Prisoner of Haven

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  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.