* * *
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, however, her hand trembling, she found that the chamber was unlocked. Peering inside, she saw no one. Had the Weaver been wrong about the location of the woman’s chamber? Had Yaella taken too long to reach the City of Kings? Had the woman left Audun’s Castle? She was nearly ready to leave the corridor, although she wasn’t certain where she would go next, when at last she heard someone approaching, light footsteps echoing softly in the nearby stairway.
A moment later the woman came into view.
The Weaver had told Yaella of Cresenne’s beauty, even confessing to her during her extraordinary dream that he had once thought to make this woman his queen. So she was prepared for that. Yaella wasn’t prepared, however, for just how young the woman appeared. Seeing Cresenne approach, Yaella’s resolve wavered, albeit for only a moment. Still, when she allowed herself to be seen and spoke the woman’s name, Yaella was shaking in every limb. The Weaver had wanted her to announce to Cresenne that he was responsible for her murder, as if the woman could have doubted such a thing.
“This is what becomes of those who betray the Weaver and his cause,” she was supposed to say, before striking the killing blow. But it had been all she could do just to say the woman’s name aloud; she couldn’t bring herself to say more. Instead she just leaped at her, moving faster and more nimbly than she had imagined she could.
For a moment, after Cresenne fell, Yaella could only stand there, staring down at her, watching the blood flow from her heart, like a dark river in flood. Then the sound of the child’s crying reached her and with it yet another memory from her last encounter with the Weaver.
“I don’t want the child harmed,” he said. A small grace, for she was certain that she could never have killed a babe, no matter who its father might be. “Take her with you if you can. Otherwise leave her there.”
The corridor was empty, and the Weaver had told her of a sally port through which she could leave the castle undetected. She bent quickly, gathering the babe in her arms, and with one last backward glance at Cresenne, she started toward the west end of the fortress.
She hadn’t even turned the nearest corner, however, when a man appeared before her. He was Qirsi-the fattest man of her race Yaella had ever seen-and he smiled a greeting when he first saw her. But then his eyes strayed to the child and he slowed his gait. Looking past her, he saw Cresenne, his pale eyes widening.
“Demons and fire!” he said, halting and blocking her way. “What have you done to her?”
She pulled her dagger free again and held it before her. The man appeared to falter at the sight of it, but only for the briefest moment.
“Give me the child!” he said. “Now!”
Yaella laid the blade on the babe’s throat. “I’ll kill her.”
Again he hesitated, glancing at Cresenne once more and licking his lips nervously, as if he saw his own future in her fate. He was sweating like an overworked horse and Yaella thought she could see his hands quaking. At last, though, he shook his head. “I don’t believe you will. Your masters sent you here for the babe. They’ll be angry if she dies.”
I don’t want the child harmed. This was probably no more than conjecture on the part of the fat man, but it was unnervingly accurate. Her eyes flicked to the child, who was screaming. A dark lump had swelled on the babe’s forehead, no doubt where she had struck the floor when her mother dropped her.