Passion Play (59 page)

His chin jerked up. His face flushed. “If you think me a coward, you do not know me.”

“I think I never did,” Ilse said, her voice rising higher. “You once said you needed my honesty. You said you wanted me to speak the truth, my lord. Were you lying? Or did you hope I’d always agree, no matter what? That I should
pretend
? Never again, Raul. I will never pretend again. Not even for you. If you think I can, if you think I would,
you
do not know
me
.”

They glared at each other.

Raul was the first to let his gaze fall away. “I need to walk,” he muttered. “Somewhere. Anywhere.”

He spun around, stumbled, and caught himself. Ilse watched him lurch down the stairs. He was clumsy in his despair, as though Khandarr had robbed him of that, too.
Let him go,
she thought.
He needs to grieve alone.

She leaned her forehead against the cool plaster wall. Far below, she heard Raul call out to one of the guards. She ought to return to the Rose Parlor. Ought to see to Benno and Emma. Or no. Let them have quiet together.

She took refuge in a parlor on the second floor. There was a couch, wide enough for two. She only needed space for one. She stretched out and laid her head on the soft pillow. Sleep, however, was impossible. Images flickered before her mind’s eye—Benno’s shaking hands, Emma’s hard gaze, Raul’s stone-faced expression as he listened, the shock in his eyes when she said she would leave. It didn’t matter if she closed her eyes. She could not blind herself to memory.

One hour passed. Then more bells rang. Ilse tried to count, but lost track. She heard a tentative knock once, but did not answer. The second time, a voice called out her name—Kathe, chasing after her again. Kathe would be worried. Had she pieced together what happened? Probably. Kathe knew far more than Raul credited her for. Or perhaps he knew and trusted her. That was why he gave Kathe the task of tending Ilse when she first arrived, bloody and near death.

The door opened. She caught a whiff of cedar and wood smoke as Raul knelt by her side.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should not have left.”

Ilse blinked. “Where did you go?”

“Everywhere. Up into the hills. By the docks. I had to walk. I could not stand it otherwise.”

“Did you take a guard?”

“I don’t know. I must have. I didn’t notice. Come.” He helped her to her feet. “Let us sit in the gardens a while.”

They had a supper outside, then walked beneath the green-leafed trees, along graveled paths lined with late-blooming roses and other flowers Ilse could not identify. Russet and orange and deep gold blossoms, arcing from long graceful stems. Rains had come and gone during the afternoon, leaving the air cool and fresh.

At the garden’s far edge, they sat close together on the stone bench. Sunset was just settling over Tiralien, gilding the rooftops and towers with its ruddy light. To the east, the skies were turning dark; the seas were the color of a dark blue wine. Raul said nothing, but gazed over the cityscape toward the coast. His mood was quiet—there was no trace of the morning’s crisis, except for the faint lines etched between his brows.

“Raul …”

“Hush,” he whispered. “We can talk later.”

Before she could answer or refuse, he had folded her into his arms and was kissing her hard. In between, he was murmuring the words
no
and
never
and then
now, please now
.

*  *  *

MORNING CAME WITH
the pale sunlight glancing through the windows. Ilse woke to find Raul studying her with wide golden eyes. Like twin suns, she thought. Like Toc’s points of lights, when he opened his eyes to Lir. Her heart contracted at the thought.
We are, both of us, Toc, sacrificing our sight to our beloved.

Then Raul sighed and closed his eyes, turning away from her.

“You said you would never run away again.”

“You said you would never lock me in a cage,” she replied.

His only answer was a helpless gesture, hand turned outward.

Raul said nothing more about it for the rest of the day, but Ilse watched the minute changes in his expression throughout the morning and afternoon. She saw how he winced at times, as though catching himself on an invisible wound. Her own eyes were dry. Her grief hidden within, the tears filling her heart until she thought it might burst.

When twilight was falling, she led him outside to the wilderness gardens, where the servants had spread thick carpets over the grass. They leaned against the tree trunks and gazed upward at the star-speckled skies. Ilse knew there were guards about them, but they had withdrawn to a discreet distance. She and Raul would have at least this small circle of privacy outside.

“Even here,” he murmured.

“What about here?” She could feel his heartbeat, quick and strong, against his chest. If she left him—once she left him—she would miss this the most.

“Even here we are not really outside. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we, just the two of us, vanished into the hills for a month.”

“Wouldn’t we be hungry?”

“I would hunt for you. And you could bring your stone knife.”

“My famous stone knife. I lost it my first night in Tiralien.”

“And I didn’t buy you another? How careless of me.”

A leaf whirled through the air, landing at their feet. Another one followed. Autumn was approaching, the warm mild autumn of the southern coast. Though as Josef often reminded them, Tiralien was the north to him. He, like Raul, came from the hot southwest provinces, where winter was a wet and stormy season.

“Winter soon,” Raul said, echoing her thoughts. “Two years since you came to me.”

“I arrived twice, I think,” she said. “Once at your door, and once at your heart.”

Raul was silent a moment, but his breath felt shaky against her hair.

“You are right. I did promise never to lock you in a cage.”

He spoke in a whisper so soft she could barely make out the words.

“I meant that,” he went on, still in that faint whisper. “But what I said before is true. Markus needs no excuse to murder you. He would do it to remind me he can. To remind others. At least if you remain here, I have a
chance
to protect you.”

Ilse reached up and touched his cheek. It was wet with tears. “But if I stayed with you, you would be just as much a prisoner then, my love. You would be like Toc without his eyes, only there would be no sun and stars, and that I could not bear.”

He buried his face in her hair and held her close. “I would make you my queen if I could.”

She had known that from the start. But a wish could not change their lives.

We’ve had lives before,
she thought.
I remember them all now. You were a diplomat, a spy, a pirate in Andelizien. I was a princess, a scholar, a bonded servant, and mage. And once we sailed together to that new world called Morennioù. If the poets and scholars are right, then we shall find each other again, if not with these lives, then in the next. By choice. By fate.

Forcing herself to speak steadily, she said, “I do not wish to go, but I must. Once I do, you must make new plans.”

“No.”

“Yes. Promise me. Stop Khandarr. Persuade Armand. Something. Or else we live apart forever.” Her voice failed at the last word. “I hate this, Raul. But you see how I’m right. We cannot pretend any longer that we are safe here. We must act. You must act.”

He shivered in her embrace. “You … you are inexorable.”

“Part of my charm.”

He shook in silent laughter that poised on the verge of grief. “What about you? How will you spend your days, then? Not hiding in silence. That’s not like you.”

Ilse suppressed a start. Ah, he knew her too well.
I want to study magic,
she thought.
More magic. I want to learn what Mistress Hedda refused to teach me—how to cross into Anderswar in the flesh. Then I can search for the jewels myself and …

What came after discovery, if discovery, she had not decided yet. But the jewels were the key to ending the wars, the key to forging … not a true peace. That would only come with a change of kings on both sides. But finding them was a start. And the task had to be one she carried through alone.

Raul stirred, restless. She kissed his shoulder, his neck. “I don’t know yet.”

A brief hesitation, as though he detected the lie. Then, “
Will
you come back?”

“Raul, I can’t promise anything. Neither can you.”

“When?” he said again, his voice going thin and sharp.

She held him tight. Tighter.
Now is the mother of When,
she thought.
And if tomorrow runs toward us, let it run swiftly.

“I will come back,” she said. “When everything is right.”

If the gods were kind. If he would have her still.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THEY DISCUSSED HIS
future intentions, her departure, just as they had discussed politics or poetry or the interwoven threads of history, magic, and passion.

“Shall we start with your plans or mine?” Raul asked.

“Yours,” Ilse said. “Mine are indefinite.”

“As indefinite as the ocean mist,” Raul said lightly, “or the winter rain clouds drifting up toward the sun. Though Tanja Duhr reminds us that the ephemeral is not necessary intangible. All poetry aside, I have only the vaguest of notions yet. Do you wish to know them?”

She shrugged. “The question isn’t whether I want to know—I do—but whether my knowing is safe. Or useful.”

He studied her several long moments, and she had the impression of a dormant fire behind those golden eyes—as though he had buried his passion. Barely. She could sense the heat flickering against her skin. If he chose, he might awaken the embers and burn through all her defenses in a moment. But then his lids sank to half-slits, the warmth receded, and she found she could breathe more easily.

“Tell me what might be important,” she said.

“Ah, that. Well, I thought I might build a new shadow court. Not here, but in Károví.”

Startled, she opened her mouth to ask a dozen questions. She stopped herself.

“No curiosity?” he asked, half-smiling. “Or rather, you don’t want to know.”

“I do,” she confessed. “But I don’t know—I won’t—”

“Neither do I,” Raul said softly. “Call it instinct, or inclination. I think it’s time we paid attention to those who serve the kings, instead of the kings themselves. One rock cannot halt the running tide. Just so, a single man cannot contain the flood of history. We must build our bulwark against war using many grains of sand.”

Starting with Duke Feliks Markov or Duke Miro Karasek,
Ilse thought. Both were long-standing members of the Imperial Council who shared responsibility for the armies. Karasek was more popular, but Markov was older, he’d advised the king decades longer. Rumor said that if Dzavek were to die, Markov had the larger faction and could take the throne. She wanted to ask how Raul intended to approach them. What assurances he would give them. (Because they would surely demand them.) What he meant to do with Simkov’s book, if anything.

But no, if she asked him those questions, he would expect answers to his.

Raul watched her intently, as though he could guess the link and chain of her thoughts. “Your turn,” he said.

Uncertain, she said, “What do you wish to know?”

“Very little.”

“Liar,” she breathed.

That provoked a tentative smile. “True. But let us confine ourselves to where you plan to spend the next months or years away from me. Will you grant me that much interference?”

Her heart gave a ping of grief. She contained it. “Yes. It’s only fair.”

They had been sitting on opposite sides of the desk, just as they had during her first interview. Raul stood and spread a detailed map of the continent over his desk. Ilse came around the desk and stood by his side. She knew this map well. Raul had commissioned it before leaving Duenne, and the mapmaker, an artist as well as craftsman, had created a work of exquisite precision. Different-color inks marked the political borders and differences in terrain—light brown lettering for the Ysterien kingdom in the far southwest, dark blue for Duenne and its environs in the central plains, and vivid green to represent cities along the east coast. Károví, too, was rendered in perfect detail from the green breadth of Duszranjo Valley set within the Železny Mountains to the silvery-gray that marked the snow-dusted plains stretching north of Rastov. Ilse ran her fingers over the point east and north where, if the legends were true, Lir and Toc created the world in their season of love.