by DAVID B. COE
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. After some time, she nodded.
“Second,” he went on, fighting the urge to gloat, “what the man did with the gold is of no importance to me. It’s enough to know that he was a traitor. Nothing else matters. And I refuse to protect his name for no reason other than your grief at losing a friend.”
The woman glared at him. “Yes, he was my friend. I didn’t know him long, but I was beginning to understand him, to have a sense of what kind of man he was.”
“Yet it was only when he died that you realized he had betrayed you and everything you work for.”
“Yes. He deceived me. Is that what you want me to say, swordmaster? That he left me feeling foolish and dull-witted? There, I’ve said it.”
“All I want is to understand why you’re speaking to me of this at all. You’re wasting my time, and I’ve had enough of it!”
He reached for the door handle, fully intending to return to Sulwen and his children.
“Please, wait,” the Qirsi said, closing her eyes and rubbing a hand across her smooth brow. She looked weary and pale. Whatever his feelings about Paegar, Gershon could not deny that the man’s death had taken a toll on the archminister.
“What I’m trying to tell you,” she said, “is that while Paegar betrayed us, and was paid to do so, I believe that he was coerced into it somehow. I don’t believe he had the heart of a traitor.”
“Does that matter?”
She glowered at him again, but only briefly. Gershon had tried to keep his tone mild. He wasn’t trying to goad her, only to grasp what it was she was telling him. After a moment, she seemed to realize this.
“I think it might,” she answered. “In fighting the conspiracy, wouldn’t it be helpful to know how its leaders go about spreading its influence? Wouldn’t you like to know what it is they hope to accomplish and how they intend to do it?”
“Of course, but—”
“As I told you, swordmaster, Paegar spoke to me of the conspiracy, perhaps hoping that he could convince me to join. It’s possible that he also spoke of me to those who paid him.”
“What makes you think that?” Gershon asked, surprised by how much this alarmed him.
She shrugged, a slight smile on her lips. “Call it the instinct of a gleaner.”
Gershon merely nodded. He didn’t trust the Qirsi, nor did he like to rely upon their magic any more than was necessary. But over the years, he had come to respect the power that dwelled within them.
He waited for her to go on, but she said nothing more. She just watched him expectantly, as if at any moment he might offer some reply.
“So, you think he told his allies about you,” Gershon said at last, still not certain what she was telling him.
“Yes. In which case, they may decide to lure me into their movement just as they did Paegar.”
And finally it all made sense. “You want to join them, don’t you?”
“Well,” she said, grinning now, “not really, no. But how else can we learn who they are and what they want?”
“And you don’t want me to say anything to Kearney because if they know we’ve discovered Paegar’s betrayal, they might be wary of approaching you.”
The smile lingered on her lips, though the swordmaster saw something else lurking in her eyes. “That’s why I don’t want you to say anything to the others,” she told him. “Someone had to be giving Paegar his gold, and that person could very well be here in the castle.”
“What if that person killed him?” Gershon said, as much to himself as to the minister.
She nodded, seeming to shudder at the suggestion. “I’d thought of that.”
“Yet you’re still willing to pretend that you’ve embraced their cause?”
“Would you go to war to protect Kearney?”
“Of course,” the swordmaster said.
“How is this any different?”
Gershon considered himself an intelligent man, perhaps not as brilliant as the king, but capable certainly of matching wits with any foe on a battlefield. Yet, every time he spoke with this woman she seemed to be one stride ahead of him. “I don’t suppose it is,” he said. “I’ll let you do this, if you’ll promise to keep me informed of everything that happens.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I intend to do this whether or not you let me.”
“Must you always be so difficult, woman? All I meant was, I’ll agree to keep Paegar’s treachery a secret, but I want to know who you’re speaking with, and what they have in mind to do.”
“And I’m telling you that might not be possible.”
“It will have to be!” Gershon let out a long breath, trying to control his temper. He often wondered if she tried to anger him. “The king trusts me with the safety of everyone in this castle, including yours.” Especially yours. “If you’re going to attempt something this dangerous, I have to be certain that I can protect you. Paegar’s dead. Now, it was probably an accident, a simple fall in a dark chamber. But it might have been more than that, and I’d be failing my king if I didn’t do everything in my power to keep you from the same fate.”
“I’ll be trying to convince these people that I’m a traitor,” she said. “If they see me speaking with you, they’ll know it’s a lie. In trying to protect me, you’ll really be endangering my life.”
“Then we’ll have to make it appear that I’m interrogating you, that my questions are born of mistrust rather than concern.”
She smiled, her eyes dancing. “That should be easy for both of us.”
He had to smile as well. She had more than a little courage. To be fair, she was braver than many Eandi warriors he knew. She was brilliant as well, and though he found the Qirsi strange-looking, with their pure white hair and yellow eyes, he had to admit that she was prettier than most. Perhaps for the first time, he understood why his king had loved this woman; why, in all likelihood, he still loved her.
“I guess it should,” he said. He heard one of the children laugh from inside the presence chamber. It sounded like Ula, his youngest. Sulwen would be wondering where he had gone and whether he intended to come back at all. “So it’s agreed then?” he asked. “You’ll keep me informed?”
She nodded. “Yes. You have my word.” She smiled again. “Now go back to your wife and children, swordmaster. Forgive my intrusion.”
She turned and started walking away. Still, Gershon stood there, watching her.
“You never told me why I shouldn’t tell the king,” he said at last. He kept his voice low, so that no one else would hear, but still the words reached her.
After a moment she turned to face him again.
“I see why we have to keep this from the others,” he went on. “But why the king? Surely Kearney can be trusted to keep this to himself.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “Even now, after so many turns apart, do you really believe Kearney would allow me to risk my life on his behalf?”
There was nothing Gershon could say. The answer was as plain to him as the single tear rolling down Keziah’s face. Kearney would never have let her do it. Not even with Gershon protecting her. Not even if it meant saving his kingdom.
Chapter Eighteen
Mertesse, Aneira
My dearest Yaella,
By the time you find this I will be far from Mertesse, sent on an errand by a mutual acquaintance. I don’t know how long I will be gone or where my journeys may take me, but know that you will never be far from my thoughts.
What few possessions I have, I leave to your care, hoping that if I do not return they may offer some comfort to you.
I love you more than you can know.
Shurik
He left the note on her bed, tucking a corner of the parchment under her pillow. Then he glanced about the dark room one last time before slipping back into the corridor and making his way out of the castle. Several days had passed since his conversation with the Weaver and though some delay in his departure had been in
keeping with the man’s instructions, Shurik now felt anxious to be on his way lest the Weaver come to him again and question why he had waited so long.
It was awkward enough having to leave with Yaella and the duke away from Castle Mertesse. As an exile from Eibithar, granted asylum by Rowan after the failed siege at Kentigern, Shurik lived in the fortress at the duke’s indulgence. No matter when he ventured forth from the castle it was bound to raise eyebrows. Had he left the morning after his vision of the Weaver, only a few days after Rowan’s departure for Solkara, it would have appeared that he had been awaiting just such an opportunity. Instead he remained in Mertesse for some time, and was fortunate enough to receive a message from Yaella midway through the waning. It was a brief note—she said merely that she missed him and looked forward to her return. But that was enough. As far as the duke’s mother and the castle guards were concerned, it might has well have been a frantic request for him to join Rowan’s party. Shurik never said to anyone that it was, but neither did he give them any cause to believe it wasn’t.
Upon receiving the message, he returned immediately to his chamber, placed a few items in a small satchel, and sent a servant to the stablemaster with instructions to have his mount ready before dawn the following day. No one questioned him. He never gave them the chance.
He steered his mount through the castle’s southern gate, riding away from the Tarbin and toward the distant, dark mass of Aneira’s Great Forest. The sun had not yet risen, and the damp cold air of night still lay heavy over the farms and open plains. A light snow had coated the land overnight, whitening the roofs and roads and settling among the grasses like sugar on some confection from Kentigern’s kitchens. The sky had cleared, and a few bright stars clung stubbornly to the night, as if defying the silver light that had begun to spread from the eastern horizon.
It had been several turns since Shurik last rode outside of a city, and longer still since he had done so alone. Indeed, he couldn’t remember having left Mertesse since Rowan’s grant of asylum. He felt free, and he savored the stillness of the morning and the simple beauty of the land. At the same time, he also felt more vulnerable than he had in years. He saw how the soldiers of Mertesse regarded him. He heard the contempt in Rowan’s voice whenever they spoke. He was a Qirsi traitor and none of the Eandi in Castle Mertesse would ever see him as anything more. Still, he had been granted the protection of the house, and he never feared for an instant that any of the revulsion he engendered would spill over into violence.
Alone on the open road, however, he had no one to protect him. In Eibithar he had always traveled with Aindreas, who never left Kentigern without at least a small company of soldiers. Even in Kentigern City, he had worn robes announcing to all who saw him that he served the duke. No one had dared threaten him.
He no longer wore ministerial robes. Rowan accepted his counsel from time to time, and allowed him to accompany Yaella to most of their discussions, but the duke had not seen fit to accept him formally as a servant of House Mertesse. Outside the castle, in the brightening glow of the Aneiran morning, he was neither minister nor traitor. He was merely a Qirsi rider. He still spoke with the accent of Eibithar, but since leaving Kentigern he had learned to mask it. Road thieves, of which the Great Forest sheltered many, usually left his kind alone, as did soldiers, particularly those of the lesser houses. But in the end, he was only as safe as his sword and his magic could make him.
The ride from Mertesse to Solkara promised to be an easy one. The cities were less than twenty leagues apart, and even if the weather turned bad, the forest would offer him some shelter. The greatest danger lay not in anything he might encounter along the way, but rather in the man he would seek once he reached the royal city.
Shurik hadn’t seen the gleaner since the day Rouel’s siege of Kentigern failed. That day, when talk of the siege turned to the ease with which the Aneirans had defeated Kentigern’s famed gates, Fotir jal Salene, Curgh’s first minister, suggested that they had been weakened by shaping magic. Of course Shurik denied that he possessed such power; he had kept it from Aindreas for nearly ten years and wasn’t about to reveal the truth just then. As it happened, he didn’t have to. He still remembered, with a clarity that made him tremble, how Grinsa had looked at him, seeming to see right through his denials as only a Weaver could. Shurik had no choice but to flee the castle that very day. Had he not, he felt certain that the gleaner would have revealed his treachery.
In all, he spent no more than a few hours in the man’s company, but he would never forget Grinsa jal Arriet’s face, the high cheekbones and wide mouth, the pure white glow of his skin. As tall as he was and as powerfully built, he looked healthier and stronger than most Qirsi ever did. No, finding him would not be terribly difficult. On the other hand, if he truly was a Weaver, killing him would be nearly impossible. Not only could the Weaver sense any magic he might have, he could reach into Shurik’s mind and keep him from using that power, or worse, force him to use it against himself instead. As a younger man, he might have had the strength to resist a Weaver’s power, at least briefly. But Shurik was old now, at least for a Qirsi, and since exhausting himself in his efforts to weaken Kentigern’s great gates before the siege, he had found that his powers were diminished, his body quicker to tire. In more ways than one, he had paid a heavy price for his betrayal.
“If you try to kill him and fail,” the Weaver had told Shurik in his dream, “I’ll see to it that you die a slow, agonizing death.”
He wasn’t foolish enough to think this an idle threat. Which meant that all he had to do was find Grinsa and track him until the Weaver came to him once more. The Weaver had said nothing to him of money, nor had he paid him in advance, as he sometimes did. Still Shurik had little doubt that if he succeeded in this, his reward would be substantial.
The sun peered above the horizon a short time later, huge and orange, casting long shadows across the landscape and making the snow glitter like tiny shards of glass. Shurik stopped for a quick meal at a small inn by the road, before riding on. By midday, a new line of clouds had appeared in the west, advancing on the land like a grey army. The wind increased, and before long it was snowing again, the hard, sharp flakes biting at Shurik’s face like blackflies during the growing turns.
Long before he wanted to, Shurik was forced to stop again, at a village inn that appeared from the outside to be barely more than the unkempt home of a poor farmer. He had come no more than three leagues from Mertesse, and already the Qirsi was bone-weary. He longed for the comfort of his small chamber in Castle Mertesse, and he found himself wondering if he had grown too old to be of any use to the Weaver.
Reluctantly leaving his mount with a small boy who didn’t look old enough to reach Shurik’s saddle, much less know how to remove it from the beast, he stepped into the inn. Inside, the house held a bit more promise than it had from the road. A fire crackled in the hearth and the common room smelled of roasting meat and baked bread. An old Eandi woman emerged from the kitchen at the sound of the door, and eyed him warily. Shurik pretended not to notice, wiping the snow from his riding cloak and shaking it from the satchel he carried. Sensing that she was about to tell him that they didn’t rent rooms to Qirsi, he pulled out a pouch of coins and poured its contents into his hand, as if counting the gold and silver pieces.
Then he looked up, smiling. “I had hoped to stay the night,” he said. “Do you have any rooms free?”
The woman licked her lips, her rheumy eyes straying briefly to the coins he held. “I suppose. It’ll cost you nine qinde.”
It was a lot, far more than he would have paid at a Qirsi inn in one of the cities. But he could hear the wind howling outside, and he had no desire to look elsewhere.
“That includes a meal tonight, and breakfast in the morning?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“And feed and water for my mount?”
“I guess.”
Shurik smiled. “Done.” I intend to eat a lot, woman, an
d I hope my horse grows fat on your grain.
She took his coins, counting them twice to be sure he hadn’t cheated her. Then she led him up the creaking stairway to a cramped room with two small straw beds and a pitcher and washbasin, both of them empty.
“I’ll bring water shortly,” she said. “When you hear the bell ringing below, that means supper is ready. I only serve it once, so don’t keep me waiting.”
“Of course.”
She nodded once, looking around the room before leaving him, as if to make certain she hadn’t forgotten anything.
Shurik sat on one of the beds, which was only slightly more comfortable than the floor would have been. It was a good thing the Weaver had paid him so well over the years. Had he been forced to pay so much for such a room on only a minister’s wage, he would have already been on his horse again, braving the storm and searching for another inn.
To be fair, the room seemed clean, and smelled only of fresh straw. No doubt he could have done far worse this night.
Shurik didn’t have to wait long for the bell announcing the evening meal. Descending the stairs, he found the woman waiting for him at the table, already in her seat. To his great surprise, his was the only other place set. She watched him sit, a sour look on her face, then muttered a quick prayer and began to eat the roasted fowl and steamed roots she had prepared.
The food was pleasant enough, though bland, and there was water but no wine on the table. But again, Shurik had to remind himself how much worse this day could have ended.
Most disturbing to him was the silence. The woman ate and drank, refusing to look at him, much less speak. Perhaps he shouldn’t have minded—how interesting a conversation could such a woman have offered? But he had been without Yaella for nearly half a turn, and aside from a passing word to the guards and stableboys that morning and this woman and the boy upon his arrival at the inn, had not spoken to anyone all day.
“You live here alone?” he asked, when the silence became too much to bear.
