The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  The problem with this conclusion was that Loukas couldn’t say what gift actually bound the Vestian, for the oddities he’d observed, and which he’d summated to magic, couldn’t be classified by the labels of Avatar.

  Had he been Avataren and talented, the Vestian would have been ceremonially bound to serve by the time he was thirteen, either in the Fire Courts or to one of Avatar’s noble families. He would have spent his adolescent years training for this future.

  But if he was of the caste of bound ones called baddha, this only compounded the problem Loukas would face in explaining his absence to his father.

  Unless they were born of a Furie’s line, the baddha were considered less than men. Oh, they were treated with deference in respect of their skills and usefulness, but everyone knew they were subhuman, abominations of nature. In his father’s estimation, to have spent three days safely in the home of a bound one would be worse than whoring himself to a slaver caravan.

  Three days? Loukas felt a fierce pang of dismay. Three days was nothing compared to the years he’d spent cultivating their forbidden friendship.

  It was bad enough, his interacting with a Vestian prince, but at least a prince of Vest was of his own caste. To have spent those years in close association with a baddha?

  Loukas felt sick.

  If his father ever discovered the truth, he’d beat Loukas within an inch of his life. Yet even worse was the conflict of his own heart, which raged now against the teachings he’d always thought truth.

  The Vestian walked in from the hallway carrying a tray of fresh-baked bread but stopped just inside the great room, his gaze instantly fixed on Loukas. “What now?” He headed for the table with his eyes holding to Loukas.

  Loukas threw off the blanket and stood, reaching for his clothes. He didn’t know how to put words to his thoughts without deeply offending his host. “I thought you were going to have these burned,” he murmured as he donned his pants.

  The Vestian laid the loaves of bread on the table, one at a time, and replied slowly, “What would your lord father say if he saw his youngest son returning in the clothes of a prince of Vest?”

  Loukas’s gaze lifted to his.

  The Vestian was watching him intently. “What will you tell him?”

  Loukas sank down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know.” He puffed an uneasy exhale and stared at the silk shirt in his hands. “I thought at first I could claim the rains had caught me in the city. But my father will never believe I spent three days carousing.”

  The Vestian’s lips curled upwards slyly.

  Loukas frowned at him. “What?”

  The smirk became a grin. “Somehow I’d always pegged you for a virgin.” He selected a serrated knife, flipped it expertly, and started slicing the bread. “Nice to be wrong for a change.”

  Loukas gave him a black look.

  “So the city is where you take your pleasure? That’s another surprise.” He finished off the first loaf and started on the second one with quick precision, darting another taunting glance at Loukas. “Knowing Avatar, I would’ve thought you the sodomite of some withered husk of a lord.”

  “Gods, no. A nobleman’s son is never—” Loukas suddenly realized what he was saying and clamped his mouth shut.

  The Vestian laughed at his expression. “You think I don’t know all about the Avataren program of patrician mentorship? Isn’t that what you call it? The taking of young male lovers by decrepit old men?”

  The private affairs of the Furies were never discussed in polite company—much less with a foreigner. Loukas felt his face flushing hot. “The lover’s bond assists in mentorship.”

  “I’ll bet it does,” the Vestian smirked. “As well as providing a convenient justification for the old preying upon the young.”

  “It’s not like that.” Loukas protested. “The courtship rituals between same-sex partnerships at any age are deeply honored.”

  The Vestian looked him over meaningfully. “Oh yes, I know. The Saphoric Codes and so forth.”

  Loukas felt completely thrown by the conversation. The Vestian was talking openly of affairs so private and taboo that speaking of them incurred a caning, no matter one’s caste. He somewhat stammered, “The codes are there to protect the rights of lovers.”

  “The rights of lovers.” The Vestian shook his head. He tossed the sliced bread into a basket a few pieces at a time. “I wish you could hear yourself sometimes. Has it never occurred to you that the full-lipped farm boy who bends over for your father has more rights than the baddhas who run his household and instruct his children?”

  Loukas watched the Vestian walk across to the fire, feeling the fluttery edges of panic. “Do you claim your barbarian practices are any better?” he tossed back for lack of a proper rebuttal. “How many wives does your father have?”

  “How many paramours has yours?” The Vestian shot him a grin. He plucked the pot from the fire with an iron hook. “We should get their two retinues together, eh? They would all have a fine time fornicating in your father’s pleasure garden.”

  Loukas’s mouth went dry. He’d never said a word about that garden to the Vestian. He wouldn’t have dared.

  The Vestian carried the pot over to the table, aiming a faintly bewildered smile at Loukas. “What did you think, that I just magically made those arrows appear on your windowsill? Much can be learned while observing from the rooftops, fire prince.”

  The rooftop.

  Well, that was one mystery finally answered, though it opened many new ones. As he realized that the Vestian had probably been observing him as much as others of his father’s household, his face grew hot.

  The buttons on Loukas’s shirt suddenly required his wholehearted attention. “I wouldn’t expect a barbarian to understand,” he muttered.

  “This barbarian who just yesterday brought you sapphire eggs and Malchiarri djawa?” The Vestian fixed him with an unerring smile. “I think I understand you very well.” Then he lifted the top off the pot, made the Avataren sign of Deference and said in perfect High Avataren, “Your breakfast, en Furie.”

  Loukas laughed in spite of himself. “Fethe, you’re insufferable.”

  The Vestian straightened wearing a decidedly devious grin. “Would you have me any other way?”

  The intimation in his question made Loukas’s heart beat faster.

  %

  “You been staring at the river all night?” Tannour’s voice yanked Loukas from his internal reverie so forcefully that it left a painful stabbing in its wake.

  Loukas turned to find the Vestian leaning against a tree. With his black garments and preternatural stillness, Loukas could barely see him. He wondered how long Tannour had been standing there, watching him. “I was checking the sentries for most of the night.”

  “Well, you missed all the fun. The A’dal saved a messenger and set the fires to deliver our message to the warlord.”

  “I heard the cheering.”

  Tannour came over to stand beside him, all pale eyes and dark, liquid grace.

  Loukas returned his gaze to the water, clenching his jaw. He wished Tannour wouldn’t stand so close. He wished he mightn’t have cared one way or the other.

  He still couldn’t decide if he regretted meeting Tannour Valeri. There were days when he hated him so palpably he thought the force of his clenched teeth would shatter them, and days when he longed for their lost fraternity so deeply that he could neither eat nor sleep for the overbearing ache of it.

  It would’ve been easier to bear if Tannour had shown even the remotest sense of loss. His cool indifference just kept the cauldron of Loukas’s resentment at a constant, agonizing boil.

  “Did the river have the answers you were seeking?”

  Loukas turned a stare at him. “What do you want, Tannour?”

  Tannour smirked. “Now that’s a loaded question.”

  Loukas exhaled a slow breath, his gaze hot.

  Tannour’s smirk resolved into a wry half-smile. “
The A’dal wants you. Don’t slay the messenger, Yashar.”

  “Don’t call me Yashar.”

  “It’s nicer than other things I might call you.”

  As Loukas held his gaze with his own fiery one, he reluctantly submitted that this comment was fair—from a certain point of view. Fiera’s ashes, but his conversation with Trell had changed so much! All this time, he’d thought...fethe, it hardly mattered what he’d thought.

  Tannour looked him over quietly. He always had been far too attuned to Loukas’s mind. “If we went to our deaths still...like this,” he didn’t say estranged but Loukas heard it in his derision, “would you feel any regret at all?”

  Loukas winced. “Tannour...”

  “You’d best not keep the A’dal waiting.” He made to slip away, but Loukas grabbed his arm.

  Fethe! How long had it been since either of them had dared lay a hand upon the other, save when Loukas had pulled Tannour back from the clutches of a waterfall in Khor Taran, which hardly counted? He half expected Tannour to smite him for the presumption.

  His ice-pale eyes did the smiting instead, accusing of insult, demanding explanation. But Loukas had no explanation for the affront of an intimacy they no longer shared. None he could put words to, anyway. He released Tannour’s arm, feeling hollow.

  With a wordless step, silent save for the trace of accusation left behind, the Vestian vanished into the night.

  Twenty-three

  “A goose by any other name is still a goose.”

  –The Hearthwitch’s Handbook

  Fynnlar val Lorian had that feeling again, the one that always heralded hazard and peril, like that time he’d nearly grounded Hadrian vran Lea’s carrack on a reef. Carian’s pirate cousin would’ve proven more hazardous to his health than the reef had he not narrowly shaved past it with just a few barnacles scraped off the hull.

  Or that time at the manor of the Archduke of Rimaldi, when a nosy maid nearly caught him stuffing some important antiquities that—strictly speaking—didn’t belong to him inside his coat.

  Or at that tavern in Tregarion, when he’d narrowly missed colliding with the gendarme who happened to be leading the hunt for him.

  Or any time he played Kings with Ghislain d’Launier.

  As Fynn silently dogged Carian’s heels through the manor of Cassius of Rogue, taking care to walk askew of the current of the pirate’s trailing smoke, he reviewed what he’d just heard, thinking he must’ve heard wrong—possibly due to Cassius’s damned bubbling wine, which always messed with his head worse than dreams of the zanthyr Vaile.

  ‘Devangshu Vita says they’ve lost a half-dozen nodes back to Demetrio Consuevé while you’ve been cooling your heels here, vran Lea,’ Donovan Kellar had said with his characteristic sneer.

  In the doublespeak of the Smuggler’s Fellowship, this translated to: Consuevé is holding Vita as a trap for you, vran Lea.

  Donovan had also said, ‘D’Varre’s on the warpath for Devangshu Vita and an unnamed, red-headed accomplice.’

  This meant Consuevé also had the thief Kardashian in custody.

  And ‘D’Varre is supporting his efforts’ meant that both Vita and Kardashian were being held at the Guild Hall in Rethynnea.

  This was all perfectly clear. What wasn’t clear was how and when bloody Donovan Kellar had become a member of the Smuggler’s Fellowship.

  Fynn pondered this all the while he and Carian were grabbing the things they needed from their rooms, and he thought it over some more as they were taking the fast route to the stables.

  Carian was stalking along an arcade bordering the coach house when Fynn demanded, “Did you buy off Kellar?”

  Carian angled him a look. “Of course I did. Only a fool trusts Cassius of Rogue. He’s not even from this realm.”

  Fynn scowled at his back. “You might’ve told me Kellar was working with us.”

  Carian snorted. “But then Cassius would know it too, which would rather defeat the purpose of purchasing a spy within his organization.”

  “I can keep a secret,” Fynn protested.

  Carian aimed a dubious grin over his shoulder. “You’re a magnet for truthreaders, mate. They descry you from a mile distant, like ospreys to a herring.”

  Fynn glowered at him. “I like you less right now than I did a minute ago.”

  Carian hitched up his britches. “Save your griping for Tuesdays. We may already be too late.”

  “For what?”

  “To save Vita and Kardashian.”

  Reaching the stables, they lit a fire under the hands to get two mounts saddled and ready for them to ride. A few minutes later, Fynn and Carian were cantering their horses down Cassius’s interminably long drive.

  They galloped fast along the promenade, stormed beneath the tunnel that demarked Cassius’s estate, and emerged into a rainy Veneisean afternoon. Fynn muttered an oath and pulled up the hood of his cloak.

  Carian turned them hard to the east.

  Kellar had made one other comment that Fynn kept mulling over because he didn’t quite know what it meant—or at least, he rather hoped he didn’t.

  As they were trotting their mounts across the uneven moorland, Fynn asked, “You going to let me in on the plan, vran Lea?”

  Carian darted a glance his way. “You going to blab it to the first truthreader we meet?”

  “That only happened twice, you know,” Fynn protested aggrievedly.

  “That you’ll admit to.”

  Fynn aimed a sullen look at him. “When Kellar said the nodes in the Middle Kingdoms are as dangerous as traveling the Seam, did he mean what I think he meant?”

  “If you think he meant that the Seam is the only safe path to Rethynnea currently, then yeah.”

  “The Seam is a safe path to oblivion.”

  “Right you are, mate.” Carian grinned at him. “If we’re lucky.”

  “We? There is no we in this misadventure. Take me back to the sa’reyth and then go about this lunacy on your own coin. I’m not wagering mine against Lady Luck.”

  “Just pay me the money you owe me and I’ll take you anywhere you like, Fynnlar.”

  Fynn glowered at him again. “I despise you when you’re being reasonable.” He sucked on a tooth while he thought of all the ways he despised reasonable people in general. “You know, you have no healthy sense of self-preservation whatsoever. I’m tired of being held hostage by your inflated belief in your own invincibility.”

  Carian smirked. “Have a little faith, mate.”

  “Faith? You know things always go from bad to worse and then the cycle repeats itself.”

  “Ah, ho...” Carian tapped a finger to his nose sagaciously, “but the Balance is shifting.”

  “Balance doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the common folk,” Fynn sulked.

  Carian arched a brow. “You including yourself in that bracket?”

  “Common folk. Normal folk.” Fynn waved irritably at him. “People who don’t subsist on an arcane power that most of us can’t even feel. Our efforts don’t change the pattern in the tapestry, so Balance cares about as much about what we do as those so-called angiel. Maybe less, since Balance isn’t even sentient and the angiel supposedly are. But I wouldn’t bet a copper sou on either one.”

  Carian turned him a wondering stare...then his expression resolved as he landed on the shores of understanding. “You’ve been talking to Balaji.”

  Fynn puffed an exhale. “Not willingly.” He scowled at the pirate. “His wine isn’t free, you know.”

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is, mate.”

  “Says the man who stole the sacred emerald from the Lost Isles of Ren.”

  Carian grinned. “I worked hard to steal that emerald—a great deal harder than those blokes guarding it, or they’d still have it in their possession.”

  “I never did get my cut on that take, you know.”

  “I applied it towards the balance of your debt.”

  Fynn scowled at him. “That balance makes
more revolutions than a weathercock, turning numbers to suit your needs.”

  Carian flashed an unapologetic grin. “You’re the one made an accord with a pirate.”

  “You know...a good friend wouldn’t remind me of that so often. A better friend would forgive the debt altogether.”

  “You make a deal with the Demon Lord...”

  Fynn snorted. “The Demon Lord would’ve offered a better interest rate.”

  The day’s sullen rain turned vindictive about the time they reached the rock-strewn canyon where Carian planned to catch the Seam to Rethynnea.

  Fynn had long reconciled himself to dying young, but dying ignominiously in some no man’s land of uncreated aether just left a bad taste in his mouth. He normally would’ve reached for wine to wash down the bitterness of inevitability, but he would’ve rather met death thirsty than drink another glass of Cassius’s effervescent horse piss.

  They released the horses atop the ridge and made the descent on foot in the pouring rain, slipping and sliding between large rocks and trying not to slam into anything likely to turn them inside out if greeted at an unkindly speed.

  They were halfway down when the hairs on Fynn’s arse stood up in salute, which meant the pirate must’ve been seriously feeling the current charging through that ravine.

  Balls of Belloth! It was channeling so hard it had mowed down all the grass! It formed a sort of fuzz along the ravine floor, barely growing an inch before the current shaved it off.

  Fynn came to an abrupt standstill and leveled an accusing stare at Carian. “You have a blatant death wish.”

  Carian paused a few paces downhill of him. “Only on Tuesdays.” He waggled his eyebrows at him saucily and started off again. “Come on, Fynnlar—where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Fynn watched the pirate ambling down the hillside and called after him, “Locked away with morality and conscience and all the other principles that only serve to get me into trouble!”

  When he caught up with the pirate again, Fynn felt like beetles were feasting on his skin. He fell into step beside Carian, whose wavy black hair was making a spidery halo around his head, and silently cursed Cassius of Rogue, Donovan Kellar and Nodefinders in general. “So what’s the plan?”