Well enough, Master Dwarf, she thought. You see me, and I see you.
Smiling, she nodded gracious greeting then turned and climbed the three stone steps to Aline’s door. She did not wait long on the doorstep before a housemaid came to answer. Her name given, Usha was shown to a small room off the entry hall and made comfortable while the servant announced her. Seated beside a window, this one unglazed and open to the air, Usha looked out upon the street. The woman with the yarn basket was gone. The dwarf stood a moment looking at Rose Hall. He tugged his coal-black beard, as though considering a choice, then took a seat upon the bottom step of the house opposite.
“Ah, Dunbrae,” said a voice from the doorway. “He keeps a close and faithful eye on me, doesn’t he? Usha, it’s good to see you.”
Thick and rough, the voice. Madoc Diviner had once described it as being like that of a half-grown boy with the ague. The voice as unattractive as the speaker, the homely girl no young man would look at twice had hoped to study with clerics and bards and spend her life in poetry and scholarship. It was not to be.
“Aline.” Usha rose. “How sorry I am to visit under such sad circumstances.”
“You are kind,” Aline said, stepping around the possibility of her own sorrow.
They had not seen each other in several years, not since Usha and Palin had sent a grimly determined young woman down the White-rage River to her marriage. The marriage would ally the wealthy merchant houses of Caroel and Wrackham, giving the latter access to the long and cherished relationships Aline’s grandfather had in Abanasinia’s merchant and shipping communities. In return for Gault Caroel’s granddaughter and his business contacts, Lir Wrack-ham would continue to fund Qui’thonas, an organization suggested by Laurana, the Queen Mother of the Qualinesti elves and devised by Palin and Usha to rescue the growing number of elves determined to flee their homeland. It had been funded by Gault Caroel himself, until his coffers ran dry. With Aline’s marriage, the effort would continue, and those who simply wanted to flee to peace could do so.
Wrackham had not reneged on his bargain. His bride had come to him, as promised, but he never caught sight of the magical portrait. On their wedding night the locket remained with Madoc. “For no one will love me as you will,” Aline had said when they parted. “No one will ever have the chance, and no matter if I am unhappily wed.” But she was not unhappy in her marriage. The shrewd old merchant had not only a keen eye for business but one that could quickly uncover a person’s character and spirit. In his own way, Lir Wrackham became enchanted. He’d been pleased to give his wife anything she asked for. Aline, who had all her young life believed passionately in the ideal of elven freedom and the freedom of all Krynn from the hateful dragons, had asked for Qui’thonas.
And so Lir Wrackham had not been enspelled by Usha’s magic. Madoc Diviner had. By the mage’s account Aline had gone only reluctantly to her wedding after that. Usha had never heard Aline’s account. Standing now in the oak paneled reception room, among treasures and artwork from distant lands, she wondered what that account would sound like.
Aline held out her hands—large hands, knob-knuckled and brown as those of a farmer’s wife. “By the departed gods, Usha, you never age a moment, let alone a day! You are lovely as ever. But I’m surprised to see you here. I’ve known that Palin’s sister comes to Haven for supplies for the family’s inn, but...” She trailed off when Usha offered no explanation. “Well! It’s good to see you. Will you come and take a glass of wine with me?”
Despite the heat of the day, Aline’s hands were cold. Usha pressed them between hers as she would have her own daughter’s. “Yes, I’d like that.”
But having offered, Aline did not herself seem interested in the golden wine or tempting poppy seed cakes brought by a servant to the high-ceilinged, airy room where she did her best to make her guest comfortable. She poured wine into pale blue goblets, then barely moistened her lips. She served cakes and honey but did not taste them. She paced up and down the length of the richly woven carpet of black and red Tarsian wool while Usha tried to do justice to her hospitality. In these dragon days such carpets as this one, the work of a year or more of a weaver’s life, were worth a king’s ransom. But Aline might as well have been pacing rushes freshly flung from the fields to a cottage floor for all she seemed to be aware of the thickness of wool beneath her feet.
“Aline,” Usha said, setting down her plate and moving her wine glass away from the table edge. “You seem ...”
Aline turned, her long face pale but for two spots of bright red over each cheekbone. “I feel like I could jump out of my skin. I’ve been like this all day. Please—” She managed a smile, an apologetic shrug. “Come walk in the market with me. This house is stifling.”
Outdoors, Usha found the air cooler than before. A fresh breeze was coming off the river. Aline sighed almost contentedly. She had been all day indoors, receiving those who came to offer condolence on Lir Wrackham’s death, deflecting the too-close questions of others who came to ask whether the rich man’s widow lacked for anything.
“These,” she said with grim irony, “are the thoughtful souls who will soon be asking whether the widow lacks for company. Or, more likely, someone to help her spend her inheritance. I’ll have a flock of suitors before long, Usha.” She pushed her thin brown hair away from her face. “Imagine that. An hour ago I shut the doors on them all and gave the servants instructions to let no one in.” She brightened. “But when the housemaid heard your name ... well, Majere isn’t a name to be turned away, is it?”
Usha put her arm through Aline’s as they walked along the quiet street. She glanced right and left, but saw no sign of the dwarf Dunbrae. The breeze off the river drifted fresh through the city, and the nearer they went to the market, the more folk they saw. It was late afternoon when canny housewives sent servants or went themselves while the vendors considered their sales for the day and whether it was better to sell what was left at lower prices than to pack up their wares again.
They walked most of the way in silence, Aline with a look that reminded Usha of the drawn expressions of people she’d seen about the city. It wasn’t until they came to the edge of the great square that had for generations served as Haven’s chief market that Usha felt the sense of a living, breathing city asserting itself. The place was a riot of color, harvested yellow wheat, limes and oranges brought by ship from distant lands, peaches and strawberries grown right here in Abanasinia piled high on farmers’ tables. Women balanced laden baskets on their hips, their clothing summer green, sky blue, and sandy or brown as the river’s edges. But those who had children kept them in tow, and the restless little ones danced and skipped impatiently, longing to race through the market chasing each other.
Usha lifted a silk scarf the color of twilight and listened to it whisper through her fingers, then another the color of brown chestnuts. She purchased them and declined to have them wrapped or sent. With swift, practiced gestures she tied the brown silk loosely around Aline’s neck. “The very color to make your green eyes like emeralds.” She used the other to bind her long silvery hair back from her face and keep it from the tugging fingers of the wind. They moved on, passing the booth of two young people of the Plains, a man and a half-grown girl who offered the beautiful feathers, for which the Plainsfolk were known, and quills for beading and decorating leather work. More than one person stopped to watch them as they moved through the market, the homely young woman, often recognized as Lir Wrackham’s widow, and her ethereally beautiful companion rumored to be Usha Majere.