“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.