Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

“How can you betray Palin? By all gods, how can you strut around Haven with a man who collaborates with the occupation?”

Dez, white-knuckled fists clenched, paced up and down the little room. Her face was pale, bruised, and scraped. Usha wanted to ask what had happened, but she didn’t try. She would get no answer now. And so she sat on her bed, her back against the wall, legs crossed tailor-fashion, resolved to wait until the storm subsided.

“This easily you betray your husband!” Dez cried. “My brother… what are you thinking? If it doesn’t matter that Palin is your husband-and it sure doesn’t seem to-he is the father of your children. How can you disgrace them?”

And there was the question to destroy Usha’s resolve.

Her cheeks flushing with anger, she said, “I am not disgracing my children. They are grown. A long time grown. They have seen the life their father and I have led, the striving against each other, fighting…”

No. She would say no more of that. If she had betrayed her marriage vows, she could at least refrain from exposing the wounds.

“Leave my children out of this. When… if they need to know, I’ll be the one to talk about it. Till then, leave them out of this.”

Dezra kicked a chair, sending it crashing across the floor. “Shall I leave their father out of this? My father? My sisters? Your whole family?” She laughed. “But then how can I ask? You’ve been the apple of one man’s eye or another since we came to Haven.”

Usha’s eyes narrowed. “You have nothing to say about betrayal. You don’t know my marriage. You can’t speak about it.”

“I-”

“You don’t know. There are two people in my marriage. Neither of them is you.”

“You almost sound as if you believe it. Poor thing.” Dezra stopped pacing, the silence of her stillness settling around them. “My brother has behaved badly. Everyone agrees-my father, my sisters. But two wrongs in a family don’t make a right. Marriage is not just two people. You know that. In the name of the gods, what happened?”

A husband who left home in storms of anger, and a canvas that showed me negative space from end to end. That’s what happened. Usha didn’t say that or even try to explain. It would only send Dez off into other furies.

“Usha, don’t you care about the family?”

Her voice chill, Usha said, “Dez, why do you hold me to a standard you don’t apply to your brother?”

Dezra’s eyes narrowed as though she suspected a trap.

“That’s right,” Usha said. “You talk about family and what I owe you and your father and your sisters, what I owe my children. Yet you seem think it’s an acceptable thing for your brother to desert his family.”

Again Dezra flared, and she flashed past the question. “You have no idea where he is, Usha, or what he’s doing. He could be dead or-”

“Or he could be lying in the arms of another woman. I don’t know, and neither do you. If he’s dead, I’ll be sorry, but his death or my sorrow wouldn’t mean he didn’t desert our marriage.” Usha rose. “The subject is closed. I won’t talk about it any more.”

Trembling with anger and sorrow, she walked past her sister-in-law’s outrage and left the room.

She wanted peace from Dezra’s impassioned defense of her family and from the ache of her own emerging understanding that she didn’t truly know what that visceral familial bond that drove Dez must feel like. She loved her children. She had loved their father once. But the blank canvas she’d shown to Loren had cried out to Usha that at best her life was negative space filled in with borrowed things, borrowed family, borrowed history.

Like charcoal sketches, those were fading with the touch of a smudging finger.

Usha walked through the market square, hardly seeing the people or the wares on display. She was exhausted and angry all at the same time. When she left the inn she’d thought she would take her weariness to Loren, but she hadn’t. Anger drove her to walking, though the day was hot and oppressive. She went down quiet streets where few folk were abroad. In the hot noon hour women talked quietly outside their homes. Children sat sleepy in doorways and the scent of cooking drifted out. One or two boys trundled high-wheeled handcarts through the narrow lanes, but most of the working folk were leaning against the doorways of their homes or taverns. Later they would return to work, but not until the nooning was had, the bread and cheese, the ale or wine.

Usha walked quickly, at the pace of her anger, but once she stopped to look up at the sky and the low-hanging clouds where dragons circled. Over this part of the city she usually saw two reds. Today she saw five. Sir Radulf had dispersed all three talons, and the sight of them chilled her. She walked on, but the thought of people at their tables made her hungry. She was in no mood for tavern fare or tavern company, and so she headed for the market.

The day’s heat lay thick on the crowded square like a damp, smothering blanket. In spite of it, the stalls were full and the sellers busy. People grumbled about the scant choices. Haven’s fare was down to fish and fowl and whatever vegetables grew in these dry times. Now and then someone would cast an eye at the sky, at the clouds and the circling dragons, but Haven was a merchant city, one that had struck an uneasy bargain with a conquering army. If commerce was difficult, it would not be stifled.

Usha bought a small pastry filled with chopped lamb, mint, and potatoes and wandered through the stalls until she saw the dwarf Henge leaning his elbows on the display table before his booth, his market day offerings spread out before.

“Good day to you, Mistress Usha,” Henge called when he saw her. “I’ve not seen you in a week of days.”

“Longer than that,” she said, looking around. “How is your brother?”

“Ach, him.” Henge shook his head. “That Scur, he’s off looking at a collection of table silver. Got the good work today.”

“Inside and out of the sun.”

“The very job. Stay and talk a while.”

Her restlessness soothed by long walking, Usha agreed. Henge did a certain amount of complaining about his younger brother, but he wasn’t one to like spending all the day in the market manning the booth by himself. She offered to share her lunch, and Henge accepted gladly. In the dusty afternoon, they talked for a while until a sudden silence dropped over the market.

“Reorx’s beard,” Henge whispered.

Usha turned. The crowd in the market parted, opening a broad avenue for the passage of four armed and mounted knights. In this heat, they were armored and helmed, and the visors of the helms were down. They came closer, and Usha saw they drove a group of people ahead of them. Two were elves, a man and a woman; one was a young human man-she put a hand to her lips, stifling a cry of recognition when she saw the red-headed young man Gafyn. They were ragged and dirty, roped together as though they were a string of cattle being taken for sale. The woman stumbled and fell, a knight struck her with the flat of his sword and, when she tried to rise and fell again, poked her with the point.

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’!”