.” His voice twisted on a bitter tone. “Days were when I could know such things by looking into a man’s heart and mind.”

Usha heard the same dry, self-mockery she’d heard from Palin in those later years when gods-given magic was dying, the cynical chuckle of a man who was once strong and willful in his magic and now daily wakes to an aching impotence.

Usha pushed her chair a little away from the small wooden table as a girl in a red skirt and black bodice used a much-rinsed rag to wipe the stains left behind be the last patron. The rag did well enough for rings from over-filled mugs of ale and beer, but failed miserably at cleaning away thick stains of something brown and sticky. That didn’t seem to trouble the girl, who balled up the rag and tossed it to the bar then turned to ask their pleasure.

Madoc turned a smile on the girl that, despite the new leanness of his face and the scruffiness of his chin, held the same charming combination of wistfulness and danger Usha remembered.

“ ’Twould please me, darling Bess, if you’d sit here on my knee for a bit.” The girl giggled as he caught her around the waist. Usha did not give much weight to her squeals of protest when Madoc lifted her up and settled her on his knee. Over the serving girl’s shoulder, he asked, “Are you hungry, Usha?”

“No.”

From Madoc’s knee, Bess took his order for a pitcher of ale. “And a couple of the clean mugs, eh?”

She giggled again and slipped out of his arms to return in moments with ale and two reasonably clean mugs.

At the bar, Sir Arvel tossed a few coins onto the oak and disengaged from the dark-haired woman. The barman said, “See you again,” and the knight assured him that he would. On the way out he slowed his step, nodded to Usha with another wolfish grin, and left the tavern.

Usha’s look was chillier than the one before, but it didn’t seem to trouble him in the least.

“Ah, you’re not going to freeze that one with your iciest glare, Usha,” Madoc said, pouring a frothing mug for Usha and one for himself. “He’s too busy warming himself at the hearth of his own self-regard. But he’s gone and it’s a good time for talking. So, tell me. I don’t have but a lick and a spit of magic, and that only on rare days, but it’s at your service if you need it. How can I help you?”

Usha looked at him for a long quiet moment, remembering him as he’d been the last time she’d seen him—a reckless young man shunned by his family for abandoning knightly training and refusing to take up a knight’s vocation as his brothers and sister had.

“The woe of my father,” he’d said, in grim mockery, “and the misery of my mother.”

In those days Madoc ap Westhos had been a wayward and very promising student of Palin’s, a young man who’d had nothing to look forward to but an increasing pile of bar bills. He’d taken Aline to Haven simply on the promise that Usha would pay off those accounts. Nor had he asked for more when he’d come back, his heart irretrievably lost. Now, head high and a strange, lean smile on his lips, he bore Usha’s scrutiny well.

On the brink of asking what he knew about Qui’thonas, Usha changed her question.

“Madoc, what do you know about Sir Radulf’s second in command?”

He gave her a long look. Usha felt him weighing the implications of the question. He took a drink of ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shrugged.

“What everyone else knows. She’s highborn Palanthian. And when Solamnics fall from grace, we tend to fall hard and far.” He twisted a wry smile. “But not all black sheep gather in the same fold, Usha. I didn’t know her family. My kin are from Sancrist. I don’t know Lady Mearah, either, just her reputation. Whatever you hear about her isn’t much of an exaggeration. She’s ruthless. Not as ruthless as Sir Radulf, though. As long as she serves his purpose, she’ll do well, but they’re a dangerous combination. Whoever is running things in Neraka these days is taking a bit of a gamble pairing those two.” Again, he shrugged, as though to say, Who can figure out what they’re thinking in Neraka, anyway? “Together, they’ll run this city so it brings in nice profits for the green dragon. If Beryl is happy, everyone in Neraka will be happy. But if things get dicey, milady had better watch her back. And Sir Radulf had better watch his.”

Satisfied, Usha said, “Do you know about Qui’thonas?”

Madoc nodded, but very carefully, as though feeling to see if an old wound still hurt. “I know it got paid for with a wedding. And that no one had gone out from Qui’thonas for some time before the old man died.”

“Do you know that the path that came in is going to lead out soon?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Who told you that? Old faithful Dunbrae?” He snorted. “That one never lets anything go. Qui’thonas is finished.”

“No.” She noted every detail of his expression, as though he were a subject to be captured on canvas. He betrayed no surprise, and nothing of hope. “Aline’s not giving up. Dezra has joined her. Others will be called upon again.”

He shrugged. “And how does this involve me?”

Usha mirrored the gesture. “My friend, to some degree it involves me. To greater degree, Dez and ‘old faithful Dunbrae.’ It only involves you if you want it to.”

She’d left out one name, and Usha saw him speak it to himself, just a movement of his lips, before asking, “What does she say?”

Usha was careful to restrain a smile. “Aline needs every willing hand.” Carefully, she said, “And every willing heart. Madoc, can you work with her?”

He was a long time silent, and because she knew him of old, because she’d known for a long time what it felt like to be in the company of a mage working magic, she knew Madoc Diviner was trying to look into her mind or her heart. She relaxed, she let him, and she felt the faintest touch, a stray breeze slipping through her thoughts. As soon as she was able to name the feeling, it vanished.

“It still works,” he said. “Sometimes. All right, Usha. If she says so, I’m with you.” He laughed, but the laugher had a hitter note. “And old faithful Dunbrae and I will have to manage somehow.”

Old faithful Dunbrae. Usha wondered what was between the two that Madoc spoke of him in such ironic tones. She didn’t ask. There would be time enough to learn.

“Now,” he said, “we’ve been a while here talking, and it’s true Sir Radulf doesn’t trouble us much with closing times or even curfew. He’s been known to order a raid now and then. Once we’ve even been closed. By and large, he likes having a place for his men to come and listen for things he’d like to know. But that’s here. In the rest of Haven, his rule must be obeyed. I’m worried the hour of curfew will be past before you can get back to your inn.”

Outside, the narrow street had grown dusky. The patrons of the Grinning Goat didn’t seem in any great hurry to leave, but few others had come in.

“Let me walk you back to the Ivy.”

Usha would have protested, said she could make it back in time, but he nodded toward the window fronting the cobbled street. Sir Arvel stood across the way, leaning against a wall, a man in the attitude of patience.

“I’ll walk you home, or he’ll follow you home. He’s curious about you, Usha. He has a greedy eye for a lovely woman.”

Madoc’s company didn’t stop the knight from following. Now and then, when she looked over her shoulder, she saw him walking behind. To this Madoc paid no attention, and when he saw Usha safely to the door of the Ivy, he swept her a bow and bid her good night.

Once inside, she found the common room nearly full as men and women and children gathered to eat what had, in a grim jest, become known as the Curfew Meal. Three women, the cook’s boy, and the landlord himself served the crowd. Arms laden with a full and heavy tray of pitchers and mugs, Rusty stopped for a moment to tell her she had a letter.

“Came for you this afternoon, Mistress Usha.” He jerked his head toward the bar. “Back there, just tell the gully dwarf to… nah, nah, never mind. I’ll get it.”

He sat down the tray, took another order, and went to fetch the letter. Usha thanked him then looked out the window. In the lightless street she saw two dark figures—Madoc talking with Sir Arvel. She didn’t hear what Sir Arvel said, but Madoc’s reply was clear: “Now, you saw me walking a lady home, sir knight. Nothing more dangerous than that. Come with me, and if you don’t agree she was a good reason for breaking curfew, I’ll buy you a drink.”

The noise in the common room seemed to grow in its intensity—the shouts of servers and customers and the wails of cranky babies. Usha didn’t hear Dezra behind her so much as sense her.

“Mighty close with the knights, your friend Madoc.”

In no mood to resume the argument, Usha didn’t answer. She unfolded the note Rusty had given her and saw it was from Loren Halgard. His signature was bold enough that Dezra saw it too.

In answer to her curious expression, Usha said, “An invitation to supper.”

Dezra raised an eyebrow.

“He’s Lorelia Gance’s cousin,” Usha said, disliking the note of rationalization in her voice.

“How nice,” Dezra said. “Lorelia’s cousin to invite you to supper, a knight to follow you home, and a mage to protect you from that. You’re tripping over men everywhere you go, Usha. No doubt all these people know you’re married.”

Stung, Usha turned from the window. “All the people know who should know.”

And if Dezra heard criticism of her too-often absent brother in that cool reply, Usha didn’t mind. When she turned back to the window, she saw that Madoc and Sir Arvel were gone. The street was not deserted, however.

A rough-looking man stood where Sir Arvel had. Short and barrel-chested, he looked up the street and down. He was not a knight, but in his watchfulness, his arrogant stance, he reminded Usha of the knight she’d seen in the market square. As she thought so, the man turned his head toward the inn. He was far enough away for Usha to believe he wasn’t looking at her. Yet she didn’t believe that, not at all. Something about the way he crossed the road and paused in the light cast out from the window made her think he saw her quite well.

Blade clashed against keen-edged blade, ringing in echoes through the vast armory beneath Old Keep. The tang of steel and sweat hung in the air, and just beneath it lurked the coppery scent of blood. From the gallery above, Lady Mearah looked down upon the battle games below—four groups of men testing their wiles and weapons. The keep, so long given over to ceremony and formal feasting, had resumed its original purpose—an armory and a barracks.

Lady Mearah glanced at the dark elf standing beside her. He was a reach away from the fluted stone column that rose from the armory below, past the gallery where they stood, and into the heights of the shadow-draped ceiling. He could have leaned on the column, on the railing before them. He did not. Tavar Evenstar, a hard-eyed, fallen Silvanesti, preserved every function of formality when in her presence.

Returning her eyes to the battle games, the lady knight said, “Tell me about Usha Majere. Who did she go to see?”

Tavar looked where she did, and they could have been two people fascinated by what was going on below. “Madoc Diviner. I hear they’re old friends.”

The lady knight raised an eyebrow. “What manner of friends? Wasn’t he one of her husband’s pupils before the Academy was destroyed?”

“He was, and it doesn’t seem there’s more to it than a brief meeting to renew acquaintance. She’s been in Haven since just before the fall, and by all accounts this is the first time they’ve been in each other’s company. She’s working as a portraitist for room and board.” He paused, Lady Mearah knew he was weighing words. “If it comes to friendship and what kind, I think the smart gamble would be on the other side of Haven. Usha Majere isn’t one for infidelity, but if she were, she wouldn’t look for an opportunity on the low side of the street. She’s been spending time with Havelock Gance’s family, and Loren Halgard has been twice seen in her company.”

“Anything there?”

Tavar shook his head. “No. As I say, Usha Majere isn’t known to be unfaithful.”

“And the other one? Her husband’s sister?”

The dark elf shrugged. “I don’t know, my lady. She was at the inn when my watcher saw Majere’s wife return. No one saw her come or go, and yet she wasn’t there all day.”

Lady Mearah nodded. She didn’t waste time telling him to learn further about the whereabouts of Dezra Majere. One by blood, the other by marriage, these women were kin to a powerful mage, one whose whereabouts were not precisely known. They bore watching, and Tavar knew his business.

Lady Mearah put her finger on the center of a blood red gem set in the silver torque around the dark elf’s own neck. The ruby, a love-gift, glowed in response to her touch. There was not much magic left in the world, but this small gem still possessed something of its old nature in that it retained the ability to know a loved one’s touch and respond warmly. Tavar closed her hand in his own, a quick gesture, a secret clasping. He was Silvanesti, cast out from his homeland before the Chaos War, before the Blue Lady’s War, even before the War of the Lance. He was over one hundred years old, yet he looked like a handsome youth. As well as Lady Mearah’s confidant and the chief of her most loyal men, a shadowy band of dark elves and renegade humans, he was her lover.

It was not something either of them wanted known. They had too many enemies—some in common, and some not.

Tavar lifted her hand and brushed her fingers with his lips. Wordless, he left, moving soundlessly across the gallery, gliding down the stone steps. She watched him stand and look at the skirmishers then walk away. By the time he was out of her sight, Tavar Evenstar was out of her mind, her attention again on the men below.

At Sir Radulf’s command, Lady Mearah had ordered her knights to inspect the weapons they’d found here the first day of the occupation in preparation for taking Old Keep as their headquarters. Not much had seemed worth keeping, the weaponry of farmers and shopkeepers—in Lady Mearah’s opinion, worth no more than hayforks and wood axes. At the commander’s wish, she’d had much of it taken out and replaced by good swords and pikes, mail and lances and spiked maces. In the bowels of the place she’d ordered a forge set up. To feed the fires she’d commandeered workers from Haven’s citizenry to harvest the forest. Under close guard, young men from the city went out in the morning and came back with carts full of wood. One or two had tried to escape. They had not gone far before archers hidden in the trees stopped them.

The bodies were left as warning. It was her mark, just as the blood red sword embroidered on the black silk tunic she wore was hers.

“My lady,” said a voice behind her. Agmar, Sir Radulf’s dark-eyed squire, stepped out of the shadows.

The door into the vast second floor chamber that served as Sir Radulf’s own quarters and wardroom stood ajar. The scent of wine and woodsmoke drifted into the gallery. From within came a clipped, “At once, Sir Radulf,” followed by the sound of another door closing.

The squire seemed to have heard neither. He sketched a perfunctory bow. “Sir Radulf sent me to find you. He’s ready for the nightly report.”

“I’m at his disposal.”

She said so, but Lady Mearah didn’t immediately move, instead leaving the squire to bow and withdraw. She was Palanthian, and though subordinate in rank to Sir Radulf Eigerson, her lineage was subordinate to that of very few people, and certainly not to any tally of Sir Radulf Eigerson’s forebears. Rank must be respected, but Lady Mearah was of the kind of folk who knew about nuance, and just how much of a nuanced delay a man like Sir Radulf would understand or tolerate.

She looked once more upon the games below. A smear of blood marred the scrubbed slates of the floor, and one of the combatants went limping off the field. His fellows got back to the business of testing themselves and training. Lady Mearah was pleased. They were like her armory—hard and cold and very strong.

Someone cried out, a harsh curse, and steel belled on steel. She watched the two fighters, men from her own talon. They had been hers from the day she joined Sir Radulf’s command, months before. Loyal, fierce, and devoted to their lady, these men and others formed the nucleus of a group of knights she could count on, steady as stone and willing to do whatever she asked.

Lady Mearah nodded, well content, and went to answer her commander’s summons. As she closed the door to Sir Radulf’s quarters, she framed the nightly report, the tally of men on the walls, the state of the food supply and the readiness the caravans and escorts ready to keep the city provisioned. In her mind, she organized rumors and facts, and she considered the reports from her personal spies, men like Tavar Evenstar. Some she would keep to herself, but she decided to include Tavar’s speculations about the woman Usha Majere.

“I’ve heard, my lord, that you’ve had some contact with her.”

Sir Radulf looked up, eyes narrowed. “I have. Your point?”

One of the torches on the wall hissed and snapped, and the flame flared. In the changing light, his face seemed sharply sculpted, his eyes cold gleams in deep sockets. That look could rock a knight back on her heels, but Lady Mearah smiled right into it.

“No great point, though it is interesting that the wife of a mage once so powerful is abroad in the city.” She shrugged. “I’m sure she’s quite harmless.”

“Utterly,” Sir Radulf said. “A saucy tongue, as I recall, but no more.”

Lady Mearah waited for dismissal, straight and tall and holding back a bit of Tavar’s news. She would not mention anything about Dezra Majere. Lady Mearah didn’t like to raise questions until she had some idea how she might find the answers.

9

The woman is like a sword!

The image of Aline Wrackham startled Dezra, even as it formed. Since their last encounter, most of Dez’s contact with Qui’thonas had been with Dunbrae. Aline left much of the daily business of putting the refugee movement together in the dwarf’s hands. Aline’s were matters of finances, the secret slipping of steel coin or firm promises along avenues as covert as actual paths Qui’thonas used into and out from Haven. From Usha’s telling of Aline’s wedding journey, Dezra thought of Aline Wrackham as a mousy poet-girl with few prospects, who gave in to the command of a grandfather happy enough to sell her in marriage. For a good cause, yes; and Aline had made good use of her gains, but it remained that she’d let herself be sold.

Because no one would ever be able to sell Dezra that way, not for the best and brightest cause in the world, she’d harbored a quiet, perhaps pitying scorn—the girl should have had a decent respect for herself. She’d thought so when she first heard the tale, and though she’d appreciated finding safe harbor in Rose Hall the night Haven fell, she’d even thought so the night she’s accepted Aline’s invitation to become part of Qui’thonas. Nothing had blurred that first impression of Aline until the startling image that formed this evening.

Yet that’s what Aline Wrackham was like—a ready sword, as she paced the oak plank floor where once a thick Tarsian carpet had lain, in the highest room of Rose Hall.

“This won’t be an easy resurrection,” Aline said, her glance leaping from one to the other of those gathered—Dezra, Dunbrae, and—to Dezra’s unvoiced disgust—Madoc Diviner. That one, Dezra thought, never takes his eyes from Aline. Neither did Aline fail to glance at him from time to time, and when she did, her cheek grew dusky. It wasn’t an attractive sight, the blush like a mottled brick. Still, it seemed to please Madoc.

“Qui’thonas won’t have an easy resurrection, but it will be a resurrection,” Aline assured them. Gowned in the high-necked, long-sleeved muted shades of mourning, in the gray light after a rainy day’s sunset, she strode like a commander on the ramparts. Quiet fire lighted her eyes, and her homely face she set like steel “Madoc tells me that many of the old paths into Haven from the river side of the city are gone, overgrown.”

The mage nodded. “Darken Wood doesn’t take long to reclaim its own.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s the air of elven hiding-magic on the Qualinesti side, but those paths are gone. Be that as it may, we wouldn’t be running on that side of the wood. Damned knights are going to be peering out of every shadow there. So we can’t go east or south. And it’s madness to go deeper into Darken Wood and risk running afoul of the centaurs.”

“And the ghosts,” Dunbrae muttered darkly. His eyes narrowed, changing his normally bluff expression to one of mistrust. But did he mistrust motive or something else? Dezra didn’t know.

Aline stopped mid-stride, watching her three friends, but she didn’t interrupt.

“And the ghosts,” Madoc said equably. “Of course the road around Darken Wood is heavily patrolled by Sir Radulf’s knights. All that’s left is the river for a run to the sea—impossible, I think you’ll all agree—and the moors out in the old Seeker Reaches. If anyone can get to them.”

Dez snorted. “You’re as naked to the eye on the moors as on the river. And about the only things living in all that stone and sky are outlaws, goblins, wolves and ravens. There’ll he no safe houses, no helping hands along the way.”

Madoc raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we could simply charter a dragon to ferry the lot of Haven’s refugees out over all the disaster, eh?” Dez bristled, he gestured dismissively, and said to Aline, “We have little choice—give up or find a way. Qui’thonas knows the Seeker Reaches, somewhat. We have friends there, though thinly spread. We will find a way.”

Aline paced to the north window, the one that looked out over the water. Perhaps she looked farther than the Whiterage, Dez thought. Perhaps all the way to the Seeker Reaches. After a moment she turned, her jaw set.

“Dunbrae, take some money and three good men. You know who’s on board by now. Buy enough supplies for a couple of days. Don’t be ostentatious about it.”

The dwarf snorted at the idea that he would be ostentatious about anything.

Aline chuckled. “Go out into the Reaches. Find old friends first, and be careful of making new ones.”

Dunbrae waited a beat, to see if there was more, then rose to leave. Dez watched him out of the room, envious of the dwarf who would soon be breathing the free air outside Haven. She and Dunbrae had worked together well in the short time since she’d declared for Qui’thonas. It hadn’t been hard work, or dangerous, nothing more than leaving sign in certain places—a token on a window sill, a mark on a back door that looked like the scratch a key leaves, a word to an old woman who would pass it to a girl in the market, who would take it on from there. Dez understood that these small tasks had served two purposes. They were messages delivered to the quiet forces of Qui’thonas, and they introduced her to folk who would not have trusted her otherwise. In Dunbrae’s company, she was immediately known for a friend.

Aline’s eyes grew still, her expression serious. “Madoc, go back to the Goat and take care of what you have to.”

One swift look spoke of understanding between them. Madoc had received his orders earlier.

In the corridor, past the briefly open door, Dezra heard the soft voice of a servant and the muted laughter of another. The door closed, and Aline fastened the shutters wide on all three windows. A breeze carried the scent of rain and the river.

“Dezra,” she said, still looking out.

Dez went to stand beside her. Looking where Aline did, she saw the river and the willow walk that lined its banks. Beyond, she imagined she could see the line of hedges bordering the common garden that served a little community near the river. Her heart ached, as though a hand squeezed it. The bodies of the hanged had been taken down from the apple trees after the news of Lady Mearah’s idea of swift punishment flew through the city. People had stopped talking about it, but sometimes at night, Dezra saw the dead men behind closed eyes. She saw him. Not as she had then, not as Usha had seen him, bruised and broken and ugly in his death. She saw him in candlelight. Dalan. She held the name in her heart with fierce tenderness. She saw him in memory as she had seen him that last time, his skin golden, shadows sliding purple along the planes of his chest, the muscles of his arms. She saw his flaxen hair in dawn’s light. She saw her lover, and when she did, her blood burned to revenge.

“They aren’t going to be as easy with Haven as they have been,” Aline said. They. Sir Radulf’s knights.

“Three hanged isn’t easy, Aline.”

“It isn’t, but things will get worse.”

Dez turned from the window. The breeze felt cool on her neck.

“So, I need to know,” Aline said. “How far can I trust you?”

Surprised, Dezra stood perfectly still, as though she could find motive or thought on the breeze. Aline didn’t smile to soften the moment. She kept as still as Dez.

Carefully, Dez said, “I’m not sure why you ask that.”

“I don’t doubt your word when you say you will never betray us. I don’t doubt your ability to do what is needed, fight the knights if necessary, protect the refugees I put into your care always.”

“But… ?”

“But how long will you do this, Dez?”

“Why, as long as I’m here. I told you.”

“Yes, you did. I’m wondering whether that means what it seems, or whether it means for as long as it takes to get your vengeance.”

Dezra’s eyes narrowed. “My—? I don’t understand.” But she did understand.

“Dalan Forester.”

The name burned along her nerves. Dezra didn’t flinch. She pushed away from the window.

“I don’t give my word lightly, Aline. I have accepted your secrets, and I will keep them.” That might have been the end of the matter, but Dez didn’t let it go. “Why do you trust Madoc Diviner, but you won’t trust me?”

“I trust you, or you wouldn’t be here, Dez.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Aline lifted her chin, pride and stubbornness. “Because he’s proven himself. When he could have betrayed me, he did not. After he’d seen the portrait Usha painted…” Dez knew the story, Aline didn’t repeat it. “How could I not trust him now?”

How, indeed? Dezra thought. It was a noble story, yet—“I don’t.”

“Why?”

Dezra thought for a moment, trying to find the right words to capture so nebulous a feeling. In the end, she shook her head. “Because I don’t. In my gut, I don’t. We’ve all changed, Aline. In the years since you came to Haven, even in the weeks since the city fell. But one thing, it seems, hasn’t changed: Madoc Diviner is a man known for taking care of himself first, others if he feels like it. He isn’t the romantic rogue you and Usha seem to think he is. At the Goat he’s well known to dark knights, to thieves and worse. He exchanges favors with them. He must. News, rumor and conjecture… these are his stock in trade. A man like that can’t be trusted.”

And there was the matter of Dunbrae—his narrowed glance, the feeling that he didn’t trust Madoc either. Dez said nothing of that. If Dunbrae did truly mistrust Madoc, she preferred to have the dwarf’s reasons from his own mouth.

Aline turned again to look out of the window. Nothing of posture or gesture gave clue to her thoughts. Over her shoulder Dezra saw the rain-washed sky winking with stars. Below, a young man went past the front of the house, head low and hurrying. If he lived near, he would make curfew. If not, he’d have some bad moments till he got to where he was going. Since the hanging, Sir Radulf’s watch had become harder than ever about the rules of curfew. Warnings had become beatings, and at least two men had gone missing.

Yet Madoc could escort Usha home after the hour of curfew and then arrange to have a beer with the knight who saw him at it.

“Dezra.” In profile, Aline’s expression showed nothing. The stars had her attention, or so it seemed. “I trust Madoc. But Qui’thonas will not work unless each one of us can trust the other. Lives are at stake. I want you in Qui’thonas. I need you. I don’t demean my faithful rescuers when I say they are not as experienced as you are. You’re a woman who knows how to fight and—most importantly—when to fight.” She turned then, and again Dezra saw the sword-woman in her eyes, bright and hard. “And I need Madoc. He will be the eyes and ears of Qui’thonas, a secret no one will know outside this group. He will look like just what the knights need him to look like in order to trust him enough to speak in his presence. He will look like no threat to the robbers and rogues that frequent the Goat. He must be this, or he is no use to us. But I won’t risk your life or anyone else’s by asking you to work with a man you can’t trust.”

Silence spread between them, then Aline drew it back.

“Think about it. I’ll respect any decision you make, and I will never doubt that you will keep every secret of ours.”

Dezra nodded.

“In the morning,” Aline said. “We’ll talk then.”

On the corner of River Way and Wrackham Street, Dezra saw Dunbrae standing. She wondered whether he’d found his three men. Had he taken money from some secret coffer and already returned to his post for a last walk around the perimeter before leaving? Dezra crooked a wry grin. For that matter, did Dunbrae ever sleep? She watched him, for a moment thinking to ask him about Madoc, but then turned and walked the other way. Dunbrae had kept watch over Rose Hall in secret since the occupation. The curfew meant nothing to him, for he could melt into the shadows as quickly as breathing. She wouldn’t compromise him now by calling attention to him. She had her own way to find safely home.

Around the other corner, past the alley where Dez and Dunbrae had killed an interloper and bundled off a dark elf to his death, the street narrowed and turned in its rise from the riverside. The back edge of Rose Hall ran along this street, bordered in boxwood, some ambitious, wandering firethorn, and honeysuckle. The peaked roof of a shed rose above the hedge. A gap in the boxwood allowed a glimpse past the boundaries of Rose Hall. The night was still; what breeze had stirred after the rain was gone.

Something moved before the shed door, a shadow flowing on the ground.

Dezra looked over her shoulder. Dunbrae was too far away to help if she needed it. Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled a knife from her boot. She slipped through the gap in the hedge on silent feet, drifting along the edge of darkness beside the hedge. The musty scent of boxwood hung in the moist air. It mingled with the odor of sweat and beer. Tavern-scent.

Dezra stopped, watching as the intruder unlatched the shed. It was a place for the tools Aline’s groundsman used. The door sighed open. The intruder stopped and looked over his shoulder.

Bullfrogs boomed in the night, peepers shrilled, and into that sudden noise, Dezra said, “Did you lose something?”

Madoc Diviner whipped around. His hand never touched the short sword hidden beneath his brown cloak before Dezra’s blade kissed the skin of his throat.

“I said, did you lose something?”

Madoc swallowed, very carefully. “No, I—” he tilted his head back to relieve the pressure of the knife. “No. I’m here on Aline’s order.”

“I heard her send you back to the Goat.”

The pressure did not lessen, but Madoc managed an ironic smile. “You didn’t. You heard her tell me to take care of what I have to do. Some of that was at the Goat.”

Dez raised an eyebrow.

“And that will be my business.” He looked down and to the right, as if to glance over his shoulder. “The rest of what I have to do is here.”

“And whose business would that be?”

“Hers.”

The reverence in the simple word sent a shiver skittering up Dezra’s neck, the kind to let her know she was in the presence of something deeply true. Still, she didn’t move the blade.

“Tell me what it is.”

Bullfrogs and peepers croaked and screamed. A rough voice called out, the words undistinguishable—despair, anger, something hard in the tone to make Dezra think someone had run afoul of the watch.

Madoc risked a shrug. “I’ll show you if you like.” The ring of a hard boot on paving stones spoke of Dunbrae coming near. “Or you can call out to him and see nothing of it.”

Dunbrae with his onyx ring, his magic to do what Madoc was increasingly unable to do—know the heart, the motive of whoever was near. Dezra eased her knife away from the man’s throat, but she didn’t put it away.

“Show me.”

Wisely, he didn’t smile when he held the door wide. “Come inside.”

Dezra stepped into darkness and stood perfectly still. Behind her, the ambient light of night seemed startling. Light of stars, of rosy candles in the windows at the top of Aline’s house, the waning moon shining down. These combined to thin the darkness a bit outside the shed door.

“Wait,” he said, and took a long stride ahead of her. A vague shape in the dark, he moved. She thought he bent down, then stood again. “Come here.”

She followed the sound of his voice and collided with him. Madoc cursed, caught his balance on something Dezra couldn’t see. She looked down and saw a deeper blackness, a square opening that seemed to drop without end.

“What’s that?” She almost reached for her knife again, then felt faintly foolish.

“A secret way.” He crouched down, looked up and around at her, his face a pale oval in the feeble light from outside. He turned his head and vanished.

Dezra heard a thump and grunt, then he called, “Wait. There’s a ladder here somewhere. Damn… somewhere.”

Her general mistrust of the mage didn’t quell curiosity. Dezra stood at the edge of the drop. Steel scraped on flint, a spark, a hiss, and a small torch flared to bright light. In the sudden glare, she saw that the drop was not much more than half again Madoc’s length.

“Move,” she said and followed him down.

Mud squelched under her boots. Firelight ran on the surface of puddles and sheened off walls where trickles of water ran. Dez saw a ceiling of damp earth and walls shored up by thick beams. The ladder that should have been propped and ready lay in the mud, it’s footing undermined by the wet, shifting earth.

“A pirate road,” Madoc said. “This is one tunnel of several that run out to the river. I’m here to check it and the others, to make sure all’s well after the rain. Things get unsettled by even a little water.” He lifted his torch, inspecting walls and ceiling. They dripped, but the wooden beams shoring them seemed strong enough to Dezra’s eye. He turned and seemed to take a brand from the earthen wall itself. This he ignited from his own torch. “As long as you’re here, come on along.”

“On your inspection tour?”

Madoc handed her the second torch. “If you like. Or you can go back up and kick your heels against the cobbles with old Dunbrae until it’s time for him to leave.”

Again curiosity sparked. Dezra took the torch. “You don’t much like him. Why?”

Madoc didn’t reply, and she followed him through the tunnel. It wasn’t long before they came to two branches. One looked fairly dry. The other was clogged with mud and rocks and fallen shoring beams. When Dez turned down to look into the clear tunnel Madoc pulled her back.

“No. These branches aren’t going to be safe, even if one looks like it. Listen.”

Beneath the comfortable hiss of torches, she heard the steady trickle of water. “It’s going to fall soon.”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

She lifted her torch and followed, careful to mark her way. At every intersection, he showed her where brands and oil-soaked rags were stored in waxed canvas pouches. “If you have to run these tunnels, you’ll want to know where to find fire at need. Without light, you could wander around under Haven for longer than you’d like.”

Dez noted the places and followed in silence. They splashed through puddles up to their ankles, but found no worse. Three of the small off-shoot tunnels proved dry, and Madoc told her where they led.

When they stopped to check the last cache of torch materials, she said, “There haven’t been pirates up the river since well after the Cataclysm. All this looks a little more recent than that.”

“It is, but only the shoring up and the widening. The tunnels themselves are as old as I say. Before the elven kingdom finally fell, Qui’thonas used them to get elves into the city when it was too dangerous to make a clear run from the river into Haven. A back door, if you will.”

“How? These don’t connect to the river on the Qualinesti side, do they?”

“They don’t. I hear it wasn’t the favorite route—right through Darken Wood. It got harder and harder at the end. More elves died than were saved. But if they made it, they ran north to Haven through the woods, vanished into caves in the hills, or scrambled through those and to the riverside. If they got that far and safely across the river after that, they dashed for the tunnels and came up behind Haven’s walls.” He shrugged. “And then the elves stopped coming.”

Madoc pointed ahead to a place where the tunnel narrowed. “Up ahead is the way out. Not to the river,” he said, answering her questioning look. “That’s down the west arm of the last intersection.” He doused his torch and, reluctantly, she did the same. “Come with me.”

In the dark, with only Madoc’s after-image lingering, Dezra felt familiar distrust crowding in. He’d been forthcoming, careful not to do or say anything to arouse the distrust. Still, she felt it. If Madoc knew that, he gave no indication. She followed as he went a few strides farther then stopped. He took her hand and put it against the rough wooden leg of a ladder. When Dez craned her neck to see up, she had the sense that wood covered the opening.

“Where?” she asked, instinctively whispering now.

He moved her aside, took to the ladder and slowly lifted the hatch. He gestured, she followed, and the feeble illumination of stars and a sinking moon seemed bright to Dezra as she lifted herself out of the hatch. They stood in a small thicket of conifers of the long-needled kind that didn’t grow naturally in this part of Abanasinia. These had been planted for someone’s pleasure many years ago. They made a screen around the tunnel entrance, thick and dense.

The boom of bullfrogs sounded like thunder, the shrill of peepers like screaming. Dezra smelled the water of a pond nearby, muddy after the rain. She looked around for bearings and caught them at once. Across the road she saw the back of the Ivy. In a high window, light burned in Usha’s new studio. A week ago, Usha had counted her savings and decided she’d be able to pay her debts in the city, pay rent in advance for the room she and Dez had been sharing, and pay for the room across the hall. The decision made, it didn’t take long to carry out. With Rusty’s help and Dezra’s, Usha had trundled her easel and paints, her canvasses and sketches and all the rest across to a much larger space, a room that served as her studio with an alcove for her bed. At this hour, she wouldn’t be painting in such uncertain light, but she might well be writing, reading, or immersed in the play and pattern of light and shadow, dreaming half-dreams and thinking about the work to hand.

One dash across the road would put Dez at the inn’s back door. She turned to say something to Madoc. Swift, he pulled her back into the pines, his hand over her mouth. Instinctively, she twisted away from him. He held harder and pointed out to the road.

Three knights walked by. Lightly armored but well-armed, they made little noise as they went, only the sound of their voices and coarse laughter could be heard.

Madoc waited till they were well gone, then let Dez go.

“Do you see, now, Dezra Majere?” His voice grew cold. “This is why Aline needs me. Sir Radulf changed the timing of that watch only this evening, and he added a man to it. No one who isn’t a knight knew it but me. It’s a safe bet I will know where the watch is every day, in every corner of the city.”

Suspicion flared, and Dezra said, “It’s how you know that troubles me.”

Madoc’s eyes glittered, hard as stone. His expression was no longer congenial. “I know, but telling you how will compromise more people than you or Aline. You say I have no allegiance. You’re wrong. But you don’t know where all my loyalties lie, and there’s no reason for me to tell you. Aline can live with that. Can you?”

Dez made a choice. “I can, and I hope Aline and everyone else won’t die of it.”

He looked up the road and down again. All was quiet. “You’ll have to take the chance.”

“You, too,” Dez said. “If I even think you’re going to be a danger to Aline or to Usha…” Her hand moved swiftly, the knife flashed from her boot sheath. “You’re a dead man.”

Madoc shrugged as though to say she’d spoken the obvious. “But for now, we work together.”

“For now.”

Dezra dashed across the road and slipped through the shadows and across the garden behind the inn. Not surprisingly, she found the kitchen door bolted. It wouldn’t be opened again until Bertie the cook’s boy roused himself to go out and see if there would be a delivery of produce from the market or whether he’d have to dig around in the kitchen garden. It could go one way or the other. Sometimes the knights confiscated cartloads of produce from the outlying farms, and sometimes they didn’t. When they came back lacking, rumor said it was because farmers were hoarding, secreting their fruit and vegetables in root cellars and caves. It was the kind of thing that put Dez in two minds. Good for the farmers if they were cheating the knights. Too bad for Haven, which would go hungry soon if food stopped coming in.

For now, however, what the knights took, they dropped off at the market, loading the carts of those who could pay good steel coin and ignoring those who couldn’t. Distribution they left up to the carters, for now. Bertie had a kinsman of some degree or another in the carting business with whom he was on good terms. The Ivy was making out well, so far.

Still, we’ll have to do something about a better way inside than waiting for Bertie, Dez thought as she settled down in the fragrant shadows of a honeysuckle hedge to wait for night to end.

10

Usha sat in the cushioned window seat, the city quiet behind her. It was as though all the world was sleeping, and she was a solitary island of wakefulness. She felt so until she turned and looked out the window. Old Keep, high on the hill, blazed with light. Sir Radulf Eigerson was said to seldom sleep; Lady Mearah—said rumor—never did. Usha imagined them pacing the corridor of the place, issuing curt, cold orders to knights and soldiers. A chill slipped down her neck and slid along her spine. How easy must have been the order for a hanging? She remembered Sir Radulf’s ice cold eyes. Not difficult at all.

The scent of the river moved only faintly on the night. The breeze came from another direction tonight, and so the fragrances and sounds of the inn’s gardens drifted through the high windows of Usha’s studio. Honeysuckle and wisteria mingled with the rich odor of dark wet earth, and the peepers still shrilled by the pond across the road behind the inn. Underneath it all, the tang of paint and turpentine remained to speak of a week of her work.

Usha wondered where Dez was now. They hadn’t spoken this morning. Dezra had been up and out early, and she hadn’t come home yet. She was Qui’thonas now, more often with Aline and Dunbrae than at the Ivy. By design or chance, they hadn’t seen much of each other in the week since Madoc had walked her home from the Grinning Goat. Usha wasn’t prepared to lay the blame for that at Dezra’s feet—or not all of it. She hadn’t been able to forget her sister-in-law’s insinuation that Usha’s behavior wasn’t appropriate for a married woman. Still, she wondered where Dezra was.

The night was hot. Usha tucked up her skirts into her belt, as farm girls do. She drew up her bare legs, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.

Shapely legs, Palin used to say. Wife, come here and bring those shapely legs of yours along. He hadn’t said any such thing in a very long time.

Usha stretched and yawned. She thought of abandoning the studio for the little alcove of a bedroom, but returned her chin to rest on her knees. She had been on her feet all day, mixing paints and working at the canvas where the portrait of Lorelia Gance’s two sons was now nearly finished. Another hour of good light and it would have been finished, the complete work drying now. It was not to be, but Usha hadn’t been ready to leave her work once the light left her studio.

And so she’d sat in the window, studying her painting by the moon’s light as it traveled across the room, sweeping the canvas. The images of young Thelan and Kalend had been illuminated by silver for as long as the moon hung outside her window. Shadows had draped most of the portrait, but the eyes of the two boys seemed to gleam with mischief. That silver light was gone now, replaced by the warm glow from two banks of candles, and the faces, once a little distant in the moon’s light, now had come to rich, full life.

Usha laughed softly. She could imagine that if she looked away for even a moment, Lorelia’s imps would leap from the canvas and tear around the studio like a couple of wild goblin-children.

But there on canvas they were quite tame. Kalend stood beside his seated brother. In the end, Lorelia had left the choice of setting in Usha’s hands, and Usha had chosen the solar. She had painted a richly appointed room, one in which books lined the wall, rare bound books of the kind only seen in libraries like the one in Palanthas. Velvet curtains draped the windows, and vases full of roses graced the tables. Thelan sat with quill in hand, a lap desk on his knee. Kalend held a model ship in his hands as though he’d just lifted it to study. She had painted them among the icons of their parents’ riches, and she couldn’t doubt that Lorelia and her councilman husband would be pleased.

A silvery lock of curling hair slipped from beneath Usha’s kerchief. She tucked it back behind her ear, and with the motion came the sudden feeling that were the painting dry this instant, it would not feel finished. Usha didn’t know why, but she knew she should sit and watch; she should wait.

And so she did, “watching the night grow dark as the moon sank. She watched the candlelight rise and fall with the breeze. She sat in the window, the stiffness of the day’s work fading, her muscles relaxing, and she knew when the breeze fell, when the stillness of the night became like a muffling cloak. She heard knights on patrol, the innkeeper’s dog barking, one of many shouting at the night. Cats screeched in the alley. Moments later, she felt the grim shadow of a dragon overhead, the fear of it sliding like ice through her heart. The dogs grew quiet, the cats suddenly silent. Usha felt fear melt when the beast was gone, sailing over another part of the city to chill sleep with nightmare.

At last, the sky grew lighter. She heard the rattle and clop of the cart that made the rounds of the inns and taverns—the produce seller, who if he had anything to sell came first to these patrons with his fruit and vegetables and eggs before taking his goods to the market. The solid sound of hooves on cobbles roused her, as though she’d been sleeping.

Usha yawned, stretched her arms, and stood to ease muscles gone stiff with sitting. Pale dawn’s light made the little candle flames seem to vanish. It lay gently on the painting. Though she had felt that the painting was not complete, the soft light showed her that nothing had changed during her vigil.

“Ho! The inn!” an old man’s voice cried. “Ho! Bertie! Wake up, boy!”

The produce cart by-passed the lane that led to the inn’s dooryard and went along the cobbled street so that Bertie the cook’s boy could dart out the back of the Ivy with empty baskets to fill. Usha heard the kitchen door slam, followed by the thud of the boy’s feet on the dirt path to the street.

“Hey!” Bertie cried. “Pull up, old man! Don’t pass us by!”

The carter laughed and pulled his brown mare to a halt. The laughter drew a smile from Usha. This ritual was old between the two, for the produce seller made it a point to arrive at the Ivy first and wait for a yea or nay from Bertie or the cook.

Like a storm rumbling in the distance, the sound of galloping horses throbbed in the morning stillness. Usha’s smile died as Bertie turned to look up the street in the opposite direction from where the cart had come. From the height of her study window, Usha saw the knights before he did. In the narrow street, they spurred their horses, running sometimes side by side, sometimes three together, as though they were in a race.

Usha leaned out her window, calling out to Bertie. Her warning went unheard as the laughing, shouting knights, five on tall horses, five in flashing mail shirts, swept around the cart, cursing the old man and hooting in laughter at his terror. The brown mare panicked and bolted. The cart lurched, then tumbled. The old man fell from the seat, trying to scramble out of the way of iron-shod hooves.

Bertie ran to help the old man up, the poor creature shaking an ancient fist and cursing as loud as his quavering voice could manage. People poured out of the inn, children wide-eyed and clinging to their mothers’ hands, young men and boys milling around and snarling at the vanished knights. None bent to help the old man and the cook’s boy retrieve the spilled produce until Dezra came running round the corner.

“Come on!” she shouted, elbowing a young man into action, shooing away a few children. “Help the old fellow, won’t you?”

Prodded, the young man got the carter to his feet while Dez and Bertie gathered up what fruits and vegetables hadn’t been damaged. One or two others pitched in by chasing after the bolted mare and trying to right the cart.

Thinking to run down and help, Usha turned from the window.

Her breath caught hard in her throat. Her painting had changed. The boys still stood and sat where she’d arranged them. But behind the children, hardly seen but out the corner of the eye, two strong, well-grown men stood. One had dark hair, the other golden. Thelan went clean-shaven, a proper merchant prince in rich attire. His brother—

Usha gasped, in her heart a pang of both fear and pride. Dark-haired Kalend wore martial attire, and he bore a shield whose insignia Usha well knew—that of a Solamnic Knight of the Rose. The insignia was the same as the one her own child wore, the Lady Knight Linsha Majere.

Kalend stood tall in armor burnished like silver, the armor of a Knight of Solamnia. Painted upon his shield was the mark of an order of knights that even now, in lands beyond Haven, beyond Qualinesti of the elves, fought courageously against dark knights such as those who ran roughshod through Haven today.

With great restraint, Usha assured the harried Lorelia that the painting would be framed—“Yes, exactly as you directed”—and it would be installed in her solar by week’s end. There was a constant coming and going of framers. The dwarf Henge had the work. Not one of them noticed the ghost of a knight, and finally the painting went home, by cart through the streets, wrapped carefully and put in a crate, the crate packed in straw.

On the day of its arrival Usha and the portrait were guests of honor at a gathering of Lorelia’s family, the two boys, her husband, her cousin Loren, and his daughter Tamara.

Who, she wondered, would see just the boys, and who would see the ghost of a knight not yet made?

At Lorelia’s insistence, there was a light supper before the unveiling, afterward a stroll in the gardens while the air was growing cool, and the inevitable discussions between Have-lock Gance and Loren Halgard about when, whether, or if Sir Radulf would begin to issue safe conduct passes out of the city. The two men were not in agreement, and Usha tended to believe Havelock Gance when he said, “Those are for merchants willing to leave their families behind for hostage. I think it was always going to be that way, but early on…” He shook his head, his skepticism changing to bitterness before Usha’s eyes. “Early on, the talk of passes was to keep people quiet. Fools believed it.”

“We believed it,” Loren said, grimly.

“You heard me—fools. All right, all right,” he said in answer to Loren’s hard look. “It’s true he made a show of letting people into the city and back out again—the Plainsfolk who trade in the market, a farmer or two who wanted to sell his produce. But now that he has his own supply lines the only choice a farmer gets is to hand over the harvest to the knights or die for it. They did the same thing in Qualinesti. I don’t know what made me think they wouldn’t do it here.”

“Qualinesti didn’t have the trade routes we have, or the trading partners. They traded some, here and there and mostly down in the south where the knights could control it. We have the sea lanes, Havelock, and our captains know every port from here south to Ice Wall, from here north over Nordmaar and down to the Blood Sea.” He sat back and took a drink from his wine goblet. “And, to boot, our traders know most of the caravan routes across the Plains of Dust. They can’t keep us prisoners forever. They’ll have to let the fleet go soon. Let them put a knight at the elbow every captain. Let them replace half the crew from their own rabble. They still have to let the fleet go.”

“Some,” Havelock Gance said very quietly, “some think we should resist.”

Loren’s face looked pale. Usha thought it looked like the skin was suddenly drawn tight over his bones. “The time for that was weeks ago, cousin. The Lord Mayor chose otherwise and hasn’t been heard from about the matter since. And I think he was right. If we’d resisted, we would have lost far more than we already have. We are not warriors. We are merchants.”

“Merchants who bought a lie and wait for passes that will not come.” Gance, who had not agreed with the Lord Mayor, growled something into his wine goblet and looked up to see Usha’s doubtful expression. Eyebrow cocked, he said, “Mistress Usha, it seems you have an opinion.”

“Several,” Usha said, smiling to soften the reply. “But on this matter, I agree with Loren. Solace is a wealthier city than Haven these days.”

Gance bristled, and Usha shook her head gently.

“You know it’s true, but Haven has one thing Solace will never have—a merchant fleet. The fleet is the reason the knights took Haven first when they came for the Free Realms. But I agree with you, sir, that Sir Radulf isn’t going to be issuing passes.” Her heart dropped a little as a long held hope leeched away. “He won’t take a chance of letting any of the wealth out of this city. And you know people would bolt with their jewels and silver as soon as they could.”

“Some,” said Loren grimly, “have already decided to do that, and they’re not taking more than the clothes on their backs.”

“That, I think, is the danger the knights most fear,” Usha said. “However unfounded the idea, they don’t want to take the chance that the refugees who leave will return with a liberating army.” Thinking of Dez, of Aline and Qui’thonas, she said, “It will only get harder from here.”

None of the three spoke of the second executions, the five men and three women found hanged on crude gallows erected in the middle of the night at one of the major crossroads, well within the city walls. They’d born a painted placard with the same message as the first: Swift Judgment. Swift Justice. Beneath a sigil shaped like a sword was neatly printed the one, stark detail of their crimes: they had been caught trying to leave the city. Like the first, news of this execution was a horror that ran through the city on wings, then vanished away from public talk almost as quickly. As though, Usha thought, people couldn’t bear to admit too much darkness into their lives for very long.

Conversation drifted away from grim realities. As the day grew cooler and the sky deeper, there had been a rowdiness of boys, and as Lorelia kept mentioning by way of apology for her reduced staff, “a defection of servants throughout the quarter.” They did not indenture servants in Haven. None were vassals of a manor. They were free folk, and many servants did not think it satisfactory to accept meal and bed for compensation until things returned to normal in Haven. There were other jobs to be had, ones that paid at the end of the day. One of the defectors was the tutor of the Gance sons, who’d claimed she was not too proud to find work in a tavern where at least she’d be paid something as server and cook.

There had been all of that, and there had been, since Usha first arrived at Lorelia’s home, a pull and a tug she could not ignore. Loren Halgard had his eye on her more often than on whatever person he was speaking with. When he asked to escort her into the house, Usha put her hand on his arm and allowed it. It was a pleasant sensation, a man’s arm under her hand again. His skin was brown and warm, and when he leaned close to whisper his congratulations on finishing the portrait, Usha smelled the river breeze on him, fresh and cool.

“My dear!” Lorelia Gance fluttered between the painting and the artist. “It’s wonderful! Have you named it?”

All eyes turned to Usha, waiting to learn the answer in various attitudes of interest—politeness, and in the case of Tamara, barely concealed boredom.

“I call it ‘Pride and Promise.’ ”

Lorelia beamed, her husband Havelock made a comfortable sound of approval.

“Pride and Promise.” It sat in a broad oak frame, for the moment resting upon a stout easel until it could be lifted and mounted above the hearth. There, it would become the focus of all who entered. Pleased, Usha admitted the painting showed well. However, she kept private her puzzlement that no one but she seemed to see the faint image of a Solamnic knight standing behind the gangly boy of the portrait. Puzzlement and, she had to admit, a certain amount of relief. She did not doubt her work. She had perfect faith that the magic in her muse would reveal its purpose when that became necessary. Sometimes, though, she wished she could know what the magic was thinking when it chose to express itself.

Usha glanced uneasily at Tamara who peered at the canvas as though looking for faults. If she found any, the image of a Solamnic knight hovering ghostly on the canvas was not one. If she’d seen it, Usha wondered, studying the girl as keenly as Tamara had studied the painting, would she have gone to Sir Radulf with the news?

Tamara moved away. Thelan and his brother, Kalend the knight-to-be, stood restlessly before the portrait of themselves, already bored by the company of their elders. Kalend elbowed his brother, and Thelan poked him hard between the ribs. Their father clamped a hand on each boy’s shoulder.

Tamara returned to the easel, peering even more closely. Watching her while appearing not to, Usha held her breath. She let it go softly when the girl murmured, “I don’t think Kalend’s eyes are quite that far apart.”

Loren, standing beside Havelock, quietly cleared his throat. Tamara lifted her head as though to defy something implicit in the sound, then she sighed.

“But the colors are quite lovely,” she said, not to Usha but to Lorelia.

“And you, Loren,” his cousin said. “You’ve not spoken a word about the portrait. Are these not the exact images of my boys?”

Gravely, Loren agreed that the painting might well be a mirror for the two boys to stand before. He inclined his head in a small bow to Usha. “And I’m delighted that Tamara is improving her understanding of how colors work to make a pleasing whole.”

His guests tended, his own cup full again, Havelock Gance toasted the portrait by pledging the health of both artist and subjects.

He was a tall man, thin as a whippet, and quiet where Lorelia chattered and laughed. Stress marked his pale face—the skin around his eyes tight, the lines around his mouth deeply scored. Havelock Gance was the chief counselor to the Lord Mayor of Haven, a man used to power who had been weeks watching power bleed away.

Were she to paint him, Usha would paint a man trying to staunch a wound.

“Thank you, my Lord Counselor.” She smiled, he returned it, and his eyes lighted in a way that reminded Usha of the glint in the eye of the young Solamnic knight he could not see. “Your sons were admirably robust subjects.”

Comfortable laughter applauded the tactful description of the rowdy sons, and Loren came to stand beside Usha. His eye kindled, but his cheek was pale. She thought of Havelock Gance, a man trying to keep a balance between the needs of his city and the demands of Sir Radulf. It was borne in on Usha that their discussions in the garden had not been casual conversation between friends, or the uninformed wondering that made much of Haven’s conversation these days. The two men had been debating a point, perhaps a strategy toward a goal they shared: the survival of Haven and her people.

“Loren—”

He hushed her with a gesture, in his eyes a plea to soften the abruptness of it. “Walk with me. Later, when this is over, walk with me to your inn.”

Around them, the voices of Lorelia’s family rose and fell, but the conversation was ebbing. Outside, the shadows grew long. People must leave soon, for curfew was coming.

“You won’t be able to do that and return home in time.”

She said so without knowing where he lived. He shook his head. “It’s not a problem. My carriage will take Tamara home, and it will be waiting by the Ivy for me before we return.”

His gray eyes grew dark. Usha thought of storms. But she didn’t think of anger, not his toward her, and she didn’t imagine that he commanded her, though his stern look could be misunderstood that way. And so she agreed. She would let him walk her home.

Usha walked in silence beside Loren in the long shadows and the russet light of sunset. The street was quiet, carts and most carriages gone back to their stables. Dogs ran in small packs, more of those than used to be when the streets of Haven were filled with people day and night.

“It’s like a different town,” Usha said, her voice low, as a knight rode by.

She knew him by his mail shirt. They didn’t go in full armor anymore. They had no fear of a populace willing to do what it must to keep peace. Now and then, they hanged the luckless who tried escape, but Sir Radulf had no real fear of Haveners.

The knight looked at her, slowed his mount and sat to stare. His frank regard made Usha uncomfortable. His eyes reminded her of Sir Radulf’s, the eyes of a man who possesses all he sees. Loren took her hand and placed it in the crook of his arm. The knight smirked and moved on.

“He knows you,” Usha said.

Loren shrugged. “We’ve seen each other before.”

“If I’d been walking alone?”

“Who knows?” Loren lifted a hand to pat hers. She almost smiled to see his expression as he thought better of what would have been a condescending gesture. “But you aren’t alone, and you’re safe.”

The knight met another at the intersection of two streets. They stopped, talked, and rode on. The watch was setting up.

Her hand on Loren’s arm, Usha kept pace with him, and they didn’t stop until they were three or four blocks from the Ivy. The knights were gone, only the sound of their horses hooves to say they’d turned each down a separate street.

Loren looked around and said, “Usha, the portrait of Lorelia’s boys is lovely. Your work is remarkable.” His voice dropped lower for emphasis. “But you will want to be careful.”

She tilted her head a little, to question.

The storm grew stronger in his eyes, some emotion he wasn’t ready to act upon. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. That portrait is dangerous.”

A little thrill raced along Usha’s arms. He had seen the magic in this painting as well as in “Silver Flight.” She stopped, turned, and took his hands in her own. The gesture surprised her. When she began to move away, he closed his hands around hers.

“Loren, what do you see when you look at the portrait?”

He frowned, puzzled now. “You know what I see.”

“In truth, I don’t. I know what I see, and I’m fairly sure I know what others see. But, what do you see?”

Again his voice was low, and he glanced along the street. “You’ve painted a ghost into that portrait.”

“A ghost? Of a dead person?” Usha shook her head. “I certainly don’t see that.”

He did not smile. “Don’t quibble. You know what I mean. The knight. You painted the shadow of the knight.”

She did not argue, and when she realized she was dangerously close to flirtation, her laughter sounded brittle. Usha removed her hands from his. She continued toward the inn, and it seemed to her that the evening air had grown chill.

“Loren, your cousin doesn’t see… it. Havelock doesn’t. I’m fairly certain your daughter doesn’t either.”

This gave him pause. He was silent and she knew he was trying to understand how some could see one set of images on the canvas while others saw differently.

“I know,” she said. “It’s my magic, but… it belongs to itself.”

“Are you certain Sir Radulf won’t see a ghost in the painting? Are you sure we are the only two who can see it? And for that matter, why can I see it?”

“I don’t know.”

Again, the sound of a horse, but this came from ahead. Loren’s carriage waited at the mounting block near the inn’s dooryard. He took her hands again, his eyes sharp, his expression earnest.

“Usha, can you fix the picture?”

“Fix it?” The idea was strange to her. “It isn’t broken. Loren, it is what it is. Who is meant to see all of it, will.”

“Kalend himself didn’t see it.”

“Not yet. Perhaps he isn’t meant to.”

“And if Sir Radulf sees it?”

She couldn’t answer, she didn’t know, and so she said, “I trust my magic. You must trust me.”

His hands still held hers. He pressed them now, palm to palm, and covered them both. “I don’t understand you, Usha Majere. In a time when magic is dying, you fling paint onto a canvas and create wonders.” He shook his head. “In this dangerous place, you ask for trust. I don’t understand you.”

He was not taller than she. Usha could meet him eye to eye. She did, looking into the eyes of this man who spoke of putting his hope in the promise of a conquering knight, and at the same time sought the company of the woman who had painted a work he was afraid could destroy his family.

Usha felt a rush of sympathy for him—his struggle to do what was best for his child, his kin, and the city he loved. Traps lay on every side. Sir Radulf could betray his trust, destroy his daughter… Loren played a dangerous game.

In that moment she wanted to answer him and say, “I don’t understand myself.”

But she did not, for if he’d asked her for a better answer, she’d have to look closely at what that answer could be and admit that she liked the way Loren’s hand felt on her arm. She liked the way he looked at her—gravely from gray eyes as though he had something he wanted to say but had no words for the saying.

She would have to admit that when she was with Loren she could not remember much about Palin Majere that didn’t call up the ghosts of passions that had burned brightly in the years of their marriage—and dwindled to sorrow and loss in these years of his absence.

Shaken, Usha bade Loren good night, freed her hands, and slipped away, running the last half block to the inn.

11

Usha woke suddenly from uneasy sleep, not sure if the sharp rap on the door and the whispered urgency was real or the clinging shred of a dream. The rap was not repeated, but the whisper was, in Dezra’s voice, rough and hoarse. “Usha!”

Heart thumping hard, she slipped from the bed and padded on bare feet across the cool wood floor. She lifted the bolt and peered into the inky darkness of the corridor, then held the door wider. Dez stepped quickly inside, smelling of sweat and horses, and of damp earth. Since Dez had joined Qui’thonas it had become Usha’s nightly dread that one day she would return smelling of injury, of blood.

“Are you all right?”

Dez nodded. “Fine. Hot, but all right. I have some news.” Good news or bad, Usha couldn’t tell from the wry twist in her voice. “I’ll tell you for a drink of water.”

Usha filled a cup with water from the jug on her night-stand. Dez drank it down and held the cup out for more.

“There’s going to be an announcement from Old Keep today.”

“When?”

“Best I can gather is around noon. Don’t know much more than that.”

When Usha refilled the cup, Dez took it gratefully. Her face ran with sweat, her hair clung to her neck and cheeks. Even with every window open, the rooms at the top of the inn were still and stuffy, little cooler than they had been at day’s end.

Quickly exchanging nightdress for skirt and blouse, Usha said, “How do you know this, Dez?”

“I was out.”

She never said more than that. By agreement neither Dez nor Usha ever mentioned Qui’thonas or its missions, not even indirectly, for fear of being overheard.

“I was coming back here and I heard a knight talking to another near Cross Street by the market. There’ll be an increase in the mounted watch around Old Keep. They were talking about that. Some people are already starting to talk about passes again.”

Usha shook her head. “They’ve pretty much given over that idea among the Lord Mayor’s council.” When Dez raised an eyebrow in silent question, she shrugged. “I heard it at the unveiling of the portrait I painted of the Gance children. Havelock Gance said it’ll never happen. I think he’s right.” She ignited a candle, and then a small oil lamp on the little desk. By that light, she began the hunt for hose and shoes. “You haven’t heard anything reliable?”

“Just that there’ll be something said from Old Keep. I don’t want to miss that, whatever it is.”

“I don’t either.” Usha found her hose and looked around for her shoes. “Once word of this gets through the city—and that’ll be about the time the first crier rings a bell—there’ll be no getting near Old Keep to know what Sir Radulf is up to. We’d better get going.” Usha slipped her feet into her shoes and looked up. “Now.”

Old Keep dazzled in the midsummer sun, bands of light reflected from the river sliding up and down Haven’s tallest tower. Before the sun was truly up, Usha and Dez had become part of a stream of people flowing toward the hill where the ancient tower stood. Dawn was already hot, the murmur of voices—querulous, resentful, some hopeful and most doubtful—became like a groundswell as more and more people crowded onto the hard packed earth around the base of the hill. The place that once served to train men and women for Haven’s defense was now a training ground for Sir Radulf’s men. The thunder and rush of battle-play had turned the place into a field of dust and stone. That dust rose now, a haze hanging over the hopeful.

Usha looked around, wondering whether they’d been wise to come early. This crowd looked much like the mass of people who’d struggled toward Haven’s gate on the day after Sir Radulf took the city. They were mostly stranded travelers and those citizens who felt they had no stake in Haven anymore. But since the city had fallen, in three separate executions thirteen people had been hanged for trying to leave. Usha could hear the question voiced beneath the murmuring: If the knight killed thirteen before, why will he let anyone out now?

The answer was beginning to be borne in on even the most foolishly hopeful: He wouldn’t.

“Dez,” Usha said, her voice carefully low. “Where is the dragon?”

Dez frowned. Where, indeed?

The great black dragon, who had led the reds in the conquest of Haven, was every morning seen to be sunning itself on the flat roof of the tower.

The skin on the back of Usha’s neck prickled and fear crept cold into her blood, even as she said, “They must have moved it off somewhere. Out by the river, maybe over to the Qualinesti side.”

“For a good wallow in the mud?” Dez shook her head. “I wouldn’t move my greatest weapon out. I’d say, damn the dragon-fear. It’s good for order.”

The low murmur of the crowd changed. It rose in volume and pitch. Usha heard individual voices now as people looked around to see what was happening. Someone cried out and pointed behind them to a row of mounted knights. The crowd hushed, a child shouted, and an old man near Usha leaned on his cane and quavered an oath. The knights spread out, forming a cordon around the crowd, keeping them away from the river and the foot of the keep’s mound.

“Dez, do you know a way out? Just in case?”

Dezra’s calm expression belied the sharp gleam in her green eyes. “I usually know one when I see one.”

Usha found this assertion to be lean comfort, but with the flicker of a glance toward her left boot Dezra silently let Usha know that, despite the first edict of the occupation, she was not unarmed.

Again the sound of those gathered changed, and the people grew still as though by one accord. Usha looked up to the tower. The highest place in Haven was not so high that she couldn’t make out the shape of two men standing on the ancient watch-walk. One was clearly a knight. He wore his sword proudly on his hip, and his black mail gleamed in the sunlight.

Usha shaded her eyes against the sun, squinting to get a good sharp look at him. “Sir Radulf,” she said.

Dezra nodded then pointed to the tower. Loren Halgard walked to stand beside the knight as people around them voiced recognition of one of their own. Someone jeered, but more fell silent as though to give the man a chance.

“And there’s someone else you know,” Dezra said.

Usha looked at her, surprised. She’d said nothing of her recent encounter with Loren. She’d hoped the matter was safely closed between them.

Her voice carefully neutral, Dezra said, “Whatever else I think of Madoc Diviner, you don’t spend much time in his company without learning one thing or another.”

Startled and suddenly angry, Usha said, “Are my friends watching me?”

Dezra shrugged. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Usha. You—”

What else she would have said died into the silence falling over the crowd as Loren stepped forward. Stranded travelers had no reason to know him, but many of Haven’s natives did. These strained to see him as well as hear him. He stood like a captain on the deck of one of his sailing ships, head high, his voice deep and loud enough to carry out over the sea of faces.

“The Lord Mayor, his Council, and the leaders of Haven’s merchants have been in discussion since the first night of Haven’s occupation.”

The crowd murmured. As though in response to a signal, around the perimeter of the throng, mounted knights moved, shaping the crowd into something smaller, more contained. Usha’s mouth went dry. Dezra looked around, eyes narrow, searching, as Loren continued to speak.

“We have come to an agreement!” He pumped a fist into the air. “The proud merchant fleet of Haven is ready to sail!”

A cheer went up from the crowd, ringing in echo against the stone walls of Old Keep. Prayers of thanks to vanished gods flew out on the wings of those cries.

“The first ships—from the fleets of Daare Egil, Lahra Grimson, and my own—will set sail on the morning tide. The sails of Haven will be seen on the seas again!”

The joyful shouts redoubled, soaring up the sky, as though Loren had announced the striking off of chains. But he hadn’t. He’d simply started off with the good news. Usha, looking around uneasily, realized that few people understood that.

“Listen!” Loren shouted, trying to be heard above the thundering roar. Behind him, a second knight came out of the Keep and spoke to Sir Radulf. If Loren knew, he didn’t turn. He lifted his arms, calling for quiet. “Listen! There is more to tell.”

The crowd stilled, silence rolling back from the foot of the mound and to the very edges of the gathering. Usha glanced at Dezra, who was looking around the crowd, noting the position of the mounted knights.

“Be ready,” Dezra whispered. “Your friend is going to say something this crowd won’t like.”

Usha’s belly tightened. She kept an eye on Dezra now.

“Last night,” Loren said, “after grave and thoughtful consideration, our Lord Mayor has turned over the stewardship of Haven to his Council, and they have voted to disband in favor of a citizen’s committee that will work in close cooperation with Sir Radulf. The committee will be made up of people you know, men and women who…”

Loren’s voice faded, hardly heard now above the rustling of people shifting from one foot to another, the restless, angry mutter that came from nowhere and everywhere as people began to understand that the man whose family had ruled Haven for generations no longer held power. An ancient tradition had ended.

Shrill, almost panicky, a woman’s voice shouted: “Show us our lord mayor!”

Like fire suddenly kindled, similar cries erupted from the crowd, people demanding to see their mayor and hear from his own lips that this unprecedented change had been made. Some shouted that he’d been forced, some called him a traitor, and everyone cried out to see him.

Loren stepped back, turning to the knights.

“If he has any sense,” Dez muttered, “Sir Radulf is going to send that other knight scurrying for the lord mayor. It was stupid move not letting him make the announcement himself.”

Perhaps, Usha thought. Perhaps not, for sight of the mayor would surely inflame the mood of the crowd. Or… a sudden thought chilled Usha. “Dez, maybe the lord mayor couldn’t make the announcement. Maybe—”

Someone shouted in a strong voice, “It’s time to take back our city!” and others joined in, while women clutched their children and looked around for ways out of the mob.

The old man beside Usha laughed, a brittle bitter cackle. “Young fools!” He clutched his cane as the people around him began to sway and move, some toward the way they’d come in, others surging toward the keep itself. “Fools! Where were they when the damned city fell? Now they care. Now!”

Usha looked up, trying to find Loren. Sweat and dust stung her eyes. From this distance, she couldn’t see his face. She could see him move, though, and the snap of his head, the swift turn that spoke of a sudden shock of fear, of terror.

There was a moment—Usha saw Dez feel it, too—when the world around seemed to still. In that moment, the crowd became motionless; As though by agreement; no one moved for the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Then, swift and dark as a terrible storm, a black-winged dragon sailed the currents low over the White-rage River. It did no more than that. It didn’t even turn its great head or note the crowd or Sir Radulf in any way. It didn’t have to.

Women screamed, children sobbed, and young men buckled under the inexorable weight of dragonfear. Usha felt her own legs go weak and watery. Terror gripped her—terror of the fanged beast, its talons longer than her forearm, its eyes blazing and cold as the eyes of its rider. She saw Dez’s face drain of color, and she felt the thunder of horses beneath her feet.

The dragon tilted its wings a little, dropped lower and then pushed up again, catching the air current and vanishing beyond the city. Usha could breathe again.

“Dez!” she shouted. Her voice sounded strangled. “Dez, the knights! Let’s go!”

Like an arrow sprung from the bowstring, Dezra grabbed Usha’s wrist, holding hard as she ran. The knights pricked their mounts now, the horses snorted, and the cordon tightened around the crowd.

Fear changed the crowd into a mob, and panic threw the mob into a rout. In the dust and screaming, Dezra’s hand slipped away. Usha stumbled and fell. Someone tripped over her. Another kicked her. She cried out in pain and then in anger. Scrambling to her feet, she looked around for Dezra and saw her running back to her through the crowd.

“No, Dez! Go! I’ll follow!”

One flash of fear lit Dezra’s face, then she turned and ran, shouldering, elbowing, kicking a way through the crowd for Usha to follow. It worked for a few dreadful moments, with all the thunder and panic coming behind her, Usha ran and she came within arm’s length of Dezra.

A child wailed, a woman shrieked, and a horse reared between Usha and them, ironshod hooves flashing in the dusty air. Laughing, the knight sawed the bit in the horse’s mouth and leaned down to grab Usha. She saw his eyes, heard his laughter, and knew him at once. Sir Arvel swung her off her feet and tried to toss her over the saddle and the horse’s withers. Usha twisted, slapping his face and raking his cheek with her nails so deeply that he bled. Cursing, Sir Arvel flung her away, and she spun to her knees. When she scrambled up, he was gone.

Though it seemed like hours, the rout was over in a matter of minutes. The knights departed the field to range themselves before every way out of the practice ground but that leading back into Haven by Cross Street. Usha stumbled along with the others who could manage. She wrapped her arms around herself, not seeing her torn blouse, not feeling scraped elbows or the red welts on her arm that would soon become bruises. Shivering in shock, she tripped on the dragging hem of her skirt. She staggered up again and went on.

When she found Dezra, Usha was no longer in shock. She was trembling with white-faced fury. Neither spoke but to be sure the other was well, and they went on in silence back through the clogged streets where people wept or muttered dire imprecations.

Usha paid heed to none of it, the weeping or the railing. Her body ached, her heart was sore with anger each time she recalled the sudden appearance of the dragon and the terror it inspired. She couldn’t forget the look of horror on Loren’s face, while Sir Radulf stood calmly by to watch the panic. To her surprise, she felt a twinge of sorrow for the man whose faith in the knight had been betrayed.

Dez, for a long time quiet, said, “What happens now, do you think?”

“I don’t know. The ships go out. That’s good, I suppose. But the Council is disbanded, the lord mayor…” Usha glanced at Dez, lowering her voice. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

“I don’t know. But they almost had a riot on their hands today. If he turns up dead, they might not be able to control the city.” She laughed, a hard, bitter sound. “Oh, they’d mow down anyone who riots, but they’d lose a lot doing it. Shops would close or be burned to the ground. The wharfs would go up in flames. I think there are enough people angry now that if they had a leader—or even one man with a loud voice crying havoc—they’d burn every ship in the harbor. Hate themselves for it later, but the mind of a mob isn’t given to thoughtful consideration. They might very well do it. No, the occupation can’t risk that. The lord mayor’s alive and well. Your friend Gance, too, I’ll bet. They’ll put in an appearance sooner or later.”

“And then… what? The city goes on this way, the fleet sails, and we’re still trapped here.”

“For now. Soon, other things might be possible.”

Dezra said no more, but they had become adept at speaking of secret things in oblique ways. Usha understood. Qui’thonas might make escape possible.

The sun shone hot on the city, gulls screamed in the blue sky, and all the trees were coated with dust. Usha longed for a cup of water, for clean clothes, for a quiet place to lie down and think. At the corner of the road that led to the Ivy, a group of young men stood, shoulders hunched, eyes low, like whipped pups. All but one, a red-headed youth swearing to the others that if need be, he would take down the occupation with his own two hands.

“Ah, Gafyn,” one said, “yer a loon. Ain’t gonna happen, never will.”

Gafyn bristled. “Not to the likes of you, ya spineless bastard.”

Dez laughed. “Boy,” she said when Gafyn turned in anger, “the occupation has a dragon. Or weren’t you there?”

His eye kindled, his jaw set, hard and stubborn. “I was there.”

Weary of her anger and disappointment, Usha said, “Dez, let’s go. Give it over for today.”

Dezra shook her head, her mocking eye still on the young boaster. “And did you notice how a field full of people fell to their knees while it passed, while it did no more than disdain to look and fly on?”

The young man’s eyes narrowed. His fellows walked away, but he stood his ground. “I saw. What’s yer point?”

“My point, boy, is that Sir Radulf used that bit of theater to remind Haven that he wields more weapons than knights and ropes for hanging, and to show how little patience he has for protest.” She turned and followed Usha, but only for a few steps before she stopped. “And here’s another point for you,” she said over her shoulder. “If you can’t keep your feet when a dragon glances your way, Master Gafyn, you’re damn sure not going to take an occupation down with your own two hands.”

Usha kept walking, waiting to hear the young man’s jeers. She did not, and when she looked back, she saw Dezra leaning against a low stone wall and talking with red-headed Gafyn.

12

Heart pounding, pulse in her temples booming, Dezra pressed herself against the stony side of the jagged gulch. Dirt slithered down the neck of her shirt, and something small with too many legs scurried past her cheek. Her breathing sounded like a bellows as she bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air. Above the crashing of her heartbeat, Dez tried to hear the sounds of pursuit.

She heard it—a shout, thunder of hard-ridden horses—and Dez pressed into the shadows as four horsemen galloped by above the gulch. She saw the horses, the foam of sweat on their legs. She saw the flash of iron and mail as someone shouted, “Where’s the woman got to?”

Another voice called, “How should I know?”

The pack above slowed, horses stamping and blowing. She heard a curse in a language she didn’t know and the sound of argument. Quickly, she looked upstream, back the way she’d come. Silt clouded the water, but that would be hard to see from above.

She hoped.

Another curse, and this one in Common. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go before milady comes looking for us.”

“And then what? Go back and tell her we might have seen something of interest but didn’t find out what?”

Other voices lifted in rough opinion, and Dez’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. Milady! These were Lady Mearah’s men, dark knights from Old Keep. Behind them, on the high land above the ravine, a farmhouse burned, and the corpses of the farmer and his two sons were laid out for wolf-fodder. Ahead, Dunbrae and two refugees rode toward the ravaged farm, toward the place they expected to meet Dezra. The farm was to be a waystop where friends would feed them and keep them the night. It was to be the place where Dunbrae would hand over the refugees to Dez so she could take them the next leg of the journey on the road across the moors and through the stony Seeker Reaches.

That plan was shattered when Dez came out of the hills and saw the smoking ruin of what had once been a stubbornly thriving farm. She’d had no chance to learn what had happened, whether outlaws had fallen on the lonely farm or something else, for standing in the ruin, she’d heard the sound of harsh laughter and the ring of bridles as four knights flashed down from one of the lean, stony pastures behind the farmyard.

One had seen her, another cried the chase, and Dezra had fled onto the moor. The best she could hope for now was that everyone’s luck held and Dunbrae and his charges wouldn’t run into the horsemen.

The argument was short-lived, and the riders stormed past. After a moment, Dez heard a change in the sound of the ground-thunder. The pack of them turned away from the gulch and galloped west across the moor.

Dezra groaned a prayer of thanks. If her luck held, they’d ride a good bit before thinking about checking the gullies and ravines.

Dezra ran, splashing through the narrow brook. She eyed the rocks on each side and the slopes of the rift. Sooner or later, she’d have to find a place to clamber up one side or the other.

She stumbled, splashing to her knees. Cursing, she tried to get up and fell again as pain like fire shot through her knee.

The damn thing’s busted—!

She tried again, staggered, and knew her knee wasn’t broken. It just hurt like it was. That was little comfort as Dezra stumbled on, searching for a way up, a way out of the gulch. She no longer thought it had been outlaws who’d raided the farm and torched it. In memory, she saw the dead man again, and then thought of his wife and daughter. They might now be suffering a harder fate than their kinsmen. Dark knights were not, these days, taken from the ranks of noble families. If Lady Mearah’s knights out of Haven had done the ill work, they wouldn’t be above selling the women in the same hideous markets where outlaws did their foul trade.

Dezra stumbled again, righted herself, and went on. Her knee screamed in pain, and she grunted curses at every step.

If knights had done the work, they’d have done it because they knew the farmer and his kin had been helping people escape Haven. By all the gone gods, the name Qui’thonas might have been spoken. Her heart sank. To save a wife, a daughter’s life, the secret might have been exposed.

And it would have been exposed for nothing.

Dezra rounded a sharp bend and blessed vanished gods when she saw her way up. A small path crawled up the eastern slope of the gulch, not more than the trail a slide of rocks might have left. Dezra laughed bitterly. Right there, at the foot of the path lay the stones that had forged the way, and they’d not made a secure path, no. No matter. It was a way, and she would take it.

The blood pounded in her head. Pain marked the beat. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Her knee throbbed, but not with the pain of a broken bone. For that, she was grateful.

“All right, then,” she muttered. “Up, now.”

Up, and it was a hard climb, a crawl at the end, with sweat and tears the fee for gaining the top. She looked around, seeking her bearings. Haven was a smudge on the southern horizon. Around her stretched harsh gray moorland. She stilled her breathing, trying to hear, but only the cries of gulls from the river and the occasional rasp of a raven interrupted the constant moan of wind over the moor.

And then she heard it—the ring of steel on steel. A small brown haze of dust hung in the air, and Dezra knew where the fighting was.

Dez shifted the quiver on her hip and strung her bow. She hadn’t the legs for running. Her knee would betray her. And so she walked toward the dust and the shouting. Steadily, head down and determined, she marched toward the sound of a horse’s scream. Closer, she stopped and nocked an arrow to the bowstring. Two others she clamped between her teeth. Stalking on, like grim death hunting, she picked her first mark and didn’t let him out of sight. Dezra took down his horse with an arrow through the eye. She killed the fallen rider the same way.

They had been four on horseback and one of them a knight. By the time Dez killed the horse and rider, one more horse was down but not killed, and the others were shying and rearing. The knight lay dead in his armor, and Dunbrae was yanking his axe out of the man’s throat. The dwarf fought a defensive fight with his battle-axe, the deadly blade flashing around him even though the haze. One of the refugees backed him, and his was the third kill. He left Dunbrae and turned, looking for the last of the attackers.

Dez saw him first—a burly, unshaven foot soldier who looked ugly enough to have goblin blood in him. The man turned toward a pile of stones, menacing a thin young woman who clutched a little girl wailing in terror. He had dark eyes empty of any light of mercy.

Dez nocked the third arrow, and Dunbrae abandoned the battle-axe for his throwing axe. In the same instant each took aim and let fly. An arrow through the throat, Dunbrae’s axe between his shoulder blades, the soldier fell, shock filling his eyes and blood bursting from his mouth.

Across the corpse, the dwarf’s eyes met Dezra’s. She raised an eyebrow, he cocked a dry grin, and so each knew the other was hale enough.

“Someone knows about Qui’thonas,” Dunbrae said.

Dez loosened the tension of her bowstring. “And the farm is burned to the foundations.”

“Damn.” Dunbrae squinted out across the moor, north as though he could see the ruins of the farm. “All dead?”

“The father and the sons. The women…” She shrugged. “No sign of them. But outlaws or knights—”

Dunbrae spat in the direction of the last dead man. “It was knights. I heard ’em crowin’ and carrying on. The women are gone, carried off somewhere.”

“We have to tell Aline that this way out is a dead end now.”

“Worse,” said the dwarf. “Sir Radulf knows about Qui’thonas. Not the name, maybe. All luck holding, not who’s running it. But he knew enough to burn one of our safe houses.”

Dez grunted, and when he cocked an eyebrow, she said, “I’m not sure about Sir Radulf, but these knights were talking about Lady Mearah.”

“So? One plague’s the same as another.”

“Maybe,” Dez said, but for some reason her gut seemed to know that wasn’t so.

Wind moaned down the moors, dust swirled in little dervishes, and flies had come to buzz around the dead. Gulls cried like ghosts. Dezra waited for the question she knew would come.

“Who cleared this route, Dez? Who told us there’d be no knights anywhere near this place?”

“Madoc Diviner.”

The dwarf grunted. The sobs of the terrified child huddled in her mother’s arms filled the silence between them.

“Men are dead, Usha.” The thud of Dezra’s boot heels as she paced the wooden floor punctuated her words. “Killed two nights ago, and—gods help them—two women were stolen, either dead or on their way to be sold.”

Usha set a plate of cold venison and a pitcher of water on the nightstand next to her sister-in-law’s bed. Dez ignored the makeshift breakfast, and Usha sat on the edge of the bed in stunned silence. The hair on the back of her neck prickled when she thought of the fate of the two missing women.

Dez stopped at the window and leaned against the sill. Blood smeared her clothes, dried and stiff and none of it her own. Her normally sun-browned face looked ashen in the afternoon light. The marks of fatigue and harrowed emotion showed in dark smudges under her eyes.

“Dez, what happened?”

Her voice leaden, Dezra said, “We were betrayed.”

Usha’s blood ran cold. “Do you know… do you know who betrayed you?”

Dez turned, her eyes flat and hard to read. “Funny you should ask, Usha. Maybe someone who can find a dark knight when he needs to—and get something back in kind for the information he passes on.”

Usha ignored the sarcasm. She tried to brush aside her own anger. The idea was ridiculous.

“I don’t believe you.”

Dezra’s bitter laughter sounded harsh as a crow’s. “You don’t ever believe me about Madoc.”

“I don’t believe little ghosts of rumors, if that’s what you mean. You know why he’s seen with the dark knights.”

“Sure. Information goes both ways. You give a little and hope to get more.”

Dezra poured water into a cup, drank it empty, and stabbed a chunk of venison with her knife. She ate as though she hadn’t had a meal in days.

“How careful do you think he is with what information he lets go, Usha? How soon do you think it will be before he’s made an offer much better than Aline’s?”

“Madoc would never betray Aline.”

“As you like. But no matter who you believe, it was Madoc who told us—his words to my ears!—that no knights would be patrolling where we were going that night.”

It was damning. Usha couldn’t deny. Still, she wasn’t able to believe it.

“Why is it so impossible to believe that Madoc himself was given wrong information? Or information that changed suddenly?”

“Him?” Dezra refilled her cup. “Madoc Diviner who boasts no one knows as much about the goings-on in Haven as he does? Give it over, Usha. He’s not to be trusted.”

Dezra said no more, plainly considering Madoc damned.

“What does Aline say about it?”

Dez looked disgusted. “You know how she is about him—besotted. Aline doesn’t know how to think when it comes to him. It’s like she’s never heard of working both ends against the middle.” Restless, she began to pace, her strides long and her boot heels thumping a grim tattoo on the floor. “He might be a traitor, but Madoc’s no fool, Usha. No one can be an honest broker of information these days. Sooner or later, Madoc will have to take sides. And the wise man picks his side early. Looks like he’s made his choice.”

Usha’s cheeks flushed with anger. “You have no reason to say that!”

“No reason—!”

“A mistake was made. Knights were where you weren’t expecting them. You don’t know Madoc set you up.”

“And I don’t know he didn’t. All I know is that I haven’t trusted him from the start, and I’m not starting now.”

Usha lifted the hem of her skirt and stepped over a dark, trickling stream of… she didn’t like to think what. Rats flashed around the piles of trash outside narrow doorways, bold even in daylight. One lean old gray sat atop a heap of rags and rotting food, beady eyes glinting darkly as it looked at her with clear disdain.

She shuddered. Though the sun sat high over Haven, in this narrow street between the Goat and the tumbledown building that might once have been a warehouse or a stable, it was always night. In this place, the heap of rags piled in doorways could turn out to be someone sleeping off a drunken binge. As easily, it could be the body of a man murdered for revenge, spite, amusement, or killed for the few copper coins in his belt.

Usha drew her skirts closer and hurried the last few yards to the tavern.

The door stood wide, perhaps to ease the smell of the place. Smoke from a badly laid fire in the kitchen hung thick in the air, but it couldn’t compete with the sour smell of beer and sweat and sawdust on the floor. Usha stepped inside, looking for Madoc and feeling every eye turn toward her.

“Mistress Usha!”

She turned, startled, and looked into the laughing eyes of Sir Arvel. The mark of her anger hadn’t healed from his face—four long scratches from cheekbone to mouth. She moved her lips in a chill, disdainful smile of acknowledgement. In answer, he sketched a mocking bow.

“It’s good to see you again, Mistress. But then we do see a bit of each other these days, don’t we?”

At the bar two women laughed, shrill peals that sounded like screeching. A low voice muttered something, and they laughed even harder. In the smoke and shadows, other people could be seen, some of them knights, others men, and a few women who seemed to have a great deal invested in keeping their faces hidden.

Sir Arvel put a hand under Usha’s elbow. When she moved pointedly away, he looked amused. “You’d be looking for our friend the mage?”

“I’m here to see Madoc, yes.”

“Too bad about that.” He jerked his head toward the farthest, smokiest corner of the tavern. Two people sat at a little table, one at his ease, the other hunched over, hiding or cursing, perhaps pleading. “He’s busy seeing what he can earn from some tale of grief and woe. Why don’t you come along with me and we can keep each other company while you wait?” He pulled a somber face, and the scratches on his check seemed to lengthen. “This isn’t the place for a lady to linger unescorted.”

A white hand slipped between them, snatching Usha’s own hand before the knight could reach for it. Bess, the tavern girl who’d occupied Madoc’s lap the last time Usha was there raised an eyebrow the knight.

“Now you know she’s not going to want to be sitting with the likes of you.” She tossed her head and gave him a saucy smile. “These women from the high streets, they have no taste for real men, Sir Knight.”

She slipped an arm around Usha’s waist and swept her away to a table near Madoc’s, yet not close enough so the face of his companion could be seen.

“Wait here now, Mistress. The mage knows yer here, and he’s told me to get ya what ya like to drink.” She shrugged. “Told me to keep an eye on ya.”

Usha smiled, surprised to do it. “You know, Bess, most people don’t think it of me, but when I was your age I was fairly handy at slipping away from the likes of Sir Arvel. I’ll be fine. ”

She saw the moment of disconnect she almost always did when people she didn’t know understood that she wasn’t the young woman she appeared to be. She saw the other look, too; the one that said, The woman’s daft or drunk.

“Well, then, if yer sure. Bring you an ale then?”

Usha thanked her and declined. She didn’t sit long before Madoc joined her. His eye on the bar and the whereabouts of Sir Arvel, Madoc spent some time in small talk until he saw the knight leave.

“Look,” he said, nodding toward the door just then closing.

Usha did, in time to see Sir Arvel fall into step beside a slender man half a head shorter than he. The man, dressed in brown hunting leathers, had the look of an elf about him, but they were gone before Usha could be certain.

“Who’s that?” Madoc asked.

Puzzled, Usha shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Madoc grunted. “Too bad. Whoever he is, he came here like your shadow, half a step behind you and quiet as graves.”

A chill skittered down Usha’s spine. “Madoc, I assure you—”

“You don’t have to. I’ll keep an eye on him. Now, let’s talk about why you’re here.”

She raised a brow, and he barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “Dezra and old faithful Dunbrae can talk any damned lie they like, Usha. I had nothing to do with what happened on the moor.”

Surprised, Usha said, “I’ve only heard the tale myself an hour ago.”

He shrugged. “I’m good at what I do. I heard about the ambush at the safe house. I heard the knight in charge and his foot soldiers were killed. Eh, not all of them, though it probably looked like it. One got away—some half-breed goblin quivering in a ditch and hoping to look dead if anyone saw him. He came back to tell a fine tale of a murderous dwarf and a demon woman.” He took a gulp of ale and thumped the mug onto the table. “I’m no traitor, whatever those two say.”

“Madoc, I know you aren’t.”

He grunted as though to say he might believe her and he might not. “My information was good when I gave it. No one expected those knights to be on the moors last night. Not even Sir Arvel. And if you’re thinking he betrayed us, he didn’t.”

Thinking of the knight, his leering smile, his insulting glances, she said, “How do you know?”

Madoc tapped his temple. “I know. When it works, the magic still works pretty well. And Arvel? He can’t shield himself. He’s like an open window. I think what happened was just cursed luck.”

“But why did they attack the house then?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, and I’m thinking no one’s going to learn why from the dead. They did. That’s all. Maybe they stopped for water or food or to ask the way to Haven. Who knows? Maybe the farmer and his kin got nervous.” Madoc shook his head. “Maybe one thing, maybe the other. Damn, I don’t know. It happened. Look, Usha, I’m an honest broker who’s compromised himself for…” For Aline. “But I am still the man everyone in Haven knew how to trust. Everyone,” he said with low bitter laugh, “but Aline. Now she does trust me. And she can continue to trust me. Dezra and the dwarf are going to have to live with that.”

His flat statement begged the question of what would happen if Dez’s mistrust continued. Neither addressed it.

Madoc shook his head, his mood changing. “You are a strange element in the design that’s growing in Haven, aren’t you Usha? We’re like colors on your palette, Aline and I; Dezra and I. We’re together because of you. Happy in it or not so happy. Whatever is taking shape here is because we’re connected to you.” Madoc lifted his mug in ironic salute. “You give us a cohesion, a shape, that wouldn’t be possible without you. It’s like one of your pictures—disparate colors and shapes and… suddenly something emerges that surprises even you. Something like Qui’thonas.”

Usha drew blurry little designs in with the mug rings on the table. She wanted to deny the metaphor, but she couldn’t. Madoc was right in what he said, but he didn’t say it all. There were other colors on the palette, and if those made by Aline and Dez and Madoc were one thing, those made by Usha and Loren, by Sir Radulf and the occupation, were another. What sort of portrait would finally come clear when all was laid down on Haven’s canvas?

Around them the noise of the tavern became a roar, men bellowing to be heard at the bar, tavern maids and women of colorful repute shrilling over that. Smoke hung thicker in the air. Whatever was burning in the kitchen no longer smelled like it could have been food. They were an island of silence in that tumult, Usha drawing random shapes with the mug rings on the table, preoccupied with her thoughts, Madoc finishing his ale in what she thought was moody silence.

It was another kind of silence. He reached across the table and tapped her arm to quietly get her attention.

“My magic isn’t always as reliable as my more mundane methods of gathering information, but as I said, sometimes it still works.”

Madoc pointed to a pair of open doors. Beyond, Usha saw a rough little garden behind the tavern. From what she could see, it was more stone than garden—a few scraggly clumps of marigolds and a miserable rosebush gasping its last for lack of water. The garden’s chief attraction, she imagined, was its privacy. To Usha’s dismay, she saw Tamara Halgard walking arm in arm with Sir Radulf there. As she watched, the knight leaned down so that his lips were close to Tamara’s ear.

“That child is a friend of yours, eh?” Madoc drank down the last of his ale.

Usha didn’t move, not even to nod.

Madoc tipped his chair back, the better to see the two as they passed. Usha looked where he did and saw Tamara’s hand slip into the knight’s.

“Madoc, have you seen them here before?”

“Not the girl. Him, though. That’s Sir Radulf.” His glance shot to Usha, and his expression sobered. “But you know that, don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed as though he scented something much more interesting than he’d at first thought. Usha felt the feather touch of soft inquiry in her mind.

“Stop it.”

He didn’t have to. Madoc’s magic failed him. The mental touch faded as though it had never been. But he had other skills, and no vanished god could take them packing with him.

“The knight,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful, “and pretty little Mistress Halgard. If she is a friend, Usha, you’d do her a favor to let her know she’s playing in a dangerous field.” He let his chair drop back, the front legs thumping on the floor. “You’re pretty close with what you know, Usha; but I can guess some things. One thing I’m guessing is that you’d better leave now. If wagers were laid, I’d bet it won’t do to have Sir Radulf see you here with me. You’re keeping interesting company these days—the daughter of a merchant prince, and the merchant himself, maybe, yes? I’m guessing you don’t want the questions to arise. Or unfortunate connections made at the wrong time.”

Usha didn’t argue. She rose to leave, but the mage stopped her.

“If you need help—” He jerked his head toward the garden. “If I can help, let me know. But for now, you’ll be followed again when you leave here.”

Her breath caught in her breast, but he smiled and shook his head.

“By a friend. Don’t worry, and don’t look around to see who it is. This friend of mine is yours, and you’ll get home without hooded strangers in your wake.” Something quick and vulnerable flashed in his eyes then vanished. “Whatever Dezra thinks about me, I’m yours to command, my lady Usha.”

She smiled at the title she’d not allowed since her arrival in Haven. It had lately sounded a wrong note in her ear, a flat sound. But Madoc, the disgraced son of a noble family, a rogue most times, knew how to speak it well. Usha did not discount his offer. She had learned years before that however things seemed, Madoc Diviner’s heart would always be true.

On the way back to the inn Usha was occupied with Madoc’s ideas of connection and conjunction—hers with Qui’thonas, hers with him, with Dez and Aline, and hers with Loren and Tamara’s with Sir Radulf.

It had been her agreement with Aline that she would keep apart from Qui’thonas, for the sake of their work and hers. She’d thought it a good idea, as had Aline and Dez; but Usha wasn’t so sure now.

Now, people were dying.

In the middle of the night, when the streets were quiet and the inn silent with sleepers, Usha woke. She lit a candle and looked for a piece of paper she’d tossed aside a day or so ago. She found it under a drift of sketches—a note from Loren Halgard. By the flickering glow of the candle’s light, Usha read it again: Just for supper, a quiet meal with my daughter and me. I’ll send a carriage for you—only tell me when. Won’t you come?

Usha found an inkwell, and she sharpened a quill. She smoothed the folds out of Loren’s note and wrote a response below his own lines. She folded the paper again, sealed it, and in the morning, she found a quick-footed lad and sent him off to deliver her reply.

Later, Usha thought she might have discussed the matter with Aline, but in the end, she decided that the risk she’d undertaken must be hers alone.

13

In the stern gray light of dawn, Lady Mearah woke. Her narrow bed, shared last night with her lover, was hers alone again. The smallest of notes lay on the pillow where Tavar had lain his head, a curl of parchment cut from something longer. Not a love note, never that from Tavar Evensong. The lady knight reached for the black silk tunic at the foot of the bed and slipped it over her head. Barefoot on the cool stone floor, she went to the hearth and the embers still glittering from last night’s fire. She breathed on the embers, and small tongues of fire licked up around the edges of charred log. The light glowed on tanned skin, illuminating scars like runes on her arms and legs to tell tales of battle. By this light, Lady Mearah read: Usha Majere was seen again with Madoc Diviner, and a runner has gone out from the Ivy with a message to Steadfast.

A message to Steadfast… to Loren Halgard.

Lady Mearah’s quarters were spare, as befit a knight in the field. They were without any luxury but that of a window that commanded a wide view of the river and Haven. She opened the window shutters and looked out into the steely light. Because of the way the river curved, it looked as though Old Keep and Steadfast sat upon opposite sides of the White-rage. They did not. Each was on its own hill, the two buildings seeming to glare across the water at each other.

Halgard had been eager enough to step into the breach when Sir Radulf commanded the lord mayor’s resignation and the dissolution of the Council. There had been no talk of remaking what Sir Radulf had dissolved—none until Loren Halgard suggested that a frightened populace would respond better to being told the mayor and council had been replaced by one of their own than to news that a dark knight now reigned in Haven.

“You can mow them all down,” he’d said. “Hang them and perhaps inspire a riot that your greater forces might will quell. No one disputes it. But in a merchant city, when you kill the merchants, you kill what made the place valuable in the first place. Let me go between you and them. They know me, and it will make things easier.”

Lady Mearah had thought that clever, and she’d decided this Loren Halgard was one to watch. Now her lover’s words came back to her in memory, ghostly: Usha Majere isn’t one for infidelity, but if she were, she wouldn’t look for an opportunity on the low side of the street.

Steadfast shone steely gray in the rising light of day. The lady knight thought that Usha Majere had certainly found something interesting on the high side of the street, as Tavar suggested. But what, she wondered, was going on at the Grinning Goat to lure Mistress Majere to the low side?

Twilight came down softly over occupied Haven, the light leaving the sky slowly and climbing up to deepest blue. A haze turned gently to mist above the river. Usha smelled a sweetness of honeysuckle in the air. Loren’s driver, the half-elf Rowan, opened the carriage door for her. Two women passing on the street stopped to watch him close the door and spring up to take his seat and the reins again.

“Some people,” one murmured to the other, “are doing rather well these days.”

Usha smoothed the folds of her dove-gray skirt and straightened the bodice, pretending not to hear.

“That’s Mistress Majere. She’s been makin’ portraits for the well-to-do. No shame in it. A woman’s got to live, doesn’t she? No doubt she’s going out on business.”

The first woman sniffed. “Dressed rather grandly for that, don’t you think? And isn’t that Loren Halgard’s carriage? Some as says he’s a collaborator.”

Her friend shook her head. “Some say that, but they’re wrong. I know him. Well, my boy does. Shipped out on his first voyage with Loren Halgard himself. When my old man Gerris died…” She caught her breath against familiar pain. “Why, Loren Halgard came himself to the funeral, and he spoke right kindly to me. And the winter after that, it was hard for us, but my boy and me, we wanted for nothing. Thanks to Loren Halgard. The man’s no collaborator.”

Not to be deterred, the first woman muttered, “You could say Mistress Majere is on business of some kind, I suppose.”

The woman’s ironic tone made it clear to Usha what kind of business she meant. Her friend laughed and said something Usha couldn’t hear as, with a flick of the reins, Rowan took the carriage out into the streets.

Usha sat in flushed and angry silence.

Old cats, she thought.

And yet, were she honest with herself, she’d have to admit that what the two gossips had seen tonight didn’t suggest a better picture. Usha smiled wryly. The gods only knew what stories would be told of the artist from Solace who went to dine privately in the home of the man said to be the city’s only liaison with the occupation. Her smile dimmed. No one need guess what Dez would say.

Well, well, they’d all have to manage, the gossips of Haven, and Dez, too. Usha had never denied that Loren was an attractive man, charming and attentive. Sitting in his carriage, rattling through the cobblestone streets where dark knights gathered to patrol the night, she looked down at her hands folded on her lap and remembered what she’d forgotten—the warmth of Loren’s hands when he’d held hers the night he walked her home from the unveiling of “Pride and Promise.”

Usha unclasped her hands and looked out the window.

It might be as the old gossip had said, that Loren was a collaborator. If that were so, Usha would be sorry. But if it were so, cultivating Loren’s interest in her would put her in a position to learn things Qui’thonas would want to know. She might prevent another ambush, more deaths like those of the farmer and his family out in the empty moors of the Seeker Reaches.

The ride through Haven at the end of the day was cool and pleasant. The clip of the horses hooves, the ring of the bridle iron drew the attention of people hastening along the streets to make it home before curfew. Where once she would have hurried, too, tonight Usha didn’t have to worry about curfew. Loren had assured her that his crest on the doors of the carriage was her passport: So she watched the sky grow dark, the stars pricking through. Knights and foot soldiers paced the wall, patrols gathered at the major crossroads. In the woods, or by the river’s edge, or perhaps in secret shadows soon to fall, Dezra and Qui’thonas would be running through the night, escorting a frightened family out of Haven and into the far reaches beyond Sir Radulf’s occupation. After the ambush on the moor, Aline had redoubled her caution and her determination. Knights may stalk the streets, dragons haunt the sky, but Haven had been a free city of free people. If people wanted to leave Haven, Qui’thonas would find a way, the only fee being the promise to cry the tale of their captivity abroad.

Aline redoubled her efforts, and tonight, riding in the carriage of the man who had made himself the liaison between Haven and the occupation, Usha was initiating hers.

Fireflies winked in the darkness beneath the trees lining the rising road to Steadfast. Havelock Gance’s house was a finer one—larger, with half-timbered additions and wide reaching gardens, but Loren’s, high upon a hill above the White-rage, was older. There wasn’t much that went on there that a man with a good eye couldn’t see from the behind the crenellated wall of the Old Keep. Loren’s was a stout granite square of a house, built in the days of pirates and raiders, made for defense and not altered much over the intervening years. It had always been known as Steadfast.

Loren stood on the bottom of the eight broad steps to the house. There was nothing of pretense or posturing about him. He waited eagerly for Usha, and he didn’t mind who knew. He helped her from the carriage and dismissed Rowan with a nod. In the purpling twilight, his eyes were smoky gray, a little gleam from the silver earring he wore caught Usha’s eye and sparked her smile.

“Usha, it’s so good of you to come. I’d thought… well, I hadn’t thought you’d even answer my note. Not after what happened.” He jerked his head toward the river and Old Keep.

He’s a collaborator. He’s not a collaborator. Usha felt the tug of both assertions as she lifted her hand in a small gesture to dismiss Loren’s apology. “I don’t hold you responsible for that. You’re doing what you can.”

As she said so, Usha found herself wanting to believe it. She dropped her glance as though the next thing she said was almost too difficult to speak.

“The Council, the lord mayor…”

He took her hand and held it gently. “The lord mayor is well. His council is… in exile, if you will. But unharmed.”

“Under guard, then.”

Loren shook his head. “Not at all. They go about freely, their families unmolested. Why, Lorelia and Havelock were here to visit only the other day.”

“Then I assume a new council has been convened?”

“No.” The word sounded sharp, abrupt. “They don’t want a council now. They want—”

They. The occupation.

“Sir Radulf wants you,” she said, her voice chill.

Loren said nothing for a long moment. Then, “Usha, I’m not claiming anything that isn’t mine. I’m…” He shook his head, his eyes those of a man who had long been arguing this point with himself. “I’m what works now. I’m keeping their place.”

A comforting explanation, Usha thought.

“To return it to them… when?”

Shadows deepened. In the gloaming they seemed to creep out from under the trees and up the hill from the river itself.

“I don’t know,” Loren said, and in his frank, gray eyes Usha saw that he told the truth. He didn’t know, and to his credit he wouldn’t pretend he did.

“Come inside now. The air is damp, and—” he looked up to the windows of Steadfast glowing brightly with light from within—“it’s getting dark.”

Loren put his hand under her elbow. Usha permitted it with only the slightest hesitation. His hand was warm and strong. This close, she smelled the river on him again, and now something more—the bite of tar and the tang of the pine oil used to polish a ship’s deck. Some of Loren’s ships had gone down to the sea with the rest of the merchant fleet. Others remained, and clearly their master had been spending time aboard.

If his cousin had trouble with disappearing servants, Loren did not. A tall, elderly man opened the oaken door and held it wide. Loren led her into the great hall where a flight of stairs climbed to the second story. Another servant moved between four tall pillars and two high banks of candles, lighting the last of them against the coming night. The hall smelled faintly of honey, and the candles glowed as though they held light within. These were not thick-skinned candles from a ship chandler’s shop. These were beeswax, not dipped but hand rolled and bearing the hexagonal imprint of the hive. At the top of the stairs, others had been lighted, and torches flared in silver cressets on the wall, one set in the wall at every fourth step.

Voices drifted down to them—a woman’s and a man’s. Usha couldn’t recognize them, not at this distance. Loren’s hand slipped from her elbow, leaving a faint trace of warmth along her arm as it did.

“We’ll dine in the solar tonight. Tamara has been looking forward to seeing you again.”

This, Usha doubted even as she managed a gracious smile. She gathered her skirt, the hem lifted a little off the stone, and walked beside him up the long flight of stairs. At the top, the gallery ran around the stairwell and the doors from there into the solar stood opened wide. The scent of freshly cut fruit mingled with the tang of wine. Servants had laid the table near the hearth for the supper’s first course. Tamara sat on one of the two cushioned benches beside an open window, a small crystal cup in her hand. She sipped wine, and her eyes shone like sapphires in the light of the tall candles placed on either side of the benches. Her dark hair was plaited with ribbons of silver, bright love knots of the kind the women of Haven traditionally wore for their suitors. She was not alone in the solar. Sir Radulf Eigerson, the image of a perfect knight, stood in attendance.

Usha glanced at Loren and saw his surprise, perhaps his disapproval in the tension in his shoulders. Then he relaxed, hiding the emotion as Tamara looked up.

“Father,” she cried, still laughing at something the knight had said. “Look, you have company.” She acknowledged Usha with a strained smile. “Why, you have more company, I should say.” In the sing-song rote of a student addressing her elderly tutor, she said, “Good evening, Mistress Usha.”

Sir Radulf turned and bowed. He stood in dusty boots, light mail sliding over a black shirt like a darkly scaled second skin. The gemmed grip of his sheathed sword winked in the candlelight.

“Loren! I hope I haven’t caused a problem arriving untimely.” Tamara’s hand slipped into his, and he smiled down at her absently. “And Mistress Usha. It’s a surprise and, of course, a pleasure to see you again.”

The knight’s eyes met Usha’s, and she heard the screams of terrified people, saw the flash of a dragon’s eye. In that glancing moment, Usha knew he wasn’t in the least surprised.

“Sir Radulf,” she said, her voice cool.

“But I haven’t come to dine,” he said, answering a question no one had asked. “I’ve come to take Loren away for a while. You will forgive me, if I promise to have him back in time for the wine and cheese, won’t you?”

Again, Loren’s shoulders tightened, again they relaxed, and Usha said, “Of course.”

Tamara reached for Sir Radulf’s hand, but he was already across the room, his hand on Loren’s shoulder and turning him toward the door.

“Come,” he said to the girl, over his shoulder and as an afterthought. “It seems Mistress Usha is prepared to forgive. Make allowances, Tamara. Your father is essential tonight.”

The word hung strangely in the silence. Essential. Why, essential? What would they speak of? Where would they go? Sir Radulf’s voice had gone cold when he said it, and his blue eyes had changed to ice. Usha didn’t imagine the conversation they’d have would bode well for whoever was under discussion.

And Usha wouldn’t hear it or know if it meant trouble for Qui’thonas.

Not this time. But there will be another night. More if I can manage them.

Usha turned back to see Tamara standing by the open window and looking down to watch for her lover. In that moment, Usha felt sorry for her. Sir Radulf hadn’t cared whether she would make allowance or would not. The sound of his boot heels in the corridor had overridden whatever answer Tamara had started to make.

In the light of candles and torches, the solar seemed cavernous, the ceiling lost in shadow, the walls suddenly distant, the flagstone floor wide. Usha thought Tamara looked very small by the window. She went and stood beside her when she heard the sound of horses. Tamara permitted it until the riders were out of sight, then she turned and walked away, putting distance between them.

“Shall I call my father’s carriage for you, Mistress? No matter what they say, he’s often gone half the night when Radulf needs him.”

And Usha thought: Radulf is it? Well, well.

“If he’s not back soon, perhaps.”

Surprise flickered in Tamara’s eyes. “Please yourself.” She crossed her arms, paced to the window, looked out into the empty dark, and came back again. After a moment, she huffed a sigh and said, “Well, what do you want to do? My father isn’t going to be back—”

“For some time. Yes, you’ve said.” Usha made herself comfortable on one of the cushioned benches. She put a loose pillow behind her back, and smiled. “I think I’d like to sit here for a while.”

Again, Tamara said, “Please yourself.” She didn’t leave, and she didn’t sit. She paced from the window to the table and stood there a moment. “I don’t suppose you want any wine?”

Usha hid her smile. “Why, yes, I would. Thank you.”

A moment, and she heard the sound of wine being poured. Another moment, and Tamara brought the cup to her. They sat for a little while, opposite each other, each on her own bench. Tamara twirled a lock of dark hair around a slim finger, looking at nothing. Too well bred to leave her father’s guest alone, she had to stay; and every other moment her eyes glanced to the hall as though she waited for rescue. And Usha wondered, Who would come to rescue her? Not her father who must wait on Sir Radulf’s pleasure, and not the knight himself.

A kind of rescue, she supposed, would be Usha’s request that the carriage be summoned and this awkward interlude ended.

Usha wasn’t about to grant it. Loren might well return soon. Until then, she would wait. Neither was she inclined to engage in small talk. She watched Tamara for a moment or two, thinking not about her but the shape of her face, the way her shoulders, while slim and feminine, reminded her of Loren’s. They had expressive shoulders, those two. Tamara’s were a stiff line of resistance. And mobile mouths. Tamara’s was just then returning to a sullen pout.

“I’m told,” Usha said, “that you look much like your mother.”

Startled, Tamara eyed her carefully. “I’m told so, too.”

“She must have been lovely.”

“So I hear. My father loved her very much.” She paused. “So I hear.”

They sat that way, quiet while one watched and the other strived to present an appearance of supreme indifference. Usha thought it was becoming ridiculous. She would have the carriage called and leave. But she didn’t. Something about the way the girl looked around the empty room, just her in a pool of light, with darkness coming ever closer as the wicks burned…

“I have a daughter,” Usha said, “a bit older than you.”

“That is very nice,” Tamara said.

“Her name is Linsha. She’s a Solamnic Knight.”

Interest, then something much like fear, flared in Tamara’s eyes. “You shouldn’t say that here.”

“In this nest of dark knights? Not ever. But in Solace I am happy to boast out loud about my daughter the knight.”

“Where… ?” Tamara said. “Where is your daughter?”

“I don’t know. It’s that way for knights—of any order. They are sworn to their causes and that leaves their families to do nothing but hope. I used to pray before the gods… left.”

“Gods.” Tamara said the word as though it were from a foreign language. “I know nothing but tales of gods. I don’t know if they ever really existed.”

Usha remained quiet for a moment, for she knew gods and she knew they existed. The beginning of the great strife among gods, the Chaos War, had flung her out of her island home. The Irda had died or vanished in the destruction, and the end of that war had flung Usha into Palin Majere’s arms. She knew gods.

Candlelight flickered, yearning delicately after a passing breeze. The night had grown cooler, and the air smelled of the river. A servant, a woman with quick, careful eyes, came quietly into the solar.

“Mistress Tamara, we’re wondering in the kitchen what’s to be done about supper?”

Tamara looked at Usha.

“I am quite ready for supper now,” Usha said. “I’d like to dine in the garden, though.”

“Please yourself,” Tamara said, but this time with a small, tentative smile.

“Thank you,” Usha said. “It would please me if you’d join me.”

In the scented night, with candles on the stone table in the garden and fireflies winking among the birches, Usha dined with Loren Halgard’s daughter. They treated the meal as a picnic, had it bundled into baskets and set out on heavy pewter plates. The wine chilled in the stream that fed the pond down the hill. In this setting, the girl relaxed, and Usha found herself liking Tamara. A mother, she was touched by the motherless girl. An orphan child, she understood something of what Tamara’s life had been like.

She had loved the Irda. They had treated her tenderly, and sometimes she still dreamed of them with an aching sense of homesickness. But in the end, the magical Irda were not her kin, not mother or father. She was a woman who’d grown up without a mother, yearning for something in heart, in soul, that could not be replaced. Tamara was that, a motherless child. It showed in her eyes, the haunted look sometimes poorly hidden.

“You have the strangest eyes,” Tamara said, wary still of the growing ease between them. “Sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green. I’d swear they’re golden now.”

Usha smiled. “It would be hard to say if they favor my mother or my father.”

“Because they never stay the same color?”

Because I don’t know what my mother or father looked like.

She smiled. “Exactly so.”

Tamara leaned forward to say something then sat up suddenly, eyes wide and alarmed. Usha turned at the sound of a snapped twig behind her. A lean, dark figure stood outside the grove.

“Show yourself,” Usha demanded.

The knight did, stepping closer to the light of their candles. Tamara’s breath hissed in surprise.

“Lady Mearah.”

Lady Mearah, the fallen child of Palanthas, the executioner of Sir Radulf’s occupation. She’d forgone heavy armor, wearing only high hoots, riding leathers, and a dark tunic. Her hair, the color of the night, had been caught up in an intricate weaving of braids, like a crown upon her head. Lady Mearah bowed with grave courtesy, but when she looked up the sly smile on her lips belied gravity.

“Forgive me, Mistress Usha. I’ve been sent.” She turned to Tamara. “By your father. He wants me to express his regret for having missed supper, and that he won’t be able to join you—” a sly smile tugged at her lips—“for the wine and cheese course. He hopes you will forgive him.”

Tamara nodded.

“And Mistress Usha,” her eyes gleamed fox-bright. “I’m sent to escort you home.”

Indeed, Usha thought, but I think not. She smiled for courtesy and declined. “Loren’s carriage will take me. Thank you.”

Lady Mearah picked up an apple from the table. She inspected it carefully then polished it on her sleeve, the motion calling attention to the insignia on the breast of the black silk tunic—a crimson sword. She took a bite.

“No, you misunderstand. I am going to escort you home. There are no carriages on the streets tonight. No horses other than ours.”

Tamara frowned. “My father—”

“Is with Sir Radulf. I am here to escort Mistress Usha home. Good evening, Mistress Tamara.”

Usha took the girl’s hand and found it cold.

“Go inside,” Usha said, her voice low and confident. “I’ll be fine. Your father knows where I am.” She glanced at Lady Mearah who took another bite of the apple. “I’m sure everything is all right.”

She’d been thinking of Tamara as a girl. All evening she’d been thinking of her as a child. Now Loren’s daughter stood straight, head high, the lady of her father’s house. “Mistress Usha, if you wish I will call Rowan.”

To do what? Defend them against Sir Radulf’s executioner? It was a bold offer, Usha thought, and a dangerous one, for Lady Mearah did not laugh.

“Go,” Usha said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Pretty little thing,” the lady knight said, watching as Tamara walked up the hill to the house. “I’m sure she’s her father’s treasure.”

“No doubt,” Usha agreed, “and from what I hear, the delight of your commander’s heart. Some might think that an enviable position to be in.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? ‘Her father’s treasure.’ A poet’s turn of phrase, yet true, isn’t it? She’s quite like a pearl—luminous, nearly breathing with light. Have you ever heard, Mistress Majere, that few men are more vulnerable than the man who possesses a pearl of great value?” Into Usha’s silence she said, “No? Hm, perhaps they don’t have that wisdom where you come from. Well, allow me to enlighten you. The man with a pearl of great value is a man who will do anything to keep it.” She tossed the half-eaten apple into the bushes. “Anything at all. That, I’m sure you’ll agree, makes him quite vulnerable. To thieves, to fire, to storm… to hard-hearted killers.”

Usha said nothing for fear that she would make things worse. She followed the lady knight from the garden. Given the chance to ride pillion, Usha said she preferred not to. It seemed to matter nothing to Lady Mearah, who professed herself pleased for a chance to stretch her legs on such a pleasant night.

The two women attempted no conversation as the knight led her horse through the silent streets of nighttime Haven. Usha was just as glad. Never abroad at night since the fall of the city, she was surprised by how truly quiet the streets were. Usha marked every knight set to watch at the crossways and was surprised to see that the mounted patrols were not all knights.

Lady Mearah shrugged and broke the silence. “Some new idea of the commander’s. Damned if I know why, but he’s putting a few citizens on with the watch. They work for their city,” she said when she saw Usha’s surprise. “Enforcing the curfew and keeping their fellows out of trouble. It’s new. Something your friend Loren Halgard suggested as a way to keep the people involved.” Her smile was icily ironic. “Well, ‘involved in their own fate’ is how he put it. Sir Radulf thinks it’s working to keep things quiet. For now, anyway. Should make you feel good, eh?”

Usha shuddered. Nothing about Haven at night made her feel good. All the life seemed to have dwindled away or fled to such places as the Goat where Sir Radulf allowed exceptions to his rule of curfew for the sake of being able to keep his finger on the pulse of the occupied city.

At the door of the inn, Lady Mearah said, “You’re a married woman, Usha Majere, and your husband is a mage of some repute. Are you looking for a little companionship these days? A way to pass the time?”

Stung, Usha replied, “What I do is my own business. I’m harming no one and breaking no law.”

The knight laughed, a cold sound, like the voice of winter. “Or vow?”

Mearah cared nothing about vows. Of that Usha was certain. Mearah wielded the word as though it were a thin, sharp knife, something to pick with, something to use for a probe. Usha didn’t flinch.

“Or vow,” Usha said, “though it’s kind of you to be concerned.”

The lady knight shrugged. “In truth, for the most of it, I don’t care. But it’s a tricky thing, making friendships in a captive city. You’ll want to be careful. If your friend falls, you might tumble with him. If you fall, so might he, and all that he treasures with him.”

The knight bade Usha good evening, and Usha went inside.

From the upper story, out her bedroom window, Usha saw Mearah watching the Ivy. It was a long while before she heard the knight leave, and a long while before she was able to sleep.

14

In a tone of amused patience, Loren said, “I’m still here, Usha.”

Usha looked up from her easel, then returned to work on the canvas she was scraping free of the last coat of pa’ressa. When she was finished, it would have the texture of an eggshell and be about the same shade of white, ready for her paints. She worked to have something to do with her hands while she considered Loren’s request that she paint a portrait of his daughter.

She’d heard nothing from him since the night he’d been called away from Steadfast by Sir Radulf. She’d wondered why but decided to let the matter be. She could see that Loren was attracted to her. That was enough, for she was not a foolish girl to fret after her first suitor—and he was no suitor.

He’d surprised her this morning, a simple knock on the door of her studio, announcing him. He’d hoped she wouldn’t mind his intrusion, and she’d said, “I like visitors, most especially when I’m doing the very uninteresting work of priming canvas.”

Usha scraped, and Loren left his post at the desk to open the window shutters wider. She liked the look of his strong, straight back as he leaned out one of the windows. He looked out at the river.

“You miss it,” she said.

“The ships and the sails filling with wind… oh, yes. I miss that. I shipped aboard my father’s vessels for years before his death. I imagined I’d captain one of those fine ships until I was old and gray.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“No. What happened is that soon after my father died, I married, then Tamara was born…” He ran a hand up the side of his face and through his dark hair. “And then her mother died. I became landbound for Tamara’s sake. For my own, too, I suppose. Or I haven’t suffered, anyway. The business my father left me grew, and it needed me in the accounting house.”

Loren turned from the window, and as Usha watched him lean against the desk she wondered how true it was that he didn’t suffer the loss of the sea. His eyes were always looking out over the city walls, looking for the river and the way to the wide ocean.

“And so,” he said, as though picking up the thread of another conversation, “I’m still waiting.”

“Yes, you are.”

Usha had to admit that Loren had waited longer for a simple answer than she would have. But it wasn’t a simple answer, not really, and she still had none for him. She smiled behind the canvas. To his credit, Loren didn’t say that the matter wasn’t so serious as to deserve all this thought. By the look of him, he might be thinking so, but he didn’t say so.

Once more, Usha looked around her studio at the two series of sketches tacked to the east and west walls. She calculated the time she would need to paint the portraits she’d contracted. One was of a young man, promised to his ailing grandfather. The other was of a woman whose children wanted her to portray their mother exactly as they knew her—a queen among women. Usha shook her head as she did every time she looked at that set of sketches. The subject was the most unqueenly of women. She’d promised to deliver the portraits within the month. It was a lot of work, but possible, and the fees were generous. One fee alone was enough to pay her and Dez’s expenses for the past month and the next.

All that was true, but when she looked again at Loren, Usha realized that none of it had to do with her hesitation to give him an answer. She set down the scraping knife and came out from behind the easel.

“Loren, when you saw the portrait of your nephews, you were afraid Lorelia or Havelock would be harmed by it, yet here you are wanting to commission a portrait of Tamara. Aren’t you afraid the portrait I paint might work in your daughter’s life in some magical way?”

He pushed away from the desk and took her hand. Before she realized it, her fingers curled comfortably around his. “You asked me to trust that if you worked with a good will your magic would cause no harm.” He lifted her hand, the fingers speckled with flakes of pa’ressa. “I trust that this hand would never harm my child, mysterious Usha.”

“Mysterious?” She shook her head, withdrawing her hand and paying no attention to the flutter of excitement his touch had caused. “That’s an odd naming.”

“No, it isn’t. You are a mystery to me, Usha. I have known you for weeks, and I don’t really know anything about you.” He looked around her studio, at the easel, the buckets and pots for mixing paints, the baskets of brushes. He looked at the sketches, his eye lingering over the emerging details of a woman’s weathered, old face. “This is all I know about you. You are an artist of remarkable talent, and you live in Solace. For the rest, you might have drifted into Haven like a feather on the breeze.”

There was so much more he shouldn’t know about her—not the least dangerous her connection to an underground organization that ferried refugees out of Haven. Uneasy, Usha turned back to her easel.

“Who are you, Usha? Who are your people, your family?” He hesitated, but only for a moment. “Who are you to have magic when all of magic is fading from the world?”

Usha paid close attention to her work now, a little thread of fear in her heart.

His voice low, Loren said, “What of your husband, Usha Majere?”

Usha’s blade rasped over the pa’ressa. It took an effort not to use too much pressure. Her voice flat, she scraped carefully and said, “I didn’t drift on the breeze, Loren. Dez and I came here on business for her father’s inn.”

Loren cocked an eyebrow. He did not often mention Dez, and Usha never did. His attention could quickly become Sir Radulf’s… or worse, Lady Mearah’s.

“And now my sister-in-law and I are trapped here. As for my people, they are…”

She stopped, for how could she tell him the story of the infant raised by the Irda and deny the naming “mysterious?” What words could she find—what words had she ever been able to find?—to tell him of the haunting sadness of being a human child among people whose physical beauty surpassed any legend’s telling? How to tell the story of a child who’d known herself as desperately ugly among the most beautiful creatures in Krynn, who became a woman without a country, with no family but that of the husband who’d deserted her?

Of these things she’d hardly spoken to anyone. For all her life the pain had felt too raw.

“Usha, what of your husband?”

She scraped carefully, steady, even strokes. The blade whispered to the canvas.

Into that whisper, Loren said, “You ask for my trust, Usha, yet you won’t give me yours.”

It was a flat statement, but it felt like an accusation. Grimly, she admitted that given the reason she accepted—no, be honest, encouraged—his interest in her, the word “trust” was something to wince from. She didn’t.

“Loren, there is no mystery about my husband other than where he might be right now. Palin Majere is a man who has been pleased to step out of my life without so much as a fare-thee-well.”

Considering the matter closed, Usha returned to her canvas.

Surprise, like the breath of lightning, lifted the fine hair on her arms. Where she’d been working, an image, ghostly and indistinct, shimmered and became a figure she hadn’t painted, one she had not contemplated painting. But it was there, a trick of intuition.

“Come here,” she said, her mouth going dry as the image resolved itself.

Perhaps he heard the quiver in her voice, for Loren came around the easel at once.

“Do you see that cloaked man? That is Palin Majere, a mage who suffers the inability to trust his magic, as all mages do these days, but who shares nothing of his feelings with me, not a word of this thoughts. He journeys on errands he will not speak of. He returns in despair and he leaves in anger, and I don’t know where he goes or why. He’s been gone from me for a long time.”

Loren moved closer, his sleeve brushing against her arm. The image on the stark canvas faded. In moments it vanished as though it had never been. Loren drew an astonished breath.

Shaken, Usha said, “Our last parting was the bitterest of all. I don’t look to find my husband returned should I ever get out of Haven.”

“Usha,” he said. “How can you bear a loveless life?”

Usha gasped, a small sound, like flinching. The question, so gently, compassionately asked, called up a memory she’d been a long time trying to forget—that of the look in Palin’s eyes the last time she’d seen him. It used to be that she could look into her husband’s eyes and see the light of his love. It had burned brightly in youth, warmly in their middle years. But the last time she’d looked into Palin Majere’s eyes, with the echoes of recrimination, anger, and suspicion still hanging in the air between them, what she’d seen recalled a spent and guttered candle.

Loren touched her cheek, his gray eyes filled with both sorrow and longing. Again, her skin prickled, and again Usha thought of how it felt when lightning passed close by outside the window. In a bright moment of clarity, Usha knew she could accept the caress or turn from it.

She turned.

“I… I have a lot of work to do, Loren, if I’m to deliver two portraits when they’re promised.”

The words no sooner spoken, Usha regretted them, but Loren had stepped away from her and the moment was lost.

“Will you consider my commission, Usha?”

A business-like request, and there was no sign of wounding in his voice. Usha knew better.

“I will consider it.” She gave him a long, level look, then nodded gravely, though the gravity was belied by a smile. “Come tomorrow and we can talk again.”

How can you bear a loveless life?

Loren’s question haunted Usha. Unspoken in every conversation she had during the day, behind even the most mundane thought, it haunted her. She didn’t try to avoid it. In truth it seemed she’d been trying to avoid it long before she came to Haven. She’d begun to think that was why she’d come to Haven, to answer the question. She thought in Madoc’s strange metaphor now.

Perhaps I’ve come here to see what shape emerges next in the design, or perhaps I’ve come to make a new shape… .

A new shape for her life? For love? Women did it. So did men. Marriage grew old. People grew apart. They no longer tried to mend what kept breaking, yet they did not dissolve the bonds of family. It was done that way among the highborn folk in Palanthas. Discreetly came lovers, and then people stood in different relationships to each other than before.

The problem occupied her mind, but Usha didn’t languish. She worked, preparing canvas for the two portraits she’d promised—mixing paints, scraping her palette, and selecting sketches of her subjects. She slipped into her work as she’d slip into a familiar river—easily, trusting the currents to take her where they willed, confident that if magic was one of those currents, it would take her where it must.

Loren’s question slipped away a little, hushed by work, and then eclipsed by something else—rumor, bright and deadly.

There is a secret path.

Not more than that was said, a tantalizing promise, a teasing hope. A secret path, a way out of Haven… and no one mentioned it when there were knights around. It was hardly spoken aloud, but people whispered and they wondered. Some scoffed. Others said the wise man keeps his mouth shut about such things in case Sir Radulf should hear and decide he needs to execute someone for it.

Still, people did speak—those who hoped and those who wondered. They spoke very quietly of the family of dwarves down in the wharf district, the Stonestrike clan who had vanished one and all—mother and father, the last son, two daughters, and even the dog. They simply vanished. There one day. Gone the next.

Usha heard that story and others—all in whispers, hurried speculation between Bertie the cook’s boy and the girl from the chandler’s shop, and the murmuring of house maids as they traveled in little knots under the cold stares of the soldiers who strode along Haven’s streets and atop Haven’s walls. With increasing unease, Usha wondered whether Qui’thonas had been discovered.

One day, she heard about the secret path from Loren.

He had come back at her invitation, but neither spoke again of a portrait for Tamara. It had become Loren’s habit to arrive at her studio on the mornings he knew she’d be working. He made himself good company from the first day, a man who knew when to talk and when to be silent while she worked. On that first day, he’d come with a book from his library. As a young man, he’d been to see the great library in Palanthas and ever after longed to have a library of his own. Five shelves of bound books he owned now, and Usha exclaimed, “Wealth!” each time she saw a book.

This morning he’d come, book in hand and rumor on his lips, a tale of a secret path out of the city. “Some fond hope among the servants.” He’d looked troubled and said it was his own hope that none of his people came to believe the rumor. “There’s nothing but heartache and grief there.”

“Disappointments,” Usha said, agreeing.

The skin around his eyes tightened, and his lips became a hard, thin line. “Deaths. Sir Radulf has been talking about patrolling outside his perimeter.”

Usha frowned, not understanding. “Is he bringing in more soldiers?”

“No. More dragons to patrol from the sky. That should kill the rumors and any foolish idea of acting as though rumor were truth.”

Usha agreed, but what he said changed worry into dread that Aline’s efforts would soon be detected.

“Don’t worry about rumors,” Dez said. “Where are you hearing them, anyway?”

Usha shrugged. “Around. In the street, in the market.”

The night was dark, the sky hung with clouds. In the empty garden behind the Ivy, Usha sat on the stone wall and Dezra stretched out on the ground beside hedges overgrown by thick, fragrant wisteria. They’d not seen each other in nearly a week. Usha hadn’t heard even the quiet sound of Dez slipping into the inn at late hours.

“What’s your friend Loren Halgard say?”

Usha plucked a rose bush of its hard, red hips and piled them on the wall. Dezra knew about Loren’s morning visits. She wasn’t often at the inn these days, but when she was it was usually to be found on her way to bed. She and Loren had twice passed each other in the corridor outside Usha’s studio. She didn’t ask Usha about it, and Usha volunteered nothing more than that he was interested in having his daughter’s portrait painted. But Usha knew Dezra was wondering, for she’d asked her question carefully.

“He says something you want to know.”

Dez sat up, suddenly tense. “How would Loren Halgard know about… anything I’d like to know?”

“He doesn’t. But I do. Sir Radulf is calling in more dragons.”

“Not knights?”

“Dragons, Loren says. Radulf is afraid that people are going to start wanting to make the rumors true. The sky patrols are going to double. You have to be careful, Dez.”

Dez grunted. “We are.”

“Will you pull back for a while?”

“That’s up to Aline. Whatever she says, we’ll do. We’ll be all right.”

Usha looked around the weary garden, the roses browning from lack of rain, the herbs outside the kitchen door going to seed. It hadn’t rained in Haven in long weeks. It had doubtless been longer than that where the river had its headwaters, for where it slid past Haven, the White-rage had grown narrow, the verge on either side brown mud flats where stranded fish died and the air stank.

“I wish I had your confidence.”

Dez pitched a pebble over the wall. “I wish Qui’thonas had half the fine bolt holes out of the city everyone seems to think.”

This was more specific news about Qui’thonas than Usha had heard in a long while. Sweeping little piles of rose hips into the sluggish stream, Usha sat forward. “You don’t?”

“Not so many. Things change all the time. What’s here today might not be there tomorrow. You know those fine citizen patrols your friend Loren got for the city?”

“Yes. To give the people a hand in what’s happening.”

Wind kicked up, and the clouds began to shred. Through the rent in one the light of a moon only two days from dark shone down. Dezra’s face was a mask of shadow, her expression hidden.

“They do a pretty good job of freeing up knights and foot soldiers, too.”

“Dez, I don’t know—”

Dezra’s temper flashed. “You’re right, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like outside this pretty inn and you don’t know how it is not to be able to trust anyone but those you go out into the night with. And not even all of them.”

That she meant Madoc was clear without having to be said. They continued to be uneasy allies, the two, and each for the sake of Aline. That might keep them safe as trust would, and it might not. But the decision was Aline’s to make, and she’d chosen to keep them both.

Dez sat up, and Usha saw her face, all hard lines. “It’s a dangerous place, this city. I—” She stopped and shook her head.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She laughed, but as though at herself. “I really want to get out of here. I want to see home again. I want to see my father and my sisters.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I want to know if they’ve learned anything about Palin. He’s been gone a long time.”

“Yes, he has.” Usha’s voice sounded flat, even in her own ears. “I’m tired. The day started early, and it’s ending late.”

Dez got to her feet and dusted down her breeches. “Early again tomorrow?”

Usha tried to gauge the meaning of the question, to know whether it touched on Loren. Dezra’s expression gave away nothing.

“Yes. There’s a lot of work to do on the last portrait.”

Dez sat still, chewing her lower lip as she did when she was thinking. “What are you doing, Usha? With Halgard? What are you doing?”

“Will you find what I told you helpful?”

“You know I will.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Trying to help.”

Dez had a look on her face like she wanted to say, Only that? Nothing else? But in the end, she said nothing. Uneasy silence stretched between them, drawing out until Usha rose and shook out her skirt, sending rose hips skipping to the ground.

“That’s all I’m doing, Dez—listening to what Loren has to say and seeing if there’s anything that can help you. Will you let Aline know what I told you?”

Dez jerked her head, a nod of assent. They went indoors in silence, and at Dezra’s door Usha bade her good luck, in case she was going out with Qui’thonas.

“Be careful, Usha. All right? Be careful.”

It did not escape Usha that her sister-in-law’s warning had more than one meaning.

Dezra left the Ivy in the small hours, slipping out the bedroom window and dropping down to the grass and away. Her routes were secret, known only to her, and they changed every night. This night, with Usha’s warning still echoing in her mind, she took the quickest, safest way to Rose Hall. She slipped through shadows, crossing alleys and little streamlets. Madoc Diviner might know the pattern of each night’s patrol, and that was handy, but when she must make her own way Dez traveled nighttime Haven simply assuming she’d meet a knight around ever corner. It never failed her and within a very short time of leaving the inn she was jumping the low stone fence two blocks north of the corner where Rose Hall loomed. From there, she’d find very little cover until she came to the part of the street where trees grew thickly, right opposite Aline’s thorny rose garden.

She grinned, her blood warming to the dare, and crossed the distance—a no man’s land where trees didn’t arch and no shadow fell. There was no cover, and nothing for it but to make her way across as best she could. She listened but didn’t hear horses or voices. She waited until she saw Dunbrae come around the corner as he usually did, the knights be damned. The knights weren’t damned, and they’d come to know Dunbrae’s route well enough to consider him within bounds as long as they saw him keep to his regular walk.

The dwarf lifted his head when he came around the corner, like an old hound sniffing the air. He saw her and waved her on. Dez started into the street then stopped when she saw a shadow slipping down the alley between Rose Hall and the stable of the neighboring house. She’d killed a man of Sir Radulf’s there only a month before. This shadow-goer, though, was known to her. To Dunbrae as well, for the dwarf muttered a curse, the end of which Dez heard when she came up beside him. Halfway down the alley, Madoc Diviner saw them and didn’t miss a stride. He sauntered the rest of the way to the street as though it were noon and he was expected.

Dez glanced at Dunbrae. “Someone call him here?”

“Not that I know. Probably doesn’t matter if anyone did. He comes and goes at will—her will.”

Aline’s will.

Dez waited for more, though by the look of him, more might have unleashed a few hours of listening to the dwarf’s grumbling and snarling. She waved Madoc on and said, “I need to talk to you both, and Aline.”

“What about?” Madoc said, looking up the street and down to be sure it was still clear.

“We have to talk about Usha.”

Aline plumped the cushions on the bench against the west wall of the solar, the one that still held the day’s heat. Through the open window the scent of roses drifted. She sat and pulled her bare legs under her night robe, never blushing though it was clear she’d been awake and not awakened, that she had been waiting for Madoc, now sitting in the chair opposite her. Dunbrae’s brow was thunderous; lightning seemed to kindle in his eye. Madoc managed not to smile, and Dez thought it best to maintain the most neutral expression she could.

The lovers long separated, she thought, had become lovers in fact—and by the look of them, some time ago.

“What have you come to tell us about Usha?” Aline asked. “Is she well?”

“She’s fine,” Dez said, thinking of Loren Halgard and looking at the two lovers. “She’s fine, but she has news.”

The three listened closely to the warning Usha had passed on to Dez, and Aline’s face went still and pale.

“We have two teams outside the walls tonight, don’t we, Dunbrae?”

The dwarf nodded. “They’re checking old routes, the ones we used when we first started taking elves out of Qualinesti.”

Aline drew a breath and let it go slowly. “Do you know when these dragons are coming in, Dez?”

“No. Usha didn’t say. I don’t think Halgard knows.”

“Do you think he knows what he’s talking about?”

“I don’t think he’s puffing himself up to impress Usha.”

Eyebrows went up all around, discreetly.

“Well, he’s been underfoot since she did the portrait of his nephews. Anyway, I don’t think he’s the type.”

Madoc’s lips twitched. “Underfoot, is it?”

Dez glared.

Aline changed the subject. “I think you’re right, Dez. Halgard isn’t the kind of man who needs to embroider his stories. If Usha believes him, I do.” She turned to Dunbrae. “How quickly can you get word to the teams that are out?”

“I’ll make sure they hear before noon. They’re not too far away. I’ll either pull them in or send them someplace they can’t be spotted.”

“Do it now,” Aline said. “Come back when it’s safe.”

Dez rose to join him, but stopped when Aline gestured. “Dez, what’s Usha doing?”

At the door, Dunbrae stood to listen. Madoc kept still. His cocked grin vanished, the wicked gleam gone from his eye. Dez wanted to say that she didn’t know what Usha was doing or why she was doing it. She wanted to speak out against Halgard for the sheer satisfaction of making her complaint. Instead she shook her head.

“She’s passed along information she knew we’d need. She says she’ll do it again if she can, and she says she’ll keep up her association with Halgard as long as it looks like it will benefit Qui’thonas. We didn’t talk about this before. We’d said she’d keep clear. But I don’t know how you can pass this up, Aline.”

“I have no intention of passing up Usha’s offer,” Aline said. “I hope she’s careful, though. I hope… she knows what she’s doing.”

Aline thought of the danger, that much was clear. But Dez thought of something else, the look she saw in Usha’s eyes when she spoke of Loren Halgard—the look a woman gets when she’s feeling things she doesn’t dare think about. She glanced at Madoc, sitting quietly beside Aline. As she did, Aline’s hand moved to his, as though she weren’t even thinking about it.

Probably, she wasn’t, Dez thought with a pang, remembering that intimate familiarity, that way of touching a man and knowing he not only welcomed the touch, he’d been waiting for it.

“I hope she knows, too,” Dez said, and. she followed Dunbrae.

In the corridor outside the solar, Dunbrae said, “I hate the bastard.”

“I know,” Dez said, and she also knew he wasn’t talking about Loren Halgard. “But why?”

The stairs were unlighted. They went carefully down. “Because he doesn’t deserve her. He brought her here, turned her over to Lir Wrackham and left, just like he was taking her to market. Then he came back, moping and skulking around until she—” He shook his head. “He’ll leave her again. He’ll break her heart. And I’ll break his head. It’s comin’, Dez. I know it.”

Might be, Dez thought, and it might not be. For her part, she didn’t hate Madoc Diviner. She simply didn’t trust him.

Usha looked around the edge of her easel when Loren put aside the book he’d been reading, a small volume of elven poetry.

“You aren’t going to tell me the poems are dull, are you?”

“No, they aren’t dull.” He chuckled. “Some even make sense to me.”

It had surprised Usha to learn that he could read Qualinesti, until she learned that he could read Dwarvish and something of the language of the nomadic desert people who live outside of Tarsis. “People all over Krynn speak Common,” he’d said, “but they think in their own language. That’s how you want to read their poetry and hear their songs.”

“Usha, we haven’t talked about Tamara’s portrait.”

They hadn’t, and Usha had thought the matter forgotten—or perhaps that he’d regretted asking. Whatever the reason, he’d never brought up the subject after the day he first mentioned it. In truth, she’d come to hope the matter of the portrait was forgotten, for she’d never been able to think about it without the image of Tamara walking in the garden behind the Goat. She would not like to take that image to the easel and try to compose the kind of portrait a father would be pleased to have.

“Do you still want a portrait?”

“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Why would you think not?”

Usha moved so that her shadow slipped off the white canvas. She inspected the quality of the whiteness and decided she’d scraped enough. The canvas was ready for whatever would come to it.

She trod carefully in her reply. “You haven’t asked again, and I don’t think Tamara would have much time to sit for sketches. It seems Sir Radulf has most of her time.”

Loren sat very still, the book open on his knee. “Yes. They’re often together.” Then, as if he’d felt a shadow of judgment over her words, he said, “He courts her openly and properly in my home, Usha.”

Stung by his curtness, Usha almost told him that the knight courted Tamara outside Loren’s home as well. She caught herself, unwilling to explain what she’d seen at the Goat. In these days of rumor and unease, it would be foolish to remind him of her connection to Madoc.

Thinking of Tamara with the knight gave her the same kind of chill as thinking of a child reaching out to play with a viper.

Loren turned a page in the book, then another, not reading but occupying his hands, and Usha thought she’d gone so far down this road that she might as well go farther.

“It still surprises me, Loren, that the knight has your blessing.”

He turned another page, the sound a whisper. “My blessing? I don’t think that is the proper word. Sir Radulf does not have my objection.”

Usha tossed the scraping knife onto a table. Loren looked up at the clatter.

“You’re quibbling, Loren.” She came out from behind the easel, wiping flakes of pa’ressa from her hands, hard swipes down the sides of her skirt.

“I am not—”

“Then you’re rationalizing, if you like that word better. Whatever you call it, you’d best look hard at what’s going on.”

Loren’s eyes were like winter ice, gray and hard. With the careful motions of a man controlling himself, he set his book aside. “You’re right. I am rationalizing, and it isn’t worthy of the conversation. My feelings about this should be no surprise to you at this late date. I don’t like the man—gods know I don’t—but I do what I must. For Haven and for my daughter. Let it go.”

She could not. His stubbornness and his willingness to fool himself angered her. Her words tumbled out, long held in and urgent now.

“No matter how much you hope it, Loren, Sir Radulf isn’t going to be your daughter’s savior. Times are changing. You hear the rumors in the city as well as I do. Of course they are only that,” she said, covering what could have become a dangerous lapse. “Just rumors, but they do suggest that people aren’t as willing to tolerate the occupation as they used to be.”

To her surprise, he didn’t didn’t defend himself or his choice. He laughed.

“People are fools,” he snapped. “They run after every rumor of a way out they can find. Times aren’t changing, Usha. They have already changed. The sooner people realize it, the easier their lives will be.”

It sounded like something Sir Radulf might say. “And so you’ve changed your own survival strategy.”

Loren’s eyes grew even colder. “What do you mean?”

“You were willing to trade your influence to the occupation so that all could go easily and well. And now—” She stopped. His face grew pale, his eyes hard. The icy silence between them now was like a challenge and, dared, Usha spoke her heart. “Loren, you traded influence for survival, and now you’re trading your daughter.”

Loren’s head came up with a snap, his eyes flashed warning. “You know nothing about it, Usha.”

It was on her lips to demand why he thought that, and to tell him how much she really did know. She caught back the words, for if she once began to talk about what she’d seen at the Grinning Goat, every question he asked would lead relentlessly to the name Qui’thonas.

Tears pricked suddenly in Usha’s eyes. In her heart a bitter voice accused her of betraying Tamara in favor of Qui’thonas. She could say no more, stayed by loyalty and betrayal. Usha went back to her easel, the canvas a wall between them.

“Loren,” she said, her voice even and cool, “I think you’ll find more congenial conversation elsewhere today.”

He stood with the blue leather book in his hand, his thumb absently tracing the length of the spine. From behind the easel she could see his face only if she moved. She did not.

“No,” he said. “I’m not leaving like this, not in anger.”

“It isn’t your choice to stay.” The canvas felt brittle under her touch, it still smelled faintly of the priming coat. “Please leave.”

Silence spread out between them, and Usha became aware of sounds from the street below—the clop of horses, the rumble of a carriage wheel. A gull cried, and out the corner of her eye she saw it sailing, gray-winged against a small patch of blue sky.

Then, in a mild voice, like someone curious and musing, Loren said, “You accuse your husband of running away, Usha.”

Usha gasped, a sharp hiss, as though she’d been struck. “You have no right to speak of that.”

He ignored her. “You accuse him, but what are you doing now? You order me to leave, but it’s you who are running away.”

Usha flared in anger. “Go! Leave right now.”

But Loren was relentless, quiet and relentless. “You hide, Usha. You’re hiding now behind the canvas.”

Her face flushed, her blood rising in anger. “How dare you? You have no right to speak of Palin to me.” With two long strides, she left the easel and put herself eye to eye with him. “You don’t know a thing about it.”

Loren shook his head, a little rueful smile on his lips. “You’re right. I don’t know a thing about it—or about you. You veil yourself in mystery. Your glances, your sighs suggest regret for a life you won’t let go—or decide to hold onto.”

“Loren, I warn you. Stop it.”

What she warned him against, she didn’t know. Whatever it was, Loren didn’t seem to care. He came closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Is he truly gone, Usha? This husband of yours. Is he gone?”

Usha wanted to back away from Loren and from what he was implying, from what he dared to ask. She lifted her chin, refusing to move even half a step.

“You know nothing about it. How dare you speak of it!”

He was implacable now, hunting for something, for an answer. “You say your husband is gone. I see no evidence of it.”

“You don’t know one thing—”

He stood so close to her now that she trembled—with anger, she thought, sheer fury that he would dare to speak of her marriage as though he knew even the smallest thing about it.

Loren shook his head, again the small, almost regretful smile. “I do know one thing, Usha.” Soft, he said, “I know I love you.”

Usha stood still, she heard only the rush of blood in her ears, the hammering of her heart as Loren put a hand on each shoulder, very gently.

She said, “Loren.”

He kissed her, first gently, then with sudden, frightening urgency. She could do nothing else but return the kiss, and she returned it fully.

His voice rough with emotion, he asked the question she’d never adequately answered. “Who are you, Usha?”

Over his shoulder Usha saw the easel, and the back of a white canvas waiting. Negative space. That’s what artists call the white space, that place where nothing is and something might be.

Her throat closing tight around a surge of anger and fear and uncertainty, Usha knew she’d been like negative space since she left Solace, a stark white canvas, waiting for color and shape and her own hand, her will to begin the work. She took Loren’s hand and brought him to the easel. In face of the emptiness of negative space, the woman whose life began in mysteries without answers took a bold step.

“I can tell you who I am not. I am not of the Irda, though they raised me. I am not a mage, though I have magic.” She laughed, the sound of it a little shaky, and she held her arms out from her sides. “I am not the young girl I seem to be. I am a mother of two grown children.”

Silence, for a breath of time.

“I am Palin Majere’s wife. Once I believed that his uncle, the dire mage Raistlin, was my father. Rumor said so, for a long time. Raistlin’s daughter they called me. But I’m not his child. I don’t know who my parents were. I’m told they are dead.”

He slipped an arm around her waist, and Usha realized with a sudden pang that it had been years since a man had held her so easily, so warmly. Her throat closed. It had been too many years since she’d felt the sweep of this kind of warmth rushing through her.

“I don’t know who I am, Loren. I never have.” She reached out and touched the white canvas, the glaze cool under her fingers, the texture only barely noticeable, like that of an egg’s smooth shell. “I’m that, I suppose. Negative space.”

When he bent to kiss her again, Usha shook her head, pushing him gently away.

“Go.”

“Usha, please—”

“Go, Loren,” she whispered. “Now.”

That whisper was a ragged sound. In her own ears it sounded more like a plea than a command. Still, he obeyed.

When he was gone, Usha sat in the chair he’d occupied all morning. She picked up the book of elven poetry he’d left behind and closed it. She sat with the book on her lap, keeping very still until she heard the faint sound of the inn’s door closing. Then she wept.

15

Usha turned into the shady lane that led to the Ivy. Heavy of heart, she also felt heavy of limb at the end of a hot, restless day. Two boys passed her, coming from the inn’s dooryard. One carried a folded piece of paper in a dirty hand. Haven’s unofficial messenger corps had dwindled to a few stalwarts who drifted between one inn and another as the travelers who’d been caught in the occupation had found places to stay with friends or relations. One or two of those had given up utterly on the hope of getting out and rented little houses on the eastern side of the city.

The prisoners are settling in, Usha thought grimly as the boys trudged by.

But she was not. No one was less settled than Usha. She’d done no painting for the past few days. The canvas she’d finished priming sat untouched on the easel where she’d left it. In that time, her feelings had swung between fear and elation, the memory of Loren’s kiss, his arms around her, even his gray eyes, driving her between one pole and the other. There was no middle ground. Reasoned thought seemed to be a thing of the past, as did sleep. At last, this afternoon, Usha had abandoned her studio in frustration and went out to walk.

That had been no remedy, Haven seemed airless. Not even the slightest breeze moved, and Usha became aware of the unpleasant smell of the river. The faint odor of dead fish, the marshes up stream, horse droppings, and all the waste a city generates… a miasma of these hung in the still air. She had not walked long before giving up and turning back to the inn. Now, in the shady lane, Usha thought she would go upstairs and face the empty canvas in hope that she’d be able to begin one of the portraits that would soon be due.

Someone called a greeting. Usha turned to see Bertie the cook’s boy at the top of the lane. She raised a hand to acknowledge and then cried out in sudden fear.

As though the ground opened under her feet, Usha plunged into freezing, almost mindless dread. She wanted to run, to bolt down the lane toward the inn, yet her knees were so weak she could hardly stagger to the hitching post and hold herself steady. Bertie cried out again and, breathing hard, her heart hammering, Usha recognized the terror gripping her.

Dragonfear!

The shouts and cries of others rang out around her. She became aware of a crowd gathering, of voices rising, shouting. Bertie pointed up, and Usha saw that others did, too.

Red dragons came in over the city, a dozen flying out of the west. Light slid along their scaled hides and glinted from the armor of the knights who rode them. Standing in the street, shading her eyes against the glare, Usha thought they looked like flames peeling away from the burning ball of the sun. On the city walls, Sir Radulf’s men cheered. From this distance, Usha couldn’t see them, but the sound of their shouts swelled as the dragons came closer.

People poured into the street from the inn, from the shops up and down the road. Their voices swelled, some screaming in terror, some shouting one to another. A woman huddled in the arms of her husband. Two dwarves in the street cursed. One was Dougal Scree, the saddlemaker from the shop up the street, the other his apprentice. Dougal shook his fist at the sky as the shadows of the dragons slipped across the crowd, sliding up the street toward Old Keep. The impotent gesture died before the derision of a knight riding by.

“Calm down, old father.” The knight laughed. “You’ll burst a blood vessel.

The dwarf rounded on the knight. “Don’t you ‘old father’ me, you ruffian! Go on! Move off!”

Still laughing, the knight pricked his mount’s sides with his spurs. The horse danced sideways, tumbling the cursing dwarf to the ground. Hoofs flashed as the tall gelding reared, and Usha sprang into the street, grabbing Dougal’s arm before the plunging horse came down. She dragged him back, and Bertie took her sputtering charge from her. The laughter of a second knight joined the first, and Usha recognized the voice.

Lady Mearah put her dark horse between her fellow and Usha. She spoke one word, too low for Usha to make out, and the knight put spurs to his mount, scattering people as he tore off down the street.

“Is there a problem, Mistress Usha?”

Usha lifted her chin, meeting the lady knight eye to eye. “There has been for some time now, milady. It doesn’t look to be getting better.”

“Ah.” The Palanthian looked up as though counting the circling dragons. When she looked back, her chill gaze seemed to go right through Usha. “Well, some would say things should be getting better any moment now.”

A hand touched her arm, gently. Usha turned to see Loren standing beside her. He said nothing to Lady Mearah, only holding her gaze in grim silence. She tilted her head, as though weighing something, then laughed.

“I’ll see you later, Halgard.”

To Usha those words didn’t sound like a reminder of an appointment. They sounded like a threat.

Lady Mearah was gone in a clatter of hoofs, scattering the rest of the curious before her. Loren put his arm around Usha’s shoulders and turned her toward the inn where Bertie was promising Dougal Scree a tankard of ale. “To help calm your nerves, sir.”

“And you,” Loren said, his breath warm on Usha’s cheek. “Saving old Scree from certain death and facing down a knight is a good day’s work. You don’t look like you need anything to calm your nerves, though. Perhaps something in the way of congratulation?”

Usha almost laughed as she slipped out of his embrace, and she almost cried to feel how empty the space between them was. Oh, dear gods, I haven’t felt this way in a long time!

Still, Usha spoke calmly. “Come inside, Loren. Take supper with me in the Common Room. We still have to talk about Tamara’s portrait.”

Something like relief passed swiftly over his face, but Loren hung on his heel, just for an instant, long enough for Usha to recall the weighing look that passed between him and Lady Mearah. Then he took a long stride ahead of her and opened the inn door. Bowing her inside he said, “It will be my pleasure to dine with you, Mistress Usha.”

In the high room at Rose Hall, where Aline planned missions for Qui’thonas, Dezra stood with her back to the window and the darkening sky. She’d seen the dragons soaring over the city. With Aline and Madoc and Dunbrae she’d watched the two talons swoop low over the river and arrow inland to circle around Old Keep, one after the other canting spread wings, as though in salute.

Remnants of dragonfear, like wisps of webs, clung to the memory, but even these were fading now. Now she watched Madoc and Dunbrae, the two looking like hounds circling each other. The strife between them, ever smoldering, had flared again—the dwarf and his distrust of the mage, the mage and his dislike of the dwarf. An old matter, but tonight it had a keener edge.

In this, Dez took no side, though once she might have. She waited, she watched, but she suspended decision. Something could break tonight. The shape of Qui’thonas could change as trust fell apart.

“You’re a damned liar,” Dunbrae said, his voice a dangerous rumble.

Aline looked up from the long table. In the past month, the place had become a war room, stripped of its fine furnishings, with only a few chairs and this long, cherrywood table remaining. The rich old merchant’s young widow had changed herself into a battle captain, and Dez read impatience in her frown when she said, “You know the rule, Dunbrae. You make the accusation you can prove. Otherwise you have nothing to say. Can you prove this one?”

Madoc, leaning against the window sill, cocked an ironic smile. “He can’t, because I don’t lie. Not to you.”

Dunbrae turned the onyx ring on his finger, and Madoc nodded as though something passed between them. “You know it, Dunbrae.”

The dwarf put his hand in his pocket, hiding the ring and, Dez thought, hiding the fact that this magical relic, the reader of a man’s intent, told him nothing to back up his claim that Madoc had given Qui’thonas false information.

Still, though Dunbrae had no real proof, Aline granted him the grace to speak and make his case. Suspicion, even a gut feeling, counted for something in Aline’s judgment. The failure of the talisman Dunbrae had so often used didn’t overrule.

“You don’t lie?” Dunbrae said. “I know no such thing. Here’s what I do know. Your information is suddenly no good. After all we’ve been hearing about the famous Madoc Diviner with his finger on every pulse in the city, your information is failing us.”

It was. Twice since the killing at Stone Farm missions had failed. Once because Dunbrae had warning only an hour before setting out with three refugees that the route had been compromised. Again, four days ago when there had been no warning at all. Two refugees died, and a good woman, an old hand from the early days of Qui’thonas with them. Dez had been the one who had to come back and tell Aline.

Dez touched the healing cut on her forehead, the scored flesh just at the hairline. She hadn’t come back with the bad news unscathed. The bruises were fading, the cut itself mending, and it had been days since she’d felt the throbbing headache.

Anyone would find it easy to believe Dunbrae’s assessment of things. Dez had in the past, but now she couldn’t. Two women she respected spoke for Madoc—one his lover, the other Usha. Even though she’d once discounted Aline’s opinion as being that of a fond lover, Dez couldn’t now. Aline was in love, but she wasn’t reckless; and Usha’s was one of the clearest eyes for seeing a man’s character Dezra knew. Yet it remained that people had died counting on Madoc’s information.

Madoc dismissed Dunbrae’s insinuation with a gesture. “You’re making things up. Is it my doing that the knights are roaming all over every way out of the city we know?”

His voice cold, his words pointed, Dunbrae said, “I’m not the one who’d know that, am I? But I do know that since the killings at Stone Farm, nothing’s been going right. You will recall that’s when you told us there would be no knights around to trouble us, yet—” He laughed bitterly. “Yet there were.”

Madoc snorted. “And you told us the knight and the foot soldiers had all been killed. That wasn’t true either, was it?”

Outside the windows the night sky hung down low over the city. The dragons had flown in out of a blue sky, but almost immediately after, the sky had grown dark, as though they’d brought storm in behind them. Slate-colored clouds unraveled at the edges as the wind picked up.

Her finger drumming the desk top, Aline looked from Madoc to Dunbrae. “Is anyone making a provable accusation?”

Dunbrae cursed.

Aline glanced at Madoc, who shook his head.

“Anyone saying he can’t trust the others?”

Dunbrae kicked at the floor. Madoc shook his head.

Aline’s hand reached for a pen, dismissing the matter. She made a few marks on the map before her, then slid it across the desk. “This is what I want to concentrate on tonight.”

Thunder rumbled in the sky, and a stiffening wind carried the scent of rain as the four turned their attention to the map. New-made to Madoc’s specifications, it showed the streets of Haven as they ran from the wealthy quarter of the city out to the river. The position of every patrol of knights and citizen collaborators showed as red points, their routes marked in green. Three places along the river bank were marked with blue triangles—safe ways out of the tunnels.

By moonset, a family of elves—folk who’d lived in Haven since they’d fled from Qualinesti—would begin a flight to freedom they’d not thought to have to make a second time.

“We can postpone this,” Aline said. “We can get word to Liel and his family and tell them things have changed.” She glanced out the window to the sky beyond. “Two talons of dragons does change a thing or two.”

Dez, till now silent, said, “Yes, but those dragons are still shuffling around looking for space to catch their breaths after a long flight—some very likely came all the way from Neraka. If the wyrms aren’t done in, the riders are. The talon Sir Radulf has had till now hasn’t been doing a very good job for him, and they’re still not much to fret us. So I’m thinking that just about now Sir Radulf and Lady Mearah are congratulating themselves on acquiring enough dragons to patrol the skies and look for our bolt holes—tomorrow night. Let’s do it.”

Aline looked at Dunbrae and Madoc. Her green eyes held them. She asked the question she always did before sending them out, perhaps to death.

“Dunbrae, can you do it?”

In his own way, Dunbrae loved Aline as much as Madoc did. He would do anything for her. Gravely he said, “Count on me, Mistress Aline.”

Aline’s voice softened. “And you, Madoc?”

Simply, the mage said, “I’m yours.”

Last she came to Dezra, and though Dez had declared her willingness, Aline’s eyes searched for the answer to another question. Madoc and Dunbrae patched up their thin trust for the sake of Aline. Where did Dezra’s trust hang?

On every one of her companions.

“We can do this, Aline. Let’s get to work.”

Storm rumbled closer, and lightning flashed in the bellies of the clouds. In the alley behind the Goat, Sir Arvel eyed the dark elf, the fallen son of Silvanesti, the lover of a woman whose descent from the favor of her Palanthian kin was as far as his from the elf lords of Silvanost. Outcasts and exiles were the makings of the dark army now. Sir Arvel had heard of days when dark knights had as much honor as those who followed the gods of Good. Those days were gone, vanished when the gods did. Those gods took a lot more with them than some mage’s ability to twinkle a spell to life with his fingers and a prayer on his lips.

“Elf,” said the knight, “I have news for your mistress.”

Sir Arvel thought that naming was amusing, and he thought himself rather clever. But he didn’t smile. It would not have done to smile over anything having to do with Lady Mearah’s private life.

Lightning flashed closer, the heatless glare flinging shadows around the alley.

Tavar pushed away from the wall. “Tell me.”

Imperious bastard, thought Sir Arvel. “There is going to be another attempt to get people out of the city.”

Tavar raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

Ah, no. You don’t get my source, elf.

“You hear things in a tavern. I know. Just like I knew about the attempt to escape over the moor.” He snorted. “Your friends never did find out who was leading the exodus, never did learn who is organizing the escapes. That one your friends managed to bungle, and most of ’em are dead now, eh? All but the mongrel half-goblin who hid in a ditch and managed to get back to Sir Radulf and puke the news that he’s down a few knights. That must’ve given milady a bit of… discomfort when she heard—most of ’em being her pet knights.”

Dark or light, elves didn’t show anger the way humans did. It was one thing Sir Arvel disliked and mistrusted about them. They just got a little closer, a little more still, and something happened in their eyes that made him think of a cat’s adjusting to a change in light. So it was with Tavar. He tilted his head to the side, as though thinking about something.

Arrogant bastard. In milady’s confidence and in milady’s bedchamber.

He said nothing of that, either. Just in case. What he did say was the way to a place far downriver, almost to the bend where the White-rage came in from the east.

“Keep an eye on the bank on the Darken Wood side. It’ll probably surprise you and sprout elves and humans. And this time find someone who can do this without managing to kill everyone he brings along with him.”

The elf gave him a scathing look and left. Sir Arvel didn’t laugh until he was certain Tavar was well gone. Then he did, the sound of it filling the alley. A few moments later, Sir Arvel heard the back door of the Goat slam. Another knight stepped into the shadows. He looked at Sir Arvel and grinned.

“Now, don’t be worrying,” he said in mockery of the idea that Sir Arvel was worrying about anything. “Every one of milady’s men will come back this time, sir. Well… almost every one of them.”

And then he, too, slipped away into the night.

Sir Arvel watched him go, feeling satisfied with his night’s work. He was not fond of Sir Radulf Eigerson, though he’d served under him for a long time. Still, he loved Lady Mearah less, so it didn’t trouble him in the least to take from her and give to him.

No one could imagine Sir Radulf cared a whit who crept into the bed of his second in command each night. Easy enough, though, to imagine how much he didn’t like the signs that those two, Lady Mearah and her dark elf lover, were gathering a noticeable crowd of retainers around themselves from among the younger knights.

It wouldn’t do to get rid of Lady Mearah. Not yet. She was too well regarded in Neraka, and whatever else he was Sir Radulf Eigerson was no fool.

But it’s certainly time break up the team, Sir Arvel thought as he slipped back into the Goat. Time to send out a warning.

“Tell me,” Loren said, standing at the window of Usha’s studio, his eyes on the storm coming in. “Tell me, Usha, what it feels like to do what you did today.”

Usha frowned. “What I did?”

Sketches lay all around the place—on the chair Loren usually sat in to read, on her bed, on the floor. Sketches of Tamara made from memory, from her father’s description. There would be a portrait and about this Usha was both glad and apprehensive.

Loren turned from the window, his back to the street and the threat of storm. “Pulling old Scree out from under the horse’s hooves. You dashed right in.”

Usha supposed she had. She didn’t remember the details, just the look of terror on Dougal Scree’s face and the knight’s unholy glee.

“Why do you ask, Loren?”

He didn’t answer at once. He seemed more interested in something in the middle distance between them, that place where one’s thoughts lay unspoken. Finally he said, “I haven’t done anything so impetuously—” He shook his head. “No, not impetuously. I have not done anything so honestly directed by my heart in… too long.”

Usha rose from the edge of the bed, sketches fluttering from her lap and drifting onto the floor. She stepped around some, over others, and went to stand beside Loren at the window. She didn’t know how to answer him without sounding falsely modest. It had felt terrifying—the dwarf’s terror, the flashing hooves. Blood-freezingly, heart-stoppingly terrifying.

“Loren,” she said, softly. She touched his arm but didn’t say more.

“It’s… the Council, Tamara… I don’t know sometimes whether what I’m doing is the right thing, the wrong thing…” He looked away, out to the lowering sky again. “Or nothing.”

“You’re doing what you can.”

“Really? You didn’t seem to think so when we first spoke, nor when we last spoke.”

She hadn’t, but she also knew she didn’t have the same weight of care that he did. She spent her days painting and hoping to glean information from Loren that would help Qui’thonas. Of that last she was sometimes proud and sometimes ashamed, for it was no easy thing to betray this man for the sake of loyalty to Qui’thonas. And it would be a betrayal if Sir Radulf learned that Loren’s words in Usha’s ears became news to help the underground effort to ferry refuges out of the city.

She shuddered, recalling the look on Lady Mearah’s face when she promised that she and Loren would see each other again.

“Loren,” she said, “sometimes I wish we were two other people.” She should have stopped there, she knew it, but she didn’t. “Two other people, who lived in another country, another time…”

He turned, and as thunder rumbled behind him, Usha saw a flash of longing in his eyes that both thrilled and frightened.

“Usha.” He traced the curve of her cheek. When she didn’t move, his finger touched her chin, then the quickening pulse at her throat. She touched his finger to stop him and found her hand closing over his. He turned her hand over, bent his head, and kissed the tender skin of her wrist.

“Loren…”

She felt his lips move against her skin. She thought they shaped a word, her name. He let her hand go, and she caught his back.

Usha didn’t cry out when he took her in his arms, and she didn’t push away. He held her close. She heard the beating of his heart. He kissed her, gently then fiercely. She met his fire with her own, and neither regretted the kisses. Later, neither regretted this afternoon on which they became lovers.

“No lights,” Dez whispered.

She looked over her shoulder and signaled with a sharp cutting gesture. At the back of the small line of travelers in the tunnel, red-headed Gafyn shuttered his lantern. The little elf child Seiley, standing between her father and mother, made a small whimpering sound as everyone around her seemed to disappear into the darkness. Gafyn whispered something, and Dez heard the girl’s whimper change into a nervous giggle.

Good boy.

This was Gafyn’s second mission with Qui’thonas, and the boy whose parents and grandparents had been fishers on this river had immediately proved valuable. There didn’t seem to be an inch of riverside he didn’t know, and Dez—who knew her way around Darken Wood better than most—found Gafyn’s knowledge of the dangerous borders to be nearly as good as her own. Fisher folk, his family had also been hunters in the days when anyone could get outside the walls of Haven.

Gafyn had a grudge against the occupation, one he was happy to prosecute by sneaking refugees out of the city under the very noses of Sir Radulf’s vaunted knights and terrible dragons.

This, though, would be the last mission Qui’thonas would run for a while. After the elf and his family were safely gone from the area, Qui’thonas would lie low and wait for Sir Radulf to get tired of feeding another dozen knights and squires—not to mention twelve ravenous dragons who would devour herds of sheep and goats before long.

After that… Dez grinned. Most of the damn dragons’ll be gone, and off we go again.

With the darkness silent behind her, Dez looked ahead, and her eyes adjusted to the changing light. Outside the mouth of the tunnel the sky hung down like an iron helm. The night closed in, thick and murky by the riverside. Dez looked for Dunbrae and saw the dwarf as only a dim figure at the riverside—a dwarf whose fathers had developed their eyesight over generations of life underground. Dunbrae had no need for light.

He lifted a hand to signal all-clear.

Dez turned and whistled, a low short sound to tell Gafyn to get the little group of refugees moving. She heard the shuffle of their feet, the sound of the little girl’s rapid breathing. Confident that Gafyn had them well in hand, she stepped out of the tunnel.

The first hot drops of rain she’d felt in weeks splashed onto her face. She looked up and saw the clouds had already begun to tatter at the edges. A shower, nothing more.

She waved the elves on. Liel came first, his daughter Seiley next, and Reith his wife after. Gafyn made up the rear, and Dez saw him slip a short sword from the leather sheath at his belt. Liel strung his bow. His wife already had hers in hand.

A small grumble of thunder rolled down the sky. A sheet of lightning flashed, then another. Seiley gasped, and her mother murmured something soothing in Elvish.

Dez had her eyes on Dunbrae, who stood looking back and upward, toward the hill under which ran this portion of the tunnel.

“Dunbr—”

Then she saw his face, his eyes, and his hand flashing for the throwing axe at his belt.

Dez whirled back toward the tunnel and shouted, “Get back! Back!”

It was too late. Four riders on black horses, three knights armored lightly, one an elf in mail red as blood thundered down the hill. Seiley shrieked. Gafyn snatched her up, tucked her under his arm, and fled to the riverside. Liel hung back. Reith, too.

Dunbrae shouted curses and bellowed: “Go! Go!”

It was the plan they’d sworn not to abandon if they were found out. No matter what, Gafyn would take the child and the parents would follow. No one must stay to fight but Dez and Dunbrae. A look of swift self-loathing on his face, the elf ran, his wife’s hand in his own.

In the moment they passed Dunbrae, the dwarf threw his axe and split the skull of one of the knights. Dez let fly an arrow and took another knight out of the world with a bolt through the eye.

“Dunbrae, heads up!”

The dwarf turned in time to see the red-mailed elf spurring toward him, sword raised like an axe to lop off his head. Dunbrae flung himself aside, rolled, and came up, his short sword in both hands. He thrust the blade upward, tearing open the horse’s belly.

The beast screamed, fell, and the elf flew over his mount’s head. Dez heard his neck snap. There was one more, somewhere.

Dez looked around frantically. There had been three knights…

And the last of them came charging around the side of the hill, howling curses, a mace whirling over his head. Dez drew, let fly, and missed. The knight thundered by, the mace wailing overhead as Dez fell, rolled, and came up behind the mounted man. She had no weapon but the knife in her boot, her bow flung aside in the fall. She snatched it out as the knight made another run at her. She saw his teeth flashing white, smelled the sweat on his horse…

She stood her ground, and it seemed like she could feel the knight’s astonishment, could almost hear him wonder—What is wrong with this woman?

Dez grinned, and maybe it was that dreadful grin that warned the knight.

If it did, he took the warning too late. Dunbrae’s throwing axe flew, lopped off the hand holding the mace, and clattered to the ground. Blood spurted, the knight stared down at the stump where his hand used to be.

It was easy enough for Dez to finish him off after he tumbled to the ground. A swift, flashing stroke across the throat, and it was done.

Dunbrae looked around at the carnage. “We have to collapse the tunnel.”

“No we don’t.” Dez grunted. “They’re dead.”

“Yeah, but not the one who tipped them off to where we’d be, eh?”

Dez closed her eyes, cold in the aftermath of the fighting, sweat chilling like ice on her face and neck. Not the one who tipped them off.

“The boy knows where to go?” she asked.

“Better than either of us. He’ll be fine. If the elves do as they’re told, them and their little girl will be away safely.”

Dez nodded, and neither said what was most on their minds—that the hard part came next, telling Aline what happened and that no one knew anything about this run besides Dez, Dunbrae, and Madoc Diviner.

16

The line of gray light beneath the window shutters spoke of a sullen, clouded day. The air, once filled with storm charge and the tantalizing scent of rain that had not fallen, had a thick, unpleasant smell. No breeze stirred, and Usha lay still, watching the shapes of the furniture in her bedchamber emerge from the darkness—the wardrobe where her clothes hung, the desk and the chair where Loren liked to sit and read. The blue stone jug filled with water and the pewter cups caught the first half-hearted gleam of true daylight as it slipped across the room.

Her lover lay beside her, sleeping.

In a matter of an afternoon and a night, everything in Usha’s life had changed. In these quiet moments, with Loren asleep beside her, she held the memories of their lovemaking to her heart, precious and wonderful. But then she looked at the tangle her life had become and wondered whether she would recognize herself if she managed to unsnarl it all.

Usha turned to watch the morning light creep across the floor. It touched the bed, the pillows and rumpled blankets and, beside her, Loren asleep. His breathing was even and quiet, only hitching a little when he moved, the small motion of a man settling more deeply into sleep.

My love, she thought. The endearment came so naturally to her that she might have been naming him so for a year rather than one impassioned night.

Usha lifted a hand to touch Loren’s face, very different in repose than in waking. This, she thought, must be the face his mother knew when he was a boy, youthful and peaceful, for the mark of adult care was eased away for the few hours he slept.

But she didn’t touch him. She put her hand down, resting it on the soft sheets, musky with the scent of the two of them. She lay still, keeping quiet, as she had been since the first hint of day. Below, she heard the sound of voices as people went down into the inn’s common room in search of breakfast.

“What will we do,” Loren had said last night, laughing, “when people see that I came for supper and stayed for breakfast?”

She’d joined him laughing. It wasn’t the kind of question that truly wanted an answer. Not then. Now, though… now it did. People could whisper what they liked about the matter. They had been doing so since Loren had first come to sit in her studio to read and watch her work. Most likely the gossips imagined that what had happened last night had, in fact, begun weeks before.

These things didn’t trouble Usha. Another did, for whatever people had thought they’d seen they had not, in truth, seen a woman forsaking her marriage vows. Last night, she had done that, and so today she must do something she’d been dreading since waking. Before rumor and gossip spoke of it, Usha must tell Dez what had happened between her and Loren. She had no illusion that this would be an easy conversation, none that it would end peacefully. She didn’t know enough of her own heart to know how to defend her actions, yet she must defend them, somehow.

Of one thing she could be certain. Dez would rail about Palin. But wherever he was, Palin Majere had not walked ghostly through the precious hours of the night past.

Loren woke, sleepy-eyed and reaching for her, and Usha lay in his arms a long time.

“Loren…”

“I know. I won’t stay.”

She was silent, barely breathing.

“Usha, may I return?”

She kissed him, at first tenderly, then hungrily. But she broke away before he could say or do more. On the floor, scattered from the previous afternoon, lay sketches of Tamara.

“There is the portrait,” he said.

There was; and there was Qui’thonas.

“I’ll see you again, Loren. Soon. But now…”

Now she needed time, and Loren gave it to her.

There was no mercy in Dezra’s outrage. It was an elemental force, a blazing up of righteousness and the pain of betrayal.

“Usha, how could you do this? Have you lost your mind?”

It wasn’t a question to be answered yet. Usha didn’t try.

“How can you betray Palin? By all gods, how can you strut around Haven with a man who collaborates with the occupation?”

Dez, white-knuckled fists clenched, paced up and down the little room. Her face was pale, bruised, and scraped. Usha wanted to ask what had happened, but she didn’t try. She would get no answer now. And so she sat on her bed, her back against the wall, legs crossed tailor-fashion, resolved to wait until the storm subsided.

“This easily you betray your husband!” Dez cried. “My brother… what are you thinking? If it doesn’t matter that Palin is your husband—and it sure doesn’t seem to—he is the father of your children. How can you disgrace them?”

And there was the question to destroy Usha’s resolve.

Her cheeks flushing with anger, she said, “I am not disgracing my children. They are grown. A long time grown. They have seen the life their father and I have led, the striving against each other, fighting…”

No. She would say no more of that. If she had betrayed her marriage vows, she could at least refrain from exposing the wounds.

“Leave my children out of this. When… if they need to know, I’ll be the one to talk about it. Till then, leave them out of this.”

Dezra kicked a chair, sending it crashing across the floor. “Shall I leave their father out of this? My father? My sisters? Your whole family?” She laughed. “But then how can I ask? You’ve been the apple of one man’s eye or another since we came to Haven.”

Usha’s eyes narrowed. “You have nothing to say about betrayal. You don’t know my marriage. You can’t speak about it.”

“I—”

“You don’t know. There are two people in my marriage. Neither of them is you.”

“You almost sound as if you believe it. Poor thing.” Dezra stopped pacing, the silence of her stillness settling around them. “My brother has behaved badly. Everyone agrees—my father, my sisters. But two wrongs in a family don’t make a right. Marriage is not just two people. You know that. In the name of the gods, what happened?”

A husband who left home in storms of anger, and a canvas that showed me negative space from end to end. That’s what happened. Usha didn’t say that or even try to explain. It would only send Dez off into other furies.

“Usha, don’t you care about the family?”

Her voice chill, Usha said, “Dez, why do you hold me to a standard you don’t apply to your brother?”

Dezra’s eyes narrowed as though she suspected a trap.

“That’s right,” Usha said. “You talk about family and what I owe you and your father and your sisters, what I owe my children. Yet you seem think it’s an acceptable thing for your brother to desert his family.”

Again Dezra flared, and she flashed past the question. “You have no idea where he is, Usha, or what he’s doing. He could be dead or—”

“Or he could be lying in the arms of another woman. I don’t know, and neither do you. If he’s dead, I’ll be sorry, but his death or my sorrow wouldn’t mean he didn’t desert our marriage.” Usha rose. “The subject is closed. I won’t talk about it any more.”

Trembling with anger and sorrow, she walked past her sister-in-law’s outrage and left the room.

She wanted peace from Dezra’s impassioned defense of her family and from the ache of her own emerging understanding that she didn’t truly know what that visceral familial bond that drove Dez must feel like. She loved her children. She had loved their father once. But the blank canvas she’d shown to Loren had cried out to Usha that at best her life was negative space filled in with borrowed things, borrowed family, borrowed history.

Like charcoal sketches, those were fading with the touch of a smudging finger.

Usha walked through the market square, hardly seeing the people or the wares on display. She was exhausted and angry all at the same time. When she left the inn she’d thought she would take her weariness to Loren, but she hadn’t. Anger drove her to walking, though the day was hot and oppressive. She went down quiet streets where few folk were abroad. In the hot noon hour women talked quietly outside their homes. Children sat sleepy in doorways and the scent of cooking drifted out. One or two boys trundled high-wheeled handcarts through the narrow lanes, but most of the working folk were leaning against the doorways of their homes or taverns. Later they would return to work, but not until the nooning was had, the bread and cheese, the ale or wine.

Usha walked quickly, at the pace of her anger, but once she stopped to look up at the sky and the low-hanging clouds where dragons circled. Over this part of the city she usually saw two reds. Today she saw five. Sir Radulf had dispersed all three talons, and the sight of them chilled her. She walked on, but the thought of people at their tables made her hungry. She was in no mood for tavern fare or tavern company, and so she headed for the market.

The day’s heat lay thick on the crowded square like a damp, smothering blanket. In spite of it, the stalls were full and the sellers busy. People grumbled about the scant choices. Haven’s fare was down to fish and fowl and whatever vegetables grew in these dry times. Now and then someone would cast an eye at the sky, at the clouds and the circling dragons, but Haven was a merchant city, one that had struck an uneasy bargain with a conquering army. If commerce was difficult, it would not be stifled.

Usha bought a small pastry filled with chopped lamb, mint, and potatoes and wandered through the stalls until she saw the dwarf Henge leaning his elbows on the display table before his booth, his market day offerings spread out before.

“Good day to you, Mistress Usha,” Henge called when he saw her. “I’ve not seen you in a week of days.”

“Longer than that,” she said, looking around. “How is your brother?”

“Ach, him.” Henge shook his head. “That Scur, he’s off looking at a collection of table silver. Got the good work today.”

“Inside and out of the sun.”

“The very job. Stay and talk a while.”

Her restlessness soothed by long walking, Usha agreed. Henge did a certain amount of complaining about his younger brother, but he wasn’t one to like spending all the day in the market manning the booth by himself. She offered to share her lunch, and Henge accepted gladly. In the dusty afternoon, they talked for a while until a sudden silence dropped over the market.

“Reorx’s beard,” Henge whispered.

Usha turned. The crowd in the market parted, opening a broad avenue for the passage of four armed and mounted knights. In this heat, they were armored and helmed, and the visors of the helms were down. They came closer, and Usha saw they drove a group of people ahead of them. Two were elves, a man and a woman; one was a young human man—she put a hand to her lips, stifling a cry of recognition when she saw the red-headed young man Gafyn. They were ragged and dirty, roped together as though they were a string of cattle being taken for sale. The woman stumbled and fell, a knight struck her with the flat of his sword and, when she tried to rise and fell again, poked her with the point.

Henge muttered a curse, his hand knotting into a fist. Usha covered the fist with her own hand, a warning, as Gafyn turned as best he could and lifted the woman to her feet. The shameful spectacle went by, carving a path for itself through the crowd. No one murmured. No one muttered. The knights were greeted by a solid wall of silence.

Then, as though to chip at that wall, the dull thud of a hammer in play drifted from the far end of the square.

“What is it?” Henge muttered.

Usha went up on her toes to see. A small squad of men dispersed through the square, stopping at trees and hammering notices. A little boy ran up to one of them, then darted away, shouting, “A hangin’! There’s gonna be a hangin’!”

The knights rode on, the prisoners stumbling ahead. In the sky, the dragons wheeled, their riders watching.

The refugees were not hanged together. Rather one was hanged beside every gate into the city, and the news of it flew through Haven. At the hour of execution, the common room at the Ivy was deserted. Few went to see one of the hangings. Most retired to their rooms, quiet and frightened and angry.

In the absence of traffic on the streets, Usha heard the scream of gulls, the lap of the river, and the soft hiss of a waking breeze. Somewhere over the moors of the Seeker Reaches, thunder rumbled. She thought it might rain. At last the sky would unburden itself. From where she sat on her bed, she could see the sky out the window. Dun clouds had turned to slate. Dez, on the floor with her back propped against a wall, poked moodily at the poorly repaired chair she’d earlier kicked across the room. It wobbled, not strong enough to hold more than Usha’s charcoals. The silence between the two was the uneasy one of reluctant truce, and Usha was the first to break it.

“How did it happen, Dez?”

Dezra shrugged. “It happened. The two elves were Liel and his wife Reith. They almost made it out. We were ambushed at the mouth of one of the tunnels. Gafyn—” She stopped to swallow hard. “He grabbed the little girl, the parents followed. You know how we do it.”

Usha nodded. Once out, freedom for the refugees was the most important thing.

“Dunbrae and I handled the knights. Three of ’em, and there was an elf.”

Usha raised a brow.

“Silvanesti, a dark elf. He is…” She laughed, a bitter sound. “He was Lady Mearah’s lover.”

The news went through Usha like ice. She thought of Loren, of the cold face of the lady knight who had spoken to her in threat in Loren’s garden, to Loren himself on the street before the inn.

“We killed them. Dunbrae and me. But the missing knights were found—well, they would be. And Mearah’s dead lover. Not long after, so were the elves and Gafyn. The child is dead.” She made a soft sound, a hitching of the breath. “They’d come to Haven a few years ago, refugees from Qualinesti and thinking they’d go back one day, when all was said and done. Last night—” She nudged the chair. It toppled over. “Last night they were trying to get out of Haven.”

The breeze smelled of rain. Dezra cursed it for a liar.

“We had the route planned, cleared, and—” Dez pounded a fist on her knee. “And we had Madoc Diviner’s oath that nothing would go wrong.”

Usha closed her eyes against a sudden sinking dread.

“But something did,” Dezra said, her voice hard, “Something went wrong, and Madoc swears he sent word that the route was compromised. Maybe he did, maybe not. All I know is what actually happened. He says he sent word by a trusty man, to let us know that the information he had from the first ‘trusty man’ couldn’t be trusted. Of course, Madoc has no idea how the message failed or how his trust was broken.”

Quietly, Usha said, “If he’d wanted to betray you, Dez, you’d all be dead now.”

“I know.” The words came hard. “I know, and yet… his sources aren’t doing well by him, are they? Almost amounts to the same thing.”

Silence sat between them, growing heavier by the moment. Gulls screamed in the sky outside the window. Usha was getting to know that particular gullish shriek. A dragon claimed the air currents over the river as it banked for an inland turn.

“Are you staying here, Usha? Or are you at his house now?”

His house, Loren’s.

Usha shrugged. “I don’t know.”

As though it were a given, Dez said, “You’ll want to stay with him.”

“I need the studio here and… Dez, he will still be close to the occupation. He will still know things.” She left the question unasked, but Dez knew it anyway.

“If you’re willing, Usha. But—”

“But how can you ask me to do what you hate me doing?”

Dez said nothing.

Usha sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I won’t lie. I don’t regret what happened between Loren and me, and I don’t know that it will again.”

Though she said so, her heart ached with the need to be with Loren, to wake up in his arms bed each morning, to fall asleep beside him at night.

“Did you ever think, Usha, that maybe Madoc and his trusty man were telling Aline the truth, as they believed it? Did you ever think that maybe your friend Loren is too close to the occupation?”

Usha frowned, trying to make the connection. “Are you saying Loren is telling things to Sir Radulf that—” She shook her head in disbelief. “Are you saying he’s learning Qui’thonas secrets from me?”

Anger shot through her like lightning.

“That’s mad! He’s no harm to Aline. The only harm you’re seeing is the harm to your idea of what’s proper. You don’t like it that I’m with him.”

Dezra didn’t deny it.

“People aren’t always going to be who you think they should be, Dez. I’m not, as you’ve made perfectly clear. And I’m sorry to disillusion you, but your brother isn’t either. What happened to Madoc and his sources has nothing to do with Loren or me. Someone broke trust.”

Dez got to her feet, icy in her anger. She turned to leave, but when she opened the door, Usha said: “Are you going to let people die for your anger, Dez?”

“I hate this, Usha.”

“I know.”

Dezra pressed her lips together, as though against words she might regret. She took a breath then said, “You know where to find me.”

The door closed behind her.

17

The sound of the lone horse drifted through the city, and those who heard it thought twice before looking to see who rode. Those who looked saw her riding by like a dark ghost, a demon in the weeds of mourning. No one looked on her for long, and those who did look heard the sound of her riding long after she’d passed, before she came around again.

None doubted that they would dream of her down the long nights of the years to come—Lady Mearah on the tall black mare in the night.

She went to the places where the three gallows trees stood—once, again, and again. In this way, she marked the passing of the hours. She looked into the face of each of the dead. She stared into the starting eyes, laughed at the swollen tongues and cocked her head to match the angle of each broken neck.

All this did nothing to warm the ice from her heart, nothing to light the darkness in her soul. And yet, such rounds used to do that. Rides like this across midnight battlegrounds, chasing reavers from corpses, giving the final grace to whatever man or woman of hers she found in the last throes… such rides had always assuaged the fury of knowing how many of her knights had died.

She rode, and she thought that the mindless jackals who denned in this forsaken city might imagine she’d hung the two elves and the human boy for killing knights. When she thought so, she laughed, and the bitterness of that laughter rang in echo though the city.

She’d killed to avenge Tavar, the dark elf who was not one of the glorious knights of the abandoned army of Takhisis. He’d been more than they, better, but riding through the city to curse the dead did nothing to make it easier for Lady Mearah to return to her narrow bed and lie next to emptiness. He had known what it meant to hear the voice of your father as he cursed you, the sobs of your mother as she named you Fallen. He knew what it was to laugh at the weeping and curse the weepers for fools.

Tavar had known what it was to take what he wanted. That way he’d taken her one night in a battleground tent. Because he’d wanted her, and standing before her, a man afire, he’d made her want him. No one ever had claimed her that way before. No one ever would again. On the table near her bed was a red stone that would never beat to the rhythm of her lover’s pulse again.

It might be said that Lady Mearah, she who had never loved anyone, had loved the dark elf Tavar. Still, it could not be said that her ride through Haven’s streets, her grief naked to the eyes of all who dared to peer through a shutter’s crack, eased an ounce of her pain. The hangings hadn’t. When the pain shifted enough, she would howl out her grief, a she-wolf mourning her slain mate. It wouldn’t help.

Someone had betrayed her dark elf. Someone had wanted him dead. It wasn’t intuition that told her that. Word whispering through the barracks of Old Keep told her.

Lady Mearah would find that one, and she would kill him in such a way that Haven would never forget it.

Usha walked alone in the green gloom of Loren’s garden, a restless wanderer among the sculpted groves and garths of Steadfast come out to breathe the early morning air. Rowan had come for her early, as arranged, but Usha had been too restless to stay indoors.

The air in the garden was not as pleasant as she’d hoped. The smell of fish dead of stranding at the edges of the shrinking river lurked on the changing breeze. High above the river as Old Keep, Loren’s home had a good view of the White-rage river, and the gardens ran out the edge of a sweep of hillside down to the water.

From the height, Usha turned to look back at the house. Light shone from the ground-floor windows as the servants began the day, rousing the kitchen fires, pulling linen from the cupboards and laying the table in the great hall, checking the wine cellar and polishing the silver. Though they did not have much better food at Steadfast than anyone else in the city, tonight Loren’s table would feed his guests well. Tonight Loren would host Sir Radulf, and he’d feed more than the commander of the occupation. In the past Sir Radulf had come and gone in the city with few men in attendance, but in the last few weeks he did not go even so far as Steadfast without a squad of six knights. Few of these knights were sons or daughters of nobility, but they were knights, and Loren’s tradition of hospitality demanded that he treat them accordingly. While their commander dined with the family and friends of his host in the solar, the six who came to guard him would dine in the great hall on fare nearly as fine as those above.

“And you will attend, won’t you, my love?” Loren had asked when the arrangements for the feast were being made.

My love… so he named her, as she named him, though since the night at the Ivy they had not lain together. My love, he said, and Usha heard longing in the words. Though she ached for him and in unguarded moments tried to recapture the feeling of the night they’d been together, the warmth of him in her bed, the sound of his heart beating when she lay in his arms, she maintained her quarters at the Ivy. Even so, Usha was often at Steadfast, and so of course she would attend the dinner.

Now, in the waking morning, Usha looked over the river and the merchant fleet bobbing in the water. It had been reduced by half as Sir Radulf manned more ships to his liking and sent them out to trade. They had been beautiful to see—proud sails bellying in the wind, ratlines humming. The city’s coffers would fill with profits from these voyages, and Sir Radulf would prosper on the taxes collected.

“It’s no different than any administration,” Loren had said to Usha, a fortnight before on the night after the sailing. “My ships used to come back to Haven, fatten my accounts, and the taxes I’d pay to the city would fill theirs.”

He’d looked like he believed that, as though he balanced it all out in his thinking and found that everything was all right.

“Of course,” he’d added, “there really is nothing different. Things work as they always have.”

“It’s very different,” Usha had insisted. He’d not been interested in hearing that, but she hadn’t let it stop her. “You know it, Loren. No lord mayor of Haven has ever collected taxes with the threat of death.”

He’d said nothing, not to agree or disagree, and Usha didn’t press. She’d come to know the meanings of his silences. This one, she believed, meant he was thinking about something he didn’t like to consider.

There were enough things like that, these days. In some quarters of the city a low rumble of discontent had arisen against the man known as Sir Radulf’s favorite. Things were not working as they always had, and if Loren had made his deal with the dark knight in the cause of saving lives, Usha thought the knight was supporting that cause poorly.

Despite the increase in the number of dragons and knights, the daring or the desperate still fled Haven on their own or with the help of Qui’thonas.

Each escape angered Sir Radulf more and, Usha suspected, fed a fear of rebellion. With swift efficiency he issued harsh rules restricting what could be said in public, and no group of three or larger was tolerated in public places. People no longer moved in congenial groups in the market to gossip or complain, and the custom in taverns fell off at once. Those caught violating these rules were harshly and publicly punished. At Lady Mearah’s discretion, executions could be and were ordered.

Qui’thonas. In these days, Usha barely allowed herself to think the name. The subject of refugees had lately become a frequent topic of Loren’s concern. Only yesterday morning at breakfast in the Ivy’s common room he’d said, “Sir Radulf has been entertaining the idea that the folk who leave Haven are being helped by an organized effort.”

Usha’s heart had thumped hard against her ribs, but she’d continued to spread peach jam—among the last to come up from Rusty’s root cellar—on her bread with not the least tremor of her hand. “Indeed? It would take a tremendous amount of organizing, wouldn’t you think?”

He did think so, and he also thought Sir Radulf had a point. “There used to be an organization helping elves out of Qualinesti.”

Usha’s mouth had gone dry. She’d set the knife down carefully. It only rattled a little against the plate.

“But I heard it all fell apart a few years ago,” Loren said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. “It was a heroic effort, and no one ever knew how it was organized or who funded it. Me, I think it was the work of Laurana, the Qualinesti Queen Mother. Poor woman, she spent so much of her time sending secret couriers here and there trying to get help for her people. You don’t hear much about her anymore, and no one knows how they fare across the river now or whether her son sits on the throne at all.”

“Yes, it’s a shame,” Usha had murmured, then asked, “Would you like another piece of bread?”

Recalling that conversation now, Usha turned away from the river. As it had for days, the sky hung low over the city. The white skins of the birches in the little grove where she’d picnicked with Tamara were the brightest thing in the garden. The chestnuts and the elms seemed weary, the beds of fragrant herbs surrounding the fish pool drooped in exhaustion. She turned her steps toward the maze of boxwood hedges and nodded greeting to a young woman carrying hedge-clippers. Like the carriage driver Rowan, this girl had elf blood.

“Go easy, mistress,” the girl said, shifting the clippers from one hand to another. “The maze can be a challenge.”

Usha thanked her, but found no challenge in the maze. She’d picked out the pattern of it the first time she’d strolled there. Now it was like walking through the market, easily done and with little thought. It did nothing to take the edge off her restlessness. She came out and walked the round of flagstone paths and found it wearying. When she sat on the curved stone bench beside the fish pond, the weight of the humid day oppressed her.

She looked at the light from the windows of the upper story of the house, those in Loren’s chambers and Tamara’s. Nothing would ease her restlessness today. Nothing would ease her until Sir Radulf had his supper, his private talk with Loren, and his hour of pretending to be a well-met guest in the home of a man whose city and whose hopes he held in his mailed hand. When she saw him ride away, his dark pack in attendance, then she would relax.

In the shadowless morning, Usha felt something cold slide over her. She looked up to see Sir Radulf’s black dragon Ebon, wings wide and gliding on the air currents over the river.

The sweet notes of Tamara’s lute drifted through the solar, sometimes stirring, sometimes soothing her audience. Very likely no musician in Haven had a more rapt audience. Most here were family—her father, his cousin Lorelia, her husband Havelock. Then there was Sir Radulf and Usha. A congenial audience, to be sure, but Usha thought the girl’s lute playing skilled enough to charm a gathering of strangers.

“My dear,” Lorelia said at Usha’s shoulder, “the child is lovely, isn’t she? And so talented! A true luthier.”

Usha forbore to smile at Lorelia’s use of the word for “maker of lutes” to mean “player of lutes” and agreed that Tamara was lovely.

Havelock, looking thin and strained in Sir Radulf’s presence, nodded but said nothing. Usha had hardly heard his voice all evening but to murmur agreement when compliments were presented to his host. The man looked like one in the grip of a wasting sickness. It was a quiet company. Unusually so. All talk had been congenial, often amusing on the surface, but something darker lurked below the amenities.

The mood was fed by the raucous sounds of Sir Radulf’s guard feasting in the great hall below. Four men and two women, they sounded like they were feeding at the barracks rather than dining at the gracious table of their lord’s host. Snatches of bawdy songs punctuated rough laughter, and twice a woman’s voice lifted in sharp protest as a servant was manhandled.

Loren’s face paled to hear this and grew harder each time Sir Radulf ignored it. The clatter of knives against pewter plates sounded harshly. Usha glanced at Sir Radulf, and then away. In truth, she preferred the rowdy feasting of his men to the table habits of their master. She’d sat beside him at dinner, first chilled then made faintly queasy by the strange precision of his table habits. He cut his meat into slices so thin they might be called slivers then carefully placed each on the plate. She’d never seen a man cut a grape in half before eating it. She had to look away as he carefully flayed the breast of duck.

Usha slipped her hand into Loren’s. He absently returned the pressure of her fingers then turned his attention to Tamara, his eyes the brooding color of the candle-smoke hanging in the still air. He had the look of a man who thought his daughter would vanish away, disappearing as the music she made faded.

In Sir Radulf’s eye, Usha thought, Tamara shone like a miser’s pile of treasure. As Tamara played, his hand twitched a little on his knee, as though it was hard for him to keep from touching her.

Usha’s skin prickled. His hands would not caress. They would possess, and it seemed that the knight’s hunger for Loren’s blue-eyed daughter had grown sharper since the day she’d met them in Lorelia’s garden.

The music fell away in a silvery drift of notes, and Tamara stood to make a proud curtsy in acknowledgement of the applause of her audience. Her face, naturally pale, seemed even whiter than before but for two hectic spots of red, like a fever flush. Her sapphire eyes shone. Usha saw the pulse in her throat racing.

In her hand, Loren’s had grown cold. He lifted Usha’s hand and kissed it, as though for courage, then stood.

“Friends,” he said, “thank you for joining us tonight. It’s always a fine thing to share meat and mead with good company.” He gathered them all in with a glance and a smile that showed nothing of the strain Usha heard far beneath his words. “And of course it is an excellent thing to share good news.”

Lorelia’s startled glance darted between her husband and her cousin. The color in Tamara’s cheeks deepened when Sir Radulf, sleek and smiling, gestured. She put aside her lute and glanced at her father before going to take the knight’s hand.

Oh, Usha thought, heart sinking. Oh, no. She seemed to hear the words before Loren spoke them. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Friends,” Loren said, “it is my pleasure—” In the great hall, someone raised a shout or a cheer. Others hailed it in rowdy laughter. “It is my honor to tell you that Sir Radulf has sought my daughter’s hand, and I have granted it.”

Stunned silence lasted for a noticeable half-beat until Lorelia rushed breathlessly into the gap.

“My dear!” she cried, embracing Tamara. “Oh, child, what news!” Fluttering, she congratulated Sir Radulf, “For it’s only proper to congratulate the groom on his good fortune.” She turned to Tamara. “But of course, one wishes the bride good luck in her choice.”

Uneasy laughter followed at the aptness of the old tradition, then congratulations overrode. Usha hung back, standing in the circle of Loren’s arms, to let Tamara’s family offer their good wishes first. When the time came, she congratulated Sir Radulf, who bowed over her hand and said, “I hope you wish us well, for you are very dear to my Tamara’s father and therefore important to me. I hope,” he said, keeping hold of her hand as she started to withdraw, “that you will paint one of your famous portraits of my Tamara, as my wedding gift to her.”

Usha freed her hand and glanced at Loren, who nodded slightly. “I will be happy to paint our Tamara. Such a lovely subject will surely dance onto my canvas as easily as music dances from her fingers.”

The knight’s chill expression said he liked her pronoun less than she’d liked his. About that Usha didn’t care a whit.

When she embraced Tamara, very quietly Usha said, “Child, never forget that when you need a friend, I am here.”

In her arms Tamara quivered, but not with fear. Usha saw pride and a kind of triumph in her eyes.

In the steamy garden, the night thick and dark and smelling of the foul river, Usha walked in silence beside Loren. She held his hand, and through flesh and bone and sinew she felt his sorrow. Beyond the walls of the garden the city was quiet. They no longer heard the rumble of carriage wheels or cart wheels as they used to do. What voices they did hear were those of Loren’s servants going about their work, safely within their master’s walls.

“I wish it would rain,” Usha said softly.

Loren nodded but absently. In the sky, dragons wheeled and turned.

“My love,” Loren said, answering the unspoken question between them. “If all the free realms fall, as Haven has, I must ensure my daughter’s safety. The safest place will be with the winner.”

Usha pressed his hand, a silent answer. It had never seemed a good enough reason, and Usha had never been able to answer the old question of what she would do.

Loren was a good man caught in difficult circumstances, and this one was his own making. She wanted to suggest that Tamara be taken out of the city by Aline’s people, but she could not. She did not admit that she couldn’t trust a man so close to Sir Radulf.

They passed the garden’s loveliest spot, a reflecting pool ringed with several varieties of weary, rain-hungry mint. Tamara would be leaving this place, and whether she admitted it or not, she would leaving the peace and security of being a cherished daughter in a rich man’s home for the instability of being the wife of a knight.

Usha made a sudden decision. In the portrait Sir Radulf asked for, she would create this delightful garden as the setting for the young woman who soon would leave it.

“Loren,” she said, her voice low and soft. “Leave off worrying. What’s done is done, and we can only hope it is done for the best.” She looked back to the house and the lights in Tamara’s bed chamber. “It’s been a long day and a very long night. Can we call Rowan to bring the carriage around?”

He looked at her, holding her hand. “If you wish.”

But she didn’t wish. She wanted him.

“Loren—”

“Stay,” he said.

Please, she thought. Don’t ask, don’t.

“Usha, stay.”

Usha looked up at the sky, at the dragons circling. The wind freshened, and this time it carried more than the failing promise of rain-scent. A cool drop and then another splashed onto her cheek. Lightning flashed, thunder crackled, and in the next moment the sky poured down rain.

Laughing suddenly, Usha said, “I think I’ve made up my mind.”

She tugged Loren’s hand and the two ran back to the house.

In the morning, Haven woke to find the river overflowing its banks, the willows and many of the elms along the banks uprooted. Cellars and cisterns had been turned into mud holes.

Loren’s gardeners cried woe, for their small, green realm lay savaged by the storm, battered and unrecognizable, as were all the gardens in the city. But Usha, standing at the bedroom window, knew she’d made the right decision to set Tamara’s portrait in the garden, to seat the girl on the curved stone bench beside the fish pond. She would recreate the beautiful space of flower beds and birch groves she remembered even then, looking out at the storm-wrack and ruin.

“My lady.”

Lady Mearah looked up, whetstone in hand, her sword across her knee. She sat alone in the vast armory, that place where her knights used to practice. No one had come near her for hours. No one wanted to look into those dark eyes and see her sorrow and the fire of her lust for revenge. Agmar, however, didn’t seem to mind. Sir Radulf’s squire had seen enough rage and blood-lust to be able to look into the lady knight’s eyes and not flinch.

“Tell me,” she said, knowing he came from his master. She didn’t look up to the gallery or the doorway that led into Sir Radulf’s wardroom. The knight had been there all night and most of the day, honing his plans to tighten his grip on Haven as keenly as Lady Mearah now honed her sword.

Agmar bowed. “I have a name for you, compliments of my master.”

Mearah put the whetstone by. “He knows who killed—” She made a small sound, like bitter laughter withheld. “He knows who caused the dark elf’s death? How?”

“By the ones you hanged, my lady. Tavar was last seen going into the Grinning Goat. We can guess he went out with the knights on the word of a man who knows most of the gossip and all the rumors that surge around Haven.”

“The mage.”

Agmar nodded. “Madoc Diviner.”

18

Usha peered out the carriage window at devastated Haven. There was water everywhere—running in the gutters, pooling in low spots, and turning gardens into swamps.

The horses snorted and shook their heads. Rowan called softly to them, encouraging with a firm and gentle hand on the reins. Usha saw the horses’ ears flatten. The offside mare flung up her head, eyes rolling so the whites glared. She wasn’t going to move, and so her harness mate went back on her haunches, making her own position clear.

Rowan tied the reins to the side of his box and slipped down into the street. He made no splash to frighten his team, and he kept talking as he walked, always using a soft, encouraging voice.

What should have been a short drive to the Ivy had become a tense and frightening journey. Rowan had been using every bit of his considerable skill to guide the carriage through deep water and muddy streams with active currents running through them. Some ran as high as a quarter way up the wheels. The horses had refused anything deeper, and Rowan searched long and circuitous ways to find even that. Two days after the storm, they still encountered roads as far as five blocks in from the river where they couldn’t see the cobbles and bricks. Trees torn out by the roots lay across many roads. Countless houses and shops had lost roofs to the wind, and those were the lucky ones. Others had been crushed by falling trees.

People stood in water up to their knees, shaking their heads in dismay. Others wandered stunned and looking witless as they sloshed through the water, hoping to find the things the storm had stolen. Many had awakened to find their kitchens flooded to the ceilings, the stores in their larders ruined, their vegetable gardens at the bottom of rank pools of water. The wells on the low side of the hill were polluted, and drinking water was suddenly, frighteningly scarce.

Loren’s gardener said bodies were washing up from the river, corpses of citizens and soldiers alike littering the banks. Usha and Loren had been wakened by Tamara on the night of the storm to watch three talons of dragons move out to the moors, for there was no high ground left for them near Haven. At dawn, Usha had asked Loren if he would allow Rowan to take her to the Ivy. He had agreed and said he would go with her, but Usha had declined. While it was true Usha wanted to check on her belongings, she wanted most to see whether Dezra was at the inn or had left word that she was well and safe. She didn’t want to encounter Dez or receive a message in Loren’s company.

“Just let me do this,” she’d said. “You have much to do here, and I’ll be guided by Rowan’s advice. If he thinks the way is too dangerous, I’ll abide by his word.”

Reluctantly, Loren agreed, for what she said was true. He had much to look after at Steadfast and could not really be spared.

Usha looked out the window again and saw Rowan take the cheek strap of the offside mare. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Hold on, Mistress.”

She grabbed leather hand straps as the carriage lurched sharply forward. Rowan led the mare and so the team, who would advance only in fits and starts. They went this way slowly, and Rowan did not resume his seat on the driver’s box. The route was not direct, and it was not quick, but in time Usha saw the stone chimneys of the inn rising darkly into the gray sky. No smoke curled up from them. Only the small yellow lights of candles and lanterns showed from the windows of the common room, and not many of those. Like wraiths, the dim figures of people drifted back and forth within, guests looking for the comfort of their fellows’ company.

“It’s like a war,” Rowan muttered.

Usha nodded. It was—a battle against the city by nature. She thought Sir Radulf and his talon of dragons hadn’t been worse.

Rowan led the horses into the mud that had been the inn’s dusty dooryard. He tied the reins to the hitching post and came around to help Usha down. Sweat ran in his face, and his hair was slicked to his neck, exposing the cant of his ears. He brushed absently at it, the old habit of covering this sign of mixed blood that was seldom welcome among elves or humans.

Usha took the hand he offered and stepped into water that soaked her skirt to the knees. The mud sucked at the bottom of her shoes. He said he’d wait with the carriage and the skittish team.

“All right,” Usha said, trying to sound optimistic and failing. She hiked up her sodden hems. “I’ll go see what’s left.”

The inn’s common room had taken on water. The rushes always so carefully laid and refreshed were sodden piles swept up against the walls and smelling faintly of rotting herbage and the river. Mud streaked a floor that hadn’t dried and wouldn’t soon. Guests sat or stood around in small groups, still stunned two days after the storm. A woman sat alone at a table near an unshuttered window, hands clasped at her breast as though in prayer as she looked out with the eyes of one beginning to lose hope.

“Her man and her two children,” Rusty whispered to Usha. “They were at the market when the rains came. Never came home.” He dropped his voice. “There’s talk of bodies washing out of the river, and I think—” He glanced toward the woman. “I think maybe…”

Usha nodded, her eyes on the woman at the window. “It’s more than talk. What do you hear, Rusty?”

He shrugged. “Nothing much. People are just coming out now. They stop in sometimes, looking for help or news. I can’t offer much news, but I help where I can, even if it’s only a place to sit and talk for a while. It’s bad, Mistress Usha. Wells are polluted. Larders and storerooms full of ruined food. Not just here, though it’s bad enough in my own storerooms, but everywhere in the lower districts. The whole market square is under water.” He shook his head. “Bad.”

“Have you heard from Dez?”

“Not a word. But she’s a survivor, that one. She’ll turn up.”

He meant to cheer, but after what they’d both learned of the city’s fate, Usha was little heartened. “You know where to find me.”

Rusty nodded and assured her he’d find her with good news as soon as it arrived. After a discreet pause and a clearing of his throat, he said, “Will you be removing there permanently?”

“No. Things will clear up here. I’ll keep our rooms.” She avoided the urge to look at the watcher at the window again, the woman holding on to thinning hope. “I know Dez will be back and wanting hers.”

“You’re not going to find much.” He jerked his chin at the stairway. “Storm blew the shutters right off the windows. It’s as wet up there as it is down there. I’m sorry.”

Usha stood haplessly in the middle of the space that had only days before been her studio. Her easel was shattered, her palette vanished, swept away in water that had poured in through the open windows. Charcoals and sketches were gone. The painting she’d been working on—a commission lately taken and only days old—was ruined. On the floor, things were worse. Her paint had been storm-flung along with the ingredients of her favorite pa’ressa recipe. They had changed the color of the oak floor.

With no place to sit, Usha stood, head low, heart aching for the loss.

“Well,” Rusty said, outside the door and peering in. “It’s certainly a mess, but it’s a colorful mess.”

“It’s not a mess, it’s a horror, but it’s my little horror. I’m not sure what I can do here. But if nothing more, I can pay you this month’s rent and next so you can hire workmen.”

But where to go? There wasn’t a room at the Ivy that wasn’t in use or made useless by the storm. She could not imagine there was anyplace else in Haven for her, though she did ask. Rusty confirmed her fear.

She could only return to Steadfast, to Loren and the game they played with rules no one clearly understood. Since the storm she’d spent each night in his bed—how to say no, to beg for a guest chamber from the man she loved?

Usha turned to Rusty. “Until it gets better here, I think I can work at Steadfast.” She looked around, weary now. “I suppose I should see if I have a salvageable wardrobe.”

Things were not much better, but some things could be salvaged. She had only sodden clothing to bring back to Steadfast, but with Rusty’s help she bundled it all up the best she could and dumped it onto the floor of the carriage.

Usha’s last word to Rusty, private and urgent, was to remind him to let her know the moment he heard anything about how Dezra was faring. Despite his attempt at reassuring her that all was well, Usha was not eased. There should have been something—a message from Dez, Aline, or even Madoc. The silence boded no good.

19

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re still there.”

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

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

“Loren…”

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

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

“No one likes it.”

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

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

“Of what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I want to go to the inn today.”

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

“Perhaps. I’m going though.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Loren—”

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

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

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

Usha stood, chin lifted, eyes coolly narrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve heard sad news from Solace. Caramon Majere is dead. They say his heart burst, that the old man worked hard as anyone cleaning up the place after the storm. Me, I think it might have broken over all that’s been going on these days. He’ll be missed.

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

Ah Dez! Did she know?

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

And she’s back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A thread of fear wound through Usha’s heart.

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.”

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 first 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.

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.”

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.”

When the city of Haven falls to the forces of a dragon overlord, Usha and Dezra Majere find themselves prisoners in a captive city. Unable to leave, the two women become entangled in the city's struggle for freedom.

But as family loyalties old and new rise to the surface, the two women find that their greatest battle may be against each other. New enemies and unexpected alliances are forged from the most unlikely places, and Usha and Dezra will have to put their differences aside if they are to stand a chance against the dark forces set to destroy them all.