by DAVID B. COE
“I see. And how is it that our friend, the Revel gleaner, has become guardian to a disgraced lord and an advisor to kings?”
Once more, she shifted her gaze to the child. “He’s a wise man, Trin. And he’s somewhat more than he first appears.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“Still, it’s all I can say. I’m sorry.”
He laid a meaty hand over hers. “No need for apologies, my dear. I offer none for my prying-you should give none for telling me that it’s none of my concern.” He grinned, for just a moment, then grew serious again. “Tell me, though, what does the future hold for you?”
Cresenne shrugged, her stomach balling itself into a fist. “Who can say? If the W-” She looked up to find Trin eyeing her intently. “If the conspiracy wins this war, I’m probably a corpse. If it can be defeated…” She made a small gesture with her hands, unsure of what to say. “I suppose this is my future.”
“Do they treat you well, these Eandi who call you traitor behind your back?”
“How do you-?”
“I told you: word travels. Do they?”
“Well enough.”
“Do you trust them to keep you safe?”
“I trust…” She had intended to say that she trusted Grinsa to keep her safe, but that would have raised more questions than it answered. “I trust myself.”
Trin smiled. “Well, good for you. I wish I had your strength, cousin.” He leaned closer to her. “Just the same, take a word of caution from an old, fat Qirsi who trusts no one, himself least of all. Be watchful. I know that there have been attempts on your life, though some of what I’ve heard I don’t quite understand. And I expect, from what I’ve been told, that there may be others. Kearney’s guards have grown somewhat lax with the Revel in their city. I walked in here today with little trouble-the soldiers at the gate hardly gave me a second look.” A mischievous grin lit his face for just an instant. “Though I gave them several. I do love a man in armor.” Just as quickly as it had appeared, his smile vanished, leaving the old gleaner grim and earnest. “My point is this: if I can come and go as I please, so can other Qirsi with darker intentions. Be careful, cousin. Now that we’ve renewed our friendship, I’m loath to see it end prematurely.”
She just stared back at him. Notwithstanding her brave words a moment before, she felt frightened and terribly small. She wanted to rail at the guards for their laziness, but she knew that would do her no good. And already another thought had entered her mind. Some time ago she had spoken with the queen-a chance encounter in the gardens. Leilia told her that if she needed anything, she had only to ask for it. Cresenne had been reluctant to request anything of the woman, assuming that the queen had long since forgotten their conversation. But perhaps in this case she could best serve herself and her child by being a bit brash.
“I’ll see to it,” she said at last. “Thank you, Trin.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’ll see to it? Now I am impressed. I wonder if Grinsa knows just what he’s gotten himself into.”
Funny that this strange man should find it so easy to make her laugh, even when it seemed that she was threatened from all sides.
“Right now, I’m sure that I’m the least of his worries,” she said.
“I don’t claim to know the man very well, cousin,” Trin told her, patting her hand. “But I expect you’re wrong about that.”
It was long past time for Bryntelle to sleep, so Cresenne walked Trin to the castle gate, bade him farewell, and asked, in all sincerity, that he come to see her again when he could find the time.
“Finding the time is a simple matter, my dear. The other gleaners know me too well to expect me to do much work, and I seldom disappoint them.”
Still smiling from this last quip, still intending to approach the queen later, after they had slept, Cresenne made her way back to her chamber, singing softly to Bryntelle, who was nearly asleep by the time they turned into their corridor.
So it was that Cresenne didn’t notice the Qirsi woman lurking by her door until she was almost upon her.
The stranger’s clothes were worn and travel-stained. She wore her white hair short, so that it framed her round, pretty face. From the lines around her mouth and eyes and her bent back and rounded shoulders, Cresenne guessed that she was in her late thirties, old for a Qirsi. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her expression was solemn and wary. But it was the woman’s eyes that drew Cresenne’s attention. They were deep gold, like a merchant’s coins, and they reminded her strongly of the Weaver’s.
“Cresenne ja Terba?” the woman asked.
Cresenne halted, sensing that she was in danger. “Who are you?”
The woman opened her mouth to reply, but then lunged at her, brandishing a dagger that she had held hidden within her sleeve. Cresenne tried to jump away, but the stranger moved with speed and grace that belied her aged appearance. She tried to ward herself, but she would have had to drop Bryntelle to do so. In the end, she was helpless to do more than watch as her attacker hammered the blade into her heart. Pain blinded her, stole her breath, her strength. Somehow she was on her back, struggling to remain conscious. She heard Bryntelle crying, realized that she no longer held the baby in her arms. But she could do nothing. She felt the life gushing from her body, staining her clothes and the stone floor. Gods it was cold. Bryntelle. Grinsa. How could she have failed them both this way? How could she have let the Weaver win?
* * *
She had journeyed eastward in secret, resting by day, moving in stealth through the nights.
“No one will know you,” the Weaver had told her one night more than a turn before. “No one will think to stop you. You’ll be able to go anywhere you choose, anywhere I tell you. You will be a walking wraith.”
And so she was. Once she had been first minister of Mertesse, one of Aneira’s proud houses. Now she was a pale shadow, invisible to the world around her. Bereft of her mount, her beloved Pon, she had been forced to travel the entire distance-more than sixty leagues-on foot. More than once, she had nearly given in to her fatigue, knowing that she was too old and too weak. She had to steal what food she could find, or forage for it off the land like some wild creature. But she persevered, drawing on resources she hadn’t known she possessed, driven in equal measure by her grief for Shurik, which lingered still even after so many turns, and by the Weaver’s promise, offered to her in the shadow of Kentigern Tor. When those nearly failed her as well, and her strength withered in the face of hunger and the mere fact of her physical limitations, she found, much to her surprise, one last source of strength: pride.
She might not have been the most valued of the Weaver’s servants, nor the most powerful, even when the magic still flowed freely through her body. But he had trusted her, Yaella ja Banvel, to see this matter to its end, and she refused to fail.
“I have a task for you,” he said that night in her dream, as the siege of Kentigern wore on and she recovered from her injuries. “A dangerous task. I can’t say for certain that you’ll survive, even if you succeed. But you will be doing a great service to the cause we share, and I believe that you’ll find peace before you die.”
She had been frightened of course. How could she not be, speaking to the Weaver of her own mortality? But she was exhilarated as well, eager to fulfill this destiny he had seen for her.
“There is a woman, a traitor to our cause,” he said, and then spoke the name. “Cresenne ja Terba. She is as dear to Grinsa jal Arriet as Shurik was to you, perhaps even more so, for she bore him a child. I want you to kill her.”
Yaella had never thought of herself as vengeful, but she was drawn to the notion that she might strike back at this other Weaver who had taken Shurik from her. In the end, with her magic a mere shadow of what it once had been, and her body little more, she had reached the City of Kings because the Weaver managed to give purpose to her life once more. Grief had consumed her; this quest for revenge had restored her, at least long enough.
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She had expected all along that gaining entry to Audun’s Castle would be the greatest challenge of all, a formidable test of her cunning. When at last she saw the City of Kings from her hiding place along the slope of the Caerissan Steppe, its massive walls gleaming in the late-day sun, the great towers of the fortress rising into a sky of brilliant blue, Yaella quailed, wondering how she could ever hope to get past such massive battlements and the soldiers guarding them. Still she went on, covering the remaining distance during the night and passing through the city gates when they opened in the morning. Only then, as she entered the city and saw the grand tents of Eibithar’s famous Revel, did she begin to believe that the gods might be with her in this endeavor, watching over her and the Weaver’s cause.
When night fell, she slipped into the castle with ease, following a small group of Qirsi performers and stepping past the guards with a confident smile and a nodded greeting, as if there were no question but that she belonged there.
The Weaver had told her where she could find the woman’s bedchamber. How he knew this, she couldn’t say, but she followed his instructions and waited by her door, knowing from all the Weaver had told her that the traitor would return to the chamber with first light.
“The woman sleeps during the day, so great is her fear of me,” he said. “You will show her that she can’t escape her fate so easily.”
Yaella remained in the shadows by the woman’s chamber for some time, struggling to slow her racing heart, fearing that she would be discovered by a guard or one of the queen’s ladies. The night ended and morning broke over the royal city, and still she waited, until she began to fear that somehow she had reached the chamber too late, and that the woman was already within, asleep behind a locked door. When she tried the door handle, however, her hand trembling, she found that the chamber was unlocked. Peering inside, she saw no one. Had the Weaver been wrong about the location of the woman’s chamber? Had Yaella taken too long to reach the City of Kings? Had the woman left Audun’s Castle? She was nearly ready to leave the corridor, although she wasn’t certain where she would go next, when at last she heard someone approaching, light footsteps echoing softly in the nearby stairway.
A moment later the woman came into view.
The Weaver had told Yaella of Cresenne’s beauty, even confessing to her during her extraordinary dream that he had once thought to make this woman his queen. So she was prepared for that. Yaella wasn’t prepared, however, for just how young the woman appeared. Seeing Cresenne approach, Yaella’s resolve wavered, albeit for only a moment. Still, when she allowed herself to be seen and spoke the woman’s name, Yaella was shaking in every limb. The Weaver had wanted her to announce to Cresenne that he was responsible for her murder, as if the woman could have doubted such a thing.
“This is what becomes of those who betray the Weaver and his cause,” she was supposed to say, before striking the killing blow. But it had been all she could do just to say the woman’s name aloud; she couldn’t bring herself to say more. Instead she just leaped at her, moving faster and more nimbly than she had imagined she could.
For a moment, after Cresenne fell, Yaella could only stand there, staring down at her, watching the blood flow from her heart, like a dark river in flood. Then the sound of the child’s crying reached her and with it yet another memory from her last encounter with the Weaver.
“I don’t want the child harmed,” he said. A small grace, for she was certain that she could never have killed a babe, no matter who its father might be. “Take her with you if you can. Otherwise leave her there.”
The corridor was empty, and the Weaver had told her of a sally port through which she could leave the castle undetected. She bent quickly, gathering the babe in her arms, and with one last backward glance at Cresenne, she started toward the west end of the fortress.
She hadn’t even turned the nearest corner, however, when a man appeared before her. He was Qirsi-the fattest man of her race Yaella had ever seen-and he smiled a greeting when he first saw her. But then his eyes strayed to the child and he slowed his gait. Looking past her, he saw Cresenne, his pale eyes widening.
“Demons and fire!” he said, halting and blocking her way. “What have you done to her?”
She pulled her dagger free again and held it before her. The man appeared to falter at the sight of it, but only for the briefest moment.
“Give me the child!” he said. “Now!”
Yaella laid the blade on the babe’s throat. “I’ll kill her.”
Again he hesitated, glancing at Cresenne once more and licking his lips nervously, as if he saw his own future in her fate. He was sweating like an overworked horse and Yaella thought she could see his hands quaking. At last, though, he shook his head. “I don’t believe you will. Your masters sent you here for the babe. They’ll be angry if she dies.”
I don’t want the child harmed. This was probably no more than conjecture on the part of the fat man, but it was unnervingly accurate. Her eyes flicked to the child, who was screaming. A dark lump had swelled on the babe’s forehead, no doubt where she had struck the floor when her mother dropped her.
“They want me to join them. They don’t care about the child.”
“You’re lying.”
“Not about my willingness to kill her. If you let me go, I promise she’ll be safe. You’re right: I was sent to kill the mother and bring back the child. The Weaver will see that she’s cared for.”
The man stared at her. “A Weaver?”
She hadn’t time for this. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered by soldiers of the king.
“Yes, a Weaver. And he doesn’t deal kindly with those who meddle in his affairs. Now out of my way.”
“A Weaver,” he said again, as if he hadn’t heard. “Of course.”
Yaella could delay no more. She pressed herself against the stone wall and began to edge past the man, still holding the dagger at the babe’s neck.
“Let me pass,” she said.
“Never.” He moved to block her way, just as she knew he would.
With a sudden thrust, she drove the blade into his flesh. She missed his heart, catching him closer to the shoulder, but still the man grunted in pain and slumped against the wall, the dagger jutting from his round body. Yaella hurried to get away from him.
As she reached the corner, however, flames abruptly flared before her, bright and angry, their heat making her flinch.
“Another step and you die!” came a voice from behind her.
Yaella turned at the sound, clutching the child so close to her breast that it began to cry anew. Her dagger was in the fat man. Fire was at her back. And staring at the apparition that faced her now, she felt Bian the Deceiver hovering at her shoulder, waiting to take her to the Underrealm.
* * *
No.
There was comfort to be found in death. Peace at a time when all the land was descending into war. Shelter from all that the Weaver had done to her. Release from a life that had strayed so far from what she had foreseen as a girl.
But no.
It was Bryntelle who reached her. The sound of her crying. Or, more precisely, the retreat of that sound. At first Cresenne thought that she was just fading, the last of her life’s blood draining from the gaping hole in her chest, cold closing in on her, like the snows advancing on Wethyrn’s Crown after a long harvest. But Bryntelle’s cries only retreated for a moment. Then they were joined by voices, a man and a woman. The woman. The one who had done this to her, whose blade had killed her.
But no. Not yet.
The woman was taking her child, or attempting to.
She forced her eyes open, stared up at the stone ceiling. She tried to raise her head so that she might look at the wound, but she hadn’t the strength even for this.
Wouldn’t it just have been easier to surrender, to embrace peace and shelter and release?
She lifted her hand, heavy as a smith’s anvil, and laid it on the wound. Warm bl
ood still flowed, but so weakly. A trickle compared with what it should have been. She probed the wound with cold, leaden fingers. Straight as the blade that pierced her flesh, long enough to kill, but easy enough to heal. She reached for her healing magic. Also a trickle, spent like her blood, but not done quite yet. The effort brought tears to her eyes, made her stomach heave. But after a moment the power welled up within her. And the wound began to close. Magic seeped into her, warm against the deadly cold, and the thaw brought with it pain that death’s chill had masked. She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes closed once more.
But she did not relent. Bryntelle’s cries still echoed in the corridor, as did the voices.
Soon the wound had closed. She could feel her heart beating within her bruised, aching chest. With more time and more magic, she might have eased the pain somewhat, but she didn’t dare.
Instead, she fought to turn over, gasping with every least movement. She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then clawed her way up the wall beside her until she was standing, her legs nearly buckling, her sight swimming. She saw two figures a short distance away. The woman and Trin.
An instant later something glinted in the dim light and Trin fell back against the stone.
The woman began to stride away. Bryntelle was in her arms.
Cresenne didn’t even think, but merely cast the flame, reaching for the wall once more to keep from collapsing to the stone.
“Another step and you die!”
The woman turned slowly to face her, her cheeks ashen, Bryntelle held before her as if a warrior’s shield. “You should be dead,” she murmured.
“Give me my baby.”
The woman glanced about, as if looking for some path to freedom. “I’ll kill her if I have to.”
Cresenne was wearier than she had ever been, but she kept the flames burning at the corridor’s end, determined not to let the woman escape.
“The Weaver doesn’t want her dead. We both know that.”
“You’re a traitor. How would you know what he wants?”
“You didn’t kill her when you had the chance. You took her instead, just as he instructed. He’s wanted this child for himself since before she was born.”
