Jastanne forced her eyes open. “Forgive me, Weaver,” she said. “But I’m so tired.”
He shook his head, his face somber in the dim light. “It’s all right,” he said. “You should sleep.” He smiled, though it seemed to take some effort. “Thank you for this night. My … my need was great.”
“As was mine.”
“I have one thing more to ask of you.”
“Of course, Weaver. Anything.”
“Tomorrow, when the fighting begins, I’ll be matched against another Weaver. You’ve heard me speak of him before, though others haven’t.”
She nodded. “Grinsa jal Arriet.”
“Yes. Defeating him will take much of my attention. But there’s another who has to die, and I want you to kill her for me. She deceived me and she seeks to destroy all for which we’ve toiled these last several years.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Keziah ja Dafydd. She’s the archminister of Eibithar. Her powers are considerable, and they include language of beasts, but she possesses neither shaping nor fire. You shouldn’t have trouble killing her.”
Jastanne nodded. “She won’t survive the day, Weaver. You have my word.”
Again he smiled, easily this time. “You serve me well,” he said, brushing her cheek with his fingers. He stood, naked, glorious, and began to dress. And Jastanne closed her eyes, allowing sleep to take her, hoping that she would dream of him and of what they had shared this night.
* * *
She sat alone by the small fire, staring into the darkness, waiting for Jastanne to return. Silence settled over the camp like a warm blanket-all around her, Qirsi slept, horses stomped and snorted, a gentle wind rustled the grasses and hummed as it moved among the boulders. And still Jastanne didn’t come back from her conversation with the Weaver.
Finally, Nitara realized that the chancellor wouldn’t return, at least not until dawn, and she feared that her heart would simply stop beating. She had expected this since the first time she saw Jastanne, with her exquisite face and lithe form, and her golden eyes, so like Dusaan’s that it seemed Qirsar had marked them for each other.
It would have been easier had she still hated the woman as she did that first day. But Nitara had come to respect her, even to like her. And how could she blame Jastanne for desiring the Weaver, when she herself had imagined a thousand times what it would be like to lie with him?
“The movement is everything,” he had said to her once, before they took the palace from Harel, as he was explaining why he couldn’t love her. “Devote yourself to our cause, and you devote yourself to me; give it your passion, and you give that passion to me.”
“But that’s not enough,” she said at the time.
And he replied plainly, though not without sympathy, “It will have to be.”
As far as she knew, he hadn’t loved any woman since then. That is, until tonight.
Wasn’t it possible then, that with victory within reach, with the Forelands about to be his, he was ready to take a wife? Or perhaps several. Just after joining the Weaver’s army Jastanne sensed Nitara’s jealousy and spoke to her of the possibility that Dusaan would have as many women as had Braedon’s emperor. “Do you really think that a man like that-a Qirsi king-will take but one wife?” Jastanne had asked her that day. Maybe, she suggested, he would choose to love both of them. In which case, didn’t the fact that he was with Jastanne tonight suggest that some time soon he might call Nitara to his bed?
It wasn’t exactly what she would have chosen-if she could claim Dusaan as her own, she would. But Jastanne was right. A man like the Weaver could never belong to but one love. Better she should be one lover among many than never know what it was to give herself to him. That would be too great a loss to contemplate.
So at last, reluctant to give up her vigil, but knowing that she needed to rest before the morrow’s battle, Nitara lay down on her sleeping roll and closed her eyes. She quickly fell asleep, and almost immediately found herself in a dream.
The minister was on a plain and a Qirsi man stood before her, wind whipping his hair around his face. She had heard some of the other Qirsi-the chancellors and a minister from Galdasten-speaking of dreams in which the Weaver came to them, walking in their sleep to give them instructions, and for one disorienting moment, she wondered if this was what was happening to her.
Then she recognized the man, and knew this wasn’t so. His eyes were brighter than Dusaan’s, his face leaner, more youthful. He was neither as tall nor as broad as the Weaver, though he did have a muscular build. She still remembered the smooth, solid feel of his back and chest from the nights they had spent in each other’s arms.
“I’m dreaming,” she said aloud, as if hoping to wake herself.
“Yes,” Kayiv jal Yivanne answered, walking toward her. As he drew near, she saw bloodstains on his ministerial robes and the dagger jutting from his chest. Her dagger.
“What do you want of me?”
He stopped just in front of her, so close that the hilt of the killing blade nearly touched her breasts. “You ride to war. There’s to be a great battle tomorrow.”
“What of it?”
“You expect to win. You think that your victory will justify what you did to me, what your Weaver has done to the Eandi in Curtell and Ayvencalde and Galdasten, what all of you will do to the armies of Eibithar and Braedon.”
“It does justify it. We’re going to change the world. You never understood that.”
“I understood. I just chose not to be a part of it.” He smiled, a dark, terrible smile. “And for that, I died by your hand.”
“I won’t listen to this.”
“Then send me away, if you can.”
She tried to wake herself, or she thought she did. It was so hard to know what she was dreaming and what was real.
“Do you remember what I said to you?”
“When?” she asked. But she knew. Gods, she knew. His last words, whispered on a dying breath.
The smile faded, chased away by a single tear, which was far worse. “I loved you so.”
Nitara closed her eyes. Or did she? Wasn’t she already asleep?
“That’s what I said. ‘I loved you so.’”
“I remember,” she said, shuddering.
“And now your Weaver loves another.”
“No!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have killed me after all.”
“I had to!”
“For him,” Kayiv said.
“Yes, for him.”
“Then I have to do this for all the others, all who would die if I didn’t.”
He pulled the dagger free from his chest, the blade emerging as clean and brilliant as the day she bought it. And raising it high, so that it gleamed in the morning sun, he plunged it into her neck.
Nitara screamed. Yet somehow she still heard him say, his voice so sad that it made her want to weep, “I loved you so.”
She opened her eyes to starlight and the dim glow of the moons. Her heart was pounding so hard that her chest hurt, and her clothes were soaked with sweat. She raised herself up on one elbow and looked around the camp. No one else appeared to be awake. Jastanne was nowhere to be seen.
“Damn,” she whispered, running a hand through her hair.
After a few moments she lay back down, staring up at the stars, knowing she should sleep, but afraid to close her eyes again.
“We’re going to change the world,” she said to the darkness, as if Kayiv might hear her. “That’s why I had to do it.”
