They parted, Dezra slogging ahead as Madoc and Dunbrae shepherded the trembling refugees toward the catacombs. As they went into the deeper darkness, the child asked in a tremulous voice about dead people and ghosts.
“We’re not going to worry about that,” Madoc said with a wink. “Live people run faster than dead people.”
Dunbrae snorted. “Quit trying to scare the child, mage. Dead people don’t run at all.”
Usha sat in the carriage beside Loren, her hands composed in stillness that did not reflect the turmoil of anger and fear within. Loren sat very still, his hands clenched in fists on his knees, the knuckles bone white. Usha put her own hand over one of those fists and found it cold.
It had been Sir Radulf’s habit to send for Loren if he wanted to speak with him. He would have a knight escort him, carrying him to the keep on dragonback. Sir Radulf had not sent for Loren today. Loren went at his own will, and he would arrive unannounced. Loren was going to Old Keep to take back his daughter.
As Loren would go, so would Usha, for she ignored his every objection.
When Loren didn’t so much as glance at her to acknowledge the touch, Usha returned to looking out the window. Haven had a sad shabbiness about it these days—ruined gardens, houses with shutters torn off, taverns with windows boarded up. The people went about their business in whatever of their clothing had survived the flood. Old men and young went scavenging through the streets for wood that might be dried in the sun. Girls and women had sacks over their shoulders to reclaim clothing, pots, candlesticks, sodden boots ... whatever they could find that might be salvaged from the storm. Once-proud Haven looked like a village of unhappy, overgrown kender.
Rowan took the carriage into the courtyard of Old Keep. The ancient tower loomed like a dark finger pointing to the sky in baleful accusation. High over the tower flew dragons, reds patrolling the city, others coming and going on other business. Sir Radulf’s own black soared over the river, wings wide and slipping along the air currents, patrolling the waterway.
Rowan leaped from the driver’s seat and opened the door.
“Usha, you needn’t come,” Loren said, looking at the tower.
Usha didn’t dignify that with an answer. Of course she would go with him. All the way to the top of those stairs. She extended her hand to Rowan, who helped her down.
Loren crossed the courtyard beneath the scornful eyes of dark knights. Usha knew he went with all the pride he could muster, and beside him she looked neither right nor left. Her heart thundered in her chest, but not with fear anymore. Now, she was simply angry—on behalf of the stolen girl, the father made helpless, and the city that had fallen. Usha climbed the long stairway with the easy grace of a woman ascending a staircase in her own home. Loren stopped before tall oaken doors. Usha slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. For the frist time since she’d refused to stay behind, he looked at her, his eyes offering silent thanks for her support.
To the side of each door stood a knight, eyes forward, each with a hand on the sword at his side. Usha wanted to smile when she saw her lover straighten to his full height. If he was supposed to beg entry, Loren didn’t. If he was to wait as a supplicant outside the doors, he wouldn’t. His daughter was within. Ignoring the knights, they entered the keep.
Tamara had been at Old Keep two days and a night. For this reason above any other, Usha had insisted on coming. She would not say it to the girl’s father, caught between dread and anger, but he might find his daughter more in need of a woman’s help than a man’s.
Usha hoped it wouldn’t be so. Loren had sent for Tamara, and he had been told it was her wish to stay. Upon receipt of a letter written over her name but not in her hand, Loren had gone to take his daughter home. He had been given a glimpse of her in the gardens behind Old Keep. She’d stood with a little merlin hawk on her wrist, lifting it to the sky. The hawk had cried and spread its wings, Tamara had turned, and she might have seen him.
Loren’s escort that day had been Lady Mearah. He had not been able to speak with Tamara, but the lady knight assured him that Tamara was well. And then she’d taken Loren back across the river by dragon, leaving Rowan to follow through the winding streets with the carriage.
That night, Usha sat on the bed watching Loren pace, now and then stopping to look across the river to Old Keep. He jerked his head in short rhythm. She knew he was counting the lights in the tall, narrow windows, trying to imagine which bright rectangle was the room where Tamara lay. Once, he stopped in mid-stride. Usha joined him at the window as a figure passed before the window facing Steadfast.
“It’s Tamara,” Loren said.
She’d put her arms around him, leaning her head on his shoulder. She felt his heart beating beneath her hand, fast and hard.
“I’m sure she’s well, my love,” Usha said, not at all sure and hoping he didn’t hear that uncertainty in her voice.
He heard something, for he said, “No one can know if Tamara is well. No one can be sure.”
He was right, of course. Tamara might be at Old Keep against her will; and she might be at Old Keep with all her consent. She had been strange and wild these last weeks, like a bright flame consuming all the pure oil in a lamp’s well. She’d spoken often of her hopes for the marriage with Sir Radulf. The city would recover because of him. The people would understand that everything he did, he did for the well-being of all.
Sir Radulf Eigerson, the Red Wolf, who allowed his second, Lady Mearah, to hang men and women for the least infraction. This was her knight. Tamara never spoke of the growing unease in Haven, the mood shifting into grim foreboding. She never once asked whether Loren thought trouble could spread through a city whose people grew a little bit hungrier every day, the wealthy becoming as thin as the poorest gully dwarf.
None of this seemed to concern Tamara. It was as though she knew what others didn’t about her betrothed—or believed what others couldn’t.
This morning Loren had said to Usha, “I will have my daughter back. I will go and take my child out of there, if I have to go with stones in a sack and a sling.”
When he’d refused to let her go with him, she’d said, “You will not go without me, Loren. If I have to follow you on foot, I will.”
And so he’d sent word to Sir Radulf that Tamara would come home with him tonight, and Sir Radulf could object standing in blood—Loren’s or his own.
Now, in the bright light of day, Usha walked into Old Keep beside him. Knights lounged around the armory that had been Old Keep’s great hall—some laughing and gambling, others honing weapons or testing their skills against each other. The place rang with rough laughter and the clang and clatter of iron when Usha and Loren entered, but silence followed in their wake as they climbed another set of stairs, these winding down from a gallery. Someone muttered unintelligible words, another laughed in a way that made Usha think that if she knew what the first knight had said, she’d have wanted to slap his face.
At the top of the stairs Loren stopped outside a vaulted chamber. In a city where wood was too wet to ignite and little kindling existed, where candles had been washed out of flooded houses and oil made useless, it seemed to Usha that all the light in the world had come into Old Keep. Every torch, every brazier, each lamp and rush light—and on the vast stone table banks of candles to illuminate a feast of food not seen in Haven since the great storm.
Dragons, carrying supplies for the garrison, had carried the means of illumination as well as food, and into this dazzle a slim figure came from the other corridor—Tamara dressed in blue and gold, her arms white, her midnight hair piled high on her head like a crown.