Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

In a certain sense the emperor's tent might seem to be a peaceful refuge, but it wasn't. It was actually one of the most dangerous places in the entire camp. The emperor held absolute power of life and death. No matter what Jagang chose to do, he would never be questioned or challenged.

"So," Jagang finally said, his back still to her, "answer my question. Do you love him?"

Nicci wiped a weary hand over her brow. "Since when have you cared what my feelings were? It's never interfered with your ability to rape me."

"Why this nonsense about rape all of a sudden!" he roared as he took a long stride back toward her. "You know that I have feelings for you! And I know that you have feelings for me!"

Nicci didn't bother to answer. He was right in that she had never presented such objections to him before. She hadn't known how to object. In that past she hadn't believed that her life was her own. How could she object to the Order using her to their ends? Further, how could she object to the leader of the Order using her to his ends?

Because of Richard she had come to grasp that her life was her own. That meant that her body, too, was her own and she didn't have to give it to anyone if she didn't want to.

"I know what you're doing, Nicci." His hands fisted again. "You're just using him to try to make me jealous. You're using your womanly ways to get me to throw you on that bed and rip off your clothes-that's what you're really after and we both know it! You're using him as a way to lure me into heated passion for you. It's really me you want, but you hide your true passions behind protests of rape."

Nicci coolly appraised his heated expression. "You are getting bad advice from your testicles."

He drew back a fist. She stood her ground, glaring into the cloudy shapes shifting across the midnight landscape of his eyes.

The hand finally dropped to his side. "I have offered you what I have offered no other-to be as good as my queen, to be above all others. Richard Rahl can offer you nothing. Only I can offer you all that an emperor can offer. Only I can offer you a part in the power that will rule the world."

Nicci swept an arm around at the royal tent. "Ah, the glamour of embracing evil. All mine if only I will give up my thinking mind and proclaim utter inequity to be a virtue."

"I offered you the power to rule with me!"

Nicci shot him a cold glare as she let her arm drop. "No, you offered me the duty of being your whore and the chore of killing those who would not bow to your rule."

"It is the Order's rule! This war is not about bringing glory to me and you know it! This conflict is in the cause of the Creator-for the salvation of mankind. We bring the true will of the Creator to heathens. We bring the teachings of the Order to those hungering for meaning and purpose in their lives."

Nicci stood mute. He was right. He might have greatly enjoyed the trappings of power but she knew that he sincerely believed that he was merely the champion of a greater good, a warrior who was serving the Creator's true wishes by enforcing the Order's teachings in this life so that mankind could go on to glory in the next.

Nicci knew very well what it was to believe. Jagang believed.

It struck her as almost laughable, though, how the ideology she herself had once advanced now seemed so profoundly foolish. Unlike Jagang, and most people who embraced the Order's beliefs, Nicci had accepted them because she thought she had to, that it was the only way for her to achieve a moral life. She endured the yoke of servitude to others, all the while hating herself for not being happy about it. The Sisters of the Light had really been no better, offering her only a different flavor of the same selfless call to duty, so she remained in the helpless grip of the Fellowship of Order. As a numb subject of the Order, being used by Jagang was one of the many sacrifices she had believed was necessary in order to be a good and moral person.

And then all that had changed.

How she missed Richard.

"All you are going to bring to mankind is a thousand years of darkness," she said, weary of arguing the truth to a true believer whose theological construct was based on what the Order preached, not on reality. "All you are going to do is cast the world into a long, dark, savage age."

He glared at her a moment. "That's not you talking, Nicci. I know it's not. You're just saying those things because Lord Rahl spouts such hate for his fellow man. You are repeating it to make me think you love him."

"Maybe I do."

He grinned. "No." He shook his head. "No, you merely want to use him to twist me around your little finger. That's the way of women-trying to maneuver and exploit men."

Rather than letting him take her down the path of what her true feelings for Richard might be, Nicci changed the subject.