“As far as I know, no one’s getting a pass just now for love or money. That might change, it might not.”
Three red dragons sailed the sky high over the crowd, their riders gleaming in black armor. Helmed and faceless, they patrolled this quarter of the city in wide rounds.
“No need for knights on the ground now when they have knights in the sky,” Dez said.
Dragon shadows spun across the ground and the white faces of the people below as the knight on the wall shouted, “Now disperse! Whoever I find still here by the time those dragons turn round again will die.”
The knight tipped his head. Two more arrows flew, this time over the heads of the crowd. People cried out, some in anger, some in fear, and the crowd melted away. Last, Usha saw the face of the young man as he guided his wife away from the wall.
“He’s ashamed,” she said to Dez, lowering her eyes so as not to meet his.
Dez nodded. “And really angry. Sir Radulf, who ever he is, will want to be careful of that.”
Usha turned to question.
Dez shrugged. “It can’t be a good thing for the commander of an occupation to have angry, restless people to control. Come to that, though, it’ll be worse for the people than the knights.”
They rode in silence for a while until Usha turned down a quieter road leading away from the wall.
“Where are you going?” Dez asked. “Back to Aline?”
“No,” Usha answered, and with a certainty that surprised her. “I don’t want to impose on Aline for who-knows-how-long.”
“Nice enough idea,” Dezra said dryly. “Rooms at inns cost money. I’m willing to pitch in all the money I had for supplies. You might remember, though, that after last night we have no inn to stay at.”
Usha ignored the irony. “Then we shouldn’t waste time finding one. Everyone who had been at the High Hand will be looking for another place to stay. What inn did you like when you weren’t staying there?”
Dezra said she liked a few, but only to look at. “I’ve always stayed at the High Hand.”
“All right, then,” Usha said, turning down another narrow lane.
Ahead was a whitewashed stone building, long and low in front, with a second story rising in back. Ivy covered its walls making a green tapestry of sunlight and shadow. Near a curve in the lane where the path to the inn’s dooryard began stood a sign painted in white and green: The Ivy.
Usha pointed. “I like that place.”
Dez eyed it up and down, the chimneys, the green-cloaked walls, the long, low front that surely held the common room. A second story rose up in back. The kitchen was safely off to the side, and a stable in back. “Very nice, but this isn’t a shabby part of town. What money we have won’t last very long there.”
Usha smiled, and it felt like the first time she had in a long time.
“Don’t worry about that, Dez. Now and then people get lucky and things work out all right.” She turned her horse’s head down the path to the Ivy and said over her shoulder, “All things considered, don’t you think we’re due for some luck just about now?”
4
Sunlight poured through the open windows of the Ivy’s common room, making the polished oak table and benches gleam like gold. Usha looked up from breakfast to see Dez at the bar speaking with the landlord. The men near her stood restively, some talking, others brooding. At the tables, women gathered with their children. These were the caught, visitors trapped in Haven when the dragons came.
“No news; and nothing from Aline,” Dez said when she rejoined Usha. “As far as anyone’s heard, nothing has changed in the city. No one’s coming in and no one’s leaving. Only thing new is that there’s a curfew. No one’s to be on the streets after dark without good reason or a pass from the commander of the occupation.” She made face, as though the word was bitter in her mouth. “And so we’re stuck here, cheek by jowl with every stranded traveler in Haven and spending a fortune for a room my father wouldn’t consider a closet.”
Breakfast sat untouched on the table before them. Dez had pronounced the eggs barely fresh, the size of a hummingbird’s, and sold for the price of pearls. Usha had to agree. A merchant city, Haven had risen to the challenge of shifting market forces and was beginning to lick its wounds while the occupation kept all customers conveniently within the city walls. Throughout the city, frustration with costlier accommodation crossed paths with each rumor about passes out of Haven. This had been discussed endlessly in the common room last night, and no one saw any reason for the topic to fail to occupy people again today. Outside, boys in ragged breeches, patched shirts, and bare feet jostled each other in the dusty dooryard. Here the young among the businessmen of the city gathered, one troop in the small army of children haunting the dooryards of inns and taverns of Haven. For a bronze coin, any of them would carry messages throughout the city for stranded travelers, those like Dez and Usha who’d come on business in the days before the dragons descended. As in every inn throughout Haven, humble or high, those facing raised rates for room and board with thin purses sent pleas for lodging to friends or family. Others hoped to get word out of the city to those who must be despairing of their safety.
As soon as they’d found a room at the Ivy, Usha had let Aline know where they were, and Dez had tried to get word out of the city with no luck. A letter to her father to assure him she and Usha were well had not made it out of Haven, and it had not come back to them. The boy who’d carried it said knights were taking all letters, reading all, burning most, and keeping some.
“Yers got read and then it got burnt,” he told Dez, who was not reassured.
Immediately after, Usha sent a runner with another such letter, this time telling him to give it to the folk at Rose Hall. She’d enclosed it with a note of her own, short and to the point: Dez’s family will be frantic. Can you help? She believed that if Aline knew a way to further the letter along the way to Caramon in Solace, she would. But the boy had gone on that mission yesterday and returned with the briefest of messages: Go no where! Wait.
Usha waited. Dez waited with less patience than she, but by this morning no one had come with further word from Aline.
Dezra shoved her untasted breakfast away. “I’m sick of milling around here like sheep in the slaughter pen.”
At the words “slaughter pen” a woman at a table near the door looked around, alarmed and gathering her children close.
“Hush!” Usha whispered. “There’s no use scaring everyone in sight with exaggeration.”
Dez snorted. “I’m not sure how much of an exaggeration it is.”
Out the corner of her eye Usha saw the innkeeper come into the common room from the kitchen. Shaped like a dumpling, freckled and bearded, and called Rusty by all for his ginger-colored hair, he came to her table, two pieces of paper in hand.
“Lady Usha,” he said, inclining his head but managing not to bow.
She raised an eyebrow. Usha would not be addressed as “Lady Usha” in Haven. She had never liked the title, considering it something that tagged along with her husband’s title Lord Palin. She preferred the simple title most Abanasinian women enjoyed. In Haven, she was Mistress Usha.
The innkeeper corrected himself. “Mistress Usha, two missives have arrived for you.”
Dez managed to swallow a smile at the annunciation of the arrival of missives when mere notes had come. Usha nodded graciously. Rusty blushed to the ears and dropped the two notes, one crisply folded so the neat inscription showed, the other somewhat wrinkled and marked with the rings of someone’s over-full ale cup.
“A rascal came last night to give you this,” he said, nodding to the latter. “He said to tell you that you’ll find help if you need it at the Grinning Goat.” He snorted. “The Goat’s no place for a lady to go. Ignore it.”