Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

Usha made a sudden decision. In the portrait Sir Radulf asked for, she would create this delightful garden as the setting for the young woman who soon would leave it.

“Loren,” she said, her voice low and soft. “Leave off worrying. What’s done is done, and we can only hope it is done for the best.” She looked back to the house and the lights in Tamara’s bed chamber. “It’s been a long day and a very long night. Can we call Rowan to bring the carriage around?”

He looked at her, holding her hand. “If you wish.”

But she didn’t wish. She wanted him.

“Loren-”

“Stay,” he said.

Please, she thought. Don’t ask, don’t.

“Usha, stay.”

Usha looked up at the sky, at the dragons circling. The wind freshened, and this time it carried more than the failing promise of rain-scent. A cool drop and then another splashed onto her cheek. Lightning flashed, thunder crackled, and in the next moment the sky poured down rain.

Laughing suddenly, Usha said, “I think I’ve made up my mind.”

She tugged Loren’s hand and the two ran back to the house.

In the morning, Haven woke to find the river overflowing its banks, the willows and many of the elms along the banks uprooted. Cellars and cisterns had been turned into mud holes.

Loren’s gardeners cried woe, for their small, green realm lay savaged by the storm, battered and unrecognizable, as were all the gardens in the city. But Usha, standing at the bedroom window, knew she’d made the right decision to set Tamara’s portrait in the garden, to seat the girl on the curved stone bench beside the fish pond. She would recreate the beautiful space of flower beds and birch groves she remembered even then, looking out at the storm-wrack and ruin.

“My lady.”

Lady Mearah looked up, whetstone in hand, her sword across her knee. She sat alone in the vast armory, that place where her knights used to practice. No one had come near her for hours. No one wanted to look into those dark eyes and see her sorrow and the fire of her lust for revenge. Agmar, however, didn’t seem to mind. Sir Radulf’s squire had seen enough rage and blood-lust to be able to look into the lady knight’s eyes and not flinch.

“Tell me,” she said, knowing he came from his master. She didn’t look up to the gallery or the doorway that led into Sir Radulf’s wardroom. The knight had been there all night and most of the day, honing his plans to tighten his grip on Haven as keenly as Lady Mearah now honed her sword.

Agmar bowed. “I have a name for you, compliments of my master.”

Mearah put the whetstone by. “He knows who killed-” She made a small sound, like bitter laughter withheld. “He knows who caused the dark elf’s death? How?”

“By the ones you hanged, my lady. Tavar was last seen going into the Grinning Goat. We can guess he went out with the knights on the word of a man who knows most of the gossip and all the rumors that surge around Haven.”

“The mage.”

Agmar nodded. “Madoc Diviner.”

Usha peered out the carriage window at devastated Haven. There was water everywhere-running in the gutters, pooling in low spots, and turning gardens into swamps.

The horses snorted and shook their heads. Rowan called softly to them, encouraging with a firm and gentle hand on the reins. Usha saw the horses’ ears flatten. The offside mare flung up her head, eyes rolling so the whites glared. She wasn’t going to move, and so her harness mate went back on her haunches, making her own position clear.

Rowan tied the reins to the side of his box and slipped down into the street. He made no splash to frighten his team, and he kept talking as he walked, always using a soft, encouraging voice.

What should have been a short drive to the Ivy had become a tense and frightening journey. Rowan had been using every bit of his considerable skill to guide the carriage through deep water and muddy streams with active currents running through them. Some ran as high as a quarter way up the wheels. The horses had refused anything deeper, and Rowan searched long and circuitous ways to find even that. Two days after the storm, they still encountered roads as far as five blocks in from the river where they couldn’t see the cobbles and bricks. Trees torn out by the roots lay across many roads. Countless houses and shops had lost roofs to the wind, and those were the lucky ones. Others had been crushed by falling trees.

People stood in water up to their knees, shaking their heads in dismay. Others wandered stunned and looking witless as they sloshed through the water, hoping to find the things the storm had stolen. Many had awakened to find their kitchens flooded to the ceilings, the stores in their larders ruined, their vegetable gardens at the bottom of rank pools of water. The wells on the low side of the hill were polluted, and drinking water was suddenly, frighteningly scarce.

Loren’s gardener said bodies were washing up from the river, corpses of citizens and soldiers alike littering the banks. Usha and Loren had been wakened by Tamara on the night of the storm to watch three talons of dragons move out to the moors, for there was no high ground left for them near Haven. At dawn, Usha had asked Loren if he would allow Rowan to take her to the Ivy. He had agreed and said he would go with her, but Usha had declined. While it was true Usha wanted to check on her belongings, she wanted most to see whether Dezra was at the inn or had left word that she was well and safe. She didn’t want to encounter Dez or receive a message in Loren’s company.

“Just let me do this,” she’d said. “You have much to do here, and I’ll be guided by Rowan’s advice. If he thinks the way is too dangerous, I’ll abide by his word.”

Reluctantly, Loren agreed, for what she said was true. He had much to look after at Steadfast and could not really be spared.

Usha looked out the window again and saw Rowan take the cheek strap of the offside mare. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Hold on, Mistress.”

She grabbed leather hand straps as the carriage lurched sharply forward. Rowan led the mare and so the team, who would advance only in fits and starts. They went this way slowly, and Rowan did not resume his seat on the driver’s box. The route was not direct, and it was not quick, but in time Usha saw the stone chimneys of the inn rising darkly into the gray sky. No smoke curled up from them. Only the small yellow lights of candles and lanterns showed from the windows of the common room, and not many of those. Like wraiths, the dim figures of people drifted back and forth within, guests looking for the comfort of their fellows’ company.

“It’s like a war,” Rowan muttered.

Usha nodded. It was-a battle against the city by nature. She thought Sir Radulf and his talon of dragons hadn’t been worse.

Rowan led the horses into the mud that had been the inn’s dusty dooryard. He tied the reins to the hitching post and came around to help Usha down. Sweat ran in his face, and his hair was slicked to his neck, exposing the cant of his ears. He brushed absently at it, the old habit of covering this sign of mixed blood that was seldom welcome among elves or humans.

Usha took the hand he offered and stepped into water that soaked her skirt to the knees. The mud sucked at the bottom of her shoes. He said he’d wait with the carriage and the skittish team.

“All right,” Usha said, trying to sound optimistic and failing. She hiked up her sodden hems. “I’ll go see what’s left.”

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.