The problem occupied her mind, but Usha didn’t languish. She worked, preparing canvas for the two portraits she’d promised—mixing paints, scraping her palette, and selecting sketches of her subjects. She slipped into her work as she’d slip into a familiar river—easily, trusting the currents to take her where they willed, confident that if magic was one of those currents, it would take her where it must.
Loren’s question slipped away a little, hushed by work, and then eclipsed by something else—rumor, bright and deadly.
There is a secret path.
Not more than that was said, a tantalizing promise, a teasing hope. A secret path, a way out of Haven ... and no one mentioned it when there were knights around. It was hardly spoken aloud, but people whispered and they wondered. Some scoffed. Others said the wise man keeps his mouth shut about such things in case Sir Radulf should hear and decide he needs to execute someone for it.
Still, people did speak—those who hoped and those who wondered. They spoke very quietly of the family of dwarves down in the wharf district, the Stonestrike clan who had vanished one and all—mother and father, the last son, two daughters, and even the dog. They simply vanished. There one day. Gone the next.
Usha heard that story and others—all in whispers, hurried speculation between Bertie the cook’s boy and the girl from the chandler’s shop, and the murmuring of house maids as they traveled in little knots under the cold stares of the soldiers who strode along Haven’s streets and atop Haven’s walls. With increasing unease, Usha wondered whether Qui’thonas had been discovered.
One day, she heard about the secret path from Loren.
He had come back at her invitation, but neither spoke again of a portrait for Tamara. It had become Loren’s habit to arrive at her studio on the mornings he knew she’d be working. He made himself good company from the first day, a man who knew when to talk and when to be silent while she worked. On that first day, he’d come with a book from his library. As a young man, he’d been to see the great library in Palanthas and ever after longed to have a library of his own. Five shelves of bound books he owned now, and Usha exclaimed, “Wealth!” each time she saw a book.
This morning he’d come, book in hand and rumor on his lips, a tale of a secret path out of the city. “Some fond hope among the servants.” He’d looked troubled and said it was his own hope that none of his people came to believe the rumor. “There’s nothing but heartache and grief there.”
“Disappointments,” Usha said, agreeing.
The skin around his eyes tightened, and his lips became a hard, thin line. “Deaths. Sir Radulf has been talking about patrolling outside his perimeter.”
Usha frowned, not understanding. “Is he bringing in more soldiers?”
“No. More dragons to patrol from the sky. That should kill the rumors and any foolish idea of acting as though rumor were truth.”
Usha agreed, but what he said changed worry into dread that Aline’s efforts would soon be detected.
“Don’t worry about rumors,” Dez said. “Where are you hearing them, anyway?”
Usha shrugged. “Around. In the street, in the market.”
The night was dark, the sky hung with clouds. In the empty garden behind the Ivy, Usha sat on the stone wall and Dezra stretched out on the ground beside hedges overgrown by thick, fragrant wisteria. They’d not seen each other in nearly a week. Usha hadn’t heard even the quiet sound of Dez slipping into the inn at late hours.
“What’s your friend Loren Halgard say?”
Usha plucked a rose bush of its hard, red hips and piled them on the wall. Dezra knew about Loren’s morning visits. She wasn’t often at the inn these days, but when she was it was usually to be found on her way to bed. She and Loren had twice passed each other in the corridor outside Usha’s studio. She didn’t ask Usha about it, and Usha volunteered nothing more than that he was interested in having his daughter’s portrait painted. But Usha knew Dezra was wondering, for she’d asked her question carefully.
“He says something you want to know.”
Dez sat up, suddenly tense. “How would Loren Halgard know about... anything I’d like to know?”
“He doesn’t. But I do. Sir Radulf is calling in more dragons.”
“Not knights?”
“Dragons, Loren says. Radulf is afraid that people are going to start wanting to make the rumors true. The sky patrols are going to double. You have to be careful, Dez.”
Dez grunted. “We are.”
“Will you pull back for a while?”
“That’s up to Aline. Whatever she says, we’ll do. We’ll be all right.”
Usha looked around the weary garden, the roses browning from lack of rain, the herbs outside the kitchen door going to seed. It hadn’t rained in Haven in long weeks. It had doubtless been longer than that where the river had its headwaters, for where it slid past Haven, the White-rage had grown narrow, the verge on either side brown mud flats where stranded fish died and the air stank.
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Dez pitched a pebble over the wall. “I wish Qui’thonas had half the fine bolt holes out of the city everyone seems to think.”
This was more specific news about Qui’thonas than Usha had heard in a long while. Sweeping little piles of rose hips into the sluggish stream, Usha sat forward. “You don’t?”
“Not so many. Things change all the time. What’s here today might not be there tomorrow. You know those fine citizen patrols your friend Loren got for the city?”
“Yes. To give the people a hand in what’s happening.”
Wind kicked up, and the clouds began to shred. Through the rent in one the light of a moon only two days from dark shone down. Dezra’s face was a mask of shadow, her expression hidden.
“They do a pretty good job of freeing up knights and foot soldiers, too.”
“Dez, I don’t know—”
Dezra’s temper flashed. “You’re right, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like outside this pretty inn and you don’t know how it is not to be able to trust anyone but those you go out into the night with. And not even all of them.”
That she meant Madoc was clear without having to be said. They continued to be uneasy allies, the two, and each for the sake of Aline. That might keep them safe as trust would, and it might not. But the decision was Aline’s to make, and she’d chosen to keep them both.
Dez sat up, and Usha saw her face, all hard lines. “It’s a dangerous place, this city. I—” She stopped and shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She laughed, but as though at herself. “I really want to get out of here. I want to see home again. I want to see my father and my sisters.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I want to know if they’ve learned anything about Palin. He’s been gone a long time.”
“Yes, he has.” Usha’s voice sounded flat, even in her own ears. “I’m tired. The day started early, and it’s ending late.”
Dez got to her feet and dusted down her breeches. “Early again tomorrow?”
Usha tried to gauge the meaning of the question, to know whether it touched on Loren. Dezra’s expression gave away nothing.
“Yes. There’s a lot of work to do on the last portrait.”
Dez sat still, chewing her lower lip as she did when she was thinking. “What are you doing, Usha? With Halgard? What are you doing?”
“Will you find what I told you helpful?”
“You know I will.”
“That’s what I’m doing. Trying to help.”
Dez had a look on her face like she wanted to say, Only that? Nothing else? But in the end, she said nothing. Uneasy silence stretched between them, drawing out until Usha rose and shook out her skirt, sending rose hips skipping to the ground.