Prisoner of Haven

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.