Passion Play

by Beth Bernobich

  “You scared us all,” Nadine said softly. “Running off alone through the streets. Idiot. You might have killed someone.”

  I did kill someone, Ilse thought.

  She must have spoken out loud, because Nadine’s hand paused, then resumed its gentle caress. “With a knife? Is that what Lord Kosenmark has been teaching you, down there so early in the morning? Ah, never mind. I can guess. Kathe nearly chased after you last night, when the first guards came back alone. She was sensible, however, and sent out the watch. They found Herrick and the other guards, but no sign of you or Lord Kosenmark. What happened?”

  “A fight.”

  “So I gathered. What kind of fight?”

  “Attacked. By brigands.”

  “Ah, yes. Those brigands. I’ve heard a multitude of fascinating rumors about these mysterious robber bands who descended upon Tiralien in the past month. Strange that they have never before attacked someone outright. But never mind. I understand you cannot tell me anything more.” She smiled unhappily. “So, my warrior maid. Are you strong enough for a visit from him?”

  Her voice was low and sad. Her expression strangely compassionate.

  “You mean Lord Kosenmark?” Ilse asked.

  “Who else?”

  Without waiting for Ilse to answer, Nadine touched her cheek and withdrew. Voices sounded outside the door. A moment later, Raul Kosenmark entered her bedroom. In the dim light, he looked no different from any other day, but when he happened to cross through the band of sunlight, she could see that bruises mottled his face, and a pink scar showed at the edge of his scalp. One eye still appeared puffy and dark.

  He sat by her bedside and gave her a crooked smile. “So. We lived.”

  In spite of her cracked and swollen lips, she smiled in return. “We did, my lord.”

  “Mistress Hedda tells me that you need a few days to rest. You lost a great deal of blood.”

  Ilse’s smile dropped away with the memory of Herrick jerking and twitching as he died. She turned her head away and stared out the gap between the curtains. She let out a long sigh, which did nothing for the tightness in her chest. Raul gathered her hands in his. “Think of it this way, Ilse. We must live well, so that we honor their memory.”

  “How many died?” she whispered.

  “Everyone who came with me—Herrick, Klaus, Varin, Azzo, and Bekka. In the second squad, we lost no one, but Captain Gerrit was badly wounded. Mistress Hedda saw to him last night long before we returned. The first squad never met the enemy, it seems. Before they reached the bridge, the city watch intercepted and detained them, saying someone had accused them of public brawling. They would have brawled,” he added under his breath, “if they had reached their goal, so perhaps it’s fitting. I shall have to see to their release tonight.”

  “Who sent them? Khandarr?”

  “I believe so. I collected a few items—a knife and a ring. Those might tell us something.”

  Ilse nodded. She tried to think out the implications of last night—the runners intercepted, the broken code—but her thoughts scattered and whirled in useless confusion. All she could think was that her advice had wrecked everything. Tears leaked from her eyes. She tried to swipe them away, but her hand flopped to one side.

  Raul took a handkerchief and did it for her. “What’s wrong? Other than murder and betrayal?”

  “I was stupid,” she whispered. “Stupid and reckless.”

  He tucked the handkerchief in his pocket and resumed possession of her hands. “You are second-guessing yourself. Yes, we made a mistake—one with terrible consequences, which I see you have thought of.”

  “I did everything wrong.”

  “Not everything. You lived. I lived. We won’t make the same mistakes again.”

  “Just different ones,” she whispered.

  “That, Anike, is called life. And you must not brood. I’ve taken measures to guard the house. And by the way, Lord Dedrick returned home safely, if not directly. The watch took him up with the brigands at his heels, and returned him to his father.” His voice turned dry. “Baron Maszuryn wrote to me himself. He has suggested that Dedrick remain within the household until he recovers his senses. I agreed. The streets are not safe.”

  The news about Dedrick made it all clear to her. He wanted to encourage her, the way a general or prince would a valued soldier.

  What about his words to you outside? whispered her treacherous memory.

  It means nothing, nothing, nothing.

  That Raul smiled at her again, a strange twisted smile that made his bruises and scars ripple, did not help. “Stubborn woman,” he said. “I was going to make a suggestion, but I see you are in the mood to oppose everything, sensible or not.”

  Ilse opened and closed her mouth. Something in his tone pricked at her memory. Then she recalled Mistress Hedda’s warning. “Is it about magic?”

  Raul made an exasperated noise. “Ah, that woman. She told you, didn’t she?”

  “Of course she told me.”

  “She should not meddle so.”

  Ilse wanted to observe that he meddled, all the time, but she could not bring herself to make a joke. Not yet. He seemed to read her mood, because this time he leaned forward, so that she could not avoid his gaze. “I am serious about everything I said. You must not blame yourself for last night. And you do have a talent for magic. How much I cannot say, but I do know that I could not have walked home without your help. So I ask you, would you like to learn more? Mistress Hedda is willing to teach you.”

  She looked away, then back, unnerved by his proximity. However discolored and distorted his features, this man knew how to use voice and presence and warmth to persuade, and even though she was aware of the ploy, she found herself responding. She frowned, irritated with him and with herself.

  “You look suspicious,” Raul observed. “Or have I sprouted wings and scales?”

  “Just the scales,” she said weakly. “Green ones.”

  He grinned. “Shall I take that as a yes? You could start tomorrow.”

  “No. No and no.” Mistress Hedda appeared in the doorway, glowering at him. “My lord, I told you this morning, you cannot rush these things. Mistress Ilse lost a great deal of blood, not to mention her bruised and mangled arm. And the knee, which traipsing about the streets all night did not help. She cannot think of starting magic lessons before ten days.”

  “Four days,” Raul countered. “I could hire a mage-surgeon to cure the arm and knee.”

  They were arguing over her like cooks in the marketplace, Ilse thought. She also noticed he had not let go of her hands. “Ten days,” she said, extracting them from his. She had the satisfaction of seeing Raul look self-conscious. “When may I start my work?” she asked Mistress Hedda. “My real work, for Lord Kosenmark.”

  Mistress Hedda shooed Lord Kosenmark to one side. She touched her warm dry fingers to Ilse’s throat and then her wrists. “Bend the knee.”

  Ilse drew her knee up slowly. It twinged, but not as badly as she expected. Hedda nodded, then gently probed the flesh around Ilse’s bandages. “No fever. No sign of infection. Good, good.” She studied Ilse’s face closely, lips pursed, as she considered her patient’s health. “You do sound stronger. Let us revisit the question in four days. By then, the worst bruising will be over, and you’ll have more strength. You were lucky not to injure your writing hand. Lord Kosenmark?”

  Kosenmark had taken a seat on the bench. He glanced from Hedda to Ilse and back. “Very well. I would not have it said I bullied her. Have I bullied you?” he said to Ilse. “You must tell me when I press my arguments too hard.”

  “That,” Mistress Hedda said, “would be a daily recital.”

  Raul rubbed his hand over his mouth. He was frowning, but Ilse could see that his eyes were bright with amusement. “I did not ask you,” he said. “But my secretary.”

  Ah, yes. His secretary. Ilse dropped her gaze to the covers, where her hands made two small humps underneath. She had nearly fo
rgotten.

  You must never forget again, she told herself. He is your master, not your friend. Nothing has changed.

  * * *

  TO HER RELIEF, she did not receive another visit from Lord Kosenmark for nearly three days. Others came to visit, but for the most part, she drowsed and slept and drowsed again. Judging from Mistress Hedda’s muttered comments, her arm was healing well. She would always have a twisting scar from her forearm to her elbow, but the wound had closed, the muscles and flesh were no longer so bruised, and there was no sign of infection.

  Her strength came back rapidly, and by the fourth day she grew bored. Another good sign, according to Kathe. With Mistress Hedda’s permission, Lord Kosenmark had Ilse’s locked letter box moved into her bedroom, where she sorted through his dwindling correspondence. Most of the letters she could forward directly to Lord Kosenmark—they came from his father, the duke, and concerned the family estates, or from Lord Kosenmark’s younger brother, who had recently married. Nothing came from Duenne or Károví, or even from agents located within Tiralien.

  “I sent word out about the recent … incident,” Kosenmark told her, when she commented on this. “Faulk and I need to devise a new set of codes. And Faulk does not trust all our couriers these days. Until things are more secure, we can only work through slower channels.”

  He made it sound as though they had suffered only a temporary setback to their plans. But Ilse had other visitors from within the pleasure house, and from those conversations, she pieced together a different picture.

  “Poor Lord Dedrick,” Kathe said. “Lord Kosenmark paid him a visit yesterday, which did not go well. Or rather, he paid Baron Maszuryn a visit. A very short one. I doubt Lord Kosenmark will repeat it.”

  She said nothing more, but Mistress Denk added later that Baron Maszuryn had ordered his son to remain at home for the next month. “They had a rare argument, Lord Dedrick and his father. In the end, Lord Dedrick won another six months at home, but eventually he must return to Duenne or forfeit half his inheritance.”

  That, Ilse thought, might account for Lord Kosenmark’s distracted manner. Strange that he had not mentioned the episode to her. It’s his private affair, she reminded herself. He might have discussed such a matter with Berthold Hax, who had served Lord Kosenmark and his family for decades, but not her.

  Still, she found it unsettling when it was Hanne, and not Lord Kosenmark, who told her about the many new guards patrolling the grounds, and how all deliveries to the kitchen were inspected before Mistress Raendl allowed them inside. “Janna says it’s because someone is making war on Lord Kosenmark. That is why they attacked him in the streets, and you, too, when you tried to warn him.”

  “Are you afraid?” Ilse asked her.

  “Oh, no. Well, sometimes. Janna tells me not to be foolish. They won’t attack here, not with six guards at every window, and the city watch making extra patrols in our neighborhood.”

  Ilse watched Hanne’s face as the girl chattered on, telling her more about the guards, and how some were women, and she had never imagined that women could fight, too, though she ought to have guessed, since Ilse took lessons from Maester Ault.

  “Is it true you killed a man?” Hanne said in a breathless voice.

  “I don’t know. I tried. Is it true that you’re happier?”

  Hanne flushed and dropped her gaze. “Yes. I still miss my mother. And my older sister. Not my brothers,” she added with a shy smile. “But Kathe says I might make a trip north this summer. Just for a visit.”

  Eventually the ten days came to an end. It was a bright hot day. The sun was little more than a white smudge overhead as Lord Kosenmark helped Ilse into the carriage that would take her to Mistress Hedda’s rooms. He seemed more preoccupied than usual, she thought.

  “I wish you success,” he said.

  “And you, my lord,” she replied.

  He started. “In what matter?”

  She glanced pointedly at the three guards just mounting the carriage, then toward the driver with his club and the two other guards on their horses. Kosenmark’s gaze followed hers, and his mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Oh that. Yes, we can talk more about those matters tomorrow.”

  “Today,” she said. “If your schedule permits. And I know it does.”

  Kosenmark muttered something under his breath, but he was smiling.

  Mistress Hedda lived just a few streets away, where she rented a set of rooms above a prosperous inn. As Ilse came into the common room, escorted by her guards, Hedda took in the scene with a grimace, but said nothing. “Come with me. They”—she indicated the guards—“can wait down here. I won’t have your concentration broken by their fidgeting.”

  Her rooms occupied one corner of the second floor. The main room was large and sunny, cluttered with tables and benches in a brightly colored chaos of jars and vials and books and artifacts. Herbs hung from the ceiling and more herbs grew in pots by the window. Ilse sniffed. She smelled magic, mixed with the scents of rosemary and thyme and damp earth.

  “I would think you didn’t need the herbs,” she said. “Though they do smell nice.”

  “And that’s good enough for me,” Hedda said as she puttered about the room, collecting candles and boxes as she went. “Besides, magic costs more than a few herbs do. It costs me and it costs my patients, and I’m not just talking about money. It changes us. Like poison, some say. Sit over there,” she said, pointing to the table and its benches.

  Ilse took a seat while Hedda set a candle on the table, then scattered dried herbs around. A light green scent filled the air around them. Hedda touched her fingers to the candle and spoke a few words in Erythandran. A light sparked at her fingertips, then a flame caught at the candle’s wick. “We start slowly. We start with you, your thoughts, and your concentration. Nothing more. Did you ever work magic before Lord Kosenmark showed you?”

  “A few times. Nothing much.”

  “Are you thinking of turning mage?”

  The older woman’s tone was dry. Ilse could not tell exactly what Hedda thought of the matter. Oh, yes, she had agreed to teach Ilse, but only after a few crisp exchanges with Lord Kosenmark, which Raul had reported to Ilse, laughing as though he found her arguments amusing. Ilse herself wasn’t sure what to make of these lessons. Try them, Raul had insisted. Think of them as one more weapon at your command.

  Except that magic isn’t a weapon, Ilse thought. It is only mankind that changes its nature.

  But Raul Kosenmark had read her wishes very well. She did want to learn. She wanted to know what the old mages of Erythandra knew, when they first summoned the magic current. To ride upon the song and storm, to other worlds and other planes, as Tanja Duhr had written.

  “It’s too soon for me to know,” she said. “I only know that I would like to learn more.”

  Hedda shrugged. “We start with the same lesson, no matter what. Make yourself comfortable first. Now I want you to look at the candle. Don’t let your gaze wander. Just look at the candle and nothing else. Concentrate on the color, how it smells, the shape of the flame. Good. Now draw the circle tighter. Shut out everything but the wick and the flame. See the flame’s heart. Look for how it changes color. You can, you know. With magic, you can see the specks of time as it passes through the air.”

  Her voice dropped into a singsong. Ilse barely heard it as she tried to concentrate on the flame and nothing but the flame. Breathe, she heard, half aloud, half in memory. Watch. Touch with your mind. Hold fast and let go. Remember and forget.

  She heard laughter, felt the shift of balance. For a moment, she remained poised on the brink. She thought of the scholar painting her veins with fire. She thought of Raul Kosenmark. Then her balance tipped toward magic and she forgot all about the world.

  A clawed hand touched her cheek. Ilse my love, my love, my love. She turned toward the voice but saw only the surrounding darkness. A rank scent brushed against her senses. Stiff feathers, like countless minute spines, tickled her bar
e skin. Ilse, Ilse, Ilse.

  Words melted from one language into the next, from Veraenen into Károví into Immatris into ones she had never heard before except in dreams. The air stank with smoke though no fires broke the darkness. Her awareness was but another stream of her magical reverie, upon which she floated as though a bird upon the wind while darkness cradled her and the clawed hand teased and stroked her, calling up desire.

  It might have been an hour, or a century later when she woke to a gray twilight, and the sight of Mistress Hedda’s square dark face opposite her. The candle, now a misshapen heap of wax, had burned out. The air felt warm and close, in spite of the open windows. From the nearby tower, the bells were just striking late afternoon.

  Ilse blinked. Her head felt light, as though she were not quite entirely connected to her body. “What happened?”

  “You summoned the current,” Hedda said. Her face was still, her eyes watchful.

  “Was that wrong?”

  “No, just … unexpected.” Hedda glanced toward the door. “The guards came up last hour. I sent them away. You didn’t hear?”

  “No.” She wet her lips and felt tiny cracks. “I was looking at the flame.”

  “What else?”

  A claw tracing patterns on her bare skin. A voice saying, Ilse my love, my love, my love.

  “What is it?” Hedda demanded. “What are you remembering?”

  “A voice,” Ilse said weakly. “A voice that knew me from before. I can’t remember all the words, but I remember a hand touching me. Not a human hand. It said I’ve been to Vnejšek—to Anderswar, I mean.”

  Without a word, Mistress Hedda rose and busied herself by the fireplace. Moments later she returned with a cup of tea, which Ilse gratefully accepted.

  “You went beyond what I intended today,” Hedda said, her voice thoughtful. “It means you have a talent, and memory of past talent in magic.”

  “Is that good?”

  Hedda smiled faintly. “Yes and no. The memories will help in studying magic, but all magic is dangerous. That much your people had right.”