“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.”