Allegiance (River of Souls 3)

“I don’t know yet. But I told my people the news. They had to know.”

He spoke with peculiar emphasis. A conflict of allegiance, she thought. Between his kingdom, his dependents, and us.

“How might that change our plans?” she asked carefully. “Can Markov order you to return?”

He shook his head. “Not as such. We are equal members of the council. More important, I command the armies. But he has allies, and influence.”

Now she understood why he had asked for this private conversation. He did not wish Ilse Zhalina to know that Károví was poised on the edge of civil war. But she comes with me. She cannot carry the news to Raul Kosenmark and Veraene.

A dozen different questions occurred to her: Did he trust her more than he trusted Zhalina? Did he consider Morennioù a nullity? Or perhaps he thought the Károvín troops there rendered it such. She disliked all those questions, disliked all the answers. It took great control, and the acknowledgment of her father’s good advice, to speak calmly.

“Do you have a counterplan?” she asked.

“Several,” he replied. “I shall need to consider the implications for each one. But I promise I will discuss them all with you, as soon as I can.”

He spoke the truth. She could read that from his tone, from the grave expression he wore as he gazed over his lands. He had broken his trust in several past lives. He would not do so again. But what those vows portended, she could not say.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE KING IS dead. I’m certain, my lord. The news came from our best agent in Károví.

Gerek Hessler recited those words over and over as he jogged up the stairs to Lord Kosenmark’s private rooms. His heart beat painfully fast, his sides ached, but he did not think of stopping. Kosenmark would want, would need, to hear this news at once.

His best intentions lasted until he gained the fourth floor, where he fell against the wall, one hand pressed against his ribs. He had eaten too well since his return from Hallau—eaten too well, and never ventured beyond the walls of this pleasure house. He was an ox again, large and lumbering.

You cannot bind your true nature, a philosopher had written. Unless you wish to chafe your soul as rope and chains chafe the flesh. Gerek closed his eyes and muttered a curse against philosophers and true natures both. Perhaps he would take up weapons drill, like Lord Kosenmark. An hour’s bout every day would take away the fat. Then he laughed silently, to think of himself with a sword and not a pen in his hand.

He touched his shirt where he’d placed the packet with Danusa Benik’s report. It had come by the usual route, through a series of trusted agents from Károví into Veraene, from there to a bookseller in Tiralien, who sent all such correspondence to Lord Kosenmark packed inside crates of old and rare books. No one had tampered with the seals, and layers of magic ensured only Lord Raul Kosenmark could read the full report. But four words written in old Immatran on the outermost envelope were enough to tell Gerek the bones of Benik’s news.

The mountain has fallen.

The mountain had to mean Leos Dzavek, king of Károví. And fallen in the code Benik and Kosenmark used translated to died. Leos Dzavek had ruled Károví beyond the ordinary span of any other human reign—since the fall of the empire. It was almost impossible to believe him dead, except that Benik was no fool. She had lived six years in the Károvín Court, an anonymous runner of the lowest order, but someone skilled at extracting secrets from her companions. She would never report a rumor as truth.

Gerek knocked at the door to Kosenmark’s office with a shaking hand. No answer. He knocked a second time—louder—then tried the latch. Locked, of course. Gerek rattled the latch in irritation. Without much expect

ation of success, he tried the spell that ordinarily would admit him, and only him, into the office. That also failed.

Has he left without telling me?

Since he and Lord Kosenmark returned to Tiralien, two weeks ago, Kosenmark spent his afternoons in his office. More than once, Gerek had come upon him on his rooftop garden, staring over the city toward the sea. He continued to receive guests in the pleasure house at night, and he met with Gerek over business matters every morning, but otherwise, he kept to his rooms.

Except twice, Gerek thought. When he vanished for a day, each time.

Kosenmark had given no explanation other than to say he’d been hunting. Hunting Lord Khandarr and his agents, Gerek suspected. Though Kosenmark had shut down his shadow court ten months ago, he still had a handful of trusted agents in Veraene. From their reports, Gerek knew that Lord Khandarr had remained in Tiralien several months after the affair on Hallau Island. Word from various agents said the king’s mage hoped to collect further evidence of Kosenmark’s treason, then arrest Kosenmark on his return. Khandarr had given up just a few days before Kosenmark had returned. By now he would have reported to the king, which made this latest news even more imperative.

Gerek set off to search the rest of the house, traversing each floor and wing from end to end—a long and ultimately pointless task. He found no sign of the man, neither in the many public halls and galleries, nor in the private parlors where Lord Kosenmark sometimes met with more secret visitors. Kosenmark’s official schedule for the afternoon claimed he was “at home to visiting nobles.”

He never is, though. Not since he lost Ilse Zhalina on that cursed island.

Gerek paused at one of the side doors that gave onto a small paved courtyard. A stone path led through an open gate to an expanse of green grass, then the formal gardens. Past the gardens lay a patch of wilderness, and beyond that, the edge of Kosenmark’s grounds, which were patrolled by guards. Gerek did not venture past the door, however. You must not leave the grounds, Kosenmark had told him, in their first conference upon their return to Tiralien. Markus Khandarr will not forgive you for escaping his company.

Such a delicate way to describe kidnapping, a beating, and interrogation by magic. There had been no official call for Gerek’s arrest, but as they both knew, the King’s Mage did not always work through official channels.

“Are you hunting our lord, Maester Gerek?”

Gerek stiffened, then reluctantly turned around.

The courtesan Nadine leaned against an arched passageway. She was dressed for an appointment with a client, in a gauzy creation of amber lace, caught by golden ribbons at wrist and ankles. The curves of her body showed through, a dark brown shadow beneath the lace, and a faint breeze carried a trace of her spicy perfume. Kathe had once told him about wild cats she had seen at Duenne’s Court, when a famed handler brought several panthers to perform before the king. Kathe had never quite decided if the handler had tamed the cats, or if the creatures chose to perform such tricks out of boredom. Gerek could picture Nadine as one of those panthers.