Midway through this fifth day, it began to snow, in heavy, wet flakes that clung to their clothes and hair. Before long they were soaked and Gnnsa was shivering with cold. Had they still been in the forest, they might have taken shelter among the trees and risked a fire, but the moor offered neither refuge from the storm nor kindling for a warming blaze.
“We should stop at the next village,” the gleaner called to Tavis, who was walking a few paces ahead of him.
The young lord turned just slightly, not enough to allow Gnnsa to see his face, but enough to indicate that he had heard. He gave a small nod, before facing forward again. A meager response, but more than he had offered in days.
Gnnsa quickened his stride, so that he was walking just behind the boy. He had apologized countless times since Mertesse, to no avail. Still, he briefly considered asking Tavis’s forgiveness once again.
“There are small towns throughout the moor,” he said instead. “None is likely to have more than one or two inns, but we should be able to find somewhere to stay.”
Nothing
“I know it’s cold, but can you walk a while longer, or do you need to rest?”
Again, no reply.
Gnnsa dropped back again, and they continued on in silence.
Several hours later, with the sky above them growing dark, they came at last to a small farming village that sat along a narrow stream, most likely a tributary of the Tarbin. The village consisted of a few homes, a smithy, a wheelwright’s shop, and a small marketplace that might have drawn a few peddlers in the warmer turns In most of the Forelands, a village of this size would not have had an inn, but this one, located in an area of the moor crossed with some frequency by those traveling between Mertesse and the Caenssan Steppe, had a single tavern with a few rooms for rent.
The innkeeper, a ruddy-faced Eandi man who made little effort to conceal his distaste for anyone with yellow eyes, refused at first to rent them a room. Eventually, however, his wife prevailed upon him to relent, pointing out that the inn had not seen any paying guests in nearly half a turn.
Tavis and Grinsa changed out of their wet clothes and ate a surprisingly fine meal of mutton stew, steamed roots, and fresh dark bread. Still the boy didn’t speak and Grmsa’s weak attempts to force a conversation left him increasingly frustrated.
They returned to their room and climbed into their beds, though Grinsa wasn’t at all tired. He left a candle burning, staring for a time at the sagging wooden ceiling. Stealing a glance at Tavis, he saw that the boy was awake also, his eyes trained on the small, bright flame.
“At least with you refusing to talk to me, I don’t have to listen to your weak attempts at sounding like an Aneiran.”
The young lord glared at him a moment, but didn’t answer.
“What do I have to do, Tavis?” Grinsa demanded, too frustrated to hold his tongue any longer “You want me to apologize again? Fine. I’m sorry. I know you want to avenge Bnenne’s death, but Shunk had to die, and I don’t think I could have reached him without getting myself killed, and you with me.”
Tavis let out a short sharp laugh. “So, you did it to save my life,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
“No. I probably would have left you at the inn. I did it to save myself, and Keziah. Is that what bothers you?”
The young lord turned away, his jaw tightening.
“I’ve tried to tell you all along that there’s more at stake here than your life and your family’s claim to the throne.”
“What? Your life?”
Grinsa sat up. “Stop it‘ You’re not nearly as stupid as you’re making yourself sound right now You couldn’t be You know of the conspiracy, you know what it’s done. We have to destroy it. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand that defeating these Qirsi is more important than any one of us?”
“The assassin killed for the conspiracy.”
“Yes. But as I told you that day in Mertesse, he’s nothing more than a hired blade. One day he kills for them, the next day he kills one of them. Shunk was the real threat.”
“Only to you.”
“Yes, to me! Who do you think is going to stop the conspiracy, you little fool? You? Your father? The movement is led by a Weaver, Tavis. A Weaver! And it’s going to take another Weaver to destroy him.”
He rubbed a hand across his brow, wondering how he could explain to the boy what it meant to go to war against his own people. The Eandi did it with some frequency though they didn’t seem to realize it. They saw themselves as Aneirans and Sanbiris and Eibitharians. Grinsa’s people, even those who served loyally in the courts, were Qirsi before they were anything else. This was how they viewed themselves; certainly it was how the Eandi saw them. Clearly, they weren’t all willing to join the conspiracy, to abandon their friendships with the Eandi and their loyalties to the realms in which they lived. But the Eandi, including Tavis, his father, and Kearney, spoke of civil war as if it were an unimaginable horror, without seeming to understand that this was precisely where the Qirsi of the Forelands were headed: a war pitting Qirsi against Qirsi, perhaps brother against brother.
Not long ago, as they crossed through the Aneiran wood, Grinsa had told Tavis of Carthach’s betrayal. He couldn’t begin to explain to the boy, however, how one man’s treachery, though well intentioned, had divided his people, how, nine hundred years later, it still divided them. Grinsa already hated the Weaver for what he had done to Keziah, yet he still didn’t relish the notion of leading the Eandi courts to war against him. The man was Qirsi, a Weaver, just as was Grinsa. The gleaner wanted to believe that he was nothing like this man, who had used his magic to cause Keziah such pain, who had bought murders with his gold. But Grinsa knew better. They were more alike than they were different. Even without seeing the Weaver’s face, he had seen his own reflection in the man’s shadow. It had been distorted, twisted, to be sure, but it was still recognizable.
“I’m not even certain that I can defeat him,” Grinsa said, his voice dropping. “But I’m the only one who has any chance against him.” He looked up, meeting the boy’s angry stare. “If the Weaver finds a way to destroy me first, everything else is lost. He doesn’t know my face, at least I don’t think he does. Shurik did, and so Shurik had to die, even if that meant denying you your vengeance and your name.”
“So the fate of all the Forelands rests solely on your shoulders?” the boy asked.
“It depends on a great many people,” he began again. “I-”
Tavis sat up. “No! That’s not what you said. You’ve told me twice now that you’re the only one who has any chance of defeating the Weaver. You really believe that, don’t you?”
Grinsa clamped his mouth shut for a moment, struggling to keep his anger in check. He had no desire to yell at the boy a second time. “I suppose the armies of the seven realms could defeat a Qirsi army if they managed to put their differences aside and fight as one. But the loss of life on both sides would be great.”
“So you’re saving lives now.” Tavis laughed again, though he was shaking his head. “You’re keeping all the people of the Forelands from destroying themselves. I’ve never heard such rot! You’re one man, Grinsa! I don’t care what powers you wield, you’re just one man. And I refuse to accept that you’re any more important to this war than my father or the king!”
“I don’t give a damn what you choose to believe! Nor do I care if you forgive me for what I did in Mertesse! I had thought that you were man enough now to grasp the significance of all that’s happened to you over the past few turns, but obviously I was wrong! You were a spoiled fool of a boy the day I met you and you remain one to this day! This is not about you, or me. This is about fighting a war against a man whose powers you can’t possibly understand, whose resources seem boundless, and whose army is unlike any fighting force seen in the Forelands for nearly nine centuries!”