Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

Here it is high summer, she thought, looking around her. High summer, yet the room had a feeling of autumn about it.

The sound of the crier’s bell faded. Usha’s restlessness increased. She gathered charcoal sticks and tied them neatly. She took up her brushes again, cleaned them one by one, though each had been tended after its last use. When they were clean, she tied them into bundles according to size. She did not return them to the basket. She took the basket and set it on the window sill, empty. She did all this as though she were a housewife preparing to remove from one house to another. The color of autumn deepened in her mood. She looked around for her paints, wanting to see the color she was feeling, umber or smoke.

A thunder of horses and carriage wheels erupted in the street below. Usha ran to the window in time to see Loren leap from his carriage. White in the face, his eyes like dark holes, he ran for the inn.

Usha left the window and flew to the stairs to meet him. Loren was there before her, like a force of nature, a fury on him Usha had never seen. He took her by the shoulders and shoved her back into the studio, cursing her when she resisted.

Shaken, Usha stumbled ahead of him. Once inside the studio, she flung away from him. Turning, her own anger matched his.

“Have you lost your mind? What’s wrong with you, Loren?” He took a step. She did not back away. Heart pounding in fear and anger, she pointed to the door. “Tell me what’s wrong. Or leave.”

The clang of the crier’s bell came closer. Usha thought it must be ringing only a block away now. The back of her neck prickled.

Loren looked like a man demented-eyes hollow, skin drawn tight across the bones of his face. His voice no more than a hoarse gasp, he said, “Tamara is dead.”

The breath left Usha’s lungs as though she’d been struck. She tried to speak. No sound came from her lips, and her heart beat painfully.

Loren pushed past her. When she turned she saw him at her worktable, sweeping charcoals and brushes to the floor, ransacking her sketches.

“What are you doing? Loren, get away from-”

With a bitter cry, Loren flung a sheaf of sketches at her feet. Cold, Usha bent to retrieve them, but she knew what she’d find. These were from the session she’d had with Tamara, the failed sketches. The dark strokes of charcoal writhed on the pages, unstable again. Wolf, raven, sword, they did the demon dance, never resolving shape.

“You killed my daughter, Usha. You told me-”

“Loren, no!”

He pointed to the sketches in her hand. “Look! You told me you would never harm my child. You told me if you worked with good will-” He grabbed the sketches from her, tearing one and crumpling the others. On the two halves of the torn sheet the images finally resolved-into a bloody sword. Lady Mearah’s sigil. “In the name of the gods what kind of will made that ?”

“Not mine!”

She didn’t make the doom. She simply saw the doom. That’s what Usha would have said, trying to make him believe what he had never truly understood. He gave her no chance.

“My child would be alive today if it weren’t for you, Usha.” His face like a skull, white and hard, Loren said, “But she was murdered last night. Her throat was cut, her body found behind the Grinning Goat.” On a ragged sob, he said, “She was executed. Mearah’s writ left on her… on her body.”

“Loren…”

He turned and walked away. The sound of his footfalls mingled with the clang of the crier’s bell as it grew fainter with distance.

Alone, Usha shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself but found no warmth. Her thoughts were all cold, of the child who had been wagered and lost. She wanted to weep, to grieve the dead girl. But the time for that would come later. Now it was time to find out why Tamara had been killed, why her poor body had been left at the Goat. She felt in her blood the tingle of patterns, shapes, and lines coalescing into some image of betrayal stretching farther than Tamara’s death. When she closed her eyes, she saw the image of a path, sinuous and fluid as a snake in motion.

Qui’thonas .

In the common room, Rusty leaned his elbows on the bar. He gave Usha a long look. He said nothing about what he might have seen or heard.

“You’re looking for Dezra,” he said.

“Yes.”

Rusty nodded. “Have a seat, Mistress Usha. Perhaps a cup of water, eh? I’m sure Dez will be around soon.”

He went to get the water and came back with it, as well as some toast. “It would be wise if you have something to eat.”

Usha accepted the toast and drank the water. It wasn’t long before Dezra came into the common room, eyes glittering, face flushed.

“You look like you ran all the way,” Usha said.

Dez crooked a humorless smile. “You look like you’ve been washed overboard and come dragging up from the sea. Happy to see you, sister.”

“Dez, I have to tell you-”

Dez held up a hand. “I probably know a lot of it already. Hard things were done last night.”

“Tamara…”

Dez’s face was set in grim lines. “It wasn’t an execution. It was revenge.”

“But for what?”

Dez hushed her with a gesture. The common room was empty. Even Rusty had gone to the kitchen. Still, Dez lowered her voice so Usha had to lean close to hear.

“Later. Now we need to keep our wits about us and move fast. We’re finding a road home, Usha. One more path away, and we have to do it pretty quick. We’re going to Aline’s now, in daylight, two sisters going to visit a friend. After that, things get different.” Dez took something out of the pouch at her belt, a wad of crumpled paper. “Found this blowing around on the ground outside. Yours?”

Usha smoothed out the pages, and her throat ached with the swelling of renewed sorrow. They were two of the sketches she’d made to start Tamara’s portrait. Loren must have thrown them away. There had been three.

On her way out the door, Usha looked for the other. It wasn’t to be found, and she could only imagine it had blown away.

Sunlight splashed golden across the wide desk, glinting from the neatly aligned nibs of quills placed precisely midway between two bottles of ink. Rowan put the wrinkled sheet of parchment carefully before Sir Radulf.

“I don’t know what it is,” said the half-elf, though he did. “I found it on the ground near the Ivy.”

Sir Radulf looked at the strange lines, like runes dancing. He didn’t touch the page. “Where the Majere woman is staying?”

Rowan nodded. “They say her work is valuable. It certainly is strange. I thought you’d like to know.” He hesitated, for he’d come to the place where treachery could betray him. What did the knight see on the page? A sketch of a dead girl’s face? The chaos of writhing strokes and curves? Or did he see something else?

“They say,” said the knight, “that more than image is created on the canvases of Usha Majere. They say that sometimes a truth is revealed.”

Rowan let his breath out slowly and said, “I’ve heard my master say so.”

The knight grunted. “Your master… he doesn’t know you have this?”

“No. He does not.”

“Why did you bring it here?”

Why, indeed? Rowan didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t despise Loren Halgard. He didn’t consider him a hard master. He liked him, in fact. And yet-he had to admit it-Halgard had lost a hard gamble for power when his daughter refused Sir Radulf. It is with servants as it is with their masters. A man has to ally himself with power if he wants to prosper.

“Sir knight, some say it’s dangerous to speak the truth to power. I think it must be. Maybe, though, it is more dangerous to speak the truth about power. Usha Majere speaks the truth about power.”