Prisoner of Haven

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  “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 th
at 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. W
hen 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?”