She had made the mistake of giving voice to these questions the previous night, as she and Kayiv lay together in the moonlight and tangled bed linens, sated and breathless.
“Have you wondered if Dusaan is the Weaver?” she asked, staring at the fire as her pulse slowed.
“The high chancellor?”
Nitara winced. She rarely used the high chancellor’s name when speaking of him with anyone, especially Kayiv. She hadn’t meant to just then.
“Yes.”
Kayiv gave a small, sharp laugh, rolling off her and stretching out on the bed so that white Panya illuminated his skin.
“He’s no Weaver,” the minister said. He laughed again, though it sounded forced. “Two turns ago you thought he was little more than the emperor’s fool. You even said that his betrayal was worse than that of the other chancellors and ministers because he was intelligent enough to know better. Now you think he’s a Weaver?”
She shook her head and sighed, still gazing at the hearth. “Forget that I asked.”
They both were silent for some time, neither of them moving. Eventually Nitara began to wonder if Kayiv had fallen asleep. She would have liked to wake him, and tell him to leave. She didn’t really want to be alone, but neither did she wish to spend the night with him.
As it happened, he wasn’t asleep at all.
“Don’t you think it strange that nothing’s happened since we received the gold?” he asked suddenly. “Didn’t you expect that we would have been contacted by now?”
“I suppose.”
He said nothing, as if waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he sat up.
“That’s it? Just, “I suppose’?”
Nitara turned to face him. “What do you expect me to say, Kayiv? That I think the high chancellor was lying to us? That I expect at any moment to hear the emperor’s guards trying to break down my door so that they can carry us off to the dungeon?” She shrugged. “I don’t.”
“Then why haven’t we been asked to do anything? That’s what he said would happen next.”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Weaver has yet to think of any tasks for us. Maybe he has more important concerns than what to do with a pair of underministers in Curtell. I just don’t know. But if Du-” She looked away. “If the high chancellor was trying to betray us, he could have done it without the gold. If anything, I think our payments prove he was telling us the truth.”
“Have you spoken with him again since our last meeting?”
“You mean alone?”
He nodded.
“No. I don’t think he’d speak to one of us without the other.” She didn’t have to ask, but she knew that he’d expect it. “Have you?”
“No. But I’m not the one who keeps calling him Dusaan.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nothing.” He lay down once more, staring up at the stone ceiling.
She sensed his jealousy as if it were an odor. He reeked of it.
Once again, they lay still for several minutes, saying nothing, and once again Kayiv broke the silence, this time just as she was gathering the courage to tell him to leave.
“What makes you think he’s the Weaver?”
Nitara shrugged, no longer wishing to discuss the matter. “I don’t know. I was thinking aloud. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“But you did.”
“He’s the most powerful Qirsi in the largest, strongest realm in the Forelands. Who else would lead the movement?”
“A Weaver; any Weaver no matter his standing in the Eandi courts.”
Look at him, she wanted to say. How could he not be a Weaver? But instead she shrugged a second time. “You’re right. I was foolish to think it.” Anything to end their conversation, to end this night.
“I’m tired,” she said. “We should sleep.”
He leaned over to kiss her and she barely brushed his cheek with her lips. She didn’t so much as glance at him again, but she could feel him staring at her, no doubt looking hurt and angry.
“Maybe I should go.”
No doubt he wanted her to argue, to plead with him to stay.
“All right. I’ll see you in the morning when we meet with the high chancellor.”
He sat unmoving for another moment, then threw himself off the bed, dressed with wordless fury, and left her chamber, closing the door sharply behind him.
She felt a pang of regret, but it passed quickly. Soon she was asleep.
Nitara awoke to the sound of Harel’s soldiers training in the palace courtyard. She dressed slowly, enjoying her solitude and realizing with some surprise that she didn’t miss Kayiv at all. She heard the tolling of the midmorning bells and left her chamber, intending to make her way to the high chancellor’s ministerial chamber for the daily gathering of the chancellors and ministers. She hadn’t gone very far, however, when she met Kayiv in the corridor. Seeing her, he faltered in midstride, then continued past her, his eyes lowered and his jaw set.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He halted, though he wouldn’t face her. “Apparently the high chancellor isn’t well,” he said, his voice flat. “We’re gathering in Stavel’s chamber instead.” He began to walk away.
“What’s the matter with the high chancellor?”
“I don’t know.”
Is he ill? she wanted to ask. Is he going to be all right? But by now several of the emperor’s other Qirsi had entered the corridor, following Kayiv. Nitara had little choice but to do the same.
Without the high chancellor to lead them, their discussion foundered as might a ship in a blinding storm. They drifted from topic to topic, revisiting old, pointless arguments and accomplishing nothing at all. Stavel tried at first to keep the debate civil, but was soon bickering with the rest of them. Kayiv said nothing, sulking in the corner of the chamber farthest from where Nitara sat, his gaze occasionally flicking in her direction. She held her tongue as well, and when the discussion ended at last, she slipped from the chamber and returned to her own, wishing there were some way for her to learn what ailed the high chancellor.
Too restless to sit still, unwilling to risk a chance encounter with Kayiv or remain a prisoner in her chamber, she left the palace for the marketplace in Curtell city. There she passed much of the day wandering among the peddler’s carts and the stalls of the food vendors. It was a fair day, the sky bright blue and a warm breeze blowing down from the Crying Hills, but Nitara could think only of Dusaan. If he were a Weaver, he couldn’t truly be ill, could he? Surely a Weaver didn’t succumb to fevers as an Eandi or a common Qirsi might. He could heal himself. She wanted to believe this, but everywhere she walked, it seemed that a shadow followed. What if he died? What would happen to the movement? What would happen to her?
The minister finally returned to the palace just as night began to fall, and seeing a pair of guards in the corridor near her chamber, she approached them.
“How fares the high chancellor?” she asked.
Both men looked at her as though puzzled.
“He’s fine, so far as I know,” one of them said. “He’s with the emperor right now.”
Relief overwhelmed her, and she felt her face flush. Grateful for the dim light in the corridor, she thanked the men and hurried to her chamber.
She would go to him this night, she told herself. Having feared that she might lose him, she could no longer bear to keep from him her true feelings. But as the night went on, marked by the ringing of the twilight bells, and then the gate close, Nitara lost her nerve. She wanted to go to him, but she feared that he would turn her away, that he might think her foolish, or worse, weak. And too, she feared him. He was a Weaver, and so the most powerful Qirsi she had ever known.