Henge muttered a curse, his hand knotting into a fist. Usha covered the fist with her own hand, a warning, as Gafyn turned as best he could and lifted the woman to her feet. The shameful spectacle went by, carving a path for itself through the crowd. No one murmured. No one muttered. The knights were greeted by a solid wall of silence.
Then, as though to chip at that wall, the dull thud of a hammer in play drifted from the far end of the square.
“What is it?” Henge muttered.
Usha went up on her toes to see. A small squad of men dispersed through the square, stopping at trees and hammering notices. A little boy ran up to one of them, then darted away, shouting, “A hangin’! There’s gonna be a hangin’!”
The knights rode on, the prisoners stumbling ahead. In the sky, the dragons wheeled, their riders watching.
The refugees were not hanged together. Rather one was hanged beside every gate into the city, and the news of it flew through Haven. At the hour of execution, the common room at the Ivy was deserted. Few went to see one of the hangings. Most retired to their rooms, quiet and frightened and angry.
In the absence of traffic on the streets, Usha heard the scream of gulls, the lap of the river, and the soft hiss of a waking breeze. Somewhere over the moors of the Seeker Reaches, thunder rumbled. She thought it might rain. At last the sky would unburden itself. From where she sat on her bed, she could see the sky out the window. Dun clouds had turned to slate. Dez, on the floor with her back propped against a wall, poked moodily at the poorly repaired chair she’d earlier kicked across the room. It wobbled, not strong enough to hold more than Usha’s charcoals. The silence between the two was the uneasy one of reluctant truce, and Usha was the first to break it.
“How did it happen, Dez?”
Dezra shrugged. “It happened. The two elves were Liel and his wife Reith. They almost made it out. We were ambushed at the mouth of one of the tunnels. Gafyn—” She stopped to swallow hard. “He grabbed the little girl, the parents followed. You know how we do it.”
Usha nodded. Once out, freedom for the refugees was the most important thing.
“Dunbrae and I handled the knights. Three of ’em, and there was an elf.”
Usha raised a brow.
“Silvanesti, a dark elf. He is ...” She laughed, a bitter sound. “He was Lady Mearah’s lover.”
The news went through Usha like ice. She thought of Loren, of the cold face of the lady knight who had spoken to her in threat in Loren’s garden, to Loren himself on the street before the inn.
“We killed them. Dunbrae and me. But the missing knights were found—well, they would be. And Mearah’s dead lover. Not long after, so were the elves and Gafyn. The child is dead.” She made a soft sound, a hitching of the breath. “They’d come to Haven a few years ago, refugees from Qualinesti and thinking they’d go back one day, when all was said and done. Last night—” She nudged the chair. It toppled over. “Last night they were trying to get out of Haven.”
The breeze smelled of rain. Dezra cursed it for a liar.
“We had the route planned, cleared, and—” Dez pounded a fist on her knee. “And we had Madoc Diviner’s oath that nothing would go wrong.”
Usha closed her eyes against a sudden sinking dread.
“But something did,” Dezra said, her voice hard, “Something went wrong, and Madoc swears he sent word that the route was compromised. Maybe he did, maybe not. All I know is what actually happened. He says he sent word by a trusty man, to let us know that the information he had from the first ‘trusty man’ couldn’t be trusted. Of course, Madoc has no idea how the message failed or how his trust was broken.”
Quietly, Usha said, “If he’d wanted to betray you, Dez, you’d all be dead now.”
“I know.” The words came hard. “I know, and yet... his sources aren’t doing well by him, are they? Almost amounts to the same thing.”
Silence sat between them, growing heavier by the moment. Gulls screamed in the sky outside the window. Usha was getting to know that particular gullish shriek. A dragon claimed the air currents over the river as it banked for an inland turn.
“Are you staying here, Usha? Or are you at his house now?”
His house, Loren’s.
Usha shrugged. “I don’t know.”
As though it were a given, Dez said, “You’ll want to stay with him.”
“I need the studio here and ... Dez, he will still be close to the occupation. He will still know things.” She left the question unasked, but Dez knew it anyway.
“If you’re willing, Usha. But—”
“But how can you ask me to do what you hate me doing?”
Dez said nothing.
Usha sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I won’t lie. I don’t regret what happened between Loren and me, and I don’t know that it will again.”
Though she said so, her heart ached with the need to be with Loren, to wake up in his arms bed each morning, to fall asleep beside him at night.
“Did you ever think, Usha, that maybe Madoc and his trusty man were telling Aline the truth, as they believed it? Did you ever think that maybe your friend Loren is too close to the occupation?”
Usha frowned, trying to make the connection. “Are you saying Loren is telling things to Sir Radulf that—” She shook her head in disbelief. “Are you saying he’s learning Qui’thonas secrets from me?”
Anger shot through her like lightning.
“That’s mad! He’s no harm to Aline. The only harm you’re seeing is the harm to your idea of what’s proper. You don’t like it that I’m with him.”
Dezra didn’t deny it.
“People aren’t always going to be who you think they should be, Dez. I’m not, as you’ve made perfectly clear. And I’m sorry to disillusion you, but your brother isn’t either. What happened to Madoc and his sources has nothing to do with Loren or me. Someone broke trust.”
Dez got to her feet, icy in her anger. She turned to leave, but when she opened the door, Usha said: “Are you going to let people die for your anger, Dez?”
“I hate this, Usha.”
“I know.”
Dezra pressed her lips together, as though against words she might regret. She took a breath then said, “You know where to find me.”
The door closed behind her.
17
The sound of the lone horse drifted through the city, and those who heard it thought twice before looking to see who rode. Those who looked saw her riding by like a dark ghost, a demon in the weeds of mourning. No one looked on her for long, and those who did look heard the sound of her riding long after she’d passed, before she came around again.
None doubted that they would dream of her down the long nights of the years to come—Lady Mearah on the tall black mare in the night.
She went to the places where the three gallows trees stood—once, again, and again. In this way, she marked the passing of the hours. She looked into the face of each of the dead. She stared into the starting eyes, laughed at the swollen tongues and cocked her head to match the angle of each broken neck.
All this did nothing to warm the ice from her heart, nothing to light the darkness in her soul. And yet, such rounds used to do that. Rides like this across midnight battlegrounds, chasing reavers from corpses, giving the final grace to whatever man or woman of hers she found in the last throes ... such rides had always assuaged the fury of knowing how many of her knights had died.