Nicci shrugged indifferently. "Doesn't matter much what I want, now, does it?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know very well what it means. Since when has it mattered to you in the least what I want? You're going to do what you want regardless of what I might have to say about it. After all, I am just a subject of the Order, am I not? I'd say that what you want is what you've always wanted- to finally kill me."

"Kill you?" He spread his arms. "What makes you think I want to kill you?"

"Your self-indulgent actions."

"Self-indulgent?" He glared at her askance. "I am hardly self-indulgent. I am Jagang the Just."

"Are you forgetting that it was I who gave you that title? I did so not because it reflected any truth, but to counter the truth-to create an image that would serve the purposes of the Order. I am the one who created that image for you, knowing that unthinking people would believe it simply because we proclaimed it. You wouldn't know how to fill the role if your life depended on it."

The cloudy shapes in his eyes shifted in an inky darkness that reminded her of the underworld-black box of Orden she had put into play in Richard's name.

"I don't know how you can say such things, Nicci. I have always been more than just with you. I have given you things I have given no other. Why would I do that if I wanted to kill you?"

Nicci sighed impatiently. "Just say what you want to say, or bash in my skull, or send me off to the torture tents. I'm not much interested in playing this game with you. You believe what you wish to believe regardless of reality. You know and I know that what I might have to say about anything is not really going to make any difference."

"What you say has always made a difference." He lifted a hand toward her as the heat in his voice also rose. "Look at what you just said about naming me Jagang the Just. That was your idea. I listened to it and used it because it was a good idea. It served our ends. You did well. I told you before that when this war is won you will sit at my side."

Nicci didn't answer him.

He clasped his hands behind his back as he took a few steps away.

"Do you love him?"

Nicci stole a glance to the side. Kahlan sat on the carpet, watching her. Kahlan's face was etched with concern for the sense of threat in the air. It looked as if she would like to tell Nicci to stop provoking the man. Yet, while she obviously looked worried for what Jagang was going to do, she also looked interested in the answer to the emperor's question.

Nicci's head spun as she tried to think of how to respond-not out of concern for what Jagang might think of the answer, but out of worry for what Kahlan might. There was the Chainfire spell to consider, the need for a sterile field that Nicci had to take into account. The way it now seemed she would likely be dead by then, but if Richard ever somehow managed to get a chance to use Orden to counter the Chainfire event, Kahlan had to remain a sterile field if he was to have a chance to restore her to who she once had been.

"Do you?" Jagang repeated without looking back at her.

Nicci finally concluded that, for the purpose of maintaining a sterile field, it wouldn't make any difference how she answered the question. It would not introduce any emotional precondition on Kahlan. It was Kah-lan's emotional connection with Richard, not Nicci's, that mattered.

"My feelings have never burdened you before," Nicci finally said, irritably. "What difference could it make to you?"

He turned back to stare at her. "What difference? How can you ask such a thing? I made you as good as my queen. You asked me to trust you and allow you to go off to eliminate Lord Rahl. I wished you to remain here but instead I let you go. I trusted you."

"So you say. If you really trusted me then you would trust me, not interrogate me. It would seem that you have difficulty understanding the concept represented by the word."

"That was a year and a half ago. I haven't seen you since. I've had no word."

"You saw me with Tovi."

He nodded. "I saw a lot of things through Tovi's eyes-through the eyes of all four of these women."

"They thought they were clever enough to use the bond to the Lord Rahl." Nicci smiled slightly. "But you were watching them the whole time. You knew everything."

He smiled with her. "You always were smarter than Ulicia and the rest of them." He arched an eyebrow. "I trusted you when you said that you were going off to kill Richard Rahl. Instead, you end up having no trouble making the bond work for you. How is that possible, darlin? Such a bond would only work if you were devoted to him. Would you like to explain it to me?"

Nicci folded her arms. "I fail to see how it could be at all difficult to grasp. You destroy; he creates. You offer an existence devoted to death; he offers life. They aren't empty words-from either of you. He never beat me bloody, or raped me."

Jagang's face, and his shaved head, went scarlet with rage. "Rape? If I wanted to rape you I would-and by right-but it isn't rape. You wanted it. You're just too stubborn to admit it. You hide your lustful desires for me behind feigned outrage."

Nicci's arms slipped to her sides as she leaned toward him as she spoke through rage of her own. "You can invent things to justify your actions all you want, but that does not make them true."

With a murderous expression twisting his features, he turned away from the sight of her. Nicci fully expected him to suddenly round on her and hit her hard enough to break her skull. She wanted him to. A quick end was far preferable to drawn-out torture on the way to a slow death.

The myriad strident sounds from out in the night all around were muted by the thickly padded tent walls. To be out of the constant din of the camp was a luxury. Outside, the ground crawled with vermin. Inside the emperor's tent there were slaves who constantly plucked up the roaches. The scented oils in the tent also covered some of the stench that hung thick in the air.

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.