Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

Out in the street a sharp voice called and another answered-a patrol of knights beginning its turn at watch. Usha listened. Dezra scowled. The patrols had been doubled since last night.

As though it were the topic of conversation (but there was no conversation at all, only silence,) Usha said, “It has been too hot today.” She scattered a handful of dried petals with a breath.

The clatter of the cook and his boys cleaning the kitchen sounded as though it came from far away. In the common room the fire burned low. The night was warm and close, and no one wanted to make it hotter. Though the air was cooler in the garden, Dezra and Usha sat alone in the deepening dark. The news of the three hanged men had flown through the city by noon, faster than fire before the wind. No one who stayed at the inn ventured out of doors tonight. Usha would have wagered the case was the same throughout Haven.

Just as walls could not contain Dezra’s restlessness, they could not contain Usha’s anger at the idea that anyone (she did not shape Loren’s name, even in her thoughts) would consider appeasing or cooperating with a brute like Sir Radulf Eigerson. No reason could be good enough.

“They are mad here,” she said to Dezra. “Every one of them. If they think things won’t go as horribly in Haven as they are going in Qualinesti…”

She spoke in a low voice, for while they were not actually breaking curfew as they were not abroad on city streets, they were keenly aware of the dragon above and the pairs of mounted knights patrolling the city streets.

Dezra ran a finger around the frothy rim of her beer mug and looked up at the wheeling dragon and its black-armored rider.

“Like a cockroach riding a red lizard,” she said. She got to her feet and stretched. “I’m going out.”

Usha stared. “Where?” She pointed to the sky, and Dezra’s bark of laughter startled her. “Dez-”

Dezra turned. The look in her green eyes said she’d come to a decision. “There’s no official way out of this damned place. They prate about passes, and on every corner I hear those passes will go only to people on legitimate business, pack traders and the like. Those will go only to people who can prove they’ve been doing business outside of Haven before the occupation, and they’ll cost a person’s firstborn for a hostage to insure his return.” She sneered. “And whoever doesn’t like that arrangement can pay half a fortune to some lowlife parasite for the chance that they’ll be shown a safe way out.”

“I’d take that chance,” Usha said. She scattered another handful of rose petals and watched them tumbled along the stone fence before a small breeze. “I’d try it.”

Dez stared at her, and it seemed to Usha she was caught between laughter and honest curiosity. “Are you serious? You saw what they did to… the bakers and the half elf.”

“I saw, and I want to get out of here, Dez. I’m earning money from my painting. There are two more commissions waiting for me when I want them. One’s small, but the other is a good one. With it alone I could move my studio into another room, pay Rusty for both our rooms, and still have enough to be able begin saving for passes. Don’t do anything rash, Dez.”

She said it, and she saw by the thrust of Dezra’s jaw and the stiff line of her shoulders that Dezra would not be advised. That look make Usha’s blood chill. They were a stubborn clan, the Majeres, come by it honestly from their hard-headed father and their mother Tika, the woman who adamantly insisted on her right to follow him to war. Dezra had inherited her full share of that stubbornness. She’d lost someone to Sir Radulf. That much Usha guessed. And she’d guessed with good clue when she remembered the soft break in Dezra’s voice when she’d spoken of the men who’d sold her bread. One of them had been more than an acquaintance. Usha had been expecting talk of vengeance. She had not expected talk of finding a way out of Haven.

“Please, Dez. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Foolish?” Dezra’s voice was no louder than a whisper, and it carried all her anger and grief on it. “Foolish would be going after that bastard knight and sawing off her head with her own dagger. Not that it wouldn’t feel good. No, I’m planning to be sensible. You said it yourself, Usha. They’re mad here in Haven. Well, there’s no need to stay in a madhouse full of murderers when I can find-”

The watch came around again, their horses snorting, bridle iron jingling. In the street the clop of hoofs paused, the conversation of the riders ceased. They started on again, and Usha leaned forward, her voice barely a whisper.

“Dez, what are you talking about? There is no way.”

Dezra tossed her head. “There used to be. There used to be all kinds of secret ways out of Haven.”

“ Into Haven,” Usha corrected. “And Aline has abandoned them.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. She’s a crafty woman, your friend Aline Wrackham.”

Usha raised an eyebrow. “Dez, do you know something?”

Dezra hesitated the barest moment before she shook her head. “No. Qui’thonas sleeps. Aline said she was abandoning it, didn’t she? But that doesn’t matter. I don’t need Aline or Qui’thonas . If they’ve abandoned the old routes, so be it. But they can’t have obliterated them. Not all of them. There hasn’t been time for that. So, what once led in can now lead out.” Dez flashed a mirthless grin. “And if I can’t find those ways, no one can.”

She came closer. Usha felt her determination quivering in the air between them.

“Usha, listen. It’s crazy not to try to leave if I can get us out.”

It would be crazy, and just as crazy to think of sneaking past tightened patrols in the city and circling dragons. But, stubborn they were, those Majere children. Usha had been married to one for many years. She was the mother of two others. If she’d learned anything, it was not to make a Majere feel obliged to become a wall to bang her head against.

“Go,” she said, then she caught her sister-in-law’s hand. “But be careful, Dez. Don’t do anything-”

“Rash or foolish?” Dezra flashed a bright and dangerous smile. “Too late. That’s just what I’m off to do.”

The dwarf Dunbrae stood just inside the doorway of the high chamber Dez knew from the night Haven fell. He’d brought her there with Usha. At Aline’s bidding he’d seen them safely through the embattled city. Now he watched her with eyes slightly narrowed. Dez didn’t think she saw mistrust there, but she did see uncertainty. Dunbrae had found her nosing around a quarter of the city where the knights had spread their watchmen thin, a warehouse district that had once been busy with ships loading and unloading and now stood quiet, as though with breath held. Dunbrae had been watching that place himself, for he knew most of the weak points in Sir Radulf’s perimeter.

“Just keeping up,” he’d said, and then he’d invited her to go with him to visit Aline Wrackham. The invitation had been politely offered, but Dez didn’t think it could have been easily declined. And so, curious, she’d followed him to Rose Hall, where she’d been courteously received, offered refreshment, and stood now waiting to hear the reason for having been waylaid.

The door to the corridor closed softly, Dunbrae was gone.

“Waylaid,” Aline said, musing. “An interesting word. You could have been killed if any of Sir Radulf’s men saw you out so late after curfew.”

“I could have been. But none did.”

“I’d say that was luck, wouldn’t you? Three men are already dead from being caught out.”

Whatever cocky reply Dez would have given vanished from her lips. She saw again the three hanged men, Dalan Forester, his brother Rolf, and the dark elf she and Dunbrae had left tied up at a crossroad.