Allegiance (River of Souls 3)

Ehren nodded slowly. “He is.”

“And do you visit with him ever?”

Ehren thought she knew the answer to that question already. “I do.”

“Khandarr will have spies watching him,” Ilse said. “I hoped you might—”

“Find the means to smuggle you inside his household?”

“Yes.”

Ehren took several moments to absorb the implication of her request. Of course the baron knew Lord Kosenmark. They had attended court together, one as a trusted adviser to the old king, one as a senior member of the general council. Both had departed from Duenne after Armand of Angersee inherited the throne. Clearly they continued to meddle in the kingdom’s politics. Just as clearly, the king and his closest adviser knew. This was a most dangerous, deadly game.

And she wants to involve me.

Had she learned this habit, too, from Kosenmark? To ask the impossible?

“You require a great deal,” he said. “And not just of me. I have a wife and our mother to care for. Soon, a child. Or perhaps your spies did not relay that particular information. It is not so important to kings and councillors after all.”

Ilse gazed at him steadily. There was no accusation in her eyes, but neither any gentleness. “You are afraid.”

“Of course I am.”

“And angry.”

He opened his mouth, shut it, and swallowed whatever he thought he might say. “A part of our inheritance,” he said at last.

Her gaze never wavered, but Ehren thought he saw a flicker of acknowledgment in those dark eyes. He wished they had a season apart from duty, or these mysterious doings of high politics, to do nothing more than talk. He suspected they had had much the same ruminations over the past few years, many of the same nights spent in grief and anger at their father. At each other.

His anger leaked away, leaving him with an emptiness centered beneath his heart. It was like a wound, kept raw and tender over three long years. She had come to him. He could not turn her away a second time.

“Tell me what I must do,” he said.

She studied him a moment longer, as if gauging his sincerity. “Very well,” she said slowly. “I need to talk with Baron Eckard. If you could visit him—tonight. Take me in your carriage as a servant, and leave me in the stable yard. You need not do anything more.”

“Tonight?”

She nodded. “I cannot wait any longer. I must find Raul as quickly as the gods allow.”

* * *

THEY SPOKE IN whispers as they planned how to achieve Ilse’s next goal. Memories of their father crowded close around them. More than once, Ehren glanced over his shoulder, only to laugh softly. Ilse, too, felt as though she could hear the ghostly echoes of past lectures in this room. She wondered how Ehren could bear it.

“Then the baron might not be at home,” Ehren said. “What then?”

“I have the necessary passwords. His people will admit me.”

“You trust them as well?”

She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead. An incipient headache haunted her, borne of the long trek from Duszranjo through the mountains, from the even longer trek she had taken from Mantharah across Károví, always having to give her trust to others. Miro Karasek. Valara Baussay. Bela Sovic. Jannik Maier and the smugglers who brought her across the passes. She wanted nothing more than to hide in a warm dark refuge.

Not yet.

“I have no choice, Ehren. Or rather, none better.”

“You might stay with us. A day or two—”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, but no. Never here.”