After a moment, Lys shrugged and continued on her way. Ilse let out an unhappy sigh, then hurried to Maester Hax’s office, where she knew the secretary waited for these letters. She did not understand why Lady Theysson could not deliver the letters herself—she visited the pleasure house frequently enough with Lord Iani—but Ilse knew that if she asked why, Lord Kosenmark would only deflect the question, or Maester Hax would give her a nonsense answer.
“Thank you,” Hax said, taking the sheaf. “Yes. Good. You might not realize it, Mistress Ilse, but Lady Theysson is an accomplished poet. And since these are her latest poems, I shall selfishly dismiss you for your long-delayed dinner. Have you sorted the day’s letters?”
“I gave those to Lord Kosenmark this morning.”
“Alas, more arrived in the intervening hours. I’ve locked them in your office, in your letter box. When you are done, bring them to me. Lord Kosenmark is not at home today.”
Ilse suppressed a faint sigh. Correspondence was indeed her primary task, and it never seemed to end. Tonight would be another meal eaten at her desk.
She stopped by the kitchen to fetch her own dinner tray, hoping to exchange a word with Kathe before she settled down to another session of work. To her surprise, she found Nadine perched on a stool, eating plums and trading rude stories with the spit boys. Nadine finished off a plum and tossed the pit into the fireplace, then looked around at Ilse’s entrance with a flashing smile. “My long-lost love! Come, have a plum with me.”
Ilse suppressed a laugh. She could see dozens of plum pits in the fireplace, and she wondered why none of the girls had tried to stop Nadine from making such a mess. Or perhaps that was no more possible than they could stop a crackle of lightning leaping from the sky. “You know that Mistress Raendl will beat you, courtesan or not,” she told her.
Nadine eyed her with an expression brimful of mischief. “So I had hoped. Or would you prefer to take her place?”
Impossible. Ilse shook her head and turned to Janna, who tried to smother her laughter without much success. “Do we have anything ready for a quick meal?” she asked.
“Stop her, Janna,” Nadine cried. “Don’t let her escape. We want a story.”
“No stories,” Ilse said. “Work. Letters.”
“Grim dreary work. Have you been eating prunes again?”
Ignoring Nadine’s chatter, Ilse gathered her own supper with Janna’s help. If she finished early tonight, perhaps she could spend an hour in the common room. It would not be so bad, not if she stayed in the bright sections, where the visitors played cards or complicated strategy games with boards and markers. Lord Kosenmark had mentioned he had received a new musical instrument, one that operated with strings and hammers set in a box. Eduard had volunteered that he knew how to play it.
She retained that hope until she saw how many letters filled her letter box. Mountains of them, she thought. There were also three letters needing a fair copy, with the notation from Maester Hax that these were urgent and should go into the post this evening with Lord Kosenmark’s signature.
Ilse ate her dinner in a hurry and started with the letter copying.
From Lord Raul Kosenmark of Valentain to Count Fredr Andersien. Tiralien. My Lord Count, It is with delight that I read your letter. I remember our conversation last year, when we discussed the increase in taxes and the parallel difficulties of conducting trade across the borders. I admit that while I have not followed the king’s policies in that matter, I do have friends with some influence and I can direct you to them …
Another one went to Baron Zeltenof, who apparently had asked for advice in governing his newly inherited barony. Lord Kosenmark’s letter demurred such knowledge, but Ilse noted that he went on to suggest a list of books, including the memoirs of another young nobleman from the empire days. Strange, she thought. Such advice did not seem urgent.
She picked up the last one, a letter for a king’s governor in the northern province of Ournes, which bordered on the kingdom of Immatra.
… my lord, I am honored you would send me your thoughts concerning the unrest along the border provinces. Though I am no longer a member of the court or council, I understand that your apprehension is not unusual, nor unreasonable. However, if I did still have influence, I would suggest that we ought not assume aggression without true evidence. As Mandel of Ysterien, wrote three hundred years ago, one generation’s prejudice too often becomes the next generation’s war.…
That letter made her pause. War?
She had heard rumors of war since long before she left Melnek. But Kosenmark talked about war as though he had heard more than rumors. Was it possible that the rumors were more than just rumors?
Unsettled, she finished off the outgoing letters, then turned to the stacks of incoming correspondence. Her duties had changed somewhat in the past week. Now she was to open and screen letters from certain addresses.
Absorbed by her thoughts, she cut open the first letter without reading the address:
Dear Raul, Our predictions were correct. The levies for ordinary soldiers have surpassed the increase in taxes, though we are now instructed to use a different accounting …
Ilse dropped the letter. This was not an invitation or social letter. Nor was it the typical correspondence between business partners—she knew that from her father’s household. She checked the address against her list, feeling faintly queasy. Lord Nicol Joannis, regional governor from Osterling Keep. His was one of the names under “confidential.” She had blundered—badly.
I’ll have to tell Maester Hax that I opened it by accident. He’ll understand.
But her hands were still shaking when she picked up the second letter and compared its name and address to her list. It was another letter for investments, but the address read Duenne’s University.
Not my business, she told herself. Lord Kosenmark might receive financial advice from a professor, for all she knew. She put the letter into the proper stack and reached for the next.
Her hand knocked against the edge of her desk. One of the stacks tilted dangerously. Ilse lunged to stop it—too late. The stack tumbled over and the letters spilled across the floor in a glorious cascade. Cursing loudly, Ilse dropped to her knees and hastily started gathering them up. She could just picture Lord Kosenmark’s expression if he walked into her office now. At least Maester Hax could not see through two sets of closed doors.
She deposited the letters on her desk then saw she had missed one—a dirty parchment envelope without any address that had skittered underneath her desk. As she retrieved it, the sheet unfolded, and her eyes took in three words, hastily scrawled across the sheet in large blocky print: Vnejšek. Jewels. Yes.
Ilse sank back onto her heels and stared at the letter. It read like a game of word links but with strange unaccountable connections. Why was someone writing such nonsense to Lord Kosenmark?
She reread the three mysterious words, and her skin prickled. Vnejšek was the Károvín word for Anderswar—the magic realm, what the poets called the knot where all magic converged. And jewels could only refer to Lir’s lost jewels. Yes. There her imagination failed. Obviously the sender was answering a question posed by Lord Kosenmark. But why? What did he have to do with Károví’s king and Lir’s jewels?
She placed the letter in the third pile and returned to her desk. The next letter came from a merchant’s guild in the north. The name appeared in the second category. Keep going, she told herself. Stop asking questions and you’ll finish sooner. But the questions refused to subside. Why would this merchant write to Lord Kosenmark? She cast her memory over the letters she had copied during the past month. Some were directed to private merchants, but many went to the king’s advisers in Tiralien, or governors through Veraene’s far-flung provinces. Each letter revealed little. It was the larger pattern that left her breathless.
Duenne. The King’s Council. Baerne’s death. Exile.
Impossible, she thought. And yet it explained so much.
&nbs
p; He had fashioned his own court, here in Tiralien.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“… IF YOU PRESSED me for my opinion, I would recommend a barricade of thick posts, bound together with tempered metal. Of course, even metal has disadvantages. If you do not choose the highest quality, the metal rusts or breaks along hidden flaws …”
… and an alliance often requires careful tending, Ilse thought to herself as she wrote to Lord Kosenmark’s dictation.
Ten days had passed since her discovery of Lord Kosenmark’s shadow court. What she suspected to be his shadow court, she reminded herself. She had no proof other than three cryptic words from one anonymous writer.
And yet, the more Ilse considered the matter, the stranger she found all of Lord Kosenmark’s correspondence. It was like those clever paintings that seemed to depict one scene, but if the beholder closed one eye, or looked through a specially ground glass, the painting showed an entirely different subject. Otherwise innocuous phrases—a request to a duke to remember Lord Kosenmark to their friends, a passage advising another friend to have patience with his errant son—took on new and doubled meanings. A world alongside ours, Tanja Duhr had written about magic’s plane. One both surrounded and contained by other worlds. If Ilse was right, she had discovered another such realm here, in Lord Kosenmark’s pleasure house.
Ilse only hoped that her face did not betray her. Maester Hax had said nothing when she confessed to opening the letter by accident, but sometimes she caught Lord Kosenmark observing her—as he did now, she realized with a start.
“You write neatly,” Lord Kosenmark said. “Your tutors trained you well.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
He let his gaze linger on her face, as though reading something in her expression, but then shook his head. “How is Berthold today?” he asked. “Tired?”
“Tired but in good spirits, my lord.”
She thought Kosenmark looked exhausted as well. There was a languid quality to his speech and faint smudges darkened his eyes. Lord Vieth had invited Lord Kosenmark to a formal banquet next week. Judging from the increase in visitors and correspondence, Ilse guessed there would be more to this affair than just music and delicacies.
Once he finished dictating, Lord Kosenmark reviewed the letter and nodded. “Good. Bring the fair copy to me later for a signature. I’d like all these letters posted today. Speaking of today, did Berthold mention the time for our session with the tailor?”
“This afternoon, my lord. It should be the final fitting, according to Maester Hax.”
“The gods grant us mercy, I hope so.”
Ilse hid a smile. She had observed one fitting and knew Lord Kosenmark and Maester Hax were to have very fine costumes, but the process proved trying to them both. An artistic man, the tailor had been most particular, saying that the cloth had to fall just right, both standing and in dance.
“You are laughing at me,” Kosenmark observed. “Or my tailor.”
“Never, my lord.”
Kosenmark eyed her suspiciously, but confined himself to waving her away.
Ilse dispatched the letters and reported back to Maester Hax. “Am I wanted now?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Ilse said, temporizing. “He signed the letters you asked about earlier, and I’ve sent them off. And I let him know when the tailor comes today.”
“Good. And the thank-you letters?”
“Done. Gone. Sir.”
“You’ve left me nothing to do,” Hax said, smiling faintly.
I wish I could do that, Ilse thought. Hax had subsided into his chair and was resting his head on his hands. He and Lord Kosenmark had met until late the previous evening, and she expected they would do the same tonight. “You promised Mistress Hedda that you would work fewer hours.”
Hax made a noise in his throat. “Save me from inquisitive women. Did you spy on us?”
“I listened, sir.”
“Did Hedda ask you to?”
“No, but—”
“But you are worse than Lord Kosenmark. What happened to that shy girl from three months ago?”
Ilse smiled. “She is here, listening to a stubborn man who is trying to distract her.”
He lifted his head and eyed her narrowly. “You are too clever sometimes. And since you insist, would you please fetch Mistress Denk’s quarterly report for me? I promised Mistress Hedda that I would not climb the stairs so often.”
“What about Mistress Raendl’s accounts? Would you like those, too?”
“Yes. Those, too. Take your time coming back.”
By the time Ilse completed her tasks, Hax had gone from his office, leaving behind a note that he was in his rooms, and would she meet with him after noon. A new batch of letters had arrived as well, among them a letter and package from Lord Dedrick Maszuryn. Ilse took those at once to Lord Kosenmark, who received them with an especially warm smile.
“Stay,” he told Ilse. “The letter might require a reply.”
The package proved to be a collection of antique maps. Lord Kosenmark scanned them with obvious pleasure, then broke the letter’s seal and scanned its contents quickly.
Ilse could almost tell what it said by the rapid changes in his expression—from pleased to concerned and then to none at all. Kosenmark’s fingers tightened around the paper. Not good, she thought.
Kosenmark glanced up from the letter. “There will be no answer,” he said softly, and crumpled the letter in his fist. “Go. Find something to do. So will I.”
Ilse did not wait for him to repeat the order. At the door, she dared a backward glance. Kosenmark was staring out the windows, his fingers tapping a restless pattern on his desk.
* * *
LORD KOSENMARK CANCELED all his appointments that afternoon, including the tailor’s. Ilse and Maester Hax were together in Maester Hax’s office, reviewing the week’s schedule, when a runner brought them the news. Hax read the message in silence then released an audible sigh. “Not good,” he muttered, and folded the note in quarters.
His words made an uncanny echo of Ilse’s earlier reaction. She must have made an involuntary movement, because Hax looked up with a frown. “Curious, Mistress Ilse?”
“No, sir. Just concerned.”
“Don’t be. I say that for your own peace of mind.” He closed the schedule book with a firm thump. “I’ll talk to Lord Kosenmark when he’s calmer. Tomorrow, most likely. In the meantime … read a book, play chess with Nadine or Josef, go for a walk into town. I shall take a nap, since nothing else can be done today.”
He stood with a groan. Ilse bit her lips against any offer of help. That would only make him more prickly. She would have to send another message to Mistress Hedda and hope that Hax did not find out. He disliked any interference.
Sighing to herself, she returned to her own office and tried reviewing her accounts—they needed no review. She started a new inventory, but that, too, was unnecessary make-work. She had no desire to listen to Nadine’s teasing, no matter how charming, nor to Josef’s ever-changing stories about his past. She was not in the mood to be entertained.
When the library, too, proved unsatisfactory, Ilse retreated to the kitchens. At this hour, only Janna and Rosel were at their workstations, and none of the scullions were about. Even so, there was a sense of soothing purpose about the place—the sharp scents of freshly ground pepper, the yeasty smell of baking bread, the clatter of spoons and knives and other implements.
More soothing than when I worked here, she realized with an inward laugh.
Kathe sat at the makeshift desk, writing out lists of supplies for the coming week. “You look out of sorts,” she observed.
“Maester Hax has given me a holiday.”
“Oh, what torment for you. What’s wrong?”
Ilse glanced around the kitchen. Janna and Rosel both pretended to be absorbed in their work, but she could tell they had overheard Kathe’s greeting. Kathe followed the direction of her gaze. “I have some errands to run,” she said
mildly. “A few items that I should attend to myself. Would you like to come with me? Just wait a moment while I fetch a few things.”
A few things turned out to be a purse of coins and a market basket. She and Ilse left the house by the back door, and continued through the gardens into the neighborhood beyond the pleasure house. It was a bright sunny day. A cool breeze blew in from the harbor’s direction. A good day for a walk, Ilse thought, then wondered how many of her errands were simply a means to get her away from the pleasure house, while Maester Hax and Lord Kosenmark met about Lord Kosenmark’s private activities.
“So tell me,” Kathe said. “What is wrong?”
Ilse shrugged. “It’s not me.”
“Then it must be Maester Hax. Or Lord Kosenmark. Or both.”
Ilse gave another shrug, thinking she had said too much already.
“I saw Lord Kosenmark earlier,” Kathe said cautiously. “Anyone could see he was in a foul mood. And I heard from Mistress Denk that he canceled his appointment with the tailor this afternoon. Then you come to me, all glum and distracted. If I were guessing, I would say that Lord Kosenmark received unpleasant news from Lord Dedrick. Am I right?”
Ilse nodded. “Though I don’t know what the news is.”
“Hmmmm.” Kathe glanced around, but they were alone in the lane. “Most likely, Lord Dedrick wrote to say he cannot attend Lord Vieth’s banquet—possibly more—and that Lord Kosenmark is severely disappointed.” She sighed. “It’s not the first time. Either Lord Dedrick quarrels with Lord Kosenmark, or Lord Dedrick’s father forbids him to visit. The effect is the same.”
“It seems an unhappy kind of love,” Ilse said, thoughtfully.
Passion Play Page 19
