The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  With her head still spinning, Isabel claimed a spot on a bench a few places down from them. She nodded to the tallest of the three, who was seated between the other two at the table’s end. “Captain Gadovan.”

  He glanced up beneath dark brows. “Lady Isabel.”

  She smiled at the others. “Mathias, Jude.”

  “Lady Isabel,” they replied in unison.

  “Long night, gentlemen?”

  Many very long weeks, Jude thought a little too loudly for Isabel’s truthreader’s mental ears to miss. Mathias kicked him under the table.

  “We’re almost finished with L9K76.” Gadovan referenced the section of the world grid they’d been rebuilding.

  A servant set down a mug of tea and a bowl in front of Isabel, along with a basket of bread and a large bowl of soft-boiled eggs mixed with yogurt. She thanked him and then looked to the Nodefinders. “Will it bother you if I eat?”

  “Please, Lady Isabel.” Gadovan looked embarrassed that she’d even thought to ask.

  I would pay a month’s earnings just to sit and watch her, Jude thought while staring rather too obviously at his mug.

  Mathias kicked him under the table again.

  Isabel smiled down at her tea.

  She’d observed the three Nodefinders working on T’khendar’s pattern. It took a specific kind of training to charge nodes and dredge new ley lines in a world grid—the arduous and perilous kind of training. And these three had skill in it aplenty.

  She smiled at the Nodefinders. “How long have you three been working together?”

  “All our lives.” Gadovan glanced at the other two. “Except Jude, for a time.”

  “He went off to become an artist—”

  “It’s called drafting,” Jude grumbled, “not drawing.”

  “—but he missed us too much.” Mathias grinned at Jude. “That’s why Gadovan and I have earned more moons.”

  “One moon.” Jude sent him a surly stare. “You have one more moon than me, Mat.”

  Mat winked at him. “Sometimes one makes all the difference, Jude.”

  Isabel served some eggs and yogurt into her bowl. “Dagmar told me you spent time tracing nodes for Eltanin.”

  The three men exchanged looks.

  Jude scratched at the back of his head, dislodging unruly auburn curls. “You could say that, my lady, but...” he looked to the others again, “I’m not sure how accurate you want to be about it.”

  “Jude, where are we right now?” Mathias gave him a could-you-be-any-more-daft? stare. “Do you think the Lady Isabel or any of the Vestals here care if we were node-tracers for Eltanin’s black market? The entirety of the cityworld thinks they’re traitors—no offense, my lady.”

  “None taken.” She smiled to Mathias’s point. “Few Nodefinders in this age have experience mapping nodes between the realms, Jude. Eltanin has been doing us all a great service by keeping the trade alive in any capacity.”

  Gadovan murmured, “It’s going to be a much-needed skill if the Council actually enacts the interrealm trade measure.”

  “If there’s a Council after all of this,” Matt muttered.

  Jude exhaled a slow sigh. “There’d be a lot of bureaucrats out of work. That’s not good for anyone’s pockets.”

  Gadovan picked up his mug and Isabel’s earlier question. “All told, we logged almost two-score years working together before we joined the Knights, my lady.”

  “A lifetime for some,” she observed with a soft smile. Her spinning head was making food undesirable. To distract herself from the effects of force-feeding her own body, she inquired lightly of Gadovan, “Is it a standard career path on Eltanin to advance from black market node-tracer to Paladin Knight?”

  The three men exchanged another round of uncomfortable glances. Isabel wondered if they might be reconsidering their willingness to let her share their table.

  “We, um...” Jude frowned across the way at Mathias. “That is to say...”

  “We are knights.” Mathias leaned towards her for emphasis. “We just—”

  “Serve more than one master?” she offered.

  “Our uncle...suggested that we should join the order, my lady,” Gadovan said.

  “Suggested.” Jude snorted. “Try threatened our lives if—”

  Gadovan silenced him with a stare.

  “Right, then.” Jude gave him a wan smile. “Suggested.”

  “He can be very persuasive.” Mathias was looking slightly peaked, as if by an undesirable recollection.

  “I’m sure he can.” Isabel well knew their uncle. He was one of her brother’s oldest friends in Illume Belliel.

  She looked the three of them over—the raven-haired Gadovan, auburn-haired Jude, and blond Mathias. She couldn’t see much resemblance among them save their eyes. “You all call him your uncle, but you’re not brothers.”

  “Cousins,” Jude supplied, “but...” he glanced at the others, “well, our blood connection is a secret, especially in Illume Belliel.”

  Isabel smiled. “I will keep it in the strictest of confidence.”

  “Have you met our uncle, Lady Isabel?” Gadovan asked.

  Isabel dropped her smile to her tea by way of politely not answering this.

  Mathias grunted into his drink. “That has got to be the most unlikely alliance ever forged.”

  A howl of wind and flapping canvas announced new arrivals as Dagmar and Franco—if told from the familiar shape of their bundled forms—found their way inside. Dagmar unwound his headscarf and shook out the sand while Franco was re-securing the folds of the tent.

  Seeing Isabel, the former came over. “Morning, my lady.” Dagmar kissed her on the cheek and settled down on the bench between her and the Eltanese. He looked to the latter. “Well? What do you three have to say for yourselves?”

  Mathias and Jude exchanged a bemused look. “A gin earned is a gin squandered?” Mat offered.

  “It’s better to die young and rich than old and poor?” Jude said.

  “We’re nearly finished with L9K76, my lord.” Gadovan nodded a sober welcome to Dagmar and then to Franco, who was just then sitting down across from the Vestal.

  “That’s good, because Rinokh was picking his teeth with K42 last night.”

  Mathias and Jude both gave muted curses, and the latter grumbled, “I really despise that dragon.”

  Dagmar shifted aside to give the servant room to set an empty bowl and some tea in front of him. Then he served himself some of the eggs. “How much longer do you think we’ll have these boys, Isabel?”

  It tickled her that Dagmar referred to the Eltanese as boys when it went without saying that they’d all seen at least six decades of life to have become so skilled with their craft. “Hmm...” she picked up her empty mug. “Let me just consult my crystal ball here.”

  Gadovan and the others were staring uncomfortably at Dagmar.

  Jude forced a laugh. “Is that...you weren’t asking her just now when we were going to...” he swallowed, “expire? ...Were you?”

  Dagmar stared gravely at the three Nodefinders.

  All of their faces paled.

  Whereupon the Second Vestal burst out laughing.

  Mat and Gadovan exchanged an ill look of relief, while Jude grumbled into his mug, “He was joking. Outstanding.”

  Dagmar angled them a sidelong look as he tore off a hunk of bread. “Repairing T’khendar’s grid isn’t the only reason the Fifth Vestal requested Nodefinders with your particular skill, boys.” Isabel felt his thoughts shifting towards a related topic even as his gaze shifted back to her. “It feels like we’ve been climbing this hill for too long now. We’ve got to reach the peak soon, surely.”

  Isabel couldn’t tell him any more about the subject of his interest than she’d told him already, because she knew nothing else about it, which was troubling in itself. She chose in that moment not to explore hypothetical reasons why she couldn’t see any farther into the future than she’d seen a week ago. “I think
we’ll all know the moment we reach the summit.”

  “Because we’ll suddenly be plummeting down the far side, my lady?” Franco had his hands folded around his mug and his brown eyes pinned on her.

  Isabel shifted her gaze to him. “Perceptive as ever, Franco.”

  “Do you think he’s jok—” Jude began.

  “No,” Gadovan and Mat growled together.

  Wishing her head would tire of its intermittent whirling, Isabel looked down at her cup and found it brimming once more with tea. She was sure the servant had not returned to fill it.

  A quiet smile lifted her expression as she lifted her gaze to Dagmar. “My brother will be here soon.”

  Does she mean the Fifth Vestal? Jude practically shouted in his thoughts.

  Criim, Jude, Mat gave him a long-suffering look, they can probably hear you thinking all the way back on Eltanin.

  The wind blew open the canvas flaps, and her brother ducked inside. He promptly turned to tie them closed again.

  The Eltanese scrambled to their feet.

  Dagmar angled Björn a grin. “Dressed for the weather I see, brother.”

  Björn looked down at his immaculate blue coat and polished boots. It was barely dawn, but he looked as though he’d just stepped out of court. Certainly not a speck of sand had dared to adhere to his person.

  Björn sprouted a smile and started towards them. “You may recall that I showed you the working.”

  “Aye, but the last time I tried making the air solid around me, my lungs quickly ran out of it.”

  “The fifth can be recalcitrant that way.” Björn’s amiable smile turned to appreciation as his blue eyes found the Eltanese. “I hope you three aren’t standing on my account. I’m the one who should be paying homage to you. L9K76 is looking very strong.”

  He bent and kissed Isabel on the cheek and murmured into her ear, “Good morning, sister-of-my-heart.”

  She gave him an adoring smile.

  The Eltanese retook their seats amid a scraping of benches while Björn claimed a spot at the end of the table, opposite Gadovan.

  “Rinokh has been chewing on K42 again,” Dagmar told Björn while serving himself more eggs.

  “So I noticed.” Björn nodded thanks to the servant, who set a mug of tea in front of him. “He’s a dog to a bone on that section of the grid. I’d like to take a better look at it, see if we can isolate what’s drawing him there.”

  Dagmar motioned to the servant to refill his mug. “That’s probably a good idea. Franco and I can tackle that this morning.”

  “Actually, I thought I might go out with you all today, play fourth with our esteemed colleagues from Eltanin on K42 and handle that quadrant for good.”

  All three Eltanese straightened abruptly. Indeed, Gadovan looked quite awake suddenly. “On the grid with us, Your Excellency?”

  Björn’s gaze strayed to Isabel. “Mmm...that’s what I was thinking.”

  She arched a brow at him. I know what you were thinking.

  Do you now? He reached across and clasped her hand while turning a smile back to the others. Almost at once, her dizziness vanished.

  She couldn’t tell if the Eltanese were excited by or apprehensive of the prospect of working with her brother on the grid. The three of them were finally having a very quiet but obvious dialogue via the privacy of their bond.

  Yet four Nodefinders working in tandem was far preferable to three, since they could map the ley lines in octahedrons instead of pyramid configurations and cover twice the area in the same amount of time.

  Dagmar looked her brother over. “You know how I feel about you working on the grid.”

  Björn gave him an unconvincing smile of bewilderment. “I somehow cannot recall.”

  “First Lord,” Franco lifted a concerned look to him, “if anything happened to you—”

  “The world would somehow continue spinning.” Björn drew Isabel’s hand to his lips and planted a kiss on it, murmuring, “I know, it astounds me also.”

  She shook her head and smiled at him. You’re incorrigible.

  So you’ve told me.

  But she did feel much better.

  Of course she did—this was her brother who was channeling elae into her. The current from him was so strong, it was making her heady.

  Yet what frightened her about his Healing—what kept her from asking more regularly for his aid—was the fear that one day he would take her hand in his and nothing would happen.

  Isabel met Björn’s gaze. You know why I—

  I know why. He kissed her hand again and then released it back into her keeping. “While we’re on K42, I want to traverse the redundant substructure in that quarter to see how the kinetic pillars are holding.” He broke off a piece of bread. “What say you three? Are you up for it?”

  Mathias choked into his mug.

  Did he really just say that? Jude’s eyes had gone very round.

  Gadovan was clearly working hard to keep his disbelief from overcoming his composure.

  Traversing the substructure of a realm’s world pattern was akin to swimming through flooded subterranean caverns in total darkness, holding your breath and hoping a god would take pity on you. Her brother enjoyed such endeavors of skill.

  A pale-faced Gadovan managed a strained, “We would...be honored, Your Excellency.”

  Björn popped a piece of bread into his mouth. “Marvelous.” He stood, grinning as he chewed. “So who’s ready for some fun?”

  Ten

  “It may be that our gods are each representatives of the

  same unified consciousness.”

  –The Seventeen Pillars of Restoration,

  an excerpt from the assembled scriptures of Jai’Gar

  Tannour grabbed a vine and hauled himself up a fallen column that was making a convenient bridge to the roof of what had once been an arcade. The Nadori scout, Kalid, extended a hand and helped him up the last few feet to where the A’dal and the others were standing.

  Tannour, the A’dal and his core of trusted commanders had left their horses at the base of the ruins and were making the ascent to the mountain’s summit on foot, for no streets or paths had survived the slow decay of the lost city.

  The trees with their trailing vines had become part of the architecture of that place; Mother Nature was reclaiming the limestone, block by block. Trell’s army was circumnavigating the ruins, two miles distant, but the A’dal wanted a clear view of the warlord’s fortress, which meant a trek through the ruined city. Yet as they ascended and the view opened, all Tannour could see was green. Astonishing to imagine a thousand men hidden so completely by the forest canopy.

  Air told Tannour that for all its vastness, nothing human moved through the bones of the city save themselves; only the overtaking vines, burying centuries of history beneath ropes of wood and composting leaves.

  “Tarshien, they say,” Lazar hal’Hamaadi told Loukas as the group of them started off again, following Kalid.

  “Are you sure it couldn’t be Xandeng?” Loukas ducked beneath a curtain of vines as he traced the careful steps of the scout, who was taking them on the ‘safe’ route through the carcass of a palace—that is, high atop its crumbling roofs and walls, where the slightest misstep meant a long fall and probably a few broken bones. “These ruins appear large enough to be Xangdeng.”

  “Why do you care what the fethen city was named?” Raegus complained. He paused to glower at Kalid, who had started up a long flight of fractured steps to yet another level of the palatial ruins they were navigating.

  “Xandeng supposedly straddled a river,” Lazar said to Loukas.

  “Xandeng supposedly was the richest city in the Cyrene empire,” Rolan called back from ahead of them. “The Nadori named it the Grace of Angharad.” He shot Loukas a knowing grin over his shoulder. “You could buy your way back into anyone’s good graces with the wealth those ruins supposedly hide, eh, Yashar?”

  Yashar was Rolan’s favorite epithet for Loukas, the nam
e of a cat with nine lives from a famous Akkadian parable. Tannour thought it richly appropriate, but for very different reasons from Rolan.

  Ignoring Rolan’s comment, Loukas pointed out to Lazar, “The Taran is only a few clicks from here. The cataclysm that destroyed this city could easily have altered the river’s course.”

  Lazar shrugged. “Cyrene ruins are more plentiful than water in this part of Abu’dhan. You want to argue about what they’re called, talk to the historians in Tal’Shira.”

  “People have spent more riches looking for Xandeng than all the jewels in Kandori,” Rolan said. “Isn’t your Agasi friend one such treasure-seeker, A’dal?”

  Trell cast Rolan a sidelong eye. “Krystos, yes. Searching for Xandeng is one of his enduring passions.”

  “Fat chance we’d just come across it while hunting down a warlord,” Raegus noted from behind Tannour.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Tannour observed with a pointed glance at Trell.

  Trell eyed him amusedly. “Says the man who walks on air.”

  “Only for you, A’dal.”

  Rolan snorted. “Graced of a goddess, confidant of dragons, bound to an Adept, and now in command of his own personal airwalker.” He grinned widely at Trell. “You’re bordering on the supernatural.”

  Trell sighed and returned his grey-eyed gaze ahead of him as he climbed the broken steps. “I don’t know how I’ll ever live up to the stories you all tell about me.”

  “The stories tell themselves, A’dal,” Rolan returned, still grinning. “We simply don’t deny them.”

  What use when a thousand men stand in witness?

  This thought came to Tannour with a pang of discomfort. The same men who’d seen Naiadithine’s mirror in the waters of Khor Taran had watched Tannour float the A’dal and Lazar hal’Hamaadi across the rushing torrent, and seen Tannour launch himself to safety on the same breath of air.

  Now Tannour’s name was being woven into the stories told about the A’dal. They’d only seen a fraction of what he could do, but that fraction might be enough to doom him.

  Because as honored as Tannour felt by the inclusion of his name in tales of their A’dal, he feared it was only a matter of time before the Vestian Sorceresy heard of them and sent a team in hunt—men or women as trained and deadly as Tannour.