Free Seeds of Betrayal by David B. Coe Page B

She found the assassin she had hired to kill Brienne, she joined the Festival, she sat in every Qirsi tavern between Mertesse and Noltierre. Everywhere she went, she asked about him, and not subtly. She had done all the things he might expect her to do, and more. She had done everything but stand in the sanctuary bell towers and yell, “Cresenne ja Terba is here!” A blind man could have found her. If he’d been looking.
    He loved her. She was certain of it. It had to be the boy’s fault, that stubborn, spoiled brat of a lord. But for all the times she told herself this, there were twice as many when her chest ached as if someone had buried a dagger there. Even now, speaking with the Weaver, when she needed so desperately to hide her feelings, she could not keep the hurt from welling up again, like blood from a wound.
    “What is it, child?” the Weaver asked, clearly trying to mask his impatience.
    She shook her head, cursing the single tear that ran down her cheek. “Nothing.”
    “You’re worried that I’m angry with you.”
    Cresenne said nothing. She might be able to lie to him, but if he caught her, he’d kill her right then. And the baby, too. Not for the first time, she used her fear of him to mask her true thoughts.
    “I’m not,” he said. “I want to find this man, that’s all. I don’t believe he’s in Aneira.”
    “I-I don’t want to go to Caerisse,” she said in a small voice.
    He exhaled slowly, as if struggling to keep his ire in check. “Why not?”
    “The winds are already blowing cold from the north. The snows are going to be fierce this year. And I don’t want to be up on the steppe when my baby is born.”
    There was enough truth in this to conceal her real reason for wanting to stay in Aneira. Snow had already fallen on the steppe, and the cold turns up in Caerisse promised to be brutal. If she was going to travel with one of the festivals after her child came, she preferred to be at least somewhat comfortable.
    Besides, she knew that Grinsa was near. She sensed it, just the way she sensed that this baby she carried was going to be a girl. She’d gleaned nothing. She’d had no visions of Grinsa or the Curgh boy. But her body and her heart told her what her mind couldn’t. He was in Aneira. Perhaps she should have explained this to the Weaver, but she feared that he would understand all too well.
    “All right,” he said at length, just as she knew he would. When it came to this child, she could get him to agree to almost anything. “Remain in Aneira. Continue your search there. When the rains come and the air grows warmer, you’ll go to Caerisse.”
    “Of course. Thank you, Weaver.”
    He seemed to stare at her again, his wild white hair stirring in the wind, his features still masked by shadows from the brilliant light behind him.
    “If you have a girl,” he said, his voice softening once more, “I hope she looks just like you.”
    She will
. “Again, thank you,” Cresenne said, making herself smile.
    “We’ll speak again soon. If you find him, or hear anything of his whereabouts, remain in Kett, even if the Festival leaves. Make some excuse, but stay there. I don’t want to have any trouble finding you.”
    The dream ended abruptly and Cresenne opened her eyes to a room so dark she could barely see to the edge of her bed. The inn was quiet, as was the street outside her window. It must have been well past the midnight bells.
    “Damn him,” she whispered in the blackness. She needed to sleep more, but already she had begun to sift through her conversation with the Weaver, searching for anything that might tell her who he was and where she could find him.
    She felt the baby move and smiled, placing a hand on her belly.
    “Are you awake, too?”
    She sat up, propping up her pillow against the bedroom wall and leaning back against it. These encounters with the Weaver always woke the child. Cresenne thought it must be because of how her body reacted to fear-the