Passion Play (38 page)

“Has Lord Khandarr left Tiralien?” she asked him one afternoon when Hax had declared that he felt too wakeful to nap. None of the letters implied that Khandarr had departed the city, but Ilse knew that Lord Kosenmark sometimes received news by visitors to the pleasure house.

Hax shrugged. “Not yet. We’ve sent inquires to friends in Duenne, but we use roundabout messengers, as you can guess. Word should come back by next week, if the roads are good.”

The roads were not good. Spring rains had washed out several highways, mudslides had made other points impassible for the caravans, and the Gallenz River had risen several feet, overflowing its banks at points. News traveled slowly, even by private courier, and though Lord Kosenmark hid his moods well, she knew he was fretful. He would be, until he had word that Lord Khandarr had appeared in court.

“And if he hasn’t?” she said, half to herself.

“Then we must inquire again. Lord Khandarr is a mage. As you observed to Lord Kosenmark, he might be investigating the same clues we do.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Hax laughed drily. “Both. The king must know the state of his borders. Besides …”

Without warning, the vitality drained from his face. Hax let his head sink onto his hands. “I hate it,” he whispered. “I hate that I have two good hours before my body wants sleep. Very well. We shall finish these letters, then I will nap.”

Ilse watched him anxiously. His voice sounded fainter than usual, even knowing he was ill. She’d heard from Kathe that, tired and yet unable to sleep, Hax had finally relented and used Mistress Hedda’s sleeping potion.

Hax lifted his head. “What?”

She looked away, embarrassed that he had caught her staring. “Nothing, sir.”

“You,” he rasped, “are too much like Mistress Hedda. Fetch me those papers from Lord Kosenmark’s office and we shall review the next week’s schedule. Now where is that ink pot? Ah, there.”

He stood and reached across his desk for the ink pot. Unexpectedly, he stopped, and his eyes went blank with surprise. “Ilse?”

Ilse looked up in time to see Hax’s face go stiff and gray. He collapsed, spilling papers and ink over the desk and onto the floor.
No. No, no, no.
Then she was running from the office and shouting for a runner. Within moments, a liveried girl clattered down the steps from Lord Kosenmark’s office.

“Fetch Mistress Hedda,” Ilse said. “Now! Run!”

She darted back into Hax’s office. Hax remained crumpled over his desk, motionless. Her heart thumping hard, she rounded the desk and saw that his lips moved. He was breathing, a frightening bubbling sound that made her go cold. She bent close and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Maester Hax, I’ve sent for Mistress Hedda. She will be here soon.”

Hax’s fingers spasmed into a fist. “Soon. Get him. Please.”

“Who? Lord Kosenmark?”

He made a strangled sound, wet and harsh. Ilse dashed out the door again, and ran into Kathe, who carried a flask in her hand. “Ilse!” Kathe was gasping for breath. “Freda said that Maester Hax—”

“He’s had a fit,” Ilse said. “Stay with him. I’m going to find Lord Kosenmark.”

“In the training yard,” Kathe called after her.

She hardly knew how she could run so fast without stumbling. Down the stairs. Out the closest side door. Down the lane and through the gates to the rear courtyard where Lord Kosenmark had his sessions with his weapons master.

He was there, wooden sword beating a fierce attack against Benedikt Ault’s rapid defense. “My lord,” she cried, running to him. “Maester Hax needs you.”

Kosenmark stopped in mid-swing. Not waiting for him to speak, Ilse seized his free hand. “Now, my lord!”

She didn’t know what he did with his sword. She only knew that he had taken her hand and they were both running through the pleasure house and up the stairs to Hax’s office.

Mistress Hedda had not arrived yet, but Kathe had been feeding Hax the concoction left for such a crisis. Kathe herself looked shaken, though she continued to speak calmly to Hax. She had made him as comfortable as she could in that short time—clearing away the papers, giving him sips of wine between those of medicine.

“Come,” Hax whispered. “Raul. Please.”

Kosenmark crossed the room. Kathe withdrew. Ilse started to follow, but Kosenmark motioned for her to stay. He dropped to his knees beside Hax and bent close. “Berthold,” he said, and his soft high voice went higher.

“Closer,” Hax wheezed.

Ilse heard nothing of their whispered conversation, but she heard how Kosenmark’s voice flattened out, and how Hax paused between each word.
He’s dying. He knows it,
she thought. How did a man bid a friend good-bye forever?

“Promise,” Hax said. His voice had gained strength. “Remember.”

“I remember, Berthold. Hush. Rest.”

“Promise,” Hax repeated. “In case …”

“In case, yes. Berthold, I promise.”

A spasm rippled through Hax’s body. His head jerked to one side, and he went limp.

Ilse pressed a hand over her mouth.
He’s dead.

She knew it from the dreadful stillness of his body, from the tears on Kosenmark’s face. From a deeper quiet in the room.

Kosenmark took Hax’s hand and pressed it between his. “Good-bye, my friend.”

Footsteps echoed from the entryway, and Mistress Hedda appeared. “My lord.”

She had a small box clutched to her chest. She was panting, and her hair had fallen from its coil. When Kosenmark did not acknowledge her, Mistress Hedda stepped forward and touched Hax’s wrist, then his temple and his neck. She nodded silently. “My lord, I’m so sorry. I was not quick enough.”

Kosenmark let out a long trembling breath. “You … You could not have stopped it, Mistress Hedda. He was old and sick and—” He broke off and wiped his hand over his face. Ilse saw the sheen of tears upon his face; she heard more in his thick voice.

He stood, a bit unsteadily. “See to his body. I must make arrangements for the death rites. Come with me, Mistress Ilse.”

Ilse hurried after him, catching up to him in the stairwell. He headed upward, feet dragging over the tiled stairs. Once he stumbled, then caught himself. Today there was no grace in his step, no image of a hunting leopard. Every movement had turned heavy and slow.

*  *  *

ILSE WORKED THE
entire afternoon under Lord Kosenmark’s direction, but she remembered only certain pieces, and those by the physical clues left behind. Ink stains on her fingers meant she had written letters at Lord Kosenmark’s direction. The ache in her throat and chest were reminders of grief. Receipts stacked on her desk came from public couriers hired to dispatch letters throughout Veraene.

The first went to Hax’s scattered family—a much younger brother who worked a farm in the kingdom of Ysterien, a sister employed in Duenne’s largest counting house, an estranged wife and two sons. Ilse had come to think of Hax as someone born to serve the Kosenmark family, and so the news about this unfamiliar, unexpected past gave her a strange unbalanced feeling. She felt as though she had been walking upon a solid floor, only to have the wood and marble turn transparent and reveal the catacombs beneath.

By evening the letters were dispatched, the body prepared, and the pleasure house was ready to receive those in Tiralien who gathered for the death rites. Lord Kosenmark had met with Mistress Denk and Mistress Raendl, then retired briefly to his private rooms. Ilse spent the last hour picking over her gowns, helpless to decide what was proper. When Kathe found her, she was still dressed in only a shift, weeping over an old scrap of paper with Hax’s handwriting.

“Come,” Kathe said. “The others are below.”

She helped Ilse into her best gown and led her to the pleasant sunlit hall, where they had laid out Maester Hax’s body. Lord Kosenmark stood by the outer doors, greeting the mourners as they arrived in twos and threes from all over Tiralien.

He looked asleep, Ilse thought as she stood a moment by the silk-draped bier. She noticed that someone had brushed out his fine white hair, which for once did not threaten to slip its band and float freely. His hands, now resting still, so still, looked paler than usual. There were still ink stains, as though he had recently been writing, and she could imagine them lifting up to sketch a point in the air.

She had liked him, respected him. For a brief while she had even hated him for mistrusting her so. But then, as mistrust had warmed back into friendship, she had come to love him as a teacher, a friend.
Even as the father I wished for.

Tears blurred her vision. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, thinking that she could never laugh again. At her side, Kathe wept openly. So did Mistress Denk, Mistress Ehrenalt, and all the courtesans.

Lord Kosenmark moved to the bier. His eyes were red, she saw, and his face was masklike. Grief lay just behind it, in the gleam of tears upon his lashes and the way he glanced at Hax and immediately away. With a hint of his old grace, he signaled to Lord Iani.

Lord Iani approached the bier and laid his hands over Hax’s. His face went tense with concentration, and his gaze turned inward. “Ei rûf ane gôtter,” he said. “Komen uns Lir unde Toc. Komen uns de kreft unde angesiht.”

A thick green scent overwhelmed that of the flowers, and a silver light burned at Iani’s fingertips. Iani closed his eyes and continued, “Komen uns de lieht. Komen uns de zauberei. Nemen unsre brouder sîn vleisch unde âten unde sêle.”

The light spread over Hax’s body, turning the flesh transparent and transforming the bones into incandescent lines within. Lord Iani continued his litany until a burning nimbus surrounded both him and the body, turning the sunlit hall dark by comparison.

Lord Iani stepped back. Lord Kosenmark lifted his hands. “Vân leben ane tôt,” he said. “Vân tôt ane niuwen leben. En namens Lir unde Toc. Iezuo!”

Light blazed to a painful brilliance, so bright that Ilse saw only pinpoint stars wheeling before her eyes. A fresh summery scent filled the room, like that of roses and lavender and the sharp green scent of crushed grass. When at last her vision cleared. Ilse saw a handful of white ashes where Hax’s body had laid.

Magic, the strongest she had ever witnessed. Her mother would have cringed away, unnerved by such power; her father would have closed his eyes, indifferent. Her grandmother … Once Ilse had believed her grandmother disliked magic—so many in Duszranjo did, even if they did not follow the old laws—but after that brief twinning of souls, and seeing Naděžda Zhalina’s life dream, Ilse thought her grandmother would have observed it as dispassionately as any cat did.
It is nothing more than a weapon, to be wielded for good or evil.

“From life to dust, from this one death to the next life,” Iani said softly.

All the mourners stood in silent meditation while the magic drifted and swirled around them. The gods have given us no prayers, Ilse thought. No rituals of cloth and candle and mystic symbols. Only this moment, this silence, as the soul makes its leap into the void.

A sigh went out from all those present. Kosenmark stepped forward and scooped the ashes into a small golden casket. He held the casket a moment, eyes closed, as though bidding Hax a second good-bye, then gave it to a waiting servant. Ilse knew the instructions Hax had left for his death. He wanted the ashes sent east, to his brother in Ysterien, there to be disposed as his brother wished. How would that man feel, receiving the small package next month, possibly a few days after the letter itself? Would he keep the casket in a remembrance chamber, as the old Morennioùens did? Would he bury the ashes as they did in Duszranjo? Would he watch over the ashes and remember his brother from long ago?

Servants were passing among the mourners, handing out cups of wine. More servants laid out platters of food on the side table. The company would pass the evening telling stories about Hax and spend their grief in talk. Ilse remained apart from the others, and when Kathe offered her a wine cup, she shook her head. Too soon, she thought. Too soon for talk or drink or even food. She drifted toward the windows and, leaning over the sill, breathed in the scent of roses. A trace of magic’s green lingered here. Iani and Kosenmark had not entirely erased their magic, and she could discern both Lord Iani’s fair signature and Lord Kosenmark’s darker one.

She felt a warm brush of air. Someone touched her sleeve. Ilse looked up to see Lord Kosenmark, a wine cup in his hand. “Please come with me,” he murmured.

He headed toward the door, catching up a wine carafe as he went. Ilse hurried after him, and she saw how a few glanced up at their passing.

Kosenmark paused briefly outside the hall, then indicated the nearest stairs. When they reached his office, he dismissed the waiting runner and motioned for Ilse to precede him into the room. She went inside and paused, uncertain, but Kosenmark walked past her to the garden doors, so she hurried after him.

It had been weeks since she last visited Lord Kosenmark’s rooftop garden. The sparse gray and brown branches were now draped in luxuriant greens. Flowering vines curled around the tree trunks, and she saw flashes of dark blue and ruby and gold between the silver brown trees.