mind.”
The gleaner thought that Fotir might respond in anger-the minister was no more accustomed than was Keziah to having people speak to him so. To his credit, however, the man gave a small smile and inclined his head. “You’re right, of course. Forgive me, Archminister.”
Keziah frowned, as if she had expected more of a fight.
“Have you heard from the Weaver again?” Grinsa asked in a whisper.
“I last heard from him about a half turn ago,” she answered, whispering as well, “just after we marched from Audun’s Castle. He was angry with me for failing to kill Cresenne.”
“Did he hurt you?”
His sister tried to smile, failed. After a moment she looked away. “It wasn’t too bad.”
Grinsa didn’t believe her, but he let it pass, his heart aching for her.
“He told me that he would find another way to kill her. Don’t worry,” she said, seeming to believe that she was anticipating Grinsa’s next question. “I sent word back to the castle. She knows to expect an attack.”
The gleaner looked away. “The attack’s already come.”
She gaped at him.
“Is she-?”
“She’s all right.” Actually, the gleaner couldn’t say with any certainty that she would ever truly recover from all her encounters with the man. The Weaver had tortured her, leaving scars on her face that might have looked like those Tavis bore had Grinsa not been able to heal her so soon after the assault. One of the Weaver’s servants had poisoned her, very nearly taking her life. And the last time he entered her dreams, the Weaver had raped her, or come as close to rape as a man could without actually touching her physically.
“What did he do to her?”
“It’s not important. What matters is that Cresenne drove him from her dreams. She won.”
Keziah still stared at him, but the horror on her face had given way to a look of wonder.
“Did she really?”
“Yes. And as I’ve been telling you all along, you have the power to do the same.”
After his own unsuccessful encounter with the Weaver half a turn before, as he and Tavis were riding across the southern Moorlands, Grinsa had come to doubt that anyone could prevail against the man. But despite all that she had endured during her dreams of the Weaver, Cresenne had given him hope, not only for himself, but for Keziah as well. He still feared for his sister-for all of them, really-but he had to believe that Dusaan could be beaten.
“She did it,” Keziah whispered, sounding awed and shaking her head slowly.
“You were telling us of your own encounter with the Weaver,” Fotir prompted gently.
She ran a hand through her hair, smiling self-consciously. An instant later, though, she had grown deadly serious. “Yes, of course. He gave me a new task to complete. He wants me to kill Kearney.”
“What?” Fotir said, far too loudly, his eyes widening. He glanced back at the soldier. “How?” he asked a moment later, his voice lowered once more.
“He left that to me. He wants it to happen in battle, so that no one suspects the Qirsi.”
“Does Kearney know?”
She looked at Grinsa. “I’ve warned him, yes.”
“Why bother?” Fotir asked. “It’s not as though you intend to go through with it, right?”
“Of course she doesn’t. But if the Weaver really wants Kearney dead, and if her failure to kill Cresenne has made him question Keziah’s commitment to the conspiracy, then he’ll have given the same order to others who serve him.”
Fotir shook his head slowly. “You both seem to understand him so well. I’m out of my depth.”
“We have an advantage, First Minister,” Grinsa told him. “If you care to call it that. We’ve both spoken with the man. He’s walked in our dreams.”
Keziah gaped at him. “You dreamed of him, too?”
“Yes, not long after you did, it seems. He tried to attack me, and he threatened Cresenne.”
“But he couldn’t hurt you, right? You’re too strong for him.”
Grinsa’s stomach turned at the memory of what the Weaver had done to him, of the pain in his temple as the man tried to crush his skull. Seeing how Keziah looked at him, begging him with her eyes to say that his magic had been a match for that of the Weaver, he almost lied. Qirsar knew that he wanted to.
Instead he shook his head. “I wasn’t strong enough.”
“He did hurt you.” Her voice shook and terror was written plainly on her face.
“I was able to wake myself before he could do any real harm. And I managed to summon a flame that lit his face and the plain on which we stood. I know for certain who he is.”
“Were we right about him?” Fotir asked. “Is it the emperor’s high chancellor?”
“Yes. Dusaan jal Kania. He was on Ayvencalde Moor. He tried to keep me from using my fire magic, but I have to say that once I’d seen him, he didn’t seem overly concerned.”
“Still,” the first minister said, “we know who he is. That has to count for something.”
“Does this mean that he’s more powerful than you are?” Keziah asked, sounding so young, so scared.
“I don’t know, Keziah. Truly I don’t. As Tavis pointed out to me, we were hardly on equal footing. He was in my dream, so he could hurt me, but I couldn’t hurt him. The most I could do was illuminate his face and the moor, and I managed that.”
She nodded, but he read the despair in her expression, and he knew its source. If he, a Weaver, couldn’t keep this man from hurting him, how was she to protect herself? Any hope she had drawn from Cresenne’s success was already gone.
For a long time, Keziah didn’t speak. She just stood there, staring off in the distance, until Grinsa began to wonder if he and the first minister should leave her. But after several moments, she seemed to gather herself. Looking first at Grinsa and then at Fotir, she said, “There’s another matter we need to discuss, before the empire strikes at us again.” She cast a quick look at Kearney’s soldier, as if to assure herself that he wasn’t close enough to hear. “When the fighting begins, how far will we go with our magic to aid Kearney and the dukes?”
“Do you mean will I weave your powers with mine?”
She nodded.
“I think the risk is too great,” Fotir said. “The emperor sent Qirsi with his army-quite a few really. And they’ll be watching us closely. I don’t know what powers you possess, archminister, but I’m a shaper and I have mists and winds. If the gleaner and I raise a mist together, Harel’s Qirsi are likely to know it. Word of a Weaver would spread across this battlefield in no time.”
“But what if it’s the only way to keep them from breaking through our lines?” Keziah demanded. “Kearney already knows that Grinsa’s a Weaver, and if Eibithar’s other nobles find out because he used his powers to save the realm, they can hardly turn around and have him executed.”
“It would be foolish of them, I agree. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it.”
“Careful, First Minister,” Grinsa said with a smile. “That’s something one of the renegades might say.”
Fotir’s expression didn’t change. “Well, in this case they may be right. This is no time for us to underestimate Eandi fear of Qirsi magic. With all that the conspiracy has wrought in the last few years, I’m afraid our nobles will be more inclined than ever to put a Weaver to death, even one who uses his magic to protect their realm.”
“Is that what you think?” Keziah asked.
Grinsa shrugged. “I suppose it is.”
She nodded, though clearly unhappy with his answer.
“But I can’t see allowing the empire to prevail in this fight, no matter the danger to me.”
“The danger isn’t yours alone,” Fotir said. “They’ll kill Cresenne and your child as well.”
“They may try, First Minister, just as they may try to execute me. I assure you that they’ll fail. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We have a number of Qirsi on our side; I may not need to weave at all. And if it does come to that, I believe I can join our powers without anyone realizing it.” He looked at Keziah again, wanting to brush a strand of hair away from his sister’s face. But he didn’t dare, not with the soldier so close. Even Fotir, who knew so much about him, didn’t know that Keziah was his sister. The danger was still too great to reveal that to anyone. Fear of Weavers ran deep among the Eandi, and for centuries, when Weavers were executed, so were all
