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.