The night was hot. Usha tucked up her skirts into her belt, as farm girls do. She drew up her bare legs, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.
Shapely legs, Palin used to say. Wife, come here and bring those shapely legs of yours along. He hadn’t said any such thing in a very long time.
Usha stretched and yawned. She thought of abandoning the studio for the little alcove of a bedroom, but returned her chin to rest on her knees. She had been on her feet all day, mixing paints and working at the canvas where the portrait of Lorelia Gance’s two sons was now nearly finished. Another hour of good light and it would have been finished, the complete work drying now. It was not to be, but Usha hadn’t been ready to leave her work once the light left her studio.
And so she’d sat in the window, studying her painting by the moon’s light as it traveled across the room, sweeping the canvas. The images of young Thelan and Kalend had been illuminated by silver for as long as the moon hung outside her window. Shadows had draped most of the portrait, but the eyes of the two boys seemed to gleam with mischief. That silver light was gone now, replaced by the warm glow from two banks of candles, and the faces, once a little distant in the moon’s light, now had come to rich, full life.
Usha laughed softly. She could imagine that if she looked away for even a moment, Lorelia’s imps would leap from the canvas and tear around the studio like a couple of wild goblin-children.
But there on canvas they were quite tame. Kalend stood beside his seated brother. In the end, Lorelia had left the choice of setting in Usha’s hands, and Usha had chosen the solar. She had painted a richly appointed room, one in which books lined the wall, rare bound books of the kind only seen in libraries like the one in Palanthas. Velvet curtains draped the windows, and vases full of roses graced the tables. Thelan sat with quill in hand, a lap desk on his knee. Kalend held a model ship in his hands as though he’d just lifted it to study. She had painted them among the icons of their parents’ riches, and she couldn’t doubt that Lorelia and her councilman husband would be pleased.
A silvery lock of curling hair slipped from beneath Usha’s kerchief. She tucked it back behind her ear, and with the motion came the sudden feeling that were the painting dry this instant, it would not feel finished. Usha didn’t know why, but she knew she should sit and watch; she should wait.
And so she did, “watching the night grow dark as the moon sank. She watched the candlelight rise and fall with the breeze. She sat in the window, the stiffness of the day’s work fading, her muscles relaxing, and she knew when the breeze fell, when the stillness of the night became like a muffling cloak. She heard knights on patrol, the innkeeper’s dog barking, one of many shouting at the night. Cats screeched in the alley. Moments later, she felt the grim shadow of a dragon overhead, the fear of it sliding like ice through her heart. The dogs grew quiet, the cats suddenly silent. Usha felt fear melt when the beast was gone, sailing over another part of the city to chill sleep with nightmare.
At last, the sky grew lighter. She heard the rattle and clop of the cart that made the rounds of the inns and taverns—the produce seller, who if he had anything to sell came first to these patrons with his fruit and vegetables and eggs before taking his goods to the market. The solid sound of hooves on cobbles roused her, as though she’d been sleeping.
Usha yawned, stretched her arms, and stood to ease muscles gone stiff with sitting. Pale dawn’s light made the little candle flames seem to vanish. It lay gently on the painting. Though she had felt that the painting was not complete, the soft light showed her that nothing had changed during her vigil.
“Ho! The inn!” an old man’s voice cried. “Ho! Bertie! Wake up, boy!”
The produce cart by-passed the lane that led to the inn’s dooryard and went along the cobbled street so that Bertie the cook’s boy could dart out the back of the Ivy with empty baskets to fill. Usha heard the kitchen door slam, followed by the thud of the boy’s feet on the dirt path to the street.
“Hey!” Bertie cried. “Pull up, old man! Don’t pass us by!”
The carter laughed and pulled his brown mare to a halt. The laughter drew a smile from Usha. This ritual was old between the two, for the produce seller made it a point to arrive at the Ivy first and wait for a yea or nay from Bertie or the cook.
Like a storm rumbling in the distance, the sound of galloping horses throbbed in the morning stillness. Usha’s smile died as Bertie turned to look up the street in the opposite direction from where the cart had come. From the height of her study window, Usha saw the knights before he did. In the narrow street, they spurred their horses, running sometimes side by side, sometimes three together, as though they were in a race.
Usha leaned out her window, calling out to Bertie. Her warning went unheard as the laughing, shouting knights, five on tall horses, five in flashing mail shirts, swept around the cart, cursing the old man and hooting in laughter at his terror. The brown mare panicked and bolted. The cart lurched, then tumbled. The old man fell from the seat, trying to scramble out of the way of iron-shod hooves.
Bertie ran to help the old man up, the poor creature shaking an ancient fist and cursing as loud as his quavering voice could manage. People poured out of the inn, children wide-eyed and clinging to their mothers’ hands, young men and boys milling around and snarling at the vanished knights. None bent to help the old man and the cook’s boy retrieve the spilled produce until Dezra came running round the corner.
“Come on!” she shouted, elbowing a young man into action, shooing away a few children. “Help the old fellow, won’t you?”
Prodded, the young man got the carter to his feet while Dez and Bertie gathered up what fruits and vegetables hadn’t been damaged. One or two others pitched in by chasing after the bolted mare and trying to right the cart.
Thinking to run down and help, Usha turned from the window.
Her breath caught hard in her throat. Her painting had changed. The boys still stood and sat where she’d arranged them. But behind the children, hardly seen but out the corner of the eye, two strong, well-grown men stood. One had dark hair, the other golden. Thelan went clean-shaven, a proper merchant prince in rich attire. His brother—
Usha gasped, in her heart a pang of both fear and pride. Dark-haired Kalend wore martial attire, and he bore a shield whose insignia Usha well knew—that of a Solamnic Knight of the Rose. The insignia was the same as the one her own child wore, the Lady Knight Linsha Majere.
Kalend stood tall in armor burnished like silver, the armor of a Knight of Solamnia. Painted upon his shield was the mark of an order of knights that even now, in lands beyond Haven, beyond Qualinesti of the elves, fought courageously against dark knights such as those who ran roughshod through Haven today.
With great restraint, Usha assured the harried Lorelia that the painting would be framed—“Yes, exactly as you directed”—and it would be installed in her solar by week’s end. There was a constant coming and going of framers. The dwarf Henge had the work. Not one of them noticed the ghost of a knight, and finally the painting went home, by cart through the streets, wrapped carefully and put in a crate, the crate packed in straw.
On the day of its arrival Usha and the portrait were guests of honor at a gathering of Lorelia’s family, the two boys, her husband, her cousin Loren, and his daughter Tamara.
Who, she wondered, would see just the boys, and who would see the ghost of a knight not yet made?
At Lorelia’s insistence, there was a light supper before the unveiling, afterward a stroll in the gardens while the air was growing cool, and the inevitable discussions between Have-lock Gance and Loren Halgard about when, whether, or if Sir Radulf would begin to issue safe conduct passes out of the city. The two men were not in agreement, and Usha tended to believe Havelock Gance when he said, “Those are for merchants willing to leave their families behind for hostage. I think it was always going to be that way, but early on ...” He shook his head, his skepticism changing to bitterness before Usha’s eyes. “Early on, the talk of passes was to keep people quiet. Fools believed it.”