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 hopefuclass="underline" 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.