“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.
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