The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Rafael mentally sighed. Sloppy. And he thinks to be our gatekeeper?

  And just like that, Ean knew Shail was now lurking behind the curator’s gaze. He couldn’t keep the contempt out of his own. “Keil—” the prince tilted his head slightly. “You don’t mind if I call you Keil, do you?”

  The curator’s modest smile was suddenly lacking for warmth. “Please, Signore Sargazzo. I am but a servant to a great man’s memory.”

  “Yes, about that...” Ean tapped a finger to his lips as he affected a thoughtful frown. “I visited the literato’s shrine recently, and he looked rather appallingly grey. I fear the preservation patterns have somehow been compromised.”

  A flash of outrage disrupted the guileless mask. “That is...a tragedy, if it is true.”

  “You must know, as I was leaving, people were even beginning to speak ill of the literato.” Ean clicked his tongue, the very image of shocked concern. “It was as if some charm had been removed from the people’s hero and they were suddenly seeing an unsettling new truth in his rotting corpse.”

  Keil’s expression grew strained. “I cannot imagine how something like that might’ve happened.”

  Ean smiled consolingly.

  “Pranksters,” Rafael clucked. “The city is too full of entitled young wielders in need of distraction.”

  Shail-as-Keil’s gaze switched to Rafael. He continued to regard them circumspectly—especially Ean—ostensibly trying to decide which one of them had dared interfere in his business.

  Which is when Ean realized Shail’s dilemma. For some unfathomable reason, the Malorin’athgul had chosen a na’turna for his puppet. Since Keil could not perceive the lifeforce, Shail had no access to elae while wearing his body.

  How wonderfully frustrated he must’ve been in that moment!

  Eventually Shail gave up trying to intimidate them with his silence and said brusquely, “I regret that the residence will not be open during the gala.” He slid that razor gaze across them anew, but finding nothing objectionable in their makeup, his smile became forced. “Perhaps you both would accept a private tour at another time of your choosing?” Whereupon he opened his arms to evidently escort them back downstairs.

  The direction he started walking would have put Ean squarely through the tentacles of a warding pattern, which, no doubt, was Shail’s intent, but Rafael adroitly slipped an arm through Keil’s and drew him flirtatiously close, allowing Ean to keep to the safer path.

  Rafael asked as they were heading back towards the staircase, “Might you tell me of yourself, Signore van Olmsted?”

  Keil turned a stare over his shoulder to espy Ean, who clasped hands behind his back and smiled benignly as he followed. “There isn’t much to tell, I’m afraid.” Keil sounded irritated as he looked back to Rafael.

  “Nonsense.” Rafael patted his arm. “There is much to tell. For instance, how long did you serve the literato? Did you perchance see him working the famous pattern that purportedly woke the fifth in his constitution?”

  Perhaps it was the dubiety in Rafael’s tone, but Keil seemed to take offense at the question. “It assuredly was the fifth the literato worked.”

  “Oh, I believe of that there can be no doubt,” Rafael replied amusedly.

  Ean was just wondering if Rafael was going to let Shail drag them all the way back downstairs when a rush of footsteps on the staircase preceded a servant’s appearance around its curve.

  The man drew up short just shy of the landing. “Signore van Olmsted! I’m so glad I found you!” He glanced uncertainly to Rafael, who was still attached to Keil’s arm, and then to Ean, who was following behind them, and gave an apologetic wince. “I hate to trouble you, but there’s a disturbance downstairs. I fear you are most needed.”

  Keil brusquely disengaged his arm from Rafael’s. “What kind of disturbance?” He turned a stare at Rafael as if he was somehow to blame.

  Rafael’s smile said he absolutely was.

  “An heiress at the door, Signore,” the servant answered, low and fast and blushing, possibly from the way Rafael was looking at Keil, as if quite taken with him. “She claims she handed her invitation to the attendant, but he’s refusing to admit her.”

  Rafael clucked at the outrage. “Please, attend to your other guests, Signore van Olmsted.” He seemed the pinnacle of innocent concern, and perhaps...suggestive of more.

  The servant cleared his throat. “That is, unless you’re...busy.”

  Keil silenced him with a glare. He shifted an excoriating look back to Rafael and Ean, clearly wanting to accuse them of somehow orchestrating the disturbance but lacking any evidence whatsoever.

  Oh, how Shail must’ve been fuming!

  Spearing through the hum of conversation rising from downstairs, a woman’s voice could be heard waging a shrill protest. The servant stared hard at his toes but was as jittery and agitated as a mouse with its tail pinned, while the woman’s protest quickly reached a discordant peal.

  Ean imagined he and Rafael had to seem the lesser of two evils in that moment, though Shail’s instincts were likely shrieking louder than the duchess’s indignation.

  “Go, go,” Rafael encouraged benignly. He walked him to the landing. “We can continue our conversation another time.”

  Keil forced a tight smile. “A pleasure to meet you both.” Then he hurried down the stairs, with the servant all but fleeing before him.

  Rafael turned to Ean.

  Ean gave him an approving smile. “Nicely handled.” He’d perceived Rafael handily planting the thought in the porter’s mind that he mustn’t admit the woman at any cost.

  “But the work of a moment.” Rafael stood on the landing, staring thoughtfully after Keil, who’d moved out of sight beyond the turn of the stairs.

  They had a finite window of time now. If Shail could’ve instantly abandoned his puppet, he surely would’ve done so. Thus, he must’ve had some purpose to accomplish at the gala in the guise of Keil van Olmsted.

  From the relative safety of the edge of the room, Ean called the fifth and studied the currents washing through the residence again. “Where would Shail leave his body while he cast his mind into his puppet? Do you think he’s in there?”

  “Doubtful.” Rafael turned away from the stairs. “The way this space is warded, he expects it to be invaded. He wouldn’t leave his shell unprotected in such a place.”

  Ean gave him a look. “You call this unprotected?”

  Rafael eyed him sidelong. “And how much difficulty will you have getting inside?”

  Ean admitted he had a point.

  Rafael exhaled a discontented sigh and started back towards the residence. “Perhaps it is the passage of the eons,” he observed in a disparaging tone, “or perhaps it is due to our mutual adversary abusing power to such a degree, but I find the argument for free will increasingly relevant.”

  Ean tilted his head at him. “There’s an argument for free will?”

  Rafael eyed him sidelong as they neared the residence doors. “Baelfeir and Cephrael have been debating it for eons.”

  Ean froze.

  Rafael continued on and stopped before the residence.

  Quite suddenly, every one of the milling guests became intensely interested in the artifact farthest from the residence doors.

  Rafael glanced to the prince. “Coming, Ean?” He melted through the wood.

  An instant later, the doors opened to reveal the Warlock in the parting, looking his imposing, black-winged self again.

  Ean eyed him as he passed inside.

  He perceived via their binding that the Warlock conceived of no discernable difference between the forms he’d chosen that day. His sense of self was no more related to the gilded, black-winged demigod than to the human iteration of himself that he’d presented to Ean, or the guise of Roberto he’d crafted for the gala guests...in Rafael’s mind, they were all of them equally illusions.

  Did he conceive of any form as his native self?

  ‘We are
none of us the shells we wear.’ Isabel’s words took on an entirely new context.

  Rafael closed the doors and spun the key in the lock. “Warlocks are always experimenting with different combinations of forms, Ean.”

  As he turned to face the prince, Rafael’s wings towered so high above them that their tops vanished through the ceiling. Ean got the sudden idea of someone on the level above—had there been a level above—watching in wonder as mysterious dark shapes glided across their floors, following Rafael’s unseen movements beneath.

  “As with a painting, where certain elements inexplicably appeal to one,” Rafael said, “the forms I choose simply appeal to me.”

  “I suppose that makes a kind of sense.”

  Pushing aside the subject for the moment, Ean summoned the fifth and looked around. Seeing no patterns that would find him specifically objectionable, Ean started slowly down the hallway, alert to sleeping Malorin’athgul.

  Rafael noted idly from behind, “You could do the same with your shell, you know.”

  Ean glanced over his shoulder. “Do what with my shell?”

  “Disperse it. Recombine it.” He gave Ean a pointed smile. “That shell of yours is simply a combination of collected energies, solidified into specific forms and functions. You could rearrange them to take a different shape.”

  Ean paused and looked to him. “You’re saying I could create a new shell?”

  Rafael opened gilded palms. “To use your vernacular, that shell is simply a pattern. The Malorin’athgul have crafted their own. Anyone who can wield has that ability.”

  He resumed his stroll down the hall and added with an airy wave of one gold foil hand, “Admittedly, it is more difficult to rearrange the pattern of one’s shell while occupying it. You would ideally disperse into the aether first.”

  Ean stood staring after him. He dodged his wings as they floated past. “But how do I craft a shell without a body to do it?”

  Rafael reached the end of the hall and looked back at him with one eyebrow arched artfully. “How indeed, Ean? Who is working the lifeforce? You or your body?”

  Then he smiled significantly and melted through the wall.

  ***

  Baelfeir chose a glass of wine from the tray of an offering steward and sipped it idly while surveying the guests attending the fête at the Literato N’abranaacht’s museum.

  Was it coincidence that his golden thread had drawn him there like a moth to a flame?

  He’d been studying Ean’s mercurial thread in the tapestry for some moons now. The prince would plant a few stitches here, a few more there, always appearing only for a short time, then vanishing again.

  And everywhere his gilded stitch flared, the pattern shifted. Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, as if the thread had grafted the vine to a new source.

  Fascinating.

  Around Baelfeir, well-heeled guests floated like airy confections across the polished chequerboard floor, pieces shifted by an invisible hand. At the far edge of the black and white tiles, near a curving staircase, Shailabanáchtran wore the guileless face of a blond man. He was puppeteering the body around, shaking hands, calling for more drinks, whispering at ears. Compulsion cocooned the poor creature whose body the Malorin’athgul had stolen.

  Baelfeir marveled Shailabhanáchtran would go to such lengths to trap a helpless thing and then wear its shell. Never mind the gall-inducing humiliation of wearing a lesser being’s shell—which Baelfeir could barely conceive of, much less ever deign to consider doing himself—the fact was, it was so much simpler to craft the illusion of form.

  Then again, Shailabanáchtran only presumed to understand deyjiin.

  The Malorin’athgul noticed him finally. His puppet’s shell had no access to the lifeforce. Another puzzling choice. Perhaps the immortal had been bored and wanted to make the game more interesting for himself?

  In any event, the puppet finally extracted himself from the repugnant press of society bosoms and political moustaches to cross the room to where Baelfeir was standing.

  Baelfeir dropped a pebble of intention into the pond of thought. Its ripple passed outward among the partygoers; whereupon everyone within its sphere became studiously interested in something elsewhere. A revolution of backs turned to form a perfect circle of disinterest, with Baelfeir and an arriving Shail at its center.

  Baelfeir looked the Malorin’athgul over amusedly. “Playing dress-up now, Shailabanáchtran?”

  Shail’s borrowed gaze razored across him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same of you.” Baelfeir looked him up and down with mirth dancing in his gaze. “You’re like a ghost ruining the party. Or is it truer to say a demon? This poor man has no idea the monster possessing him each night. Isn’t there a famous story about a man whose devilish alter-ego eventually overwhelms the one of pure intent?”

  Shail hissed, “What are you doing in Alorin?”

  “Ah...” Baelfeir studiously sipped his wine. “The preeminent question.”

  Shail held an acerbic stare on him that seemed incongruous with the puppet’s guileless features. “The map no longer exists. I’m growing increasingly impatient with contending this point with you.”

  Baelfeir chuckled at the layered meaning in his comment. “I understand you feel I’ve encroached upon your territory, Shailabanáchtran, but you must admit I have the prior claim.”

  Urgency veritably thrummed in Shail’s veins. Baelfeir assumed he had some important matter driving his activities that evening.

  “State your business or remove yourself from my affairs,” the immortal ground out while conversation buzzed beyond the circle of turned backs. “I cannot spend all night swatting away moths attracted to the flame.”

  “An intriguing choice of metaphor.” Baelfeir eyed him quietly as he sipped his wine. “When you alerted the empire to my whereabouts, I took it as an invitation to join your game. I just can’t decide if you meant to invite me to play on your side or your opponent’s.” He followed a sudden hunch. “What’s his name? Ah, yes: Ean val Lorian.”

  The puppet’s left eyelid began to twitch. Shail’s borrowed lips formed a thin line. “Ean val Lorian is cooling his heels in your neck of the universe—that is, if breath remains in his lungs.”

  “Is he now?” Baelfeir smiled magnanimously at him. “How very fascinating.”

  Shail’s puppet clenched his teeth. “I would’ve thought Vleydis told you all about my arrangement with Wylde.”

  Baelfeir replied with an easy wave of his goblet, “Perhaps Vleydis is keeping your confidence more truly than you give him credit for. We Warlocks are all intensely loyal, in our way.”

  “In any case, you’re mistaken. I gave no invitation. It was a warning.”

  “Indeed? A warning.” Baelfeir’s eyes widened with mock alarm.

  The Malorin’athgul glared at him.

  Baelfeir chuckled. “I shan’t keep you any longer, Shailabanáchtran. You and I clearly have more interesting avocations to occupy our interest than batting insults at one another. Please, go and greet your guests.”

  Instantly every guest turned around. People were suddenly coming at Shail from every direction.

  As the crowd closed in, Baelfeir lifted his glass to Shail and flashed a smile.

  ***

  Shailabanáchtran made his puppet smile and nod appreciatively to the people swarming him, but inside he was fuming.

  He wanted to leave his Palmer instantly and hunt down the suspicious men he’d left upstairs. He needed to be back in his own body, ensuring Baelfeir didn’t drop in yet again on some other of his private activities, the quintessential uninvited guest!

  But he had important benefactors to thank, to woo, to beguile into further acts of treason they would later have no memory of. If he abandoned his puppet in the middle of the party, the man would have no idea why he was there. Too much opportunity would be lost amid the resultant confusion.

  A few more minutes. Then he could see
to these interlopers.

  Shail-as-Keil shook another hand, smiled another insincere smile, murmured the ridiculous pleasantries that glued mortal society together.

  He’d never before regretted choosing the man for his puppet. Keil’s natural earnestness and generosity opened doors to powerful—if unwitting—allies for Shail’s activities.

  Keil knew nothing of the plans Shail used his body to orchestrate. When Shail left Keil’s mind to its own devices, the patterns of control went dormant and became invisible to any inspection. In the wake of the Danes’ attack at the Quai game, Shail’s puppet had many times been interrogated by the Empress’s spies, but he had always passed those inspections with ease.

  Shail had accomplished much through Keil.

  Yet now...tonight...between Baelfeir and the suspicious men...he was realizing that keeping Keil na’turna for so long had been a mistake. Keil was vulnerable, and that made Shail vulnerable.

  What to do...?

  Ironically, if someone had asked the real Keil, he would’ve told them to work the literato’s pattern—and then spent hours commiserating on the tragedy that was the Empress having confiscated said pattern and outlawed it as unsafe for general use—but Shail knew that pattern could no more wake a dormant gift than a pig could wield elae.

  But it gave him an idea.

  Ever this world begged to show him how to better take advantage of it!

  Amid the milling splendor of Agasan society, Shail smiled, and the body of Keil smiled with him.

  Thirty-nine

  “Complacency, conformity, these are freedom’s gravest

  enemies. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

  –General Gareth val Mallonwey, Duke of Towermount

  The Palace of Andorr in Kandori was a massive complex comprising palaces, gardens and courts spread over twelve levels and a hundred acres terraced into the mountainside. It crowned the end of the largest arm of the sacred mountain Kōhinūr, overlooking rich farmland; and beyond this, the tangle of stark, white-capped peaks that demarked the joining of the Dhahari Mountains and the Iverness Range.