She rode, and she thought that the mindless jackals who denned in this forsaken city might imagine she’d hung the two elves and the human boy for killing knights. When she thought so, she laughed, and the bitterness of that laughter rang in echo though the city.
She’d killed to avenge Tavar, the dark elf who was not one of the glorious knights of the abandoned army of Takhisis. He’d been more than they, better, but riding through the city to curse the dead did nothing to make it easier for Lady Mearah to return to her narrow bed and lie next to emptiness. He had known what it meant to hear the voice of your father as he cursed you, the sobs of your mother as she named you Fallen. He knew what it was to laugh at the weeping and curse the weepers for fools.
Tavar had known what it was to take what he wanted. That way he’d taken her one night in a battleground tent. Because he’d wanted her, and standing before her, a man afire, he’d made her want him. No one ever had claimed her that way before. No one ever would again. On the table near her bed was a red stone that would never beat to the rhythm of her lover’s pulse again.
It might be said that Lady Mearah, she who had never loved anyone, had loved the dark elf Tavar. Still, it could not be said that her ride through Haven’s streets, her grief naked to the eyes of all who dared to peer through a shutter’s crack, eased an ounce of her pain. The hangings hadn’t. When the pain shifted enough, she would howl out her grief, a she-wolf mourning her slain mate. It wouldn’t help.
Someone had betrayed her dark elf. Someone had wanted him dead. It wasn’t intuition that told her that. Word whispering through the barracks of Old Keep told her.
Lady Mearah would find that one, and she would kill him in such a way that Haven would never forget it.
Usha walked alone in the green gloom of Loren’s garden, a restless wanderer among the sculpted groves and garths of Steadfast come out to breathe the early morning air. Rowan had come for her early, as arranged, but Usha had been too restless to stay indoors.
The air in the garden was not as pleasant as she’d hoped. The smell of fish dead of stranding at the edges of the shrinking river lurked on the changing breeze. High above the river as Old Keep, Loren’s home had a good view of the White-rage river, and the gardens ran out the edge of a sweep of hillside down to the water.
From the height, Usha turned to look back at the house. Light shone from the ground-floor windows as the servants began the day, rousing the kitchen fires, pulling linen from the cupboards and laying the table in the great hall, checking the wine cellar and polishing the silver. Though they did not have much better food at Steadfast than anyone else in the city, tonight Loren’s table would feed his guests well. Tonight Loren would host Sir Radulf, and he’d feed more than the commander of the occupation. In the past Sir Radulf had come and gone in the city with few men in attendance, but in the last few weeks he did not go even so far as Steadfast without a squad of six knights. Few of these knights were sons or daughters of nobility, but they were knights, and Loren’s tradition of hospitality demanded that he treat them accordingly. While their commander dined with the family and friends of his host in the solar, the six who came to guard him would dine in the great hall on fare nearly as fine as those above.
“And you will attend, won’t you, my love?” Loren had asked when the arrangements for the feast were being made.
My love... so he named her, as she named him, though since the night at the Ivy they had not lain together. My love, he said, and Usha heard longing in the words. Though she ached for him and in unguarded moments tried to recapture the feeling of the night they’d been together, the warmth of him in her bed, the sound of his heart beating when she lay in his arms, she maintained her quarters at the Ivy. Even so, Usha was often at Steadfast, and so of course she would attend the dinner.
Now, in the waking morning, Usha looked over the river and the merchant fleet bobbing in the water. It had been reduced by half as Sir Radulf manned more ships to his liking and sent them out to trade. They had been beautiful to see—proud sails bellying in the wind, ratlines humming. The city’s coffers would fill with profits from these voyages, and Sir Radulf would prosper on the taxes collected.
“It’s no different than any administration,” Loren had said to Usha, a fortnight before on the night after the sailing. “My ships used to come back to Haven, fatten my accounts, and the taxes I’d pay to the city would fill theirs.”
He’d looked like he believed that, as though he balanced it all out in his thinking and found that everything was all right.
“Of course,” he’d added, “there really is nothing different. Things work as they always have.”
“It’s very different,” Usha had insisted. He’d not been interested in hearing that, but she hadn’t let it stop her. “You know it, Loren. No lord mayor of Haven has ever collected taxes with the threat of death.”
He’d said nothing, not to agree or disagree, and Usha didn’t press. She’d come to know the meanings of his silences. This one, she believed, meant he was thinking about something he didn’t like to consider.
There were enough things like that, these days. In some quarters of the city a low rumble of discontent had arisen against the man known as Sir Radulf’s favorite. Things were not working as they always had, and if Loren had made his deal with the dark knight in the cause of saving lives, Usha thought the knight was supporting that cause poorly.
Despite the increase in the number of dragons and knights, the daring or the desperate still fled Haven on their own or with the help of Qui’thonas.
Each escape angered Sir Radulf more and, Usha suspected, fed a fear of rebellion. With swift efficiency he issued harsh rules restricting what could be said in public, and no group of three or larger was tolerated in public places. People no longer moved in congenial groups in the market to gossip or complain, and the custom in taverns fell off at once. Those caught violating these rules were harshly and publicly punished. At Lady Mearah’s discretion, executions could be and were ordered.
Qui’thonas. In these days, Usha barely allowed herself to think the name. The subject of refugees had lately become a frequent topic of Loren’s concern. Only yesterday morning at breakfast in the Ivy’s common room he’d said, “Sir Radulf has been entertaining the idea that the folk who leave Haven are being helped by an organized effort.”
Usha’s heart had thumped hard against her ribs, but she’d continued to spread peach jam—among the last to come up from Rusty’s root cellar—on her bread with not the least tremor of her hand. “Indeed? It would take a tremendous amount of organizing, wouldn’t you think?”
He did think so, and he also thought Sir Radulf had a point. “There used to be an organization helping elves out of Qualinesti.”
Usha’s mouth had gone dry. She’d set the knife down carefully. It only rattled a little against the plate.
“But I heard it all fell apart a few years ago,” Loren said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. “It was a heroic effort, and no one ever knew how it was organized or who funded it. Me, I think it was the work of Laurana, the Qualinesti Queen Mother. Poor woman, she spent so much of her time sending secret couriers here and there trying to get help for her people. You don’t hear much about her anymore, and no one knows how they fare across the river now or whether her son sits on the throne at all.”
“Yes, it’s a shame,” Usha had murmured, then asked, “Would you like another piece of bread?”
Recalling that conversation now, Usha turned away from the river. As it had for days, the sky hung low over the city. The white skins of the birches in the little grove where she’d picnicked with Tamara were the brightest thing in the garden. The chestnuts and the elms seemed weary, the beds of fragrant herbs surrounding the fish pool drooped in exhaustion. She turned her steps toward the maze of boxwood hedges and nodded greeting to a young woman carrying hedge-clippers. Like the carriage driver Rowan, this girl had elf blood.