“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.
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,
