Comment and whisper followed them, murmured speculation about what Palin Majere’s wife was doing in Haven, about whether the great mage himself were in the city. They went on through the market, Aline pointing out the stalls of jewelers and weavers, of pot throwers and chandlers. They stopped at the stall of a portly fruit-seller who was flapping his hand to keep flies from a gleaming pile of strawberries. His stock was not much in need of replenishing, his mood grim.
“It’s been quiet like this for days now,” Aline said. “I think poor Lir’s funeral was the noisiest thing in two weeks. Most followed along for diversion.” Her eyes darkened and she shrugged as though to dismiss a troublesome thought.
Usha wondered whether Aline had seen Madoc at the back of the crowd. She almost asked, but folded her lips upon the question best left for later.
Aline said, “Mostly we listen for news from the road and the river.”
“Dark knights.”
“Yes. Did you and Dezra have any trouble on the road?”
“No, but we worried about it. Dark knights lurk all over the road between here and Solace, not making trouble yet, but making their presence known. I’ve heard that the green dragon is looking this way. More tribute to be had here than from poor ravaged Qualinesti, they say.”
The breeze quickened, making the awning over the fruit-seller’s stall flap and ripple with a sound like distant thunder. Usha cast a glance at the sky, the blue dome arching over the city and the river shone cloudless.
“More tribute for green Beryl,” she said, “but that’s not the only concern.”
Aline’s eyes darkened. “I know. If Beryl is sending dark knights into Abanasinia, that means she’s ready to challenge Malys.”
It could mean little else, for the pact between the great dragons who had savaged Ansalon’s native dragons and divided the spoils between them in the Dragon Purge was that each would hold its own territory and not try to upset the balance of power between them. That was the pact. In truth, any dragon who could, would amass whatever territory it was able to. Among the dragons, the true contest always lay between the most powerful and devious, green Beryl and red Malys.
“I’ve heard people say,” Usha said while a woman and her impatient child selected a basket of peaches, “that Abanasinia could find itself a sudden battleground. What do you—?”
Quick as a kender, the little boy danced away from his mother, laughing as she lunged to grab him and missed. He spun around to elude her grasp and ran right into Usha. She caught him when his mother’s frustrated cry rang sharply. He wriggled out of her grasp and pushed her back into the table in front of the fruitseller’s stall. Peaches tumbled onto the dusty earth, and strawberries followed in a fountain of red sweetness. The exasperated mother, offering harried apology to Usha, snatched her child out of the mess and out of the market as the fruitseller rounded on Usha with snarling curses.
“Damn it! Isn’t it enough that I can’t sell the damned peaches or strawberries these days? Now look! Ruined!”
Usha and Aline scrambled after rolling peaches, keeping their skirt hems away from the dashed strawberries. To mollify the red-faced seller, Aline bought some strawberries, blueberries, and peaches.
“Please have them sent around to my house,” she asked, counting out the price of the fruit from the coins in the silken pouch at her girdle. She gave him directions. The man knew her at once and fumbled some words of sympathy as he assured her the fruit would be in her kitchen before she herself was at her front door.
At the end of the day, in the failing light, Usha and Aline walked side by side in silence, enjoying the cooling air. When they’d gone so far as to see the roofs of Rose Hall, Usha asked the question that had gone unanswered after the cascade of falling peaches interrupted their conversation.
“Aline, do your people in Qui’thonas have any news about the plans of the dark knights, or perhaps of Beryl herself?”
Aline walked on, her head tilted, as though she were thinking. Then she stopped and when she turned, Usha saw deep sorrow in her friend’s eyes.
“There is no Qui’thonas.” Aline’s voice dropped low, though nothing moved on the street but shadows. “Not anymore. No elves have come out of Qualinesti for some time now. I don’t know what’s happening there. No one does. I used to hear by various ways how they fared in the forest. No more. It’s as though a door has been shut and nailed tight. I can’t send my people to rescue elves who aren’t there. The departed gods help Qualinesti now. We cannot.”
The sky tinted to deeper blue in the east. Over the river the sun hung low.
“Tell me, Usha, how is Palin? Is he well?”
“As far as anyone knows.”
Aline glanced at her sideways. If she drew conclusions from the undertone of bitterness in Usha’s voice, she said nothing more. The two went on in silence, and at the door of Rose Hall Aline said, “Can I send you back to the High Hand in my carriage?”
“Thank you, but no. The tavern is no great distance, and I enjoy a walk in the evening. But... Aline, don’t disband Qui’thonas yet. Don’t send them all away.”
“Not yet,” Aline agreed. “I’m in touch with them, but we’ve let the safehouses go back to being mere homes. The secret ways from the river to the city are no more than deer tracks now.”
They spoke for a little while longer, but not of refugees or threats. Aline did not mention Palin, and Usha did not ask about Madoc.
A motion in the shadows gathering between the houses caught Usha’s eye.
“Dunbrae,” Aline said to Usha. “You’ve met.”
Usha shook her head. “Better to say we’ve seen each other.”
“Good, then. Qui’thonas will see you home. Good night, Usha. Come and see me tomorrow and we’ll talk among the roses while Dezra finishes her business.”
“I will.”
When the two parted no sound came from the shadows, not the scuff of a boot on cobblestone, nor the slightest breath indrawn. But like a shadow himself, Usha sensed the presence of the dwarf Dunbrae as he followed her through the streets of Haven, a silent, unseen watcher to see her safely to the door of the High Hand.
“Look,” Dezra said, thumping her boot heel onto the bench at the opposite side of the scarred plank table. “I know what I’m talking about.”
Usha glanced at the dusty boot and resisted the impulse to tug her skirt away. But for an uninterested barkeeper and the eternally distracted gully dwarf who emptied spittoons, they were alone in the common room of the High Hand. Many of the inn’s rooms were taken—they’d been glad that the landlord had kept one for Dezra—but the mood of the place was quiet, people gathering only at meal times and then drifting back to their rooms. It had been so for three days, and each morning Usha was glad to leave the place, to go walking in the city or by the river, alone or with Aline. Walking, Usha tried to unravel the painful knot of frustrations that had driven her from Solace and her empty house. She had little success. None, if she were being honest with herself. The old questions about Palin, about their increasingly arid marriage, haunted her. She could not drive them off with anger or by ignoring them, nor could she hide from them behind pleasant diversions.