The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  He set the bindings to the sun’s revolution and tied them fast with magnetic strings that would break when the heavenly orb rose again in the east. Cristiano would not be leaving his apartments that night.

  Then, his disguise assured, Ean inhaled deyjiin, tore the realm’s fabric and moved himself and Rafael through Shadow and out again inside the rooms he’d taken at an uptown hotel.

  With the silver-edged portal hissing in his thoughts like silk scraped over rough glass, Ean exited Shadow, feeling tense and alert and too highly susceptible to Rafael’s impressions and thoughts. He tossed the outfit onto a chaise and sent the fifth to open the doors of his rooftop patio.

  Beyond lay Faroqhar in all its splendor. The city’s domes and spires sparked fire in the late afternoon sun; likewise the glittering cerulean sea, which lay further south. On Ean’s right, a stripe of river traced the footprint of the palatine hill, whose bulk was encased in trees.

  Ean could see neither the Imperial Palace nor the Sormitáge, for both were shrouded by the hilltop forest, but he had an excellent view of the Piazza dei Elura directly below his balcony. The latter hosted a cathedral dedicated to the angiel Epiphany on its north side and the shrine-turned-popular-public-attraction of the Literato N’abranaacht on the west.

  Ean doubted this arrangement was a coincidence.

  He’d gone that morning to visit the shrine where the literato’s body lay immortalized beneath preservation patterns. The line of admirers hoping to pay their respects had snaked out into the piazza—as it was doing even still—so Ean had cloaked himself in night and slipped inside unnoticed.

  He had certainly admitted the irony at the time in using a trick taught to him by a Malorin’athgul in order to hide all trace of his presence from yet another Malorin’athgul.

  Unfortunately, Shail would be wise to any craft Pelas might use, so the nightcloak wouldn’t serve Ean in getting inside Shail’s residence.

  It had worked well in the piazza though.

  He’d walked unseen along the line of people and stood back of the bier, staring at the body draped in patterns like sunlight, seeing a man that looked exactly like Shail lying there, yet knowing it absolutely wasn’t him.

  What in Tiern’aval was Shail hoping to accomplish with this charade?

  Ean had cast a discerning gaze across the many patterns surrounding the body—patterns of preservation, as well as fourth-strand illusions that made the sun appear to be ever-shining—and tried to imagine how the fake literato could possibly be serving the real literato.

  Then, with the flick of an irreverent thought—and maybe the slightest hint of pique—he started every one of those patterns unraveling.

  He’d suppressed a smile as he left the shrine.

  Now, as he stood watching the sun setting over the crowd standing in line in the Piazza dei Elura, Ean couldn’t help wondering how many more hours would need to pass before the literato’s attendants noticed their hero wasn’t as fresh as he’d once been. He bet that would significantly cut down on the number of people waiting to pay him their respects.

  “I took the liberty of calling for a coach, Ean.” Rafael came up beside him and curled elegant fingers around the wrought iron railing. His ruby ring gleamed as alluringly as his gaze. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Ean turned him a look. “Why would I mind?”

  “I perceive your concern about me.”

  Ean stifled a wince. He at least ought to be able to shield his thoughts in consideration of Rafael. He exhaled a slow sigh and rubbed his temples. “Not you specifically, Rafael.”

  One corner of Rafael’s mouth twitched with a smile. “No? It doesn’t bother you, having brought a Warlock into your realm, seeing now what I am juxtaposed against this world you love so dearly?”

  He cast a veiled challenge in the arch of one brow. “This doesn’t bother you then?” and Ean felt Rafael shift his intent. Deyjiin realigned beneath the Warlock’s will, and Cristiano’s lover, Roberto di Castronicci, appeared in place of Rafael.

  The prince had no doubt that were he to run his hand through Rafael-as-Roberto’s hair, as he’d watched Cristiano do so many times that afternoon, those tousled locks would respond with the same soft perfection as had the real Roberto’s.

  But Rafael wasn’t using elae to craft this illusion. Ean had no idea how he was doing it—and he was sharing Rafael’s mind.

  Ean swallowed and looked back to the city.

  Yes, it bothered him. On many levels.

  But right then, he had to focus on holding his own illusion of Cristiano in place—never mind that Rafael could probably have done it for him much more readily and simply—and on the imminent task to hand.

  His thoughts turned to his conversations with Björn, the guiding stars by which he would navigate the vast ocean of his pattern of cause and consequence. He wondered how long it had taken the First Lord to come to terms with the realities that he himself was just then beginning to understand.

  As he gazed out across the city, the prince summoned his pattern and watched its arabesques take flight, spiraling outwards over domes and roofs towards the horizon of his thoughts.

  This pattern was the key to unlocking every riddle of the game. Even though he understood only a fraction of its intent, Ean knew this unequivocally.

  And he knew that the more he studied each strand of the pattern, the more he would come to understand what other parts of the pattern those strands were affecting, and perhaps more importantly, which Player was taking those actions.

  For clearly, every strand represented a choice made by an individual, spawning future consequence. If Ean could isolate the largest strands in the pattern—those that bound many other threads to them—he would be able to watch the actions of other Players in the game.

  Unbalance the field. That was his charge, the one guiding star that burned longer and more brightly than all others.

  This charge would necessarily bring him into opposition with Shail and Baelfeir. These immortals wove no strands in his pattern of consequence, and their steps were invisible in the mortal tapestry, but this didn’t mean their actions couldn’t be observed.

  It was one of many ways Ean stood head and shoulders taller than his earlier iterations of self. For Arion hadn’t known how to identify a Malorin’athgul’s influence on the pattern, but Ean did.

  And he saw it so clearly as he gazed towards the pattern’s far horizon: a distortion influencing a large section, as discernable as a squall shadowing the sea. He was heading into the fog of that storm that very night.

  Only...Ean knew exactly why the fog was hovering there.

  He would be the wind that blew it away.

  Unbalance the field.

  His role in the game had just become so much bigger.

  Thirty-six

  “Anything a man cannot adapt to

  suit his needs he will destroy.”

  –The philosopher Aristotle of Cyrene, cir. 109aF

  Without form, Tannour’s disbanded particles of self floated in the aether on currents of blood-tinged memory, currents of pain...

  %

  The fire felt hot on his face, hot on his knees where he sat cross-legged before the hearth. His linen pants couldn’t protect his skin from the fire’s heat.

  The Sorceresy was that fire in his life. His mind found no insulation against their flame. He stood before their scalding forge, naked, unprotected, sometimes bleeding...often weeping.

  Mercuric patterns manacled Tannour’s wrists, deceptively two-dimensional; yet ephemeral chains linked those tattoos inalterably to his life pattern. He could dunk his body in acid, melt away his flesh, yet so long as he lived, his tattoos would return to haunt whatever tortured relic of his body remained.

  In addition to the silver cuffs shackling his wrists, similar inked vestments adorned his chest, his neck, his back and upper arms—telltale armor of operatives of the Vestian Sorceresy. The tattoos shackled him to his masters, bound him to their malice. Throu
gh the swirling designs, his masters observed his every choice, followed him everywhere. Watched him always.

  And he’d failed them.

  They’d sent him out with another task to accomplish. Always this was their way, to send him into the world alone, with a mission objective, a specific task, and if he failed to achieve it...well, he just couldn’t let himself fail. Five years of missions and he hadn’t failed one.

  Until now.

  Tannour worked the muscles of his jaw. Fury burned like banked coals behind his gaze. Beneath his skin, his tattoos writhed.

  There had been no way to finish the task without Loukas learning things he was never supposed to know, without him figuring out Tannour’s nature. That part was always mission critical: no one could ever know anything about him or the mission itself.

  And damn it all, Tannour cared too much for Loukas already. He was desperate to keep his masters from knowing just how much he cared. It was so difficult to maintain that duality of mind and heart, to gaze upon his friend and not feel anything in the moment, to share his company and not want to...

  Even now, he dared not think the thought.

  A dark despair suffused him. In some ways, he was glad he’d failed. They would punish him badly for it, yes, but to have gone forward with his mission as directed...

  If Loukas ever found out, he would never believe any of it had been real.

  Loukas already hated how reserved Tannour had become; the Avataren felt spurned by Tannour’s unwillingness to share any details of his life. Tannour knew his friend desired more from him—fethe, Loukas desired him plain enough. And Loukas had surely earned Tannour’s trust if nothing else. But he held himself back to protect them both.

  To the Sorceresy, every path was considered valid; yet Sorceresy instructors uniformly walked mor’alir. When Tannour returned after each assignment, lightbenders took up residence in his mind and scraped a razor file across his memories to see what new information it would bleed.

  Tannour was all but helpless to these inspections. They used the patterns binding him to review his every action and decision. The weeks or months since he’d last checked in would replay across the canvas of his mind without his conscious participation. Any mistake, any infraction, the least misjudgment incurred exacting punishment.

  And if in these replayings they found something important to him, some new person or thing he’d come to treasure...they would twist it until it became unrecognizable.

  He’d learned early on, if there was something he loved, something he wanted to keep, he mustn’t ever let them find out. He couldn’t tell Loukas how much he cared for him, because the minute he confessed this truth to Loukas, he would be confessing it to his masters also.

  A sudden banging on the front door of his lodge roused Tannour with a start. No one knew the lodge existed save Loukas, yet the Furie was the last person he’d expected to see again that night.

  Tannour hastened to open the door and found Loukas dripping on his doorstep, shirtless, his auburn hair plastered to his head and his lips faintly blue. At Tannour’s startled expression, he murmured, “I had nowhere else to go,” and staggered inside.

  Tannour shut the door and turned to follow him. That’s when he saw the bloody welts on his friend’s back. He knew precisely why Loukas had been flogged; Tannour felt as if he’d done it to him personally.

  “Fethe, Loukas,” he cursed before he could catch himself.

  Loukas stiffened.

  His head whipped around to face Tannour, his expression clouded with shock. He demanded in breathless accusation, “How do you know my name?”

  ***

  Loukas n’Abraxis stood in the empty node chamber of the warlord’s stronghold in Abu’dhan, feeling cold.

  It had been five hours since Loukas and Lazar saw the signal from the fortress confirming that their forces had taken the day.

  Four hours since Gideon val Mallonwey’s men had stormed the fortress node chamber.

  Three hours since they’d exhumed the warlord from beneath a mountain of stone and bound him with every chain they could find.

  Two hours since they’d pieced together the story of what had happened out of the creature’s mad ravings.

  One hour that Loukas had been standing in the node chamber, staring at Tannour’s blood on the floor.

  Moments since he’d realized Tannour wasn’t coming back.

  ‘If we went to our deaths still...like this, would you feel any regret at all?’

  Tannour’s words suffocated him.

  Loukas dropped to his knees, suddenly unable to breathe. The idea of losing Tannour made his entire body clench up. The feeling reminded him with painful acuity of that fateful night almost a decade ago...

  %

  When Loukas returned to his father’s estate after his three-day absence, things went far worse than he’d anticipated. The estate had been in turmoil, with search parties canvassing land and river in search of him, and a third party dispatched to the city.

  From the dark expressions his father’s men wore upon seeing Loukas safely returned, Loukas thought his father must’ve offered a bigger reward for finding him dead than alive. No one looked pleased to see him.

  Least of all his father.

  The estate’s seneschal hauled Loukas before the smoldering hulk that was the Lord n’Abraxis, whereupon Loukas offered a stammering explanation for his absence—as truthful as he could make it, for his father’s baddha satya was lording over his every word, inspecting his verisimilitude like a sommelier dissecting wine.

  When Loukas had finished his explanation, instead of offering him a warm bath and a nourishing meal, they thrust him into a dank chamber in the cellars and left him there, alone, hungry and trembling with cold, while the sun made a lonesome passage across the sky and his father determined what to do with him.

  After sundown, his father’s baddha satya appeared.

  The Adept was a thin-faced man with a long nose and colorless eyes set too close together, such that his expression always looked pinched. He wore his long blond hair pulled severely back into gold bands linked together with thin chains, an accoutrement of all baddhas in the Fire Courts. Loukas had always thought the headpiece resembled miniature gold manacles and found the tradition unsettling.

  “Come with me,” the baddha intoned from the doorway.

  Loukas pushed shakily to his feet and followed.

  The baddha satya wore flowing robes of iridescent silk that whispered with his every step. Instead of leading Loukas upstairs, he took him through the cellars to a room Loukas had never seen before but would in short order never forget.

  It was a large, stone-lined chamber, octagonal in shape, its austere walls lit by braziers and a roaring fire in an oversized hearth, none of which helped in chasing away the chill of the place.

  A single armchair sat by the fire, facing dangling chains on the other end of the room. To Loukas’s horror, the baddha satya shoved him towards the latter.

  The Adept had just finished bolting manacles around Loukas’s wrists and hauling his arms over his head when the Lord n’Abraxis entered.

  “Father—” Loukas entreated.

  “Do not speak.”

  Loukas’s father was tall and broad-chested. His bulk had resettled in his later years to extend his waistline by several inches. He wore his auburn hair plaited tight and close against his head, a pragmatic tradition when attending court—the better to sit beneath the headpieces all Furies were expected to wear—but his father wore the braids all the time. Loukas looked much like a younger version of his father, but he never saw any of himself in the Lord n’Abraxis’s gaze.

  Loukas had no idea why they had him strung up. He’d expected his father would be wroth with him, but he’d never imagined he would treat him like a common thief.

  The Lord n’Abraxis settled down in the armchair. “You will answer my questions truthfully, or this will be the last conversation we ever have.”

  Loukas stared wo
rdlessly at him. “Yes, Furie,” he finally whispered, deciding his father’s title a safer address than any other he might’ve used.

  His father nodded to the baddha satya.

  “Why did you not return after the storm?” the Adept asked sharply.

  Loukas didn’t understand why they were asking this question, as he’d already told them what happened. “I...was stranded on the other side of the Ver, as I said.”

  “You could not swim?” sniped the baddha.

  Loukas looked at him in bewilderment. “The waters were dangerously high, as I said before.”

  “You might’ve made it safely.”

  “Or I might’ve drowned,” Loukas rejoined, trying to keep his voice from rising in anger.

  “So you spent three days in Vest with this boy who helped you from the river.”

  “He saved my life. Yes.”

  “He saved your life.” The baddha exchanged a look with the Lord n’Abraxis. For some reason, they seemed to doubt this truth.

  Looking back to Loukas, the baddha ground out derisively, “And you claim you never learned his name?”

  “I told you already I did not.”

  “After three days spent with him?”

  Loukas heard an intimation in this statement that he very much misliked. He stared angrily at the baddha—Fiera’s ashes, the man had to know he was telling the truth!

  “All he ever said was that he was a prince of Vest. I’ve already told you all of this.” Loukas looked back to his father entreatingly. “Furie, it was the truth then and the truth it remains. Ask the baddha if I lie.”

  The baddha looked again to his father, and again they exchanged a look that was anything but reassuring.

  His father rose slowly from his chair. “We searched for you the entire three days you were taking your leisure in Vest. We were about to dredge the river for your body.”

  He chose an iron poker from a hook and jabbed at the logs in the fire. “My men investigated your story today,” he said without looking at Loukas. “The youngest son of Prince Orinth of Valeri has been training at the Sorceresy since he was thirteen—Tannour is his name.”