The inn’s common room had taken on water. The rushes always so carefully laid and refreshed were sodden piles swept up against the walls and smelling faintly of rotting herbage and the river. Mud streaked a floor that hadn’t dried and wouldn’t soon. Guests sat or stood around in small groups, still stunned two days after the storm. A woman sat alone at a table near an unshuttered window, hands clasped at her breast as though in prayer as she looked out with the eyes of one beginning to lose hope.
“Her man and her two children,” Rusty whispered to Usha. “They were at the market when the rains came. Never came home.” He dropped his voice. “There’s talk of bodies washing out of the river, and I think—” He glanced toward the woman. “I think maybe ...”
Usha nodded, her eyes on the woman at the window. “It’s more than talk. What do you hear, Rusty?”
He shrugged. “Nothing much. People are just coming out now. They stop in sometimes, looking for help or news. I can’t offer much news, but I help where I can, even if it’s only a place to sit and talk for a while. It’s bad, Mistress Usha. Wells are polluted. Larders and storerooms full of ruined food. Not just here, though it’s bad enough in my own storerooms, but everywhere in the lower districts. The whole market square is under water.” He shook his head. “Bad.”
“Have you heard from Dez?”
“Not a word. But she’s a survivor, that one. She’ll turn up.”
He meant to cheer, but after what they’d both learned of the city’s fate, Usha was little heartened. “You know where to find me.”
Rusty nodded and assured her he’d find her with good news as soon as it arrived. After a discreet pause and a clearing of his throat, he said, “Will you be removing there permanently?”
“No. Things will clear up here. I’ll keep our rooms.” She avoided the urge to look at the watcher at the window again, the woman holding on to thinning hope. “I know Dez will be back and wanting hers.”
“You’re not going to find much.” He jerked his chin at the stairway. “Storm blew the shutters right off the windows. It’s as wet up there as it is down there. I’m sorry.”
Usha stood haplessly in the middle of the space that had only days before been her studio. Her easel was shattered, her palette vanished, swept away in water that had poured in through the open windows. Charcoals and sketches were gone. The painting she’d been working on—a commission lately taken and only days old—was ruined. On the floor, things were worse. Her paint had been storm-flung along with the ingredients of her favorite pa’ressa recipe. They had changed the color of the oak floor.
With no place to sit, Usha stood, head low, heart aching for the loss.
“Well,” Rusty said, outside the door and peering in. “It’s certainly a mess, but it’s a colorful mess.”
“It’s not a mess, it’s a horror, but it’s my little horror. I’m not sure what I can do here. But if nothing more, I can pay you this month’s rent and next so you can hire workmen.”
But where to go? There wasn’t a room at the Ivy that wasn’t in use or made useless by the storm. She could not imagine there was anyplace else in Haven for her, though she did ask. Rusty confirmed her fear.
She could only return to Steadfast, to Loren and the game they played with rules no one clearly understood. Since the storm she’d spent each night in his bed—how to say no, to beg for a guest chamber from the man she loved?
Usha turned to Rusty. “Until it gets better here, I think I can work at Steadfast.” She looked around, weary now. “I suppose I should see if I have a salvageable wardrobe.”
Things were not much better, but some things could be salvaged. She had only sodden clothing to bring back to Steadfast, but with Rusty’s help she bundled it all up the best she could and dumped it onto the floor of the carriage.
Usha’s last word to Rusty, private and urgent, was to remind him to let her know the moment he heard anything about how Dezra was faring. Despite his attempt at reassuring her that all was well, Usha was not eased. There should have been something—a message from Dez, Aline, or even Madoc. The silence boded no good.
19
Almost a week after the storm, Usha stood at Loren’s bedchamber window in a pool of sunlight. Behind her, Loren spoke quietly to a servant. Usha heard distress in the woman’s voice when she said, “Sir, there’s precious little breakfast to serve. The bread’s gone, the cheese is moldy, there hasn’t been bacon in days—”
Loren cut her off, but not harshly. “Take what there is into the solar, as usual—but not before you’ve eaten.”
She murmured something. It sounded like protest. Usha knew it wouldn’t be heeded. Loren, the son of ship captains, a captain once himself for a while, knew the value of keeping his crew as strong and hale as possible. Above all, he knew the value of sharing fare equally with all in hard times. So resentment had no chance to grow, to be sure, but there was more to it—a fundamental fairness people could count on. It must have made his sailors glad to crew with him, and it did make his few servants feel loyal as kin.
Usha stood in the warm fall of light, hearing more said but no longer listening. For the first time in days, the morning sky showed a faint wash of blue. The gray cover was thinning, light trying to win through. She couldn’t bear to look away.
Gently, Loren’s hands touched her shoulders, then slipped down her arms.
Usha looked around, accepted his kiss, and when she felt his hands tighten a little on her shoulders, she turned back to the window. She looked up, her eye caught by a shadow swirling across the ruined gardens.
“They’re still there.”
Loren grunted and said, “They won’t be going away, love.” He slipped his hands along her arms again, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. He kissed her neck, and her skin shivered.
In the sky above Steadfast, a talon of dragons came in from the east. They had no riders—those were quartered in Old Keep—but the dragons came at call. No riders, but they carried burdens—food for the barracks, food for Sir Radulf’s table. As these came in, another dragon flew in from the south, a knight attendant, and swung down over the river turned toward Old Keep.
“Loren...”
He turned her from the window. She let him, but only long enough to kiss him. He tried to stop her from returning to look at the sky, but she stepped out of his arms, closer to the window.
“I can’t pretend they aren’t there, Loren. The knights and all the dragons. There must be twice as many now has when Sir Radulf called in reinforcements. The moor must groan with the weight of them. And I can’t pretend I like it.”
“No one likes it.”
Usha said nothing. She didn’t think anyone did who wasn’t Sir Radulf. But she did think Loren himself tolerated the occupation. Before the storm, when Sir Radulf was willing to give a little for all that he was taking, Loren had been able to win concessions, small mercies. Now, Loren had nothing to offer and so nothing to gain. Haven was in ruin.
“Loren,” Usha said, “is Sir Radulf afraid?”
“Of what?”
“The flood. The city slipping out of his grip.”
Loren kissed her again, a brush of lips across her neck. She felt his breath warm on her skin. “I don’t think so. If he were—” He slipped his arms around her, and she leaned against him. “If he is, we’d all do well to be afraid. However it is, things are going to get harder.”
The red dragon dropped down from the sky to Old Keep’s courtyard. Its rider leaped from the saddle and hit the ground running. Usha couldn’t hear the clanking of armor, but she imagined it well. They all came and went in armor now, and if they damned the heat, their master must have threatened worse than damnation to the knight who did not show himself at full strength at all times.