There was nothing Gershon could say. The answer was as plain to him as the single tear rolling down Keziah’s face. Kearney would never have let her do it. Not even with Gershon protecting her. Not even if it meant saving his kingdom.

Chapter Eighteen

Mertesse, Aneira

My dearest Yaella,

By the time you find this I will be far from Mertesse, sent on an errand by a mutual acquaintance. I don’t know how long I will be gone or where my journeys may take me, but know that you will never be far from my thoughts.

What few possessions I have, I leave to your care, hoping that if I do not return they may offer some comfort to you.

I love you more than you can know.

Shurik He left the note on her bed, tucking a corner of the parchment under her pillow. Then he glanced about the dark room one last time before slipping back into the corridor and making his way out of the castle. Several days had passed since his conversation with the Weaver and though some delay in his departure had been in keeping with the man’s instructions, Shurik now felt anxious to be on his way lest the Weaver come to him again and question why he had waited so long.

It was awkward enough having to leave with Yaella and the duke away from Castle Mertesse. As an exile from Eibithar, granted asylum by Rowan after the failed siege at Kentigern, Shurik lived in the fortress at the duke’s indulgence. No matter when he ventured forth from the castle it was bound to raise eyebrows. Had he left the morning after his vision of the Weaver, only a few days after Rowan’s departure for Solkara, it would have appeared that he had been awaiting just such an opportunity. Instead he remained in Mertesse for some time, and was fortunate enough to receive a message from Yaella midway through the waning. It was a brief note-she said merely that she missed him and looked forward to her return. But that was enough. As far as the duke’s mother and the castle guards were concerned, it might has well have been a frantic request for him to join Rowan’s party. Shurik never said to anyone that it was, but neither did he give them any cause to believe it wasn’t.

Upon receiving the message, he returned immediately to his chamber, placed a few items in a small satchel, and sent a servant to the stablemaster with instructions to have his mount ready before dawn the following day. No one questioned him. He never gave them the chance.

He steered his mount through the castle’s southern gate, riding away from the Tarbin and toward the distant, dark mass of Aneira’s Great Forest. The sun had not yet risen, and the damp cold air of night still lay heavy over the farms and open plains. A light snow had coated the land overnight, whitening the roofs and roads and settling among the grasses like sugar on some confection from Kentigern’s kitchens. The sky had cleared, and a few bright stars clung stubbornly to the night, as if defying the silver light that had begun to spread from the eastern horizon.

It had been several turns since Shurik last rode outside of a city, and longer still since he had done so alone. Indeed, he couldn’t remember having left Mertesse since Rowan’s grant of asylum. He felt free, and he savored the stillness of the morning and the simple beauty of the land. At the same time, he also felt more vulnerable than he had in years. He saw how the soldiers of Mertesse regarded him. He heard the contempt in Rowan’s voice whenever they spoke. He was a Qirsi traitor and none of the Eandi in Castle Mertesse would ever see him as anything more. Still, he had been granted the protection of the house, and he never feared for an instant that any of the revulsion he engendered would spill over into violence.

Alone on the open road, however, he had no one to protect him. In Eibithar he had always traveled with Aindreas, who never left Kentigern without at least a small company of soldiers. Even in Kentigern City, he had worn robes announcing to all who saw him that he served the duke. No one had dared threaten him.

He no longer wore ministerial robes. Rowan accepted his counsel from time to time, and allowed him to accompany Yaella to most of their discussions, but the duke had not seen fit to accept him formally as a servant of House Mertesse. Outside the castle, in the brightening glow of the Aneiran morning, he was neither minister nor traitor. He was merely a Qirsi rider.

He still spoke with the accent of Eibithar, but since leaving Kentigern he had learned to mask it. Road thieves, of which the Great Forest sheltered many, usually left his kind alone, as did soldiers, particularly those of the lesser houses. But in the end, he was only as safe as his sword and his magic could make him.

The ride from Mertesse to Solkara promised to be an easy one. The cities were less than twenty leagues apart, and even if the weather turned bad, the forest would offer him some shelter. The greatest danger lay not in anything he might encounter along the way, but rather in the man he would seek once he reached the royal city.

Shurik hadn’t seen the gleaner since the day Rouel’s siege of Kentigern failed. That day, when talk of the siege turned to the ease with which the Aneirans had defeated Kentigern’s famed gates, Fotir jal Salene, Curgh’s first minister, suggested that they had been weakened by shaping magic. Of course Shurik denied that he possessed such power; he had kept it from Aindreas for nearly ten years and wasn’t about to reveal the truth just then. As it happened, he didn’t have to. He still remembered, with a clarity that made him tremble, how Grinsa had looked at him, seeming to see right through his denials as only a Weaver could. Shurik had no choice but to flee the castle that very day. Had he not, he felt certain that the gleaner would have revealed his treachery.

In all, he spent no more than a few hours in the man’s company, but he would never forget Grinsa jal Arriet’s face, the high cheekbones and wide mouth, the pure white glow of his skin. As tall as he was and as powerfully built, he looked healthier and stronger than most Qirsi ever did. No, finding him would not be terribly difficult. On the other hand, if he truly was a Weaver, killing him would be nearly impossible. Not only could the Weaver sense any magic he might have, he could reach into Shurik’s mind and keep him from using that power, or worse, force him to use it against himself instead. As a younger man, he might have had the strength to resist a Weaver’s power, at least briefly. But Shurik was old now, at least for a Qirsi, and since exhausting himself in his efforts to weaken Kentigern’s great gates before the siege, he had found that his powers were diminished, his body quicker to tire. In more ways than one, he had paid a heavy price for his betrayal.

“If you try to kill him and fail,” the Weaver had told Shurik in his dream, “I’ll see to it that you die a slow, agonizing death.”

He wasn’t foolish enough to think this an idle threat. Which meant that all he had to do was find Grinsa and track him until the Weaver came to him once more. The Weaver had said nothing to him of money, nor had he paid him in advance, as he sometimes did. Still Shurik had little doubt that if he succeeded in this, his reward would be substantial.

The sun peered above the horizon a short time later, huge and orange, casting long shadows across the landscape and making the snow glitter like tiny shards of glass. Shurik stopped for a quick meal at a small inn by the road, before riding on. By midday, a new line of clouds had appeared in the west, advancing on the land like a grey army. The wind increased, and before long it was snowing again, the hard, sharp flakes biting at Shurik’s face like blackflies during the growing turns.

Long before he wanted to, Shurik was forced to stop again, at a village inn that appeared from the outside to be barely more than the unkempt home of a poor farmer. He had come no more than three leagues from Mertesse, and already the Qirsi was bone-weary. He longed for the comfort of his small chamber in Castle Mertesse, and he found himself wondering if he had grown too old to be of any use to the Weaver.