Usha, my Usha, Irda-girl!
So Palin used to sing to her in the first years of their marriage, but she was no daughter of the Irda. She had been raised by them, a magical folk whose personal beauty surpassed anything a poet could dream. She’d lived with them until the time of their vanishing during the Chaos War. She had loved them and perhaps breathed some of the magic that was so unlike the vanishing magic of Krynn, a magic that made the Irda unlike any other race. But she was not one of the Irda. Usha was a mortal woman, a human woman. So the Irda finally told her. It had helped, somewhat, to know she wasn’t simply an ugly and untalented Irda. It hadn’t helped to know herself a kinless orphan.
Usha picked up the stub of a charcoal stick she had used to write out her list of paint components and turned over a clean sheet of parchment from the stack of scraps on the counter.
“Yes,” she said, answering Gussie’s question. Her hand moved swiftly, the charcoal rendering stroke and stroke, her eyes on the girl. “My father did die, and my mother, too. I don’t know if I miss them because I never knew them. I do have two children, though, and I love them very much.”
Gussie’s eyes lighted. “Where are they?”
“Oh, I don’t know for certain. My daughter is a knight.”
Gussie gasped.
“But she isn’t a dark knight. She wears the silver armor of Solamnia. My son is an alchemist.” She made a face to imitate Gussie’s of earlier, scrunching up her nose and squinting her eyes tightly. “And some of the things he makes smell really awful!”
Gussie’s laughter pealed through the shop. Usha smiled and—stroke and stroke upon the parchment—her eyes never left the child.
“Will your daughter-knight come and save you?”
An arc, a curve, a plump cheek, a spill of curls. The charcoal whispered the magical words to the parchment that are common tongue to every artist.
“I’m sure she would want to come rescue me if she knew I was here. She doesn’t, though. She thinks I’m home in Solace.”
“What about her da? Won’t he come and get you?”
Behind her, Usha heard a footstep, and Dez said, “He would if he knew. But he doesn’t know we’re here, either.”
The moment chilled. Usha said nothing but looked away and worked closely on the sketch, then looked at Gussie again.
“I’m not too worried. I’m making friends here in Haven, and I’ll be all right till I can go home again.”
She took up the sketch and showed it to her subject. Gussie clapped her hands in delight to see a picture of herself sitting on a garden bench with a basket of lettuce on her lap. She jumped from the counter to fetch the picture, but stopped when Usha pointed toward the door.
A rabbit, looking slightly confused, sat on the threshold, just then lifting her paw to scratch behind a floppy gray ear.
“Magic!” the child cried.
Of a kind, Usha thought, looking at the charcoal sketch.
Lines and curves had changed, shifted, and little girl with the basket of lettuce on her lap had become a lovely young woman in elegant white mage robes, smiling with Gussie’s bright eyes at a rabbit sitting on her knee.
The rain that had threatened all day began to fall in fat drops when Usha and Dez were a long block from the Ivy. About then, the two spoke for the first time since leaving the pigments shop.
“Your brother,” Usha said, “is fortunate to have someone to come so quickly to his defense before defense is needed.”
“Why shouldn’t I defend him?” Dez bristled and shot Usha a narrow glance. “He’s your husband. Why shouldn’t you think he cares enough to worry about you?”
“Recent history,” Usha said, “speaks rather loudly on that score.”
The rain fell harder, like needles on the skin. The only people they saw were those scurrying to get indoors. Silence between the two grew colder. When they reached the Ivy, soaked to the skin, Dez walked in the door trailing water and ordering ale. Usha went up the stairs to their room.
The room seemed a bare, tiny place in the gathering gloom. She’d replaced the clothing she’d lost in the fire with two sensible skirts, blouses, hose, another pair of shoes. They lay on the bed, looking like someone else’s clothing. Thinking herself petty, even as she felt it, Usha missed her closet at home, the neatly hung skirts, folded blouses and gowns both common and festive. She lifted a hand to her ear and missed the weight of earrings.
“It is home I miss,” she whispered. She missed more than that. She missed Palin. But she would not frame the feeling in words, let alone whisper it aloud.
Rain drummed against the shuttered windows, and shadows lurked in the corners. Usha lighted the lamps, but she was little cheered. She did not speak with Dezra again until morning when they came out of the inn with most of the other guests and much of the staff to hear what was being cried in the street.
“Hear!” shouted a small man who walked before a chain-mailed, mounted knight. The small man rang a big bell loudly. “By order of the commander of the occupation, Sir Radulf Eigerson”—Clang! Clang!—“the city of Haven will be ruled as ever”—Clang!—“by the Lord Mayor and his Council!”
He lifted the bell to ring again, then felt the knight’s horse nudge him in the back and he muffled the brass with his hand.
“The Lord Mayor and his Council will be guided by Sir Radulf Eigerson. Haven’s system of magistrates will be disbanded. The people will not carry weapons. Breach of this order will be considered the high crime of treason. In all criminal matters, including breach of Sir Radulf’s orders and Haven’s peace, justice will be meted out by Lady Mearah, adjudicator for Sir Radulf. Milady’s justice will be swift, and it will be fair.”
In the gathered crowd a murmur of anger and fear rose, then fell as the crier shouted that the people of Haven were to go about their business as usual. Then he and the knight passed on along the street, the clanging of the bell resuming as they turned a corner.
“The high crime of treason.” Dezra laughed. “Against what? Good sense? And not a word about loosening control of the roads.”
Usha shook her head. “And nothing about passes.” She looked out across the road, up to where Sir Radulf’s soldiers walked the walls. “It’s like being in prison.”
Dez snorted. “He can’t keep a whole city imprisoned. He’s got to know that will get him a population boiling to get out. And he can’t keep the merchant fleet in the harbors, or he’s got nothing to send back to his masters. Sooner or later, he’ll open the river gates and let the captains man their ships. He’ll let them go—with armed knights aboard to make sure they come back. It’s wealth Sir Radulf is here for, nothing more. And granting passes so a few merchants can come and go on the roads again will take the pressure off a restless population.”
“I don’t see why he should let merchants go,” Usha said, “and think they’ll come back again.”
A grim smile twisted Dezra’s lips. The sight of it chilled Usha.
“Dez, what... ?”
“A man might not come back for his business once he’s left it. But he will come back for his kin.”
In the distance, Usha heard the ringing of other bells and imagined she heard the voices of other criers as news of Sir Radulf’s orders went through the city. The two women met each other’s eyes for the first time since their dispute.
“Hostages, Dez? Against the return of the merchants?”
“I’m no commander of knights.” The moment stretched out in silence, then Dez shrugged a little. “But that’s what I’d do.”