Seeds of Betrayal

Chapter Seven

City of Kings, Eibithar

It all comes back to Thorald, Your Majesty,“ Wenda said, her eyes fixed on the king, who stood motionless before the fire. ”In that respect nothing has changed. As long as Tobbar continues to support you, and remains above the dispute between Curgh and Kentigern, you should be able to keep the houses from going to war.“

Dyre sat forward, his pale eyes flicking from Wenda to the king and then to Keziah. “But Tobbar isn’t well. If he dies before these matters are resolved, there’s no telling what Thorald will do.”

“Actually, it seems quite clear to me,” Paegar said. “Tobbar has two sons in Shanstead, both of whom have much to gain from Thorald’s return to supremacy. I expect that if Tobbar dies any time soon, they’ll immediately throw the weight of their house behind Aindreas.” He turned to Gershon. “Wouldn’t you agree, swordmaster?”

Keziah might as well have not been in the room. She might have been archminister to the king of Eibithar, but to Kearney’s other advisors, she was nothing. Wenda, Paegar, and Dyre had all served as ministers under Aylyn the Second, the late king. Natan jal Samara, Aylyn’s archminister, left Audun’s Castle when the old king died, having served him for nearly seventeen years. One might have expected the other ministers to do the same, but Kearney chose to keep them on, and at the time it seemed a wise decision. Kearney, the former duke of Glyndwr, ascended to the throne under the most extraordinary of circumstances, agreeing to lead the land after it became clear that this was the only way to avoid a war between

Javan of Curgh and Aindreas of Kentigern. Recognizing that some might question his claim to the throne, since under Eibithar’s Rules of Ascension he was not the rightful king, Kearney thought it best to continue the practices of his predecessor as much as possible.

But rather than raising Wenda to archmimster, making Paegar and Dyre his high ministers, and bringing in his own Qirsi as underministers, Kearney made Keziah his lead advisor, just as she had been in Glyndwr. No one could find fault with the king for doing this. He also made Gershon Trasker, his swordmaster in Glyndwr, the commander of the King’s Guard. Such was the prerogative of a new ruler.

While the other Qirsi accepted the new king’s choice, however, they did not accept her. When she spoke, they listened, and when Kearney agreed with her counsel, they yielded to his judgment. But they never asked her opinion, and they never deferred to her in discussions such as this one, though it would have been proper, given her position. They wouldn’t even look at her, unless it was to glare at her responses to the king’s questions. In recent days, over the past turn or so, Paegar had begun to show some signs of accepting her. But this was just a beginning, and a small one at that. Kearney had made her the most powerful Qirsi in the kingdom, and Keziah found herself afraid to so much as speak without leave from the king.

Gershon, who distrusted all Qirsi, hated her most of all, and did nothing to help her. Indeed, he seemed to relish her discomfort. While they still lived in Glyndwr, Kearney and Keziah had been lovers, sharing a dangerous and forbidden love for which the swordmaster blamed her and not his duke. Keziah had hoped that coming to the City of Kings might force them to put their differences aside and allow them to build on the progress they made during their ride to Kentigern, meager though it was. But if anything, the swordmaster had grown more protective of Kearney and thus more hostile toward her.

For his part, the king appeared to be oblivious of the politics of his court, or perhaps he just felt that it was up to Keziah and the others to make peace with each other without compromising their oaths to serve him. Their love affair ended with Kearney’s ascension-it was one thing for an Eandi duke in the remote highlands of Glyndwr to love a Qirsi woman, he explained at the time, but it was quite another for a king to do so. She still remembered their last night together, in the Glyndwr Highlands, shortly before Kearney’s army marched to Kentigern, with a vividness that made her skin tingle.

“I agree that Tobbar’s sons have less interest than he in recognizing Glyndwr’s claim to the throne,” Gershon said, glancing at Paegar before turning his gaze to the king. “But they have much to lose if this comes to civil war.”

Kearney looked up from the fire. “Explain.”

“When you ascended to the throne, we assumed that both Javan and Aindreas had abdicated in your favor. That’s what you and the others agreed to in Kentigern. And so it followed that your investiture was consistent with the Rules of Ascension. But since then, Aindreas has claimed that he never agreed to this, that the bargain struck that night involved only you and Javan. In effect, Kentigern claims that you and Curgh stole his crown, and he’s convinced the duke of Galdasten of this as well. In their eyes, with you as king, the Rules of Ascension are dead. This leaves them free to challenge your authority and even wage war against you without it being treason under the law.”

Dyre nodded. “It also allows the lords of Galdasten to lay claim to the throne again, without waiting any longer.”

Keziah had to agree that this made a good deal of sense, though she still found Aindreas’s deception infuriating. Not only did it allow Aindreas to justify his defiance of the new king, but it allowed the House of Galdasten to move beyond the tragedy of 872, when a madman brought the pestilence to Galdasten Castle, killing the duke and duchess as well as their children. Under the Rules of Ascension, the House of Galdasten would have had to wait four generations before being recognized once more in the Order of Ascension. Abandoning the rules ended their wait.

“All this may be true,” Wenda said. “But where does that leave Thorald.?”

“Under the Rules of Ascension,” Gershon answered, “Thorald has been Eibithar’s preeminent house. Tobbar’s sons, particularly the older one, won’t be inclined to give up that standing.”

Keziah cleared her throat awkwardly, drawing their gazes, including Kearney’s. Feeling their eyes upon her, she nearly held her tongue. I’m archminister, she told herself. I have a right to speak here, and a responsibility as well.

“With the deaths of the elder and younger Filib,” she said, “Thorald has no immediate claim to the throne either-that’s why Javan was in line to be king. Won’t Tobbar’s sons be as willing as the duke of Galdasten to turn away from the rules?”

“Maybe,” Gershon said. “It depends upon whether their own ambitions outweigh their loyalty to the house and their ambitions for their children. Their situation is different from that in Galdasten. Kell of Galdasten had no brother. His death nearly killed the entire family line. Filib the Elder had Tobbar, so the damage wasn’t as great. Tobbar’s sons can’t claim the throne, but they need only wait one generation more. Marston’s son can rule the land, and if he does, the younger boy’s son becomes duke of Thorald rather than merely thane of Shanstead.”

Keziah nodded, then rubbed a hand across her brow. Since Kearney became king, she had spent a good deal of time poring over the Rules of Ascension, trying to anticipate ways in which Glyndwr’s enemies might seek to subvert the house’s new power. Yet she still found the rules arcane beyond comprehension. They were inordinately detailed, providing for nearly every contingency, and therein lay their strength. The rules assured that the noble houses of Eibithar would always have a method by which to select a new king, even under the most trying of circumstances. At the same time, they allowed for some sharing of power among the kingdom’s major houses, so that one family would not be able to hold the throne for centuries at a time, as had the Solkarans in Aneira and the Enharfes in Caerisse. Recently though, Keziah had begun to wonder if all the time the nobles of Eibithar spent fighting over the rules did more to undermine the kingdom’s stability than the rules did to guard it.

“Do we have someone speaking with Tobbar’s sons?” the king asked, looking first at Gershon, and then at the ministers, his eyes finally coming to rest on Keziah.

“We send messages to Tobbar regularly, Your Majesty,” the archminister said. “We rely on the duke to see to his sons.”

Kearney frowned. “But the duke is ill. From all I’ve heard, he may be dying. Wouldn’t we be foolish to ignore the sons until after the father is dead?”

“It would be… inappropriate for us to send messages directly to either the thane of Shanstead or his brother, Your Majesty,” Wenda said. “It might imply that we distrust the duke. At the very least it would indicate that we no longer consider him the leader of the House of Thorald.”

Kearney threw up his hands. “Then don’t allow the message to come directly from the throne. Use one of our allies. Use Lathrop.”

“The duke of Tremain, Your Majesty?”

“Yes. Ask him to contact Marston. He shouldn’t mention that he’s acting at my behest, but we need him to get some sense of where the thane and his brother stand.”

“Tobbar will see through that immediately,” Gershon said.

“No doubt,” the king agreed. “But he’ll also understand why we’re doing it. We don’t need Thorald and his sons as allies in this. As long as Thorald refuses to take sides, Aindreas can’t challenge us. But if the brothers Shanstead sympathize with Kentigern and Galdasten, we need to know, so that we can make plans to defend ourselves and the houses standing with us.”

Wenda nodded. “That seems a wise course, Your Majesty.”

“Will you see to it, Archminister?” Kearney asked, facing Keziah once more. “I’d like the message dispatched before nightfall.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

“Very good,” the king said. He glanced around the chamber. “Is there anything else?”

No one spoke, and after a moment Kearney gave a single nod. “Then we’ll meet again in the morning.”

The ministers stood and started to leave, as did Gershon.

“Archminister,” the king called as Keziah reached the door. “A word? ”

She cast an uneasy look at the others, all of whom were staring at her. “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said, returning to her chair.

“You understand what I want in this message?” the king asked when he and Keziah were alone.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, knowing this couldn’t be the only reason he had called her back.

Kearney opened his mouth as if to say something, then shook his head and turned away, looking hurt and just a bit angry.

He had told her several times that he didn’t like her calling him “Your Majesty.”

“It makes me feel that I’ve lost you,” he told her on one occasion. “When we’re with others, I understand that you have to. But when we’re alone…”

When we’re alone, she wanted to say, it’s the only way I can remind myself that you don’t love me anymore. He still looked the same, with a youthful face and brilliant green eyes beneath a shock of silver hair. They still saw each other every day and she still dreamed of his touch at night. Yes, they were in Audun’s Castle, and yes, Kearney wore the jeweled circlet on his brow, but it would have been so easy for her to forget that their love had ended. She needed to address him formally for the same reason Kearney hated it: so that she’d know she had lost him forever.

“I trust you’re well,” he said after a brief silence.

“Yes, Your-” She let out a slow breath. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He glanced at her briefly, looking uncertain. “Do you think Thorald can be convinced to support us?”

“Only if it serves them. You’re a young man, and you have an heir. Under the rules, Glyndwr will hold the throne for as long as the line of heirs continues uninterrupted. Already they can see that their wait will be a long one. Gershon may believe they’ll be slow to abandon the rules because of Thorald’s position among the houses, but I’m less certain.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

She shrugged, gazing toward the fire. Five turns ago she could have explained it to him, but now he had other burdens. Her problems paled beside those of Eibithar and her king.

“It’s not like you to lower your sword, Kez, especially where Gershon is concerned.”

Keziah smiled. He hadn’t called her that in a long time.

“I saw no reason to argue the point,” she said. “The truth is, none of us knows what Tobbar will do, much less Marston and his brother. Perhaps after we’ve heard back from Lathrop we’ll have a better sense of what we can expect from Thorald and Shanstead.”

The king nodded, his brow furrowing beneath the violet jewel on his crown. “Perhaps.”

They fell silent again, the king standing near his desk, and Keziah watching him from the chair. Whatever it was he had called her back to discuss clearly made him uneasy. But it wasn’t until he finally spoke that she understood why.

“Have you had word from your friend?” he asked, his eyes flicking in her direction for just an instant.

“My friend?” she repeated.

“The gleaner.”

It took her a moment to realize that he meant Grinsa, who was more than just her friend and a good deal more than a mere gleaner. Grinsa jal Arriet was a Weaver, a Qirsi who could bind together the powers of many Qirsi and wield all their magic as if it were his own. Such was the fear of Weavers among the Eandi that ever since the Qirsi Wars centuries ago, Weavers and their families had been executed upon being discovered. This explained why even Kearney, whom Keziah still loved as she had no other man, only knew Grinsa as her friend. In fact he was her brother, though, because of Qirsi naming customs, by which sons carried their mother’s name, and daughters their father’s, this was easy to conceal.

When Kearney first met Grinsa in Tremain during the growing turns, the king had sensed the power of the love they shared, and had actually been jealous. Keziah couldn’t help but notice, just from the way he asked about Grinsa, that a residue of that jealousy remained to this day. Maybe she hadn’t lost him entirely after all.

“No, I’ve heard nothing from him in some time.”

Kearney twisted his mouth, as if uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“I thought maybe with the Revel in the city…”

“He’s not with the Revel anymore. He’s with Lord Tavis.”

The king nodded. “I know. Do you have any way of contacting him?”

He contacts me in my dreams, as Weavers do. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.” She watched him as he squatted to stir the fire. “You’re concerned about Tavis?”

“Of course,” the king said without looking at her. “But more than that, I’m eager to learn if they’ve found Brienne’s killer. If they can prove Tavis’s innocence, we might end this conflict between Curgh and Kentigern before it turns to war.”

“I suppose we might,” she said, though she found herself wondering if it was too late for that. Even if there were a way to prove beyond any doubt that the Curgh boy hadn’t killed Lady Brienne of Kentigern, her death and all that followed it had left scars on both houses. Their hatred for each other ran deep; bridging that rift would take time.

“Isn’t there any way to find him?” Kearney asked, looking back at her, his face ruddy from the heat of the fire. “Is there no one to whom you can send a message?”

“I don’t even know where they’ve gone. Before he left, Grinsa said something about going to Aneira, but he didn’t tell me more. And while I may be archminister to Eibithar’s king,” she added with a small smile, “that doesn’t carry much weight with the Aneirans.”

Kearney tried to smile, but he just looked pained, like a man too aware of his own powerlessness to find humor in the limitations of those who served him.

“If you hear anything, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course.”

They remained that way for several moments, their eyes locked. Finally Keziah stood, looking away as she did.

“I’ll see to that message,” she said. “The one to Lathrop.”

“Thank you.”

She crossed to the door quickly and pulled it open. Glancing back one last time, she saw that Kearney was stirring the fire again, his lips tightly pressed together. She couldn’t begin to guess what he was feeling, which scared her more than anything else.

There were times, more often than he cared to admit, when Paegar felt like a coward in his first battle. Standing by the door of his quarters waiting for the archminister to return from her conversation with Kearney, the minister smiled ruefully at the image. It wasn’t just that he wanted to survive what he knew was coming. Above all else, he wished to make it through each day without being noticed by anyone, neither his allies nor his enemies. If he could have made himself invisible, like some mischievous demon from the Underrealm, he would have done it in an instant. Failing that, he did all he could to appear as ordinary as a chair or a table. He never allowed himself to arrive late for the king’s daily discussions, but neither did he reach Kearney’s chambers too early. He said little, but he always said something, so as not to make himself conspicuous with his silence. Most important, he did everything in his power to avoid the Qirsi healer with whom he had conspired to kill King Aylyn during Adriel’s Turn.

Murdering the old king certainly had been a coward’s act. Aylyn had been so weak, so lost to life already, that it barely counted as a murder at all. Paegar might have placed the pillow over the king’s face to smother him, but the old man offered no resistance. For all the high minister knew, Aylyn may have been dead already.

Still, that night had haunted his sleep ever since. He dreamed of the murder quite often, and every time it was the same. He laid the kerchief over the king’s mouth and nose, lifted the pillow, and placed it down on Aylyn’s face, pressing harder and harder until he was leaning on the old king with all his weight. At first, just like the actual murder, Aylyn offered no resistance. But then suddenly, a mind-twisting pain ripped through Paegar’s gut and he staggered backward to find the king’s dagger buried hilt-deep in his belly. Looking up, he saw the pillow and kerchief fall away, revealing the king’s face, his eyes wide open and a fierce grin on his pale lips.

Invariably the minister awoke soaked with sweat, his heart pounding against his chest and tears dampening his cheeks. Sleep was lost to him for the rest of the night. All he could do was sit in the darkness, choking back his sobs and hoping that no one passing by his chamber door would hear. He dreaded the dream as the wife of a drunken brute might dread a beating; the longer he waited, the more certain he grew that it would happen again soon.

Yet, when he lay down to sleep each night and prayed to Shyssir for gentle visions, it wasn’t this dream he had in mind, but rather another that he feared even more. The vision of the Weaver. The leader of the Qirsi movement had only appeared to him twice, once to ask the minister to join his cause and a second time to tell him that the king had to die. To this day, he wondered how the Weaver had known to find him. Certainly one of the others had mentioned his name, but that didn’t really change the question. How had they known that he would take their gold and betray his king? How could they have known that his loyalties to both Aylyn and Eibithar were so tenuous when he hadn’t realized it himself? He still recalled the night he returned from one of the city’s sanctuaries-he no longer remembered which one, though he often tried, thinking it important somehow- to find a small leather pouch on his bed. It was filled with five-qinde pieces, sixteen of them, more gold than he earned in an entire year as the king’s minister.

That night he fell into a vision of a windy plain, and on that plain, at the top of a steep rise, he found the man who would thereafter control his life. At first he thought it a simple dream, a fantasy brought on by the mysterious gift, and even after the Weaver spoke to him of the gold, he failed to grasp that it was anything more. Only when the Weaver hurt him, wrapping an unseen hand around his throat and squeezing until Paegar thought he would die, did he understand that all of it was real. When he dared to ask why he had been chosen, the Weaver said only that he was one of the fortunate ones, that he had a choice. His service to the cause would be rewarded with riches; his refusal to serve would result in a slow, painful death.

For a time he served merely by giving information to others who contacted him on the Weaver’s behalf. In return, he received small payments of gold. The night after he killed Aylyn, he found more than one hundred qinde in his chamber. He still didn’t know who paid him or how the courier delivered the gold. But the Weaver remained true to his word- Paegar served, and he was paid. He could only assume that if he ever defied the Weaver he would die.

Thus, he lived in constant fear of having to take another life on behalf of the cause. For though he managed to murder an ailing old man who was already on his deathbed, and who had no wife or young children to mourn him, Paegar couldn’t bear the thought of having to kill this new king. The minister owed nothing to Kearney, nor did he care if it fell to one of the others to assassinate him. But he hadn’t the stomach for it himself.

It no longer bothered him that he was a coward. In his youth it had been the source of much shame, but as he grew older he began to accept it as a part of who he was, like his intelligence and his various magics. If nothing else, Paegar knew, it would allow him to live a long life, at least by Qirsi standards.

Unless the Weaver had other plans for him. He felt certain that the Weaver would see no virtue in his cowardice, but rather would view it as an impediment to Paegar’s ability to serve the movement, perhaps even as cause to rid himself of the minister. So Paegar had decided that he needed to make himself indispensable to the Weaver. Not as a killer, since his talents didn’t lie there, but in some other way. And he had to do so quickly. It was only a matter of time before the Weaver came to him again. Too much time had passed since their last conversation, and as with his disturbing dream of Aylyn’s murder, Paegar knew he would have to wait only so long for the next one.

For more than a turn he had struggled to find some task that would keep him in good stead with the Weaver. The gold left for him after Aylyn’s murder had been payment for the killing, but he knew the Weaver well enough to understand that it had also been intended as incentive to do more.

“I want those who serve the cause to go beyond my instructions,” the Weaver told him the very first night they spoke. “I expect them to work on behalf of this movement at all times.”

He knew better than to hope the Weaver would never ask him to kill again. If he found another way to serve the movement, however, one that even the Weaver himself could not have imagined, he might forestall the next murder for at least a short while. But what?

The answer finally came to him by chance, after he overheard a conversation between Gershon Trasker, Kearney’s ill-tempered swordmaster, and Leilia, the queen. Gershon and the king’s wife were in the corridor near Kearney’s quarters, and Paegar had just descended the stairs of the prelate’s tower. Hearing them speak, he kept himself in the shadows by the doorway and strained his ears to listen. Much of what they said held little interest for him. There was to be a feast the following night, and Gershon, always concerned for the king’s safety, had asked to arrange some of the seating. Near the end of their discussion, however, Leilia said something that caught the minister’s attention.

“I assume that the Qirsi whore will be there.”

“Yes, my lady,” the swordmaster answered.

“I want her as far from me and as far from Kearney as possible.”

“The king is welcoming the duke of Aratamme, my lady. The duke will have his first minister by his side, and it’s customary for the king’s archminister to sit with the ranking Qirsi of a visiting noble.” He seemed to hesitate briefly. “I assure you, my lady, their… trysts are over.”

“I don’t care if they’re over, and I don’t care if the queen of Sanbira herself is coming!” the queen said, her voice growing shrill. “I don’t want that woman at our table!”

“To have her sit anywhere else would raise questions, my lady, questions that might be… awkward for both you and the king.”

A long pause followed. At last Leilia muttered a most unqueenly curse. “Fine,” she said. “Just put her at the end of the table. I don’t want to have to see her, much less speak with her.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Their conversation ended a short time later and they walked off in opposite directions, the queen heading toward her chambers and the swordmaster entering Kearney’s. Paegar had been on his way to speak with Keziah, Wenda, and Dyre, but he remained where he was for a long time, hidden in the shadows, his back leaning against the rough stone of the tower’s inner wall.

One didn’t have to be a scholar to make sense of what he had just heard. The king and the archminister were lovers, or at least they had been. From what he knew of the king, Paegar found it hard to believe that Kearney would have risked a forbidden love, even as the duke of a remote house on the Caerissan Steppe. But much of what he had observed of the king and his minister over the past several turns made far more sense in the context of a failed love affair. There was a sadness to Keziah that went far beyond anything that could be explained by the treatment she had received from her fellow ministers. For his part, the king’s gaze often seemed to linger too long on the archminister during their discussions. On several occasions, Paegar found Kearney staring at Keziah’s face long after she had finished speaking. He hadn’t given it much thought before. Keziah was a beautiful woman, with a round, pretty face, pale yellow eyes, and long white hair that she always wore tied back in twin braids. Paegar had allowed that the king might be taken with her, as he himself was. But until this day, he had never guessed that they might share something more. Once confronted with the possibility, however, the minister could only rail at himself for failing to see it sooner.

Here was the prize he could offer to his Weaver. Wouldn’t the leader of the Qirsi movement be interested to know that the archminister of Eibithar’s new king had been the man’s lover? Wouldn’t the Weaver find some way to use such information, and wouldn’t he reward handsomely the man who first brought it to him?

But his thoughts didn’t stop there. What if Paegar could do more? What if by the time the Weaver entered his dreams again, the minister had already started turning the archminister to the Qirsi cause? Perhaps the king had ended their love cruelly, or maybe the hostility of the other ministers had left her resentful of both them and the king they served. He could see already that she and Gershon mistrusted one another, and no doubt she hated Leilia as much as the queen hated her. As far as Paegar could tell, Keziah lived as an exile, friendless, loveless, and joyless. To this point, he had done nothing but contribute to her pain. The other ministers resented the king’s decision to pass over Wenda and make Keziah archminister, so Paegar had treated her with disdain as well. To befriend her would have been to draw attention to himself.

Now, though, he saw how much might be gained by making himself the archminister’s confidant. There still were risks, but the possible rewards seemed too great to be ignored.

He started slowly, so as not to appear too obvious. Two days after overhearing the queen’s remarks, when Keziah arrived for their daily audience with Kearney, Paegar allowed his gaze to meet hers and nodded a greeting. Even this small kindness seemed to surprise her, and she hesitated for an instant before nodding in return. A few days later, the minister arranged what would appear to Keziah to be a chance encounter in the castle corridors. Again, he didn’t do much-he had to build her trust slowly, as one might win the affections of a feral cat. He merely nodded to her as they passed one another, adding, “Good day, Archminister,” almost as an afterthought. Keziah murmured a reply, and Paegar found himself wondering if he had already pushed her too far too quickly.

The following day, however, when they met again in Kearney’s chambers, the archminister nodded to him first, offering a small smile as well. Paegar struggled to keep himself from looking too pleased as he returned the nod. But his heart raced like that of a young man in love. It had begun. He no longer wondered if he could win her trust; the question now was how soon.

Fighting his excitement and his eagerness to build on these successes, the minister forced himself to avoid her. For much of Bian’s waning, he refused to speak with her again. He even went so far as to argue a point with her in front of the king and the other ministers, though it required that he take the lead role in that day’s discussion. Early in the new turn, however, he began once more to extend small kindnesses to her. He nodded to her at the start of each audience, and occasionally offered a smile if something in the discussion struck him as humorous. A second “chance” encounter, this one near the ministerial chambers, included not just a “good day,” but a “hope you’re well,” besides. The following day he managed to arrive at the king’s door just as she did and, bidding her good morning, held the door open for her, smiling as she stepped past him into the chamber.

All of which led to this day. He would have preferred to build to this over a few more days, but hearing the king ask Keziah to remain with him after the audience ended, Paegar realized that he could wait no longer. If Kearney began to turn to her for more counsel, or-gods forbid it-rekindled her passion for him even in the smallest way, all would be lost. He had to take the next step now.

Her quarters, like those of all the king’s ministers, were on the same corridor as his, albeit at the far end. If she returned here directly from Kearney’s chambers, she would pass by his bedchamber. So Paegar stood by the door, waiting and listening. For a long time he heard nothing, until he began to fear that he had miscalculated and that she had gone elsewhere after speaking with the king. At last, however, he heard the faint slap of footsteps on the stairs of the nearest tower. A moment later, she stepped into the corridor.

He waited until she had just passed his door before pulling it open and stepping out of his chamber.

Keziah turned at the sound and offered a small smile, though clearly something troubled her.

“Archminister,” he said, smiling in return as he closed his door. He rubbed his arm and frowned. “These corridors get rather cold this time of year. Especially when the wind blows off the steppe.”

She nodded, appearing unsure as to how to respond. “Yes,” she finally said. “I suppose they do.”

“Is everything all right, Archminister?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“You seem… distracted. And after the king asked you to remain, I feared that perhaps something had happened with respect to Thorald, or even worse, Kentigern.”

“No,” she said. “There’s nothing. He just wanted to speak with me about some changes he’s been considering with the ducal tithes.”

During the past turn, as he first started trying to win her trust, Paegar had wondered what powers the archminister possessed. If that was the most convincing lie she had to offer, he felt reasonably certain that delusion wasn’t one of them.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m relieved to hear it was nothing more.” He smiled again and started toward the tower stairs. “Good day, Archminister.”

“Good day.”

He let her get almost all the way to her door before calling to her again. “I was on my way to the kitchen,” he said. “I didn’t eat before we spoke with the king. Would you care to join me?”

Paegar saw her hesitate. She even took a step back in his direction, before stopping herself.

“Thank you, High Minister. It’s kind of you to ask.” She paused again, chewing her lip. One might have thought he had asked her to leave Kearney and serve the emperor of Braedon. “I really should return to my quarters, though,” she said. “I’ve a message to the duke of Tremain that I need to compose. Perhaps another time?”

It was just the response he expected. The only surprise was that she gave his offer so much thought.

“Of course, Archminister. Another time.”

He turned away and descended the stairs, hearing her door open and close as he did. Only then did he allow himself a grin. To anyone watching, it would have seemed an insignificant encounter, a meaningless invitation politely refused. Paegar knew better, however. He had seen her waver as she weighed his proposal. He had seen her cheeks color slightly when she asked if they might sup together another time. She was starved for friendship and he had offered her sustenance. It would still take time, but already he felt certain that he had her. The greatest danger lay not in anything she might do, but rather in his own zeal. He couldn’t rush this. She was lonely, to be sure, but she was also clever. He risked all by trying to ingratiate himself too quickly. Still, he had already begun to plan their next encounter, feeling certain that he could build on this one.

“Let the Weaver come,” he whispered, crossing the castle courtyard to the kitchen tower. “I have a prize for him.”