Allegiance (River of Souls 3)

Another shock, stronger than the magic.

I know that script.

The letter was brief—only three short lines—and written in obvious haste.

Ehren, I need your help. If you agree, send word back by Váná Gersi. He knows me. So does the stable master, Eda Hanzl. If you doubt them, let me only say that my favorite book was by Tanja Duhr.

No signature, but he didn’t need one.

My sister wrote this.

He called out, “Gersi, I need you.”

Gersi appeared at once. In his face, Ehren read tension and a great deal of curiosity.

“Bring the sender to our best parlor,” Ehren said. “No, wait a moment.”

His sister had disappeared twice under strange circumstances. He could trust Gersi and Hanzl, at least he hoped he could, but it was safer if he did not involve others. “Bring my visitor here,” he said. “If my wife inquires, tell her I am engaged in a matter of business.”

Alone again, Ehren read the message through a second time. He needed more clues, but this blunt request for assistance offered none. Or was that a clue itself? He remembered his sister as a soft-spoken young woman, as one might expect of Petr Zhalina’s daughter. She had loved their grandmother. Loved him, he believed. But this … She had addressed him simply by name and asked for help.

He cast the paper aside and stood, too anxious to wait patiently. Three years. He’d thought her dead once, when she ran away from Melnek. Then came a letter from the man Alarik Brandt with news that Therez lived. Thief, he called her, and worse. But he also gave the address where Petr Zhalina could find his daughter. It was a house in Tiralien, run by the notorious Lord Raul Kosenmark. Petr had set off at once to fetch his daughter away. He returned without her, and when Ehren asked, he would only say, My daughter is gone. I met a woman named Ilse.

The following year their father died. Ehren exchanged a few letters with Ilse, but he could tell from her excuses that she would never willingly return to Melnek. Then came another message through her agent, saying she had left Kosenmark to live in Osterling Keep. Five short months later, a courier from the regional governor of Fortezzien brought Ehren the news that an unknown man had murdered Ilse Zhalina. She had made a will leaving everything to him.

And now he discovered she was alive.

I cannot bear this. She will vanish again, I know it.

A knock at the door brought him spinning around. “Yes?”

“Your visitor, Maester Zhalina.”

“Come in,” he said. “Please.”

The door opened. A woman entered the room. She spoke quietly to Gersi, who closed the door behind her. Ehren came around his desk, but stopped almost at once when his sister turned back to face him.

He hardly recognized her. Oh, the angles of her face had not changed, not much. She had grown no taller, and that swift tilt of her head as she took in the room and his presence was just as he remembered. But her manner—the set of her lips, the way she met his gaze directly and without a trace of hesitation or shyness—it was as though a different mind inhabited the woman who stood before him.

“Therez…”

“Ilse. My name is Ilse.”

Her voice was low and rough. Angry.

Ehren checked his own quick reply.

She has good reason to be angry with all of us.

And yet, she had come to him, told him she needed his help.

They studied each other a few moments. Ehren took in more of her appearance, more details that spoke of the years they had spent apart, and of a history he could not begin to guess at. Her hair was plaited into a single braid, leaving only a few wisps around her face. She wore loose trousers of some sturdy brown material tucked into low boots, a quilted jacket in the northern style, and gloves. The boots were scuffed, the heels worn. Her clothing had obviously seen much wear. And yet his merchant’s eye could see it was all of good quality. As she drew off her hood, he caught a glimpse of a wide leather band around her wrist.

A knife sheath.

When had she learned to wield a knife? From that Lord Kosenmark? And there was the matter of her magic, another alien skill.

With an effort he recalled himself. “What do you need?”