Usha glanced at the bier and corrected herself. “Aline Wrackham.”
“Wrackham. That name I know. Huh.” Dez watched the coffined remains of the wealthiest man in Haven, arguably the wealthiest man in this part of Abanasinia, pass by. “That’s not good. There’s going to be a lot of scrambling around in the counting houses if the widow calls in Wrackham’s debts. You suppose she’s as tight-fisted as her husband?”
Usha shook her head. “She is not.”
“You sound like you know her.”
“I do. She married Lir Wrackham because of... because Palin and I asked her to.”
Dez’s eyes widened. “The story gets better and better. My brother never told the family about you two being matchmakers.”
Usha shrugged. There was much Palin hadn’t talked about in the past few years. “Have you heard of Qui’thonas?”
Dez had, but as most people, she knew Qui’thonas only by rumor. The word was Elvish for “the path away.” And, like many, she’d heard whispered tales of a secret organization that helped elven refugees out of captive Qualinesti and saw them safely to freedom in Abanasinia.
Her curiosity piqued, Dez glanced at her brother’s sister. “I’ve heard it’s run by Laurana, the Qualinesti Queen Mother.” She pulled a wry smile. “And I’ve heard it’s funded by humans in Abanasinia.”
Usha watched Lir Wrackham’s widow riding by. “The truth lies somewhere in between, but that woman has fed both the spirit and the purse of Qui’thonas. She gave her life to it, her youth and her heart.”
The line of mourners passed, winding away to the part of Haven where the cemeteries lay on the high ground away from the river. Usha watched it go, thinking how Palin had asked for her help when Qui’thonas was in danger of falling apart. He’d told her no one could ensure that the mission—“The marriage,” Usha had corrected him—would go well the way she could. “You are magic,” he’d said to her, not only then, but later, at night when she went into his arms.
They had been hopeful then. She and her husband had still been lovers, then.
Usha watched the last of the mourners go by until Dezra jogged her elbow, inclining her head toward a tall young man at the edge of the crowd. He wore much-mended clothing, and his boots were scuffed and worn at the heels. He kept to the back of the procession, hanging around the rougher edges of the crowd.
“Looks like he’s up to no good,” Dezra murmured.
At first glance, Usha agreed, thinking he was a pick-pocket looking for a mark in the crowd. A second, closer look and she saw past the beard and the shabby clothing to the high-boned shape of his face, the aristocratic hook of his nose. In that moment, the young man’s intense brown eyes met hers, and Usha felt a shiver of recognition.
“I thought him long gone from Haven.”
The crowd thinned, onlookers drifting back to their homes and businesses now that the grieving and gaudy were gone. Dezra urged her mount forward into the narrow street. “You know him, too?”
Usha looked over her shoulder, but the man was gone, vanished into the shadows of a high wall or down some secret alley. “He is Madoc ap Westhos,” she said. “They called him Madoc Diviner, in the days of magic. He accompanied Aline on her wedding journey from Solace.”
“To guard the bride?”
“And to make sure a wedding gift arrived for the groom from Palin and me. I’d painted a locket portrait for Aline to give her husband on their wedding day, for she was to marry a cold, old man.”
The narrow city street widened, on either side stretches of greensward and garden replaced taverns and humbler homes. Beyond, they saw the high stories of the houses of the wealthy and powerful, balconies on high, broad gardens surrounding. Amid them all, the Old Keep, a tower of granite, rose over the city. It had been built by dwarves from Thorbardin to defend Haven, long ago in the days when pirates ran up the river and lordless folk swarmed in from Darken Wood to raid. Still the proudest building in Haven, Old Keep now stood as an armory for the citizens who kept watch on the walls.
“So,” said Dez, looking around now for the High Hand Tavern. “Your friend Madoc carried a bride and a gift to Haven. Never left, eh? Well, some people don’t. The city’s not for me, not for long, but some people like it just fine.”
“Not Madoc. Madoc is—or was—the kind of man who stays long enough to build up a tavern debt, and never long enough to pay it off. But...”
“But?”
Dez turned her horse’s head down a shaded lane, and Usha followed.
“You know how some of my paintings are just... paintings, and some are ... more?”
Dez nodded. Most people who knew Usha knew that her reputation as a portrait painter was well deserved. Some knew there was more to her art than mere portraiture, something mystical, enchanting, and not wholly akin to the gods-given magic of mages like Palin Majere.
A thin youngster, all legs, skinned knees and pansy blue eyes called to them from the doorway of the High Hand. She shouted something about how her father had been expecting Dez some days ago. “But yer room’s all ready, just like always.”
Dez waved acknowledgement, but absently. The girl in the tavern doorway hopped out into the dooryard as the two women stopped. While Usha and Dez dismounted, she held the reins of each horse.
“This portrait wasn’t just a painting,” Usha said, handing her palfrey over to the care of the landlord’s daughter.
Dez cocked a grin, understanding. “A love token to charm an old miser? Nice. How did it work?”
Usha said nothing for a while, recalling the intense, starved look of Madoc Diviner’s dark eyes. “Very well,” she said at last. “But it worked on the wrong man.”
2
Late day sun felt hot on Usha’s arms and neck as she stood to look at the mullioned windows of Lir Wrackham’s house. Light danced over the rippled glass—four windows of glass!—in imitation of light on the surface of the river. Lir Wrackham had been a wealthy man to have that many windows of glass. As far as Usha knew, there was no glassblower in Haven capable of doing work of greater complexity than cups and candlestick holders. Aline’s husband must have had these windows imported at enormous cost, perhaps from as far away as Tarsis.
The street was quiet. At first Usha thought it was dozing in the sun, most folk keeping indoors for the shade. That might be so in this part of the city where the wealthy had others to work for them, but few servants were to be seen. A black-bearded dwarf wearing a forgeman’s soot-stained leather apron stood across the street talking with a young human woman who held a basket full of fat skeins of blue and white yarn. Usha felt his dark-eyed gaze slip over her then slip away. She saw no one else, nor had she seen much activity in the city as she’d walked from the High Hand Inn to the river and along the cool and willow-shaded paths to this comfortable enclave of Haven’s wealthy. It was a quieter city in the fading afternoon than it had been at dawn when Lir Wrackham’s funeral wound through the streets.
Usha didn’t imagine that whole quarters of Haven had gone into mourning, but when she and Dez had parted at the High Hand, Dez to make the rounds of her usual suppliers, and Usha to offer Aline her condolence, Usha had thought she’d find more than shadows on her friend’s doorstep. She looked up and down the street and saw no sign that anyone had come to offer the widow sympathy.
The house, half built of timber, half of stone, was much like others in this part of Haven, but Usha knew it at once for Aline’s. “You’ll know Mistress Wrackham’s house by the roses,” the landlord at the High Hand had assured her. “That place is a’climb with roses. Rose Hall, the old man called it. Just like he was some nobleman tryin’ to keep his castles and estates in order.”
It was indeed a’climb with roses. The vines and canes reached up the stone foundation, the walls of the bottom floor and up to the timbered second floor upon fanned trellises, red and white entwined as high as the second story. Close to the street, a well-kept bed of peach and ivory-colored roses embraced the front of the house, stretching the length of the short block that began at River Way and ended at Wrackham Street. The beds had been recently watered and the air still smelled of the rich fragrance of wet earth. Usha sipped the scents as though sipping wine. Across the street the woman with the basket on her hip laughed, and the dwarf chuckled as he toyed with a ring on his finger. He slipped another glance Usha’s way.