David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

It was almost as if the emperor were punishing him for his absence that morning. All the Weaver wanted was to return to his chamber and await nightfall, so that he could be done with Cresenne and turn his attention fully to the gleaner.

“Tell me about the treasury.”

“What about it, Your Eminence?” trying to keep his tone light.

“We’ve a war to wage. My father always used to say that no weapon was more essential to a successful war than gold.”

“Quite true, Your Eminence. Your father was a great man.”

“I take it we have enough gold to wage and win this war.”

He should have known better, but he couldn’t resist giving voice to the first response that came to him. “You’ve enough gold in your treasury to fund two wars, Your Eminence.”

“Ean forbid it should come to that.”

Dusaan suppressed a smile. “Ean forbid.”

The master of arms arrived a few moments later, and as he and the emperor spoke of the training of soldiers and the poor fighting skills of the latest probationers, Dusaan had little choice but to stand and listen. Eventually, the three men walked to the palace’s great hall where they were joined by Harel’s wives for the evening meal. The emperor said little to Dusaan; once again the chancellor sensed that this was intended as punishment and nothing more.

The Weaver should have been able to endure the evening without effort, but knowing that Harel sought to teach him a lesson, he found himself suffering as if he were on a torture table. Every foolish statement the emperor made, every attempt at wisdom that came out as the trite truism of a child, every fawning compliment paid to the man by the master of arms grated on him until he thought he would shatter his teeth for the clenching of his jaw. The dinner lasted an eternity-it almost seemed that the emperor lingered over the meal, hoping to prolong Dusaan’s misery.

When at last it ended, the emperor returning to his sleeping chamber with the youngest of his wives, Dusaan nearly ran back to his own chamber. A freshly fed fire awaited him there, as did a basin filled with steaming water. He splashed his face repeatedly, as if to wash the ignominy of the evening from his skin, before settling into the large chair by his hearth. It was already well past the ringing of the gate closing bell. No doubt Cresenne was asleep.

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.