Or so he thought. When he cast his mind eastward toward Audun’s Castle, he found that though he still sensed her presence there, he couldn’t reach into her mind. She was awake still, tending to her child perhaps, or making love with the gleaner. He recoiled from the image, opening his eyes to the firelight in his chamber, and clamping his mouth shut against a sudden wave of nausea.
“She’s a traitor and a whore,” he said aloud. “She’s nothing.”
Yet he knew better. He had tried to kill her, and would do so again this night. But he could not deny that he still wanted her as his own. Never had he felt this way about a woman before, not even Jastanne ja Triln, the merchant who slept naked so that she might offer herself as a gift to the Weaver each time he walked in her dreams. Yes, Cresenne was beautiful, but there were others who were as well; it was more than that. It was the child she had borne, it was all that she had once given to the movement despite her love for the gleaner. He had intended to make her his queen when the time came. And though he knew now that he could not, that dream would prove far harder to kill than the woman herself.
He allowed himself to sleep for a time, waking again when he heard the midnight bells ringing in the city. He stirred the fire and added a log. Then he reached for Cresenne a second time.
Once more, he found that she was awake, and he had to struggle with a second vision of her and the gleaner, their legs entwined, a candle casting dark, terrible shadows on the wall beside them. But even as he pushed the vision away he realized that it was false, a product of his own jealousy and his lingering feelings for the woman. She wasn’t with Grinsa, and she wasn’t nursing her baby. She was merely awake, avoiding him. She had no intention of sleeping during the night. The gleaner would have seen to that, for he was a Weaver as well and so understood the effort it took for Dusaan to reach across the Forelands and into her mind.
“Demons and fire!” the high chancellor murmured, opening his eyes again.
He should have anticipated this. Instead, he had wasted the day wallowing in his fear of the gleaner and his regret at having failed to kill Cresenne. He would have to find time during the day to kill her-she had to sleep sometime-though, having angered the emperor with his absence this day, he’d have little choice but to wait several days before making the attempt.
In the next moment, however, cursing his stupidity a second time, he realized that he might not have to wait at all. He closed his eyes once more and reached out toward Eibithar’s royal city a third time, this time seeking not Cresenne but the king’s archminister. He didn’t bother to make her climb the rise, though he took extra care in raising the brilliant white light behind him, as if expecting Grinsa to jump out from the shadows of the plain at any moment.
“Weaver,” she said. “I expected you.”
She had said something like this to him before, the night she opened her mind to him and fully bound herself to the movement. It had pleased him then. Tonight it did not. He had only thought to reach for her in the past few moments-that she had known he would need to do so before he did only served to make him more aware of how foolish he had been. Cresenne did this to him. It was even her fault that Paegar was dead. The sooner she died, the better.
“Then you know why I’ve come,” he said, his voice thick.
“I believe I do. It’s the woman, isn’t it? The one who betrayed you?”
“Yes. How long has she been there?”
“More than a turn, Weaver.”
More than a turn! He nearly struck the archminister, though he knew it wasn’t her fault. He should have contacted her sooner. Not long from now, the invasion would begin and Dusaan would begin in earnest his campaign to take the Forelands from the Eandi. Now was a time for vigilance, and instead he had grown dangerously lax.
“She’s told your king much about our movement?”
“She has, Weaver. Forgive me for not stopping her, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know if you wanted me to, or if perhaps this was a ruse of some sort. Only last night did I realize for certain that it wasn’t.”
“You needn’t apologize. What did your king have to say about what happened last night?”
“He was frightened, Weaver. The woman had told him that the movement is led by a Weaver, but until he saw what. . what you can do, I don’t believe he grasped what it means to face a Weaver in war.”
Dusaan nodded. “I suppose there’s some value in that.”
“Yes, Weaver.”
“She sleeps now during the day?”
“That’s her intention, yes.”
“And she was instructed to do this by the gleaner, the father of her child?”
He sensed some hesitation on her part, as if she didn’t wish to speak of Grinsa. There was fear in her mind as well, though of what he couldn’t be certain.
“Yes, Weaver.”
“You don’t wish to speak of this man. Why?”
“He frightens me, Weaver. He claims to be a Revel gleaner and nothing more. Yet he found a way to save the woman, and then he healed her wounds.”
“Trust your instincts where this man is concerned. They serve you well. He’s more than he claims to be. That’s all you need to know right now.”
“Yes, Weaver.”
Again, he felt that she was holding something back, as if there might have been more to her feelings for the gleaner than she was admitting. It occurred to him then that she might have been attracted to the man. Cresenne had fallen in love with him; wasn’t it possible that the archminister had as well. If she had, he didn’t want to know it. The gleaner had caused him enough trouble already.
“Can you get close to the woman?”
“I’ve befriended her, Weaver. When I heard that she had been with the movement and now intended to betray it, I thought it wise to convince her that I was a friend. After last night, she’s guarded throughout the day and night, and the gleaner is never far from her side. But I believe I can still see her. Why?”
“Because I want you to kill her.”
Keziah blanched and her hands began to tremble. “I don’t know that I can, Weaver.”
“Do you mean that the guards and gleaner will stop you, or that you might not be capable of killing her?”
She lowered her gaze. “Both.”
“You may need to befriend the gleaner as well. Win his trust and he may see fit to leave you alone with the woman. That will be your chance. As to your misgivings about killing, others in this movement have had to make similar sacrifices in the name of our cause. When the time comes, I’m certain you’ll find the strength to do as I command. If you fail, you’ll suffer as the woman has.”
“Yes, Weaver.”
“I want her death to appear to be my doing.”
“Your doing?”
“Yes. Give her a sleeping tonic and then smother her. The gleaner will blame me, just as he should. I want her death to be a warning to other Qirsi who would turn against our movement. And I want our enemies to know that I can reach them no matter where in the Forelands they might try to hide.”
“Yes, Weaver. Very well.”
Yet there it was again. Her fear, her reluctance. .
“What of her child, Weaver?”
And then he understood.
There was risk here as well. The child might well grow up to be a Weaver, and she would have cause to hate him, to want him dead and to oppose all that he would have built by then. But even Weavers didn’t live forever, and by the time Cresenne’s baby grew into her power, Dusaan would probably be dead already. Still, that wasn’t the true reason he would allow the child to live. Since learning of Cresenne’s pregnancy, he had seen this baby as the embodiment of the Qirsi future. She was the heir to all that he sought to build here in the Forelands, if not in name, then at least in spirit. He had wanted the woman to be his queen, not only because she was lovely but also because she seemed to carry the destiny of all their people within her body. Cresenne had forsaken the movement, and would die because of it. But Dusaan couldn’t bring himself to kill the child as well.