Passion Play (26 page)

He rose early, Hax told her, and spent two hours with the weapons master, Maester Benedikt Ault. After breakfast, he generally spent an hour or more with Maester Hax discussing business. He ate his midday meal alone or with visitors. More visitors came by appointment in the late afternoon. Evenings he spent with more intimate friends, or abroad at some of Tiralien’s great houses, though at times those friends visited him in the common room.

“We keep a schedule, and he changes it,” Hax said. “His company is much sought after.”

Her first day ended close to midnight, and she fell into bed exhausted. In the days that followed, she worked longer hours. Earlier ones. Curious ones.

Lord Kosenmark had not created this position out of charity, she soon realized. Letters arrived daily from all parts of Veraene—fine parchment from dukes and counts, marked with elaborate seals, plainer ones from merchants in the interior, anonymous letters from trading posts along the Károvín border. There were even packages from Lord Dedrick, who liked to send gifts when other obligations, or his father, prevented him from visiting. Ilse sorted them all according to Maester Hax’s instructions.

“I take one immense pile,” she told Kathe, “and from that I make three not-as-huge ones. Then I carry them around for a while, stop, go fetch something for Lord Kosenmark or Maester Hax. Most of the time I wait for them to finish talking in private.”

Kathe’s cheeks dimpled. “So many
somethings.
No, don’t worry. I shan’t ask what these somethings are. I know you must be discreet. And I can see you like the work.”

Ilse laughed. “Oh yes. I do.”

They found they did spend more time together, and not just because their stations had changed. When Kathe visited merchants to order supplies or to arrange for special consignments, Ilse often accompanied her, and they walked to the open-air markets once a week. Those were not the only times Ilse left the pleasure house. She frequently rode in Lord Kosenmark’s carriage to the courier or posting establishments with packages or letters bound for distant provinces. Other times she delivered or picked up items from noble households in Tiralien itself, either riding or walking, but always escorted by one of Lord Kosenmark’s guards. When she asked why the runners did not make those deliveries, Maester Hax said it was to their benefit if Ilse learned her way about the city.

She came home from one such errand only to meet Lys coming down the side lane with a large basket over her arm. Ilse paused, conscious that she had not seen Lys since their confrontation a month ago. Lys stopped as well and stared. Her face was a blank, but Ilse sensed the anger behind that watchful gaze, which took in Ilse’s new clothing, the sheaf of letters she carried, and the guard and carriage behind her. It was as though she absorbed everything, giving nothing back, not even a reflection.

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.

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?”