Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

Way stops, Usha thought, picking up Dezra’s discarded clothing and tossing it in a corner. For both of us, the inn is nothing but a way stop.

The thought stung, a sudden thorn. In Loren’s arms, in Loren’s bed, she wanted to be nowhere else, and there, she never doubted her right to his love. Now, amid the ruin of her studio, picking up Dezra’s sodden clothing, she knew she had no right to use that love as a refuge.

Out the window she saw the dragons flying. One it seemed carried a double burden, a knight and someone clutching behind. Was it Loren summoned? She remembered his anger of the morning and then recalled Tamara’s distress.

Father and daughter, they each had become tied to Sir Radulf. In her chest she felt a small pressure, the kind that comes before the first cloud of storm can be seen on the horizon. Her hands full of wet clothing, looking at the ruin of the streets below, Usha knew. Between Sir Radulf and Loren, something had changed.

A thread of fear wound through Usha’s heart.

Tamara came to Usha dressed in the color of bruises.

On the first day of her sitting she arrived wearing a flowing skirt the shades of gray and purple and little sandals that laced up to her knees with slim leather straps dyed listless green. Around her neck and draped over her shapely arms, she wore a filmy scarf whose colors were a sad shade of fading yellow.

Dark rings marred the skin beneath her eyes, as they had for days. The color she applied to those marks, something she’d hoped would be flesh toned, did nothing to hide the circles.

Fear lurked in swift, darting glances, peering out and ducking back.

“Child,” Usha said, taking Tamara’s hand and leading her to the long-legged stool. “I’m glad you could come.”

She wanted to cry out, Who has done this to you? More, she wanted to see whether the draping scarf hid actual bruises.

“What a lovely scarf,” she said, touching the long end. She moved her hand a little, and the scarf slid from Tamara’s neck. Relief washed through Usha when she saw the white skin of neck and shoulders unmarked.

“This will be the easy part,” Usha said when Tamara was settled.

She took her own place on the stool opposite. The girl looked up, her attention returning as though from a distance. She arranged her skirt, and Usha watched, carefully pretending not to. No bruise stained Tamara’s legs. No one had laid a hand on her. It was weariness that marked her-and fear.

“All I need from you is that you stay where you are.” Usha put her sketchbook on her knee and took up a stick of charcoal, her hand already working to block out space for images. “I don’t even mind if you move around a little or talk at this stage.”

Tamara didn’t move but to sit straighter. She was like a child determined to do her best at the task to hand. The restive, glittery-eyed young woman Usha had come to know had utterly vanished as though she’d been an illusion.

“I’m sorry I missed you at breakfast,” Usha said. “Rowan could have driven us both here and taken us home again, but then I was up and out early.” She looked up to smile. “I wanted to be ready for you. Poor Rowan, he’s doing a lot of backing and forthing for this painting, isn’t he?”

Absently, Tamara said, “I suppose so.”

Charcoal slipped along paper. Whispering lines and curves became the smooth shape of Tamara’s cheek and elegant neck. A flurry of curls appeared, dark hair spilling down her shoulders, feathering her cheeks.

“I think we’ll be able to have the painting Sir Radulf wants in time for a wedding gift.”

Tamara brought back her attention, this time with a sudden, guilty start. “He hasn’t been asking.” One hand sought the other, fingers very carefully entwining in the appearance of relaxed ease. At ease, she would have been regal.

The merchant prince’s daughter. Liking the thought, Usha bent to her work, letting her charcoal find the shape of a woman at the threshold of her beauty, intelligence, and talent.

“Of course, Sir Radulf has been very busy,” Usha said, gently. A small line, a touch of shadow near the chin, a widening of the brow around the temple, and the image became more like the person before her. She became, to any eye, Loren’s daughter.

Tamara nodded. “It’s difficult. He has… well, there are so many things… Radulf needs to do, to have done. He…” She shrugged, as though that would tell the rest.

The gesture said little to Usha, but Tamara’s hesitation to speak the name of her betrothed said much. She didn’t flaunt that name with pride, as she once had done.

The even, northern light dimmed as something sinuous and swift sailed before the sun.

Never a flock of gulls these days, Usha thought.

The image she’d been keeping in the middle distance between mind and paper vanished.

The breeze fell, and at once the upper room felt steamy. Usha brushed her hair back from her face with a swift gesture. She looked up and lifted a hand to tell Tamara to turn. “Just so I have light on your profile and-”

The charcoal broke in her fingers.

She reached for another, and on the page the perfect swirl of curls slipping down the swanlike neck smeared as her hand passed over.

Usha stopped, hand in mid air. No charcoal dust stained her wrist, not her fingers. She had not touched the page. The image she’d been coaxing wavered, like something seen under water.

“Tamara,” she said, her heart tripping. She put the paper away, slipped it onto the table behind her. “Child, you look weary.”

Tamara found a too-bright version of her swift, confident smile. “I think I’ve been keeping too many late nights.” She lowered her lashes, an imitation of a woman’s thoughtful modesty. “Radulf is so attentive.”

Usha’s heart ached. The imitation was a good one, but the girl who made it remembered too late that Usha knew she’d not been from her father’s house in days.

“He sends gifts,” Tamara said quickly, slipping from the stool. With small, distracted motions, she gathered the yellow scarf around her shoulders as though, in the heat of the steamy day, she were cold. “Books, and music.” She laughed breathlessly and walked to the window. Outside, right below the window, a horse snorted. “He sent a new lute-right from Qualinost, he says.”

Plunder.

Tamara crossed to the window, not glancing at the smeared sketch.

“It’s hard to resist trying to learn more music. I want to…” Tamara glanced out the window, and her shoulders tensed. “Well, I want to play for him and show him how much I appreciate what he’s done.”

The clanging of a bell caught Usha’s attention. She joined Tamara at the window and saw the produce cart trundling around the corner to the inn. Bertie the cook’s boy jogged down the path but soon turned back. The cart carried very little food-clearly nothing Bertie thought worth buying. In these days of scant produce and little game, Usha knew it must have been a hard thing to reject anything. The driver and horse, looking dejected and weary, moved on.

“Food isn’t coming in from the countryside,” Usha said.

Tamara’s fingers plucked absently at her scarf. “There isn’t much. Everything was flooded or drowned.” The scarf slipped from her shoulders, and she caught it back. “He’s trying, Usha. Radulf is trying, and he knows people are scared and hungry.”

And he’s no fool, Usha thought. He knows frightened, hungry people are dangerous.

Usha put an arm around Tamara’s shoulders. “We’ll be fine. Haven is a strong city. The people are good and sensible when they remember to be, and they almost always remember. They’ve held together through the occupation. They’re not about to topple now.”