Loren’s face flushed with sudden anger. “In Qualinesti they had no more choice than we do. Some escaped. Most did not. There is a rebel leader rising up now among the elves. Some runaway servant girl who thinks she is a warlord.” He shook his head. “Maybe she’s killed a few knights and will kill a few more. No doubt she is a pretty hope, but in the end she’ll be killed herself. The dark knights are the power, Usha. Men like Sir Radulf stand like stone, and all resistance breaks on them like waves at the foot of a cliff.”
In the shadow behind the arbor wall, Sir Radulf took Tamara’s hand once- more. He turned it palm up and kissed her more intimately than before, his lips brushing the tender skin of her wrist. The girl did not resist. Usha couldn’t see from this distance whether she blushed or not, but she could hear Tamara’s soft laughter.
“Why do you let him lay hands on your daughter?”
Again, Loren’s face flushed. “He does nothing improper. He pays her court.”
“Let us hope he pays her better courtesy than he did ‘his’ city.”
Loren sat quietly for a long moment, the muted sounds of the city slipped past the walls. Usha realized that Lorelia had left the gathering a little while before, trusting her guests to her servants or each other. From the stable the sounds of children laughing drifted, then one of the boys burst out into the sunlight, running; and so she knew where her hostess had gone.
“Usha,” said Loren. “Look at my daughter. She’s of an age to be married soon.”
She was. A lovely girl on the brink of womanhood, smiling into the chill blue eyes of a man who held her hand as though, should she ask, it would be he who decided if he let it go or didn’t. In her father’s voice, Usha heard quiet anguish when he said, “You can guess what will become of her in an occupied city. She’ll be prey to every knight or foot soldier. If they think she has Sir Radulf’s protection ...”
“If they think so,” Usha said, “and if she keeps his interest. It’s a risky gamble, Loren.”
“Everything is a risky gamble. Half my ships languish in the river. Those still abroad have heard news of Haven’s fall and their captains will find safe harbor for a while. The Lord Mayor cooperates with the occupation. My cousin hosts the commander at her husband’s request, for the Council will show him a good face. And I will cooperate with Sir Radulf, as most of the merchants and the wealthy will. I hate it, but it means one day soon my ships will go down the river to the sea again. I’ll make money, the knight will tax us, but not too much, for he won’t want to choke a good source of tribute for his masters.
“There will be passes soon, Usha. The Lord Mayor and others, we continue to talk to Sir Radulf, and he doesn’t turn us away.”
Now it was Usha’s turn to sit silent, but only for a moment. During their conversation they’d spoken of Sir Radulf, but they hadn’t spoken of the other knight, she to whom Sir Radulf had given the power to judge the accused and levy punishment.
“It all sounds ... so benign,” she said, her tone belying her words. “And yet there is the Lady Mearah.”
Lady Mearah. She of the pale skin, the whip-thin frame and midnight hair. She who carried her own banner, though no other man or woman of Sir Radulf’s army did. Red sword on black silk, her banner told anyone who knew Solamnic heraldry that she was of a noble Palanthian house—one that had long made honorable the red sword on purest white silk. Some in Haven said that perhaps it amused Sir Radulf or his masters to let a dark knight parade her betrayal of her own knighthood for another. Others wondered whether the Lady Mearah had the power, despite how things appeared, to make such a choice unmolested and without anyone’s approval.
“There is the Lady Mearah.” Loren’s were the eyes of a man withdrawing. “And order must—”
“Order must be maintained, yes,” Usha said dryly. “The occupation would have a great investment in order being maintained.”
Loren leaned across the little stone table, his expression never thawing. “For the sake of the people, yes, it must. Other towns have resisted the knights and their dragons, and they have been laid waste. There will be order, and things will get back to normal, or as close as can be managed. In Haven, there will be peace, of a kind.”
“Peace? How can you say that? Look around you.” She dropped her voice to a scornful whisper. “There is a dark knight in your cousin’s garden and he’s pretending to pay court to your daughter! They tried cooperation in Qualinesti, Loren. Look what it got them! A kingdom only now waking up to understand that it is tumbling into ruin.”
Loren jerked his head, a nod to say he knew this. “The fate of the elves doesn’t have to be Haven’s. I’ll do whatever I can to soften this terrible time for my city.” Tamara’s laughter sang like bells under the rose arbor. “And for Tamara. These are my people, Mistress Usha. Tamara is my child.”
A glint of challenge sparked in his gray eyes. As he had not flinched from her disdain, neither did Usha flinch when he said, “You are a mother. Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“I would not let—” Almost Usha said, “I would not let her jailor lay hands on her. I would not gamble for her safety with her future.” But she didn’t say it, for though she knew what was right, she did not truly know what she would do.
Silence lay uncomfortably between them, then Loren’s hand moved as though to reach for hers. He touched her fingers.
“It seems we can’t agree, but let it only be on this matter. You’re a stranger in Haven, and you must be tired of the fare at the Ivy. Come have supper with Tamara and me one evening.”
Usha moved her hand. Her voice cool, she said, “Sir, I have not said I am staying at the Ivy.”
The memory of his touch remained, ghostly, on her fingertips, and Usha did not remind him that she was a married woman. No mention of her husband was made by either.
“No, you haven’t said so, but my cousin has, quite a few times since you agreed to paint the portrait of her sons.” Loren’s voice softened. “Come to supper one night, will you?”
“You’re very kind, but I must decline.”
He accepted this and pressed no further.
On the way back to the Ivy Usha did not think of him at all. During the evening while she waited for Dez to return from wherever she’d gone, she thought of Loren Halgard not even once.
In the morning Usha woke early, the scent of the river coming into the room on a small breeze. Dezra was gone, her narrow bed either unslept in or made up by her own hand. A longing to walk by the water in the shade of the overhanging willows took her, but the river and the willows lay outside the wall, and each of the small gates out of the city to the water was manned by a goblin in battle harness or a pair of human soldiers. Still, the morning was fresh and the sky brilliant blue. Usha went out, walking toward the wall and the river she could hear and smell but not see. She stopped at some distance from the goblin leaning against the gate. It laughed deep in its throat and leered at her. She ignored it as though it didn’t exist and looked for what she could see over the wall.
The wind fluttered a blue pennon hung from the top of a tall mast. Gray gulls skipped in the sky around the bellying curve of the topmost sail of one of Haven’s merchant ships. Usha looked along the line of what she imagined must be the river’s course and saw other ships, most known by small pennons or the tips of wooden masts. Each one, she knew, was occupied by a crew of Sir Radulf’s men. Haven’s famed merchant fleet tethered until the dark knight freed them again.
It would have to be soon, as Dez had said, or else the knight was wasting men and time and resources. His mistress was a greedy green dragon who would not wait patiently for this occupation of Abanasinia’s wealthy trading port to bear fruit. Sir Radulf would have to free the fleet from the wharfs and send them out with a closely guarded crew. Usha’s heart lifted at the thought of the proud ships flying, their white sails bellying with wind. They would sail past the stone bridge that spanned the White-rage River between Haven’s Vale and that part of Darken Wood that was sometimes thought of as Haven’s and sometimes not. Freed, the ships would fly with the prevailing winds and currents all the way to the Newsea.