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.

"Your plans of rule, your plans for the Order to bring its ideas to all the world, are not going to work. You need all three boxes of Orden. I was there when Sister Tovi died. She had the third box but it was stolen from her. "

"Ah yes, the brave Seeker, wielding the sword of truth"-he parodied a sword thrust-"stepping in to liberate the box of Orden from a wicked Sister of the Dark." He gave her a sour look. "I was there, watching through her eyes, after all."

He had been watching Nicci through Tovi's eyes as well.

"The fact remains that the Sisters had all three boxes. You may now have those Sisters, but you only have two boxes."

A sly smile replaced his annoyance. "Oh, I don't think that's going to be as much of a problem as you think. Nor will it matter that you placed that box in play. I have ways around such petty difficulties."

Nicci was somewhat alarmed to learn that he knew that she had put the box in play, but she tried not to let on.

"What ways?"

The smile only widened. "What kind of emperor would I be if I didn't have plans for every eventuality? Don't you worry, darlin, I have everything well in hand. All that matters is that in the end I will see to it that all three boxes are reunited. When they are once again together then I will at last use the power of Orden to end all resistance to the Order's rule."

"If you survive that long."

His annoyance returned as he studied her blank expression. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She gestured into the distance. "Richard Rahl has loosed the wolves on your beloved flock."

"Meaning?"

She arched an eyebrow. "The army you chased up here is gone. You weren't able to destroy it, were you? Guess where that army is, now."

"Scattered in fear for their lives."

Nicci smiled at his scowl. "Not exactly. The D'Haran army has been charged with taking the war to those in the Old World who support that war, to those who gave birth to aggression with their teachings and set it upon the innocent. Those people are going to have to face the consequences of sending surrogate murderers north. They, no less than you, have the blood of innocent people on their hands. They think that distance sanitizes them, but being far removed from the evil they directly bring about will not absolve them of their crimes. They will pay the price."

"I am aware of Lord Rahl's latest sins." The muscles in Jagang's jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. "Richard Rahl is a coward who goes after innocent women and children because he cannot bear to face real men."

"That would be the worst kind of willful ignorance if you actually believed it, but you don't. You want others to believe it, so you pluck carefully selected half-truths out of the context of reality in order to cloak your cause in pseudomorality. You seek to craft an excuse for the inexcusable. In a manner of speaking you hide behind women's skirts as you shoot arrows so that when arrows come back at you, you can feign outrage at an atrocity.

"Your true purpose, though, is to strip the absolute right of self-defense from those you wish to destroy.

"Richard is a man who understands the reality of the threat represented by the beliefs of the Order. He is not sidetracked by rigged issues meant to obscure the truth. He understands that to survive he must be strong enough to eliminate the threat, no matter what form it takes-even if it is to destroy the fields that grow the food that gives your men the strength to slit the throats of people peacefully living their own lives. Anyone defending those fields is a party to murder.

"Richard knows the simple truth that without victory there is no survival for his people."

"Those people bring suffering on themselves by resisting the righteous teachings of the Order," Jagang said.

The muscles in his arms tightened along with his fists as he paced, looking on the verge of violence. He didn't like it when anyone disputed his assertions, so he Bounded on Nicci and repeated them more forcefully, as if his raised voice, and the threat in it, would settle the matter.

"Richard Rahl proves his depravity, and the immorality of those he leads, by sending his men off to kill the innocent women and children of the Old World instead of standing and fighting our soldiers. His atrocities against women and children prove what a cowardly criminal he really is. We have an obligation to rid the world of such sinful people."

Nicci folded her arms as she fixed him in the kind of glare once reserved for those who would not bow to the will of the Order. It was a look that had frequently preceded actions that had earned her the title Death's Mistress. It was a look that gave even the emperor pause.

"All the people of the New World are innocent," she said. "They did not bring war to the Order, the Order brought war to them. It's true that people in the Old World-including children-will be hurt or killed in the fighting. What choice is there for these people? Continue to be slaughtered and enslaved out of fear of harming someone innocent? They are all innocent. Their children are all innocent. They are being harmed, now.