Something like relief passed swiftly over his face, but Loren hung on his heel, just for an instant, long enough for Usha to recall the weighing look that passed between him and Lady Mearah. Then he took a long stride ahead of her and opened the inn door. Bowing her inside he said, “It will be my pleasure to dine with you, Mistress Usha.”
In the high room at Rose Hall, where Aline planned missions for Qui’thonas, Dezra stood with her back to the window and the darkening sky. She’d seen the dragons soaring over the city. With Aline and Madoc and Dunbrae she’d watched the two talons swoop low over the river and arrow inland to circle around Old Keep, one after the other canting spread wings, as though in salute.
Remnants of dragonfear, like wisps of webs, clung to the memory, but even these were fading now. Now she watched Madoc and Dunbrae, the two looking like hounds circling each other. The strife between them, ever smoldering, had flared again—the dwarf and his distrust of the mage, the mage and his dislike of the dwarf. An old matter, but tonight it had a keener edge.
In this, Dez took no side, though once she might have. She waited, she watched, but she suspended decision. Something could break tonight. The shape of Qui’thonas could change as trust fell apart.
“You’re a damned liar,” Dunbrae said, his voice a dangerous rumble.
Aline looked up from the long table. In the past month, the place had become a war room, stripped of its fine furnishings, with only a few chairs and this long, cherrywood table remaining. The rich old merchant’s young widow had changed herself into a battle captain, and Dez read impatience in her frown when she said, “You know the rule, Dunbrae. You make the accusation you can prove. Otherwise you have nothing to say. Can you prove this one?”
Madoc, leaning against the window sill, cocked an ironic smile. “He can’t, because I don’t lie. Not to you.”
Dunbrae turned the onyx ring on his finger, and Madoc nodded as though something passed between them. “You know it, Dunbrae.”
The dwarf put his hand in his pocket, hiding the ring and, Dez thought, hiding the fact that this magical relic, the reader of a man’s intent, told him nothing to back up his claim that Madoc had given Qui’thonas false information.
Still, though Dunbrae had no real proof, Aline granted him the grace to speak and make his case. Suspicion, even a gut feeling, counted for something in Aline’s judgment. The failure of the talisman Dunbrae had so often used didn’t overrule.
“You don’t lie?” Dunbrae said. “I know no such thing. Here’s what I do know. Your information is suddenly no good. After all we’ve been hearing about the famous Madoc Diviner with his finger on every pulse in the city, your information is failing us.”
It was. Twice since the killing at Stone Farm missions had failed. Once because Dunbrae had warning only an hour before setting out with three refugees that the route had been compromised. Again, four days ago when there had been no warning at all. Two refugees died, and a good woman, an old hand from the early days of Qui’thonas with them. Dez had been the one who had to come back and tell Aline.
Dez touched the healing cut on her forehead, the scored flesh just at the hairline. She hadn’t come back with the bad news unscathed. The bruises were fading, the cut itself mending, and it had been days since she’d felt the throbbing headache.
Anyone would find it easy to believe Dunbrae’s assessment of things. Dez had in the past, but now she couldn’t. Two women she respected spoke for Madoc—one his lover, the other Usha. Even though she’d once discounted Aline’s opinion as being that of a fond lover, Dez couldn’t now. Aline was in love, but she wasn’t reckless; and Usha’s was one of the clearest eyes for seeing a man’s character Dezra knew. Yet it remained that people had died counting on Madoc’s information.
Madoc dismissed Dunbrae’s insinuation with a gesture. “You’re making things up. Is it my doing that the knights are roaming all over every way out of the city we know?”
His voice cold, his words pointed, Dunbrae said, “I’m not the one who’d know that, am I? But I do know that since the killings at Stone Farm, nothing’s been going right. You will recall that’s when you told us there would be no knights around to trouble us, yet—” He laughed bitterly. “Yet there were.”
Madoc snorted. “And you told us the knight and the foot soldiers had all been killed. That wasn’t true either, was it?”
Outside the windows the night sky hung down low over the city. The dragons had flown in out of a blue sky, but almost immediately after, the sky had grown dark, as though they’d brought storm in behind them. Slate-colored clouds unraveled at the edges as the wind picked up.
Her finger drumming the desk top, Aline looked from Madoc to Dunbrae. “Is anyone making a provable accusation?”
Dunbrae cursed.
Aline glanced at Madoc, who shook his head.
“Anyone saying he can’t trust the others?”
Dunbrae kicked at the floor. Madoc shook his head.
Aline’s hand reached for a pen, dismissing the matter. She made a few marks on the map before her, then slid it across the desk. “This is what I want to concentrate on tonight.”
Thunder rumbled in the sky, and a stiffening wind carried the scent of rain as the four turned their attention to the map. New-made to Madoc’s specifications, it showed the streets of Haven as they ran from the wealthy quarter of the city out to the river. The position of every patrol of knights and citizen collaborators showed as red points, their routes marked in green. Three places along the river bank were marked with blue triangles—safe ways out of the tunnels.
By moonset, a family of elves—folk who’d lived in Haven since they’d fled from Qualinesti—would begin a flight to freedom they’d not thought to have to make a second time.
“We can postpone this,” Aline said. “We can get word to Liel and his family and tell them things have changed.” She glanced out the window to the sky beyond. “Two talons of dragons does change a thing or two.”
Dez, till now silent, said, “Yes, but those dragons are still shuffling around looking for space to catch their breaths after a long flight—some very likely came all the way from Neraka. If the wyrms aren’t done in, the riders are. The talon Sir Radulf has had till now hasn’t been doing a very good job for him, and they’re still not much to fret us. So I’m thinking that just about now Sir Radulf and Lady Mearah are congratulating themselves on acquiring enough dragons to patrol the skies and look for our bolt holes—tomorrow night. Let’s do it.”
Aline looked at Dunbrae and Madoc. Her green eyes held them. She asked the question she always did before sending them out, perhaps to death.
“Dunbrae, can you do it?”
In his own way, Dunbrae loved Aline as much as Madoc did. He would do anything for her. Gravely he said, “Count on me, Mistress Aline.”
Aline’s voice softened. “And you, Madoc?”
Simply, the mage said, “I’m yours.”
Last she came to Dezra, and though Dez had declared her willingness, Aline’s eyes searched for the answer to another question. Madoc and Dunbrae patched up their thin trust for the sake of Aline. Where did Dezra’s trust hang?
On every one of her companions.
“We can do this, Aline. Let’s get to work.”
Storm rumbled closer, and lightning flashed in the bellies of the clouds. In the alley behind the Goat, Sir Arvel eyed the dark elf, the fallen son of Silvanesti, the lover of a woman whose descent from the favor of her Palanthian kin was as far as his from the elf lords of Silvanost. Outcasts and exiles were the makings of the dark army now. Sir Arvel had heard of days when dark knights had as much honor as those who followed the gods of Good. Those days were gone, vanished when the gods did. Those gods took a lot more with them than some mage’s ability to twinkle a spell to life with his fingers and a prayer on his lips.