“Elf,” said the knight, “I have news for your mistress.”
Sir Arvel thought that naming was amusing, and he thought himself rather clever. But he didn’t smile. It would not have done to smile over anything having to do with Lady Mearah’s private life.
Lightning flashed closer, the heatless glare flinging shadows around the alley.
Tavar pushed away from the wall. “Tell me.”
Imperious bastard, thought Sir Arvel. “There is going to be another attempt to get people out of the city.”
Tavar raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”
Ah, no. You don’t get my source, elf.
“You hear things in a tavern. I know. Just like I knew about the attempt to escape over the moor.” He snorted. “Your friends never did find out who was leading the exodus, never did learn who is organizing the escapes. That one your friends managed to bungle, and most of ’em are dead now, eh? All but the mongrel half-goblin who hid in a ditch and managed to get back to Sir Radulf and puke the news that he’s down a few knights. That must’ve given milady a bit of... discomfort when she heard—most of ’em being her pet knights.”
Dark or light, elves didn’t show anger the way humans did. It was one thing Sir Arvel disliked and mistrusted about them. They just got a little closer, a little more still, and something happened in their eyes that made him think of a cat’s adjusting to a change in light. So it was with Tavar. He tilted his head to the side, as though thinking about something.
Arrogant bastard. In milady’s confidence and in milady’s bedchamber.
He said nothing of that, either. Just in case. What he did say was the way to a place far downriver, almost to the bend where the White-rage came in from the east.
“Keep an eye on the bank on the Darken Wood side. It’ll probably surprise you and sprout elves and humans. And this time find someone who can do this without managing to kill everyone he brings along with him.”
The elf gave him a scathing look and left. Sir Arvel didn’t laugh until he was certain Tavar was well gone. Then he did, the sound of it filling the alley. A few moments later, Sir Arvel heard the back door of the Goat slam. Another knight stepped into the shadows. He looked at Sir Arvel and grinned.
“Now, don’t be worrying,” he said in mockery of the idea that Sir Arvel was worrying about anything. “Every one of milady’s men will come back this time, sir. Well... almost every one of them.”
And then he, too, slipped away into the night.
Sir Arvel watched him go, feeling satisfied with his night’s work. He was not fond of Sir Radulf Eigerson, though he’d served under him for a long time. Still, he loved Lady Mearah less, so it didn’t trouble him in the least to take from her and give to him.
No one could imagine Sir Radulf cared a whit who crept into the bed of his second in command each night. Easy enough, though, to imagine how much he didn’t like the signs that those two, Lady Mearah and her dark elf lover, were gathering a noticeable crowd of retainers around themselves from among the younger knights.
It wouldn’t do to get rid of Lady Mearah. Not yet. She was too well regarded in Neraka, and whatever else he was Sir Radulf Eigerson was no fool.
But it’s certainly time break up the team, Sir Arvel thought as he slipped back into the Goat. Time to send out a warning.
“Tell me,” Loren said, standing at the window of Usha’s studio, his eyes on the storm coming in. “Tell me, Usha, what it feels like to do what you did today.”
Usha frowned. “What I did?”
Sketches lay all around the place—on the chair Loren usually sat in to read, on her bed, on the floor. Sketches of Tamara made from memory, from her father’s description. There would be a portrait and about this Usha was both glad and apprehensive.
Loren turned from the window, his back to the street and the threat of storm. “Pulling old Scree out from under the horse’s hooves. You dashed right in.”
Usha supposed she had. She didn’t remember the details, just the look of terror on Dougal Scree’s face and the knight’s unholy glee.
“Why do you ask, Loren?”
He didn’t answer at once. He seemed more interested in something in the middle distance between them, that place where one’s thoughts lay unspoken. Finally he said, “I haven’t done anything so impetuously—” He shook his head. “No, not impetuously. I have not done anything so honestly directed by my heart in ... too long.”
Usha rose from the edge of the bed, sketches fluttering from her lap and drifting onto the floor. She stepped around some, over others, and went to stand beside Loren at the window. She didn’t know how to answer him without sounding falsely modest. It had felt terrifying—the dwarf’s terror, the flashing hooves. Blood-freezingly, heart-stoppingly terrifying.
“Loren,” she said, softly. She touched his arm but didn’t say more.
“It’s ... the Council, Tamara ... I don’t know sometimes whether what I’m doing is the right thing, the wrong thing...” He looked away, out to the lowering sky again. “Or nothing.”
“You’re doing what you can.”
“Really? You didn’t seem to think so when we first spoke, nor when we last spoke.”
She hadn’t, but she also knew she didn’t have the same weight of care that he did. She spent her days painting and hoping to glean information from Loren that would help Qui’thonas. Of that last she was sometimes proud and sometimes ashamed, for it was no easy thing to betray this man for the sake of loyalty to Qui’thonas. And it would be a betrayal if Sir Radulf learned that Loren’s words in Usha’s ears became news to help the underground effort to ferry refuges out of the city.
She shuddered, recalling the look on Lady Mearah’s face when she promised that she and Loren would see each other again.
“Loren,” she said, “sometimes I wish we were two other people.” She should have stopped there, she knew it, but she didn’t. “Two other people, who lived in another country, another time ...”
He turned, and as thunder rumbled behind him, Usha saw a flash of longing in his eyes that both thrilled and frightened.
“Usha.” He traced the curve of her cheek. When she didn’t move, his finger touched her chin, then the quickening pulse at her throat. She touched his finger to stop him and found her hand closing over his. He turned her hand over, bent his head, and kissed the tender skin of her wrist.
“Loren...”
She felt his lips move against her skin. She thought they shaped a word, her name. He let her hand go, and she caught his back.
Usha didn’t cry out when he took her in his arms, and she didn’t push away. He held her close. She heard the beating of his heart. He kissed her, gently then fiercely. She met his fire with her own, and neither regretted the kisses. Later, neither regreeted his afternoon on which they became lovers.
“No lights,” Dez whispered.
She looked over her shoulder and signaled with a sharp cutting gesture. At the back of the small line of travelers in the tunnel, red-headed Gafyn shuttered his lantern. The little elf child Seiley, standing between her father and mother, made a small whimpering sound as everyone around her seemed to disappear into the darkness. Gafyn whispered something, and Dez heard the girl’s whimper change into a nervous giggle.
Good boy.
This was Gafyn’s second mission with Qui’thonas, and the boy whose parents and grandparents had been fishers on this river had immediately proved valuable. There didn’t seem to be an inch of riverside he didn’t know, and Dez—who knew her way around Darken Wood better than most—found Gafyn’s knowledge of the dangerous borders to be nearly as good as her own. Fisher folk, his family had also been hunters in the days when anyone could get outside the walls of Haven.