The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

Kat was staring dreamily at Trell.

  “Kat.” Cray tugged on her sleeve.

  She blinked and looked bemusedly at him.

  “The prince asked if you’re ready to go,” he said in a low voice while his not so lightly veiled glare said, What the heck, Katerine?

  She blushed. “Oh, yes. Thank you, Your Highness.”

  Trell obligingly helped her onto Caldar’s back and then swung into the saddle behind her. Taking up his reins, he told Ean, “Cross the ravine and head due south, brother. We’ll be watching for you.”

  Ean nodded.

  Trell heeled Caldar back up the hill and out of sight.

  “I’ll go help the Lady Fallon get down,” Creighton muttered.

  Ean kept staring after his brother.

  That is, until quite suddenly Alyneri leaned in and kissed him on the check.

  Ean turned her an astonished look. “What was that for?”

  She lifted her chin. “Heroes are supposed to get a kiss from a pretty maiden. Everyone says so.” Then she added more uncertainly, “There aren’t any other maidens here...so I’ll have to do.”

  Ean slowly slung his bow across his shoulder, frowning. “You didn’t kiss Trell.”

  Alyneri gave him a little smile.

  And right then, Ean decided he would face down ten deadly cats if it meant having Alyneri look at him like that every time.

  %

  In the middle of the endless ocean, Ean stopped still.

  He didn’t know how he knew that this was Alyneri’s thread, but he was suddenly certain that it was.

  Her design continued beyond the point where he’d stopped walking, but no Malorin’athgul shadows fell across it that he could see. Under the circumstances, that was the best he could hope for.

  Alyneri... Ean marveled at where the game had taken her.

  As a stone thrown into a still pond casts ripples, so had her choices cast forth future spirals of consequence. As with any posited future, not all of it would come to be. Only the strongest spiral would continue on, the thread weaving new branches off whichever strand took deepest root.

  In that moment, Ean realized that he had more power to change the shape of the design than he’d ever imagined.

  But he had to be smart, discerning, surgical in his actions. If he changed a Player’s decision or choices for them, then the whole pattern could spiral off into a new design, one that might have unexpected and deadly consequences.

  Suddenly Ean understood Björn’s reticence to counsel him, and Phaedor’s before that. Because a person’s choices had to remain their own choices, or the whole design could shift instantly, skewing the whole structure being studied, throwing off all of one’s plans and postulations.

  And it was a delicate, fragile thing, indeed, to help someone without influencing their choices.

  But if he could...if he found a way...it could shift the Balance of the entire game.

  Reveling in the possibility, Ean started walking the next thread.

  Forty-seven

  “You can gauge the forward progress of civilization by the

  number of people still throwing rocks at things

  they don’t understand.”

  –General Loran val Whitney, Duke of Marion

  Katerine val Mallonwey sipped delicately at her tea and kept her eyes downcast, that her ears might miss nothing of what was said.

  The Calgaryn sun, shining in through the windows of the Dowager Countess of Astor’s solar, had that bright autumn feel, the kind that beckoned one outside to enjoy the crisp morning air and the gilded colors of the forest. The kind that spoke of fog-bound mornings and frothy seas, of misty days and the promise autumn always brought to the land, foretelling of winter’s deep-sleeping magic buried by snow-drifts, and of barren trees bound in glittering ice.

  All of the same colors burnished the trees as had colored them in years past. Apples veritably clogged the pathways through the Queen’s Garden, especially beneath the Arbor Promenade, where the fruit trees had been trained over tall arches. The kitchen hallways perpetually smelled of cider, and every day the sky shone a depthless blue only achieved at that time of year. The palace staff were already preparing for the Harvest Festival, though few believed it would actually happen, not with the Duke of Morwyk marching his army across the kingdom and Calgaryn in his sights.

  Everything seemed the same, yet everything was different.

  “...Analiese closed her city house and headed for her country estate with her lord husband,” the Dowager Countess of Astor was complaining while continuously stroking the Shinti-Hansa napping in her lap. The dog’s black nose barely peeped from its mane of golden fur. Katerine wished she could sleep as soundly as that dog.

  “They were wise to leave, what with war on the horizon,” noted Ianthe val Rothschen d’Jesune, better known as the Marchioness of Wynne. She reached to pour more tea, and the sun caught her golden hair in a halo of light, befitting images of the angiel in paintings and frescos.

  Katerine thought the vision darkly ironic.

  “You shouldn’t speak so boldly, Ianthe,” demurred the Contessa di Remy. She hailed from Caladria in far western Agasan, and her husband served as an aide to the Empress’s Ambassador to Dannym. “After all, we do not yet know that war is assured.”

  Katerine always admired the way the contessa managed to present herself as such a voice of impartiality when privately she would support anyone who promised a contentious reprieve from the boredom of her days.

  “Doesn’t the aristocracy always retreat to their country estates at this time of year?” Katerine’s sister, Lisandre, asked. She was only fourteen and could get away with all kinds of questions that would’ve looked suspicious if Katerine had voiced them. “I know our family usually leaves Calgaryn at the end of the season, before the first snow.”

  But they wouldn’t be going anywhere this year.

  As if hearing the thought, the marchioness fixed her ice-blue eyes on Katerine. “I’m surprised your lord father hasn’t sent all of you home to Towermount where you’d be safe from the coming atrocities.”

  “Really, Ianthe,” protested the Contessa di Remy.

  “War is a terrible place to be, Nicola.” Ianthe turned her scrutinizing gaze back on Katerine. “Especially for beautiful unwed girls.”

  She didn’t add, who may find themselves on the losing side of the battle, but Katerine heard it all the same.

  In truth, the lords had started fleeing back to their country estates long before the social season ended—as soon as reports of Morwyk’s army on the march had reached Calgaryn. Some lords had never made it home.

  Katerine’s father, the Duke of Towermount, believed Duke Stefan of Morwyk was attempting to eliminate anyone who supported King Gydryn. Her father had secretly sent decoys to their own estate in the east, even going so far as to have soldiers dress as his wife and daughters. The decoys were attacked their third day on the road.

  Sadly, her father had learned little for his effort. The mercenaries had only been paid to kill. They’d had no knowledge of who’d hired them.

  Katerine held Ianthe’s gaze, wondering if the marchioness knew about the decoys sent to Towermount.

  “All I know is Analiese’s departure has left a gaping hole at my card table,” Lady Astor groused meanwhile.

  Ianthe shifted her gaze to the grey-haired countess. “I would be pleased to fill it for you, Wilamina.”

  Lady Astor snorted dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ianthe. You’re pathetic at tarot.”

  “That’s rather unfair.”

  “You do bet imprudently on too many tricks,” the Contessa di Remy murmured into her tea.

  Ianthe darted a frown at her. “As a strategy, it has merit.”

  “In any event, I have asked Lady val Taren to join my table.” Lady Astor was espying Ianthe like an unwelcome spot on her linen. “That is, if she isn’t also fleeing to the countryside to avoid the coming unpleasantness.”

  Ianthe
sipped her tea. “It will only be unpleasant if Errodan defies Lord Stefan.”

  Hearing Ianthe use Her Majesty’s name so intimately always made Katerine’s skin try to crawl off her bones.

  “I can hardly see Her Majesty welcoming Lord Stefan with open arms,” the Contessa pointed out mildly.

  Lisandre suddenly exhaled a shuddering breath and lifted wide eyes to the other ladies. “I don’t want to see our kingdom at war.”

  Contessa di Remy placed a hand over Lisandre’s. “No one does, mia cara.”

  Katerine thought this the worst lie the contessa had uttered thus far that morning.

  “But what if what everyone is saying is true, and His Majesty is truly...dead,” Lisandre barely whispered the word, “—may he find his way in the Returning—and Prince Ean also...” She paused, holding the contessa’s gaze with large hazel eyes, then continued more quietly still, “That is...if Prince Ean died in that accident that destroyed the Temple of the Vestals in Cair Rethynnea, as everyone is saying, then...shouldn’t Her Majesty step down?”

  Lady Astor and the Contessa di Remy exchanged an unreadable look, but Ianthe regarded Katerine’s sister with a faintly superior smile. “I applaud your wisdom, ma cherie. If only your queen shared your point of view.”

  Ianthe was Veneisean by birth and loved pointing out whenever possible that Queen Errodan was not her queen. In fact, she relied upon her foreign birth to excuse all manner of presumptive, condescending and critical utterances—that is, her birth, and her lord husband’s excessive wealth.

  Katerine was always on the lookout for any slip of tongue that would prove the marchioness complicit in sedition against the throne, but Ianthe was careful only to espouse ideas, never actions.

  Lady Astor sighed. “I do not envy Her Majesty the coming months.”

  Ianthe’s blue eyes flashed to the aging countess. “Oh, come off it, Wilamina. Everyone knows Errodan has no grounds to defy Lord Stefan and no hope of holding the throne herself. The Lord Duke will surely walk the palace Promenade to the thunderous applause of a grateful people.”

  “If His Majesty is dead,” Lady Astor returned sharply beneath a skeptically arched grey eyebrow.

  Lisandre’s eyes widened. “Who would dare speak such a thing if it wasn’t so?”

  “Exactly. It is undoubtedly true.” Ianthe set down her tea rather forcefully. “If Errodan was not so imperiously stubborn, she might’ve spared all of us the immense embarrassment of her persistent willful denial. It serves no one. Why, the season was cut shockingly short by all of this... this à la débandade,” she practically spat the Veneisean phrase, which connoted a chaotic debacle. “I had to cancel my final soiree, and it was to be the most spectacular of all!”

  “A tragedy, I agree,” clucked Lady Astor. “That husband of yours is quite the looker. I could ogle him all night and never tire of the view.”

  “Honestly, Wilamina.” The Contessa di Remy eyed her disapprovingly.

  Lady Astor lifted her chin in an imperious tilt. “If one cannot speak one’s mind at sixty and eight, Nicola, when can one?”

  Still frowning faintly—for the Contessa di Remy was far too savvy to display emotion in any extreme—she looked to Ianthe and murmured with warning like a lacing of sugar on her tone, “Yet...I do hope the Lord Duke has evidence to support the claims currently sweeping the kingdom as his vanguard. It would be quite the embarrassment for His Majesty to suddenly return, riding hale at the head of his army, after being proclaimed dead to the entire world.”

  “Surely you don’t expect Lord Stefan to produce a body, Nicola,” Ianthe scoffed. “As if Prince Radov should’ve dredged the bloodied sands for mangled corpses after those barbarian Basi attacked their caravan?”

  “I don’t expect anything of the sort.” The contessa cast the marchioness a smile that brought the taste of ashes to Katerine’s tongue. “But Her Majesty might.”

  Katerine dropped her gaze back to her tea.

  The Akkadians had proven themselves treacherous in the past, but it seemed too coincidental that both Prince Sebastian and His Majesty would’ve fallen prey to the same tactic—that is, an attack while on the road to a parley with the Akkadian Emir.

  Her father said His Majesty had been warned to expect treachery and would’ve taken steps. In fact, her father didn’t believe for a heartbeat that King Gydryn was dead, though he admitted His Majesty could’ve been wounded in the attack, which was the only part of the rumor that had been confirmed.

  As far as Katerine knew, no one had received word from His Majesty or any of his knights since they all departed Tal’Shira for the parley countless moons ago, and only rumors—started, most likely, by spies loyal to Lord Stefan—offered any explanation for the lack of news.

  But Katerine’s father said that if His Majesty had actually fallen to the Basi, the Duke of Morwyk would’ve come thundering into Calgaryn with the king’s body on a bier for the entire world to witness.

  Instead, he was taking his time crossing the kingdom, paying visits to every noble household along the way. Only a fool would imagine that sedition wasn’t at the heart of those visits. But without His Majesty or any of his sons to legitimize the val Lorian reign...when Lord Stefan did arrive, he would be well within his rights to claim the throne, and then where would they all be?

  “You don’t think it strange that His Majesty’s body was never found?” asked the Contessa di Remy meanwhile, shifting a sagacious glance between Lady Astor and the marchioness.

  Ianthe shrugged. “The Basi are barbarians. Obviously, they took the king’s body away to do some horrific injustice to it.” She sipped her tea, sounding nothing if not pleased by the prospect. “Head shrinking, or some such.”

  “Those are the Shi’ma, my lady,” Lisandre correctly meekly.

  “What?”

  “The head shrinkers? They’re the Shi’ma of Bemoth. The Basi worship different gods.”

  “Well, whoever,” Ianthe snapped. She was never keen to have her statements corrected. “No doubt you took my point, Lisandre.”

  Lisandre dropped her gaze. “Very much so, Marchioness.”

  Deep inside, Katerine trembled.

  Her world felt like it was crumbling at the edges. Every day there was talk of some new terrifying threat. Every day her mother grew more distant and her father more severe. Every day she woke only wanting the day to end, when she might venture into the garden and find a moment’s peace with...

  But she couldn’t think about that. Not here, for her expression would betray her.

  If she was being perfectly honest though—and Katerine always tried to be perfectly honest with herself—then she must’ve been the most terrible person at that table, because...well, deep in her heart, she was grateful for the Duke of Morwyk’s march on Calgaryn.

  If not for the threat of war hanging over them, her father surely would’ve forced her to marry someone else by now, and then...and then there would’ve been no hope for her to be found in any quarter.

  “You’ve been terribly quiet this morning, little Kat.”

  Katerine glanced up to find Ianthe watching her with that small but very dangerous smile, the one she usually reserved for anyone loyal to the throne, or Alyneri d’Giverny.

  “Surely you must have something to say? It’s hardly like you to remain so silent, even if you rarely have much to offer our table.”

  “Because your commentary is always so insightful and thought-provoking,” Lady Astor muttered disagreeably.

  Ianthe’s eyes flashed to the dowager countess. “Veneisean women speak their minds, Wilamina.”

  “Regardless of whether or not they exhibit a modicum of reason,” Lady Astor noted critically.

  Katerine dropped her gaze to her tea. They all thought her shy and insipid. Katerine had worked hard to create that impression.

  “Your pardon, Marchioness,” she said in her meekest voice. “My mother says politics is an unseemly avocation for a lady and has not educated me in the su
bject.”

  Lady Astor clucked, “Quite right, quite right. Ianthe is ever leading us into the dark and grimy waters of impropriety.”

  Ianthe glared at the dowager countess. “As if your stockings are filthy from a lack of washing, Wilamina.”

  The old woman arched an imperious grey eyebrow. “I’m surprised you have any stockings left to launder, what with the way you doff them so freely in salons across the city.”

  Ianthe sucked in her breath with a hiss. “At least I don’t have to purchase a man’s attentions! You might as well...”

  The two ladies continued insulting one another while an embarrassed Lisandre stared at her hands and the Contessa di Remy watched with cold amusement. Katerine sipped her tea and tried to keep her expression neutral. Maybe they would forget she was the one who’d started it.

  Her father had admonished her that freedom came at the cost of constant vigilance. Katerine couldn’t productively stand on the walls in defense of the palace and their way of life, but she still had to do her part to maintain the vigilance which freedom required of them.

  Accordingly, she held this vigil every morning with Lady Astor and her coterie of vipers, that she might better tell her father of the treachery slithering beneath the surface of palace society.

  Through the open windows, bells could be heard ringing distantly, carried on the wind from the city. Hearing them, a chill skittered down Katerine’s back.

  As soon as Ianthe and Lady Astor became bored with insulting one another, which they always eventually did, Katerine set down her tea cup and lifted a tentative gaze to the aging countess. “Forgive me, Lady Astor, but I’ve just recalled that our mother asked us to visit her before the noon hour. Might you excuse my sister and myself to attend her?”

  The dowager countess looked mildly upon her. “Of course, child.”

  Katerine glanced to Lisandre, who obediently set down her cup. They murmured polite farewells to the others, then quickly left the salon. As they turned down the corridor, Lisandre took her hand.

  Katerine squeezed her sister’s tightly in return.

  They exited Lady Astor’s chambers into the morning and followed a lengthy, groin-vaulted arcade back towards their family’s side of the palace. Beyond the stone columns, the morning hummed with brightness, but Katerine couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling that had claimed her.