Prisoner of Haven

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  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.