Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

The two of them smelled of sweat and river water, of smoky torches and stinking fish oil. Qui’thonas had taken no refuges out of Haven since Konal had been killed and Barthel captured. All three ways into the tunnel under Rose Hall had been collapsed. By Aline’s order, every member of Qui’thonas had been told to stand down. Tonight, Madoc, Aline, and Dunbrae had been exploring the catacombs. The old burial chambers were far more extensive than had been believed, and they were drier than the tunnels, though still so damp that torches sputtered.

Through the reek of that work, like a crimson thread in a black tapestry, Madoc smelled blood. The hiss of Dezra’s indrawn breath told him she did, too. She started to step past him, but he held her where she was with a quick gesture.

“We don’t know who that is, and we don’t know if he’s dead.”

“Not he,” Dez said. She pointed, and Madoc saw the wind ruffling dark, curling hair. “There’s a tryst gone bad, eh?”

Madoc looked around the ruined garden, into dark corners and beneath tangled arbors. Nothing moved. If an angry lover had done murder, he didn’t linger to look on his work. If a robber or ravisher had tried too hard to get what the poor woman wouldn’t give, he’d long fled.

Madoc went down the steps, noiseless with Dez a shadow on his heels. He saw the young woman’s face, her eyes wide in terror, but it was Dez who saw the pool of blood and the slit throat.

A shiver of recognition spun through Madoc’s head. “That’s Loren Halgard’s daughter.”

Dez started to say something. He grabbed her arm and turned her back toward the stairs.

“Find Usha. Go find her now.”

“Madoc, what are-?”

“ Now! She’s in danger!”

He pointed to a small wooden placard near the dead girl’s knee. It was Lady Mearah’s writ, all to familiar in Haven these days. Black paint signed with the sigil of a bloody sword, it proclaimed the execution of a traitor.

“Find her. Get her to Aline. I’ll get Dunbrae.”

“But-”

“Meet me at Rose Hall.”

Madoc went through the city like a dark-eyed phantom, alighting on the doorsteps of his sources, every person who owed him favors, everyone he could intimidate into a guess or from whom he could wring a fact. He cared nothing about watches and curfew. He knew where the secret places were, the walls that seemed to have no way past-unless one knew where to look.

He woke butchers and basket weavers, money lenders and coopers. He came to them silently, through a window, a back door left carelessly unlatched. With a blackmailer’s cold eye, he held up their secrets, their shames, their broken troths. For the fee of keeping these quiet, he demanded what they might know of the night’s murder. In the end, he found what he needed from an old woman whose granddaughter he’d once helped in the matter of a blackmailing lover. With a whisper and a sly smile, she told Madoc that Lady Mearah’s lover had died in a recent fight between knights and the elves who’d lately been hung for trying to leave the city.

“A dark elf, him,” Madoc’s reluctant informant said. “The fair flower of milady’s eye-but not so much loved by the knights under her command. Not so much loved by Sir Radulf himself… so it’s said. Not that ’e had any light in his eye for the lady knight. Just didn’t like ’em gettin’ so comfortable together.”

Indeed, Sir Radulf hadn’t. Lady Mearah and Tavar were gaining followers among knights who would rather have sacked Haven outright and taken the loot back to Neraka and be done.

“The waitin’… that’s not settin’ so well with some of the knights these days, not so well with the foot soldiers. The dark elf died for a warnin’.” The old woman shrugged. “Looks like Sir Radulf’s woman died for an echo.”

Again, she shrugged. “It’s also said Halgard’s girl was happy enough about it all. Till tonight. So who knows? Maybe Sir Radulf killed her himself.”

To the question of why Tamara had been found dead in the garden behind the Grinning Goat, the old woman had no answer. Madoc’s belly went cold. He thought of captured Barthel and Dunbrae’s certainty that the man would withstand Sir Radulf’s questioning.

One road or all-they led to Tamara’s death at the Goat tonight, and to danger for Aline and Usha.

Madoc knocked on the door of Dunbrae’s house. Nothing stirred within. He tried again. Nothing. Dogs barked at the sound. In the house next door someone passed before a window, lifting a lamp, then blowing it out. A modest house, a modest street, and no one liked to see what was going on outside the window these days.

Cursing, the dwarf opened his door.

“Damn fool with all the racket! Get in here!”

The night breeze made Dunbrae’s candle gasp and dance. He sheltered it with his hand, demanding to know whose house was on fire as Madoc pushed past him and slammed the door.

White in the face, Dunbrae heard Madoc out. When the mage was finished, Dunbrae said, “Loren Halgard. He knows Mistress Usha well, doesn’t he?”

“Rather well.”

“But-”

The little flame trembled. Shadows wavered and did not settle as Madoc explained a connection Dunbrae didn’t see, one he had himself made, weeks ago while he and Usha sat at the Goat watching Tamara and Sir Radulf in the garden. Usha Majere-Aline’s friend, Dezra’s sister-in-law, Loren Halgard’s lover, and in her way Madoc’s own patroness-had touched each of them in ways that made their disparate enterprises work, revealing truth where truth was not easily found.

“Dunbrae,” said Madoc, his voice low. “Tamara was killed at the Goat, and they say she was looking for me. If this doesn’t lead Sir Radulf to Qui’thonas at the first step, it will put him there at the last. Where’s Aline?”

Dunbrae pulled on his breeches. “Home. Safe.”

“All right. Dezra’s on her way there.” Madoc looked out the window in the direction of Rose Hall. He couldn’t see it, and he wished he could. Suddenly, fiercely, he wished he could see Aline and know she was well.

Dunbrae looked at him, dark eyes grim. “It’s time to break camp.”

Madoc nodded. “You get to Aline and help Dez. You know Aline’s going to want to wait around to close things down.”

“She might want to,” Dunbrae said, grimly, “but I’m not going to let her.”

“Good. I’ll find Usha. And, please gods, she’ll be at Steadfast, or else there’ll be the trek through the city to find her.”

There was not much more to do than appoint a place to meet, and every moment spent doing that clawed at Madoc’s nerves. So much could still go wrong. So much might have already gone wrong and changed their every plan. It was as though he could hear a bell tolling or see sand slipping down the last curve of an hourglass.

“Dwarf,” he said, turning on the doorstep. “Whatever happens-”

Dunbrae nodded. “Aline gets out.”

Usha opened the shutters and let the scent of the wind and the river into the studio. Dawn brightened the sky. In the street a dog barked. From blocks away came the harsh clang of a bell-one of Sir Radulf’s criers beginning a round through the city. He would be announcing a death. These days the criers had little else to proclaim but news of executions.

Restless, Usha turned from the window. She’d wanted to walk from Steadfast to the inn. The morning was cool, the river smelled fresh, but in the end she’d allowed Rowan to drive her.

“ ’T’isn’t you Loren will be angry with mistress, if he finds out I let you go alone into the city.” The half-elf had said that smiling, but Usha understood.

Unable to settle, Usha wandered from one end of the studio to the other. She picked up brushes and put them down. She straightened a canvas lately primed so it leaned just so against the wall. She unpinned sketches from the wall and laid them out neatly on her work table. Time had come to sort them, toss out the old ones, and think about whether there would be new ones.