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believe him or not.
Twilight had fallen before she finally came inside. There, she found that the maids had swept, dusted, and aired her rooms. Lamps were burning in both her bedroom and her sitting room. A carafe of good wine and a meal waited on the usual table. She took the tray into the nearest parlor and ate there, listening to the faint sounds of music rising up from the common rooms.
Stay or go. Help Lord Kosenmark or choose a different path. The questions pursued her back to her rooms. The lamps had guttered, so she relit one and took it with her into her bedchamber. The room felt more silent than usual. She could barely hear the music from below, and she wondered if Lord Kosenmark sat above, or wherever the listening vent opened, and listened to her footsteps over tile and carpet, the hiss of the brush through her hair, the minute sounds as she changed into her nightgown. That he listened no longer bothered her as much, and she wondered what that said about her.
Sometimes friends make mistakes. Grievous ones.
Did that make Lord Kosenmark her friend? And could she make a difference if she stayed?
Destiny or free will? She had a choice, she decided. Which meant she ought to choose wisely.
And if I cannot choose wisely, I must choose the best I know how.
She glanced up at the vent. He would be listening, she was sure of it.
“I’ll stay,” she whispered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, however, she was at a loss how to act. She had expected Lord Kosenmark to hear her declaration to the air and to send a runner with a summons, but the hours trickled away, bell by bell, until those of high noon sounded. No one came to her during the hour she spent in the library. She walked through the lower gardens one more time and noted how all the wildflowers had bloomed. But no one came to her with a message, though she frequently left word of her whereabouts.
She returned to her rooms but immediately left them. She could not bring herself to visit Lord Kosenmark’s office, or even hers, without a formal invitation. And going to Maester Hax was impossible until she spoke with Lord Kosenmark. The common rooms would still be empty at this hour, and she decided to spend an hour there.
She met Kathe on the stairs. Kathe looked tired and somewhat distracted, and she was carrying a tray of covered dishes. “Ah, there you are,” Kathe said with some relief. “I’ve come with your dinner.”
“When did you start carrying trays?” Ilse asked.
“When I was seven,” Kathe said. “And whenever we are shorthanded. Come. I imagine you are sick of your rooms. You can take your lunch on the balcony, and we can have a small chat.”
She led Ilse down a gallery on the second floor to the balcony where they had chatted when Ilse first came to the pleasure house. Against Ilse’s protests, she laid out the dishes, just as though Kathe were the serving girl, and Ilse her mistress. “You could be,” she said. “If I had come to your house up north.”
“But you didn’t. And I didn’t stay there,” Ilse said.
“No, we both came here. And I’m glad for that. I hate the cold.”
“It’s not so terrible …”
“Frost and ice and snow showers, from what I’ve heard.” Kathe shuddered. “Ugh. And speaking of chills and cold, you should eat while your soup is hot. Here’s a nice spot, with plenty of sun but not too much.”
Ilse applied herself to eating while Kathe chatted to her about all the house trivia. How Janna had tried to befriend Hanne. How Steffi and Dana had come to shouts and scratches over one of the stable boys, then made up the next hour when they discovered he had bedded the newest chambermaid. Her voice lost some of its humor as she told Ilse how Rosel suddenly took ill the day before, and how Lord Iani himself, who was visiting the house, tried to cure her fever, but things took a bad turn. Ilse listened and compared the scraps of truth amid all the lies and distortions. She wondered what Lord Kosenmark had told the guards to make sure of their silence.
“And we lost Lys,” Kathe added, with a self-conscious glance at Ilse.
Ilse paused, her soup spoon halfway to her mouth. “Lys is gone?”
“She gave notice yesterday,” Kathe said. “She told us how Rosel had no one else in the city to look after her. But when my mother could not tell her which sick house, she demanded the answer from Lord Kosenmark, and he refused. She said some words to him. I thought he would throw her from the house himself, but he did not. He … He was very odd. Anyway, my mother had offered Lys a letter of recommendation and Lys refused it. That made my mother so angry she couldn’t speak.” She smiled ruefully. “Yesterday was not the best of days.”
No, it was not, Ilse thought. Her stomach felt queasy, thinking of Rosel, then Lys who followed her friend into a kind of exile. She had not expected Lys to prove so loyal.
“I’m sorry that you’ve lost two girls so quickly,” she said.
“Not your doing,” Kathe said. “Besides, though they were our best girls, I think we shall do better with them gone. Janna told me about her cousin’s friend, who is looking for a better posting, and I thought I might ask Hanne if she had a sister or brother who would like to come south. That would give her some company from home.”
Their conversation was curtailed by a runner from Mistress Raendl, saying that the new pastry cook had arrived and would Mistress Kathe please attend the first interview.
“Ah, the pastry cook,” Ilse said.
“We’ve taken to calling them by number and week,” Kathe grumbled. “Though not to their faces.”
