careless gesture. The gems on his fingers flashing in the lamplight. “Not at all. Whenever the queen speaks with her emerald, she must use magic. When she does, I will hear her.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OVER THE PAST several months, Gerek Hessler spent his holidays wandering the streets of Tiralien, reacquainting himself with the districts from his student days. Today he browsed through the warren of secondhand booksellers in the Little University. Here one might find dozens of cheap novels, or second-rate poetry from the previous decade, but it was also possible to find a genuine treasure. Some of the vendors were iterant, much like the spice dealers Kathe mentioned, selling their wares from carts or baskets in the street.
He picked up a crumbling edition of Alberich Wieck’s essays from one such cart. The copy itself was not valuable—the binding had cracked and several pages were missing—but he had always liked Wieck’s observations on the accepted forms of scholarly interpretation. He handed over a silver denier, received his change, and moved on with the book in his satchel. The next stall carried only mathematics textbooks. Interesting, but not worth the price. He drifted past more shops and stalls into a square populated mostly by butchers and chandlers. One lone vendor, however, had set up a cart by the entrance. Without much confidence, Gerek looked over the man’s wares. Political treatises. Erotic engravings. An occasional tract speculating about spiritual matters.
He turned over a few leaflets without much interest, then paused.
A cookbook?
Gerek glanced back at the other shops, as if considering whether or not to move on. Pretending boredom, he sorted through the bin a second time. It was a cookbook. The title—engraved in thick woodcut letters—mentioned ornamental dishes from the court. He dug past the book to an assortment of heroic poetry volumes, then back to the cookbook itself.
Its condition was better than he would have expected. Water stains covered several pages, but the parchment showed no signs of worm or decay. If the date was correct, the volume dated from the later empire days. If not … well, it made an interesting curiosity.
“Ten silver denier,” the vendor said immediately. “Which is a true bargains for such a rare—”
“Ten copper,” Gerek countered.
The vendor wailed about his poverty, the wife and ten children he fed from his meager earnings, etc., etc. They dickered back and forth a few more times, until Gerek finally handed over two silver denier. The price was robbery, but he thought Kathe might like the book. He knew she studied all manner of cookery. Sometimes Lord Kosenmark liked to hold historical feasts for his noble friends.
He ordered the book wrapped in clean brown paper and added it to his satchel. And because he liked the man’s looks, he added a third silver denier to the sum.
My father was right, I am a fool, he thought, as he accepted the man’s thanks.
But the thought of Kathe’s pleasure overrode everything else. He spent most of the walk back to the pleasure house imagining her delight when he presented this gift.
Except he was not entirely certain of her delight. To be sure, Kathe smiled whenever she greeted him. But she smiled at everyone, including the rag and bones man. Well, she might like the book, even if it comes from me. He could write a note. Say he’d come across the book by chance, which was true.
It was late afternoon when he returned. Guards nodded as he passed through the front doors. Inside, he heard the maids at work in the common room. Gerek was fumbling at the door latch to his rooms when a runner came round the corner. “Maester Hessler. Lord Kosenmark requires your presence.”
“Right away or—?”
“Now, sir.”
Kosenmark never acted without reason. And Gerek had noted how Kosenmark had withdrawn into a deeper privacy over the past week. Could there be a crisis with the kingdom? Gerek thrust the book into the runner’s hands and asked him to deliver it to Mistress Kathe. He would write a note later, he told himself, as he jogged up the stairs to Kosenmark’s office.
Two guards stood outside the door, and another inside—Detlef Stadler, the house’s senior guardsman. But it was the pair farther inside the room that captured Gerek’s attention.
Kosenmark sat at his desk. A stranger stood in front of him—a young man with thick black hair tied in braids. Dressed in salt-stained clothes and carrying the strong scent of fish and tar, he appeared to be a common sailor. At Gerek’s entrance, the young