Curious, Usha, said, “Who was the rascal?”
“Madoc Diviner,” the innkeeper said. “Used to be a mage, in the days when you could count on magic working. Or so they say. Calls himself an information broker now, and that’s true enough. He’ll get information for anyone. For a price. You ladies stay away from him. He’s no good.”
Dez pricked up her ears at this description of Usha’s old friend, but Usha herself smiled and thanked the innkeeper for his trouble. Madoc’s note was sealed with a blue wax seal, the impression a heron in flight. Curious, Usha scanned the page and found a second wax seal above one penned line in a neat hand: Send this seal if you need me.
Dez raised an eyebrow.
“Offering help if we need it,” Usha said. Careful of the seal, she tucked the note into her belt and turned to Aline’s note.
Usha,
I could find no way to send Dezra’s letter on. I will keep trying. I’ve told Rusty that I will hack your debts.
The page enclosed will affirm the same to anyone you show it to.
Use it as you will and don’t think more about it. — A
Dezra’s eyes grew wide when she saw it. “It’s... gods! It’s as good as a letter of credit. Usha, how much money did old Wrackham have that his widow can be so generous?”
“Aline would be generous with her last coin,” Usha said, moved. “It’s good to know she’ll be there if we need her, but I’m going to make sure we don’t have to.”
“Nice sentiment,” Dez said, unimpressed. “But at the rates they’re charging here and everywhere else, we’ll be out of money soon.”
Though she would not impose on Aline’s generosity, her friend’s openhanded offer spurred Usha to action. She consulted for some time with the landlord, and by noon the innkeeper had their belongings moved from the little chamber Usha and Dez had occupied the night before to an even smaller one across the hall. The room appeared to have been part of a larger space, one that might well have been portioned into smaller rooms to increase the number available to rent. The only windows the tiny chamber had faced north to an even, cheerless light, one high up and another, narrower one squinting out onto a corner of street below.
“And the virtue of this move?” Dez asked, looking around the chamber from which all furniture but two small beds had been removed. Their gear, such as it was, lay piled between the beds making the place look more like a store room than a bed chamber.
“I’m going to have a studio,” Usha said, spreading her arms as though embracing the idea. “Dez, the light in here is perfect.”
“Such as it is,” Dez muttered.
Usha nodded. “It’s north light, perfect and clear. That’s what I’ll need if I’m going to support us by painting.”
Dez’s expression went from puzzled to skeptical. “I don’t think people are in the mood for buying portraits or landscapes or little lockets with a child’s adorable smile captured in miniature.”
Usha was not discouraged. She paced the length of the room then stepped out the distance between the doorway and the far wall. None of that took very long to do, and it seemed to her that the room had grown suddenly smaller since she’d looked at it with Rusty only a few hours before. Still, her course was set.
“I’ve been supporting myself very nicely with my painting since Palin decided he’d rather spend his time away from home. When things settle down, I can support us here, too.”
Dez looked for a moment as though she would flare in her brother’s defense, then kept still on the matter.
“Have at it, Usha,” she said. “If you like, I’ll go around with you while you figure out what supplies you need and where to get them.”
Looking around the space that had, in her mind’s eye, already become her studio, Usha gladly accepted the offer.
All that day and evening the two spent learning where to find the suppliers of such things as Usha needed.
The next morning, Usha went out with energy, ready to begin assembling her studio.
“I will mix my own paints,” Usha said, “of course.” She shot a glance at the leaden sky, hoping the clouds would lift. Nothing of what she wanted to purchase today could be delivered if there was the least risk of rain. “Some like to have an apprentice for that kind of work, but I’ve always liked doing it myself. There are a lot of components to buy—the base, the oils and pigments for all the colors. It’s going to be very expensive.”
Dez shrugged. “Not a problem. I haven’t dealt with the sellers of paint, but whether we’ve done business together or they’ve only heard of me, there is hardly a provisioner of anything in Haven who doesn’t know he’s in for a serious time of bargaining when I walk in the door.”
“It is what I hoped,” Usha said, flashing a smile.
In Haven, the center of Abanasinian commerce since after the Cataclysm, in that Lord City where generations of men and women built empires of commerce and waged battles in the counting houses whose outcomes were known to few and affected people far beyond the stout gates of the city, dark knights manned the five watchtowers and the walls.
Eight days had passed since the city fell. Red dragons patrolled the sky, wheeling in long lazy circles over the river and the city. Word had gone through the streets and byways like fanned fire that the name of the commander of the occupation force was Sir Radulf Eigerson, and that he had met only once with the Lord Mayor and his council. It was said Sir Radulf had laid down the law at that meeting—literally—by using his dagger to nail a copy of his official writ to the oaken table that had served generations of Haven’s wealthy. The Lord Mayor and his advisers came away with the chief point of the writ, that the person to reckon with was Lady Mearah of Palanthas.
“A lovely woman,” the rumors said of her. “Delicate beauty, alabaster skin, hair like a spill of midnight sky.”
And a woman whose reputation for ruthlessness followed like a shadow.
The lady knight used no family name, and that was not a thing for wonder. She was a fallen child, a daughter of Solamnia who had turned away from her noble heritage to dark armies. Sir Radulf’s name caused a stir, for that knight was otherwise known as Red Wolf, a battle name gained on war grounds and well earned. Mention of Lady Mearah of Palanthas raised a different kind of murmuring, for it had been heard since the fall of the city that here and there folk had been taken into the custody for unspecified offenses. Few came back. Those who returned had nothing to say, and they met no one’s eye. Terrified, perhaps, or ashamed. Or both. Those who didn’t return were executed as traitors by Lady Mearah’s order, their bodies dumped unceremoniously—and very publicly—outside the low stone wall enclosing the city’s cemetery.
“That one,” the people said in the taverns and around the home hearths, “that one is going to be curse the dragons brought.”
People said so, yet in Haven life went on as householder, taverner, wealthy merchant, lord, and humble servant adjusted to the changes. They were Haveners after all. They lived on a river whose capricious moods could get dark indeed. They were hearty enough and had been for centuries. They could manage with mounted patrols of knights manning all the major intersections. They’d survive the flood of foot soldiers that poured into Haven on the third day to join the dragonriders in guarding the city walls.
Among those lower ranks were at least a dozen goblins, but most of the soldiers were humans, men and women hardened on battlegrounds all across Ansalon. They kept to their barracks in the lower floors of Old Keep, and for the most part they kept out of trouble. This was not to be wondered at. Two of the corpses who appeared by the cemetery wall had been those of occupation soldiers.
Haveners could survive these, and Haveners could manage, though some quarters their city smelled of the burned wharfs. But it also smelled of baking bread and tapped ale kegs, of the river and the particular scent that lingers in the air as the summer grows old and thinks of turning to autumn.