He couldn’t blame all of his troubles on others, he knew. His own carelessness had forced him to kill the high minister in the City of Kings. He still didn’t understand how he had managed to let the man see his face.

“Of course you do,” he murmured to himself, pausing over the accounting and rubbing his brow.

It was the woman. Cresenne. He had allowed himself to imagine her as his queen, though it should have been clear to him that she still loved this other man, the one who had fathered her child. Hearing Paegar speak of his love for Kearney’s archminister, Dusaan had been reminded of his own unrequited affections and his pain and rage at learning that she still longed for the gleaner. Before he understood fully what had happened, the light behind him had faded and Paegar had looked upon his face, he had seen the plains of his dreams for what they were, the moors near Ayvencalde. There had been nothing for Dusaan to do but kill the man.

Which meant that he needed someone new in the royal city of Eibithar.

Paegar had given him a name before he died. Keziah ja Dafydd. Another minister, another Qirsi who had pledged herself to the service of an Eandi noble. Still, the Weaver sensed that this one might be different, that she might be more. For one thing, she was a woman, and he had found over the years that among the ministers, the women served him far better than did the men. Enid in Thorald, Yaella in Mertesse, Abem in the court of Sanbira’s queen, in Yserne; all of them had proven their worth time and again. Even Cresenne, who had caused him so much anguish as of late, had been more valuable to him than the most powerful men he had turned. Keziah, he believed, would serve him just as well as the others.

But not only was she a woman, she was also, according to Paegar, the king’s lover. At least she had been before he took the throne. Theirs had been a forbidden love, which meant that it most likely had been a deep love as well. Even for a duke and his first minister, the risks of an affair between a Qirsi woman and Eandi man would have been too great for it to be anything less. Losing him had to have been a terrible blow, enough perhaps to leave her bitter and eager for vengeance. Such had been Paegar’s hope, and Dusaan found that he wanted to prove the man right, as a way of honoring him. He smiled at the thought. These were not sentiments he would usually have allowed himself, but in this instance they seemed justified.

Still, though she might hate her king now, enough perhaps to betray him without other incentive, the Weaver needed to be prepared to pay her. He had noticed that most of the women he turned did not have the same voracious appetite for gold that he observed in so many of the men. But neither did they refuse it when it was offered to them.

Finding gold in Braedon’s treasury had never been a problem for him. The challenge lay in turning the gold to his own purposes without raising the suspicions of the emperor or his other Qirsi. Fortunately, an empire as vast as Braedon had no shortage of expenses. By adding a few extra qinde to the allocation for the Braedon garrison on Enwyl Island, in the Gulf of Kreanna, for instance, or increasing slightly the allowance for the naval presence near Mistborne Island, at the top of the Scabbard, he could make the accounting look reasonable while creating a pool of gold which he could use without drawing attention to his activities. He never sent the garrisons or naval forces less than they needed, so no one ever complained. And since requests for gold came directly to him, no one else ever noticed the discrepancies.

Dusaan sent this extra gold to a sea merchant who frequented the ports of Ayvencalde, Bishenhurst, and Finkirk. For centuries, the empire had used merchants as spies to keep watch on the other six kingdoms of the Forelands. None of the emperor’s couriers would have thought twice about delivering gold to this man. That he was Qirsi would have seemed to them a curiosity and nothing more.

His name was Tihod jal Brossa and he was the one man in the world whom Dusaan considered a true friend. They had grown up together in valley of the Rimerock River near Muelry. Their fathers, unlike most of the Qirsi in Braedon, had refused to work in the Eandi courts or in Braedon’s Carnival. Instead, Tihod’s father farmed and Dusaan’s father served the nearby villages as a healer. Neither man ever grew wealthy. Indeed, there were many times when Dusaan’s mother pleaded with her husband to seek a position in one of Muelry’s lesser courts. But throughout their lives, both men maintained a stubborn pride in their ancestry and in their powers as well, limited though they were. They instilled this same pride in their sons, telling them tales of the ancient Qirsi warriors at bedtime, and taking it upon themselves to begin training the boys in the ways of magic well before their Determinings. While so many Qirsi children grew up ashamed of their white hair and yellow eyes and slight builds, Dusaan and Tihod saw these as signs of dignity. The rest of the children, Qirsi and Eandi, called them arrogant, but the boys didn’t care. They were inseparable, like brothers; they had no need for other friends.

When their formal training began, and Dusaan learned from his Qirsi master that he was a Weaver, he told Tihod, but no one else, not even his father. To this day, his friend remained the only one who knew.

Generally he sent Tihod between one thousand and two thousand qinde at a time, placing a reserve of gold in the merchant’s hands to speed payments when necessary. These were imperial qinde, which were accepted throughout the Forelands but were held to have less value than the qinde used in the six kingdoms. One thousand imperial was worth about seven hundred qinde in the six. Tihod exchanged the gold pieces at a rate somewhat more favorable to himself, usually sending five hundred qinde on to those who served Dusaan for every one thousand imperial he received from the Weaver. It was a steep price Dusaan was paying, but since he was using the emperor’s gold, he gave it little thought. In return for all this gold, Tihod delivered the payments to ports throughout the Forelands, making certain that they found their way into the right hands. He had even created a web of couriers who carried the gold from the ports to the inland cites, where it could be left in specified places for Dusaan’s most trusted servants-his chancellors, as he called them. Dusaan didn’t know any of these couriers by name, nor did Tihod know the names of those who served the movement. The Weaver told Tihod how much gold to send and where to have his couriers hide it. He then told his underlings where to find the payments. In all other respects Tihod’s web and Dusaan’s movement remained utterly separate from one another.

In this way, the Weaver could pay his underlings in common currency rather than in imperial coin, making it far less likely that any of them might trace the gold back to Braedon and thus learn his true identity. At the same time, his friend made enough gold through these transactions to ensure that he would do nothing to upset Dusaan’s plans. The Weaver trusted Tihod, but he found it comforting to know that the merchant had other incentives beyond their friendship to keep his secret. A Weaver could never be too careful.

It took Dusaan but a short while to allocate enough gold to make his first payment to the archminister of Eibithar. He had decided to give her one hundred qinde, or rather to have Tihod give it to her out of his reserve. Dusaan wanted this done quickly. One hundred, he hoped, would be enough to lure her into the movement, but not so much as to seem that he was trying to buy her loyalty. He needed to impress upon her that this was more than merely a way to grow rich. The movement offered her a chance to bring glory to her people, to redeem the Qirsi from Carthach’s betrayal. And perhaps, if Paegar proved to be right about this, the Weaver might also convince her that by joining his movement she could strike back at the Eandi king who had spurned her when he placed the jeweled crown on his brow.