Dezra added her agreement, but Aline shook her head. “No. Thank you, but not now.”
“Aline—”
Green eyes sparked, the only thing to speak of the stubbornness few would have thought quiet Aline possessed. “This is my city, Usha. Haven is my home. I wasn’t going to leave after Lir died. I won’t leave now. Look.”
Outside the window a pair of red dragons swung in broad lazy circles, wings wide as they sailed low over the smoky city. In the south part of Haven fires still burned. Unlike the fine houses where Rose Hall stood, houses in the poorer quarters did not have slate roofs. Neither did the buildings of the warehouse district, but nothing burned there. Even the pier the knights had fired last night was far enough away from the storehouses to have made a good threat while presenting no real danger.
“Someone made a very careful strike last night,” Aline said. “It’s meant to terrify the city, while leaving most of our assets unharmed.” She shook her head. “I’m in little danger, I think. Certainly nothing our friend Dunbrae can’t protect me from. But you and Dez ...”
“Are getting out of here,” Dez finished. “Come on, Usha. The High Hand is in ashes, and everything we brought with it. We have nothing to pack, and by Aline’s grace two good horses. Let’s go.”
Aline’s assertion of her own safety was mostly bravado, but her determination to remain in Haven was unshakable. In resolve, she didn’t look less homely, but somehow regal.
Usha embraced the young woman warmly, begged her to take care of herself, and went out to Rose Hall’s stable with Dez. A half-grown boy stood in the shade of the stable roof’s overhang, holding the reins of two saddled mares. His face was smudged with the soot of ashes drifting down over the city, his eyes wide and white.
“Will you be leaving soon?” Usha asked.
“No, lady. Me ma an’ me sis is here.” He looked up at tall Rose Hall already being covered in a lace of gray ash. The boy looked for only a moment, then he thumped his chest once, proudly. “I’m stayin’ to take care of me own.”
Another time, Dezra might have laughed and good-naturedly called the boy a fool for thinking he could protect his mother and sister from green Beryl’s knights. Now Usha silently blessed Dez for what she did say as she took her horse from the boy and swung into the saddle.
“Good lad. You keep an eye on them. Don’t look for trouble, and your family will be fine.”
The boy’s cheeks flushed. He held the stirrup for Usha to mount, and the shadow of a dragon slipping along the ground passed over them. Usha could just hear the tremor in the boy’s voice when he wished them a good journey.
Usha and Dez rode along the streets where gardens drooped beneath ash. They couldn’t smell the roses for the dry stink of burning. Beyond the tall houses of the wealthy, high above any other structure in the city, Old Keep rose. Their way took them near its grounds. Soldiers of the dark army guarded the place, knights on horseback patrolled, their chain mail shimmering in the light, their blades sheathed, their lances couched, and all on prominent display.
“Look,” Usha said, pointing to the tower.
Dez cursed. Upon the tower’s top, the flat granite roof where the defenders of Haven had once stood to keep watch for pirates, a black dragon sunned itself. It raised its wings, preened a spiky crest, and stretched its neck to bellow at the sun. Sunlight edged the countless black scales of its hide, sliding along immense muscles, glinting from the tips of fangs. So close to the creature, Usha’s blood went cold and her knees weakened so that it was hard to grip her mount. Dragonfear wound through her, like a cold snake in the belly.
No other dragon was near Old Keep, not on the ground or in the sky. Usha imagined that no other dragon would dare infringe on this one’s territory. The proudest building in all Haven had become a dragon’s lair.
Past Old Keep they joined a throng of men and women. Some were afoot, others on horseback. Those with children, elders, or the infirm pushed high-wheeled hand carts. Usha looked for a way around the swelling crowd. She found none. In this part of Haven, the best roads were crowded on both sides by houses and shops; the lesser ways were often no more than narrow streets that opened into smaller lanes or ended in shabby garden fences. At every intersection, black-armored knights on tall horses, or soldiers afoot with pikes, lances, or swords kept close watch on the procession of hopeful refugees.
Usha nudged Dez to show her that now and then a knight or a pair of soldiers fell in with the crowd. They did no more than create breaks in the flow, but it was enough to turn back the faint of heart.
“No way the knights are going to let all these people out,” Dez said. “They might have earlier, but it looks like they’ve decided too much of Haven is on the march now.”
They’d come to the city wall and the stout gates that opened on the road from Darken Wood. Two figures stood on the watch walk. Each bore long pikes, though neither was geared as a knight.
“Two of the foot soldiers,” Usha said. The wood of the wall bore dark stains she hadn’t seen when they’d entered the city. Her stomach clenched when she realized this was blood, lately spilled in Haven’s defense. “I wonder who is left of Rinn and his friends.”
Dez grunted but did not speculate.
The crowd was indeed thinning behind them, and ahead it had stalled. Someone shouted, “Look!” and a murmur washed through the throng. Usha rose in the stirrups to see a knight in mail stride out of the northern watchtower. He held a black helm under his arm and used a pair of padded leather greaves to slap dust from his breaches as he walked. He spoke to one of the men, and both put aside their pikes and strung their bows. One looked outward over the forest, the other looked inward to the people milling at the gate.
“Well, he’s a handsome fellow,” Dez said. “You think he’s setting up as the new lord mayor?”
Usha hushed her with a gesture as the crowd’s murmuring settled. The knight looked over the crowd, their faces turning up to see him.
“Hear!”
A baby wailed in its mother’s arms, and a mule brayed somewhere behind Usha and Dez. All else was still.
“By order of Lord Radulf Eigerson, knight and commander of the army serving the green dragon Beryl, you are commanded to return to your homes.”
A sharp voice lifted from the crowd to Usha’s left. She turned to see a lanky young man standing nearby, his arm around a girl of about the same age. The girl had a bundle in her arms—the wailing infant from a moment ago.
“Ain’t goin’ home, Sir Knight,” the young man shouted. Usha saw his face go pale when he looked at the blood of Haven’s defenders on the wall. Still, he was not cowed. “You go tell your lord we’re leaving Haven!”
They were only three on the wall, behind the crowd the mounted knights and foot soldiers were not in sight. Usha looked a question at Dezra, Where did they go? Dez shrugged uneasily.
Emboldened, the young man looked around him at the others gathered. “We’re free men of Abanasinia. We damn well go where we like!”
Angry muttering swelled like a wave rolling on the ocean, agreement washing up against the closed gates.
On the wall, the archers drew and let fly. Two arrows wasped through the air. Beside Usha, the woman with the child screamed. In the ground inches from the toes of her husband’s boots the two arrows hummed, quivering. Usha’s horse snorted and danced back. She felt it gather itself to rear and leaned forward as Dez leaned across the little distance between them and took hold of the reins.
“Now,” the knight drawled, “I have orders to leave as many of you alive as I can. But it’s up to me how many that turns out to be. Hear again! No one leaves the city without a pass, and no one gets a pass from anyone but Sir Radulf.”
He nodded in the direction of the Old Keep. Many turned to look, as Usha did, and saw the black dragon sunning itself on the granite root of the tower.