The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  The metallic bud the Adepts formed would’ve caught his eye regardless, but he recognized the bright silver thread in the center as one that had recently connected with the golden thread of his singular interest.

  Baelfeir affixed a filament of his attention—not on the girl herself, but on the curiously shadowed man walking beside her; his thread was so pinned to hers in the fabric that he clearly never left her side—so as to easily find her again when interest willed.

  Then he returned his gaze to the chaos blooming across the mortal canvas. Oh yes, this game was shaping up very nicely indeed.

  Eight

  “Humanity is unworthy of this world.”

  –Shailabhanáchtran, Maker of Storms

  The Empress Valentina van Gelderan pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers and closed her eyes, but the headache persisted.

  Too long...too long spent reading the tragic accounts of dead kings. Too long pushing on without sleep. Much too long mired in uncertainty.

  Would that she had her Sight to guide her. But she saw now that she’d already spent too much of her reign relying upon it. She didn’t know how to act without surety; how to choose among a dozen evils when her every choice impacted millions of souls. The past few months without her Sight had given her a new level of appreciation for the fortitude of mortal kings.

  Valentina pushed wearily from her chair and walked to the sideboard for more wine—no, water would be better suited at this point.

  Holding the glass, gazing out the windows across parkland and metropolis, she noted the city’s lights glimmering golden beneath overcast skies and realized she had no idea if this twilight represented dawn or dusk.

  She sent a mental nudge to her secretary, who entered her chambers within seconds of her summons. “How may I assist you, Aurelia?”

  “What is the hour, Paolo?”

  “The bells just rang seven. Would you like your evening meal now?”

  Food was the furthest thing from her mind, despite not being able to recall when she’d last eaten. She caught a whiff of Paolo’s thoughts and quirked her head at him. “You were already on your way to see me?”

  “Yes, Aurelia. The Endoge has just arrived for you.”

  “Thank you. Send him in.”

  “And that meal?” he proposed with a rather cheeky smile.

  Valentina twitched an imperial brow. “Perhaps a tincture of salicin instead.”

  “Your will, Aurelia.” He bowed and left, shutting the doors upon his exit.

  Valentina sank down into an armchair and rubbed her forehead. Despite the pounding in her skull, she cast her awareness along a specific channel of the fourth. Where are you, mia caro?

  It was but a heartbeat before Marius answered. Sailing beneath overcast skies on calm seas. The zanthyr summons the wind for our ship.

  Some of Valentina’s tension eased just hearing her Consort’s voice in her mind. I would know the moment you reach safe harbor.

  I don’t know how safe the harbor will prove to be, Marius replied somewhat drily, though she caught an undertone of apprehension as well, but you’ll be the first to know when we drop anchor. A moment’s pause and he inquired, I sense distress. Are you unwell?

  Just a headache. Perfectly indecent of my brain to harangue me so without your company to soothe it.

  Very impudent indeed. I must have words with your lovely head when I return. He cast her a caress across their binding. You should eat something, Valentina.

  I cannot spare the time.

  Marius caught her truer thought and reprimanded, Those books have known greasier fingers than yours. Have Paolo turn the pages if you’re so concerned for their preservation. I want a woman in my bed, not a waif.

  Your will, High Lord, she smirked at him.

  Valentina, promise me you will not neglect yourself or I’ll fly there on the nodes and force-feed you with my own hands.

  That is incentive enough to continue my fast.

  He growled at her.

  I must go. The Endoge comes. Be safe, mia caro.

  Marius cast her a ghostly kiss. Then he was gone from her mind.

  Paolo opened the doors to admit Liam van Gheller, Endoge of the Sormitáge, trailed by a brace of aides overloaded with books. The willowy, violet-doused Endoge bowed and greeted her while Paolo directed the pages to place the books on her credenza. Then he came over with her tincture. “May I get you anything else, Aurelia?” A meal, perhaps?

  She eyed him askance as she took the glass from his offering hand. “Has my Consort been consorting with you?”

  “Great minds think alike,” he replied with a smile. “And you, Endoge? Wine, tea?”

  Liam shook his head. “Thank you. I’m fine, Paolo.”

  Paolo bowed and departed, directing the assistants out in front of him.

  Valentina watched him with amusement behind her gaze. “He grows bolder by the year.” She smiled to Liam. “I should’ve replaced him a century ago, but good soldier-scholars are hard to come by these days.”

  “What times we live in,” Liam commiserated with a sigh.

  As Valentina met his light gaze, it occurred to her that she was grateful for the Endoge’s solidarity.

  When Nadia had confessed to her that she’d divulged the truth of the Literato N’abranaacht’s identity to the Endoge—despite Valentina’s explicit orders—she’d been furious with her daughter. But the Sormitáge’s knowledgeable administrator was proving an indispensible ally in pursuing the mystery of Shailabanáchtran.

  At her behest, Liam moved to a seat across from her. “I found the books you asked for and a few new ones that you may find helpful, Aurelia,” he said as he sat.

  “You didn’t have to bring them yourself, Liam.”

  “They are not works I would see fall into unsavory hands. The Quorum of the Sixth Truth has long been a topic of high speculation and intrigue—the rogues of the ancient Adept world, as you know. I cannot even trust my own aides to oversee the delivery of such works. I fear the temptation would be too great to read their forbidden contents—never mind the price such books would fetch on the black markets. But may I ask, why has our Empress taken such sudden interest in Quorum lore?”

  “It’s been his topic of interest for decades.”

  “Ah.” The Endoge arched brows in understanding. “So it is not merely the Literato N’abranaacht’s pattern that we’re investigating?”

  Valentina glanced to the ancient text lying open on her desk. “The Quorum appears to be as misunderstood as they were feared, Liam. They changed through the centuries from a brotherhood of fifth-strand Adepts serving the needs of the realm to something...darker. At the height of their dominion, they were experimenting with everything from inverteré patterns to biological manipulation—generally on unwilling participants. Most of this you already know.”

  She sat back and eyed the Endoge speculatively. “But if you ignore the historical books about them and read their own texts...Liam, in their final years, something else was clearly going on.”

  The Endoge looked at her with interest.

  She asked him, “Have you worked a Latent Telling on any of these texts?”

  Surprise pulled the Endoge straighter in his chair. “I confess...I have not.” His eyes took in the dozens of books piled on her desk and surrounding credenzas. “But you have—on all of these?”

  It was no wonder her head was pounding. “I’ve worked a Telling on every personal account. Some of them are patently false. Some of the most shocking are entirely true. And some...” she narrowed her brow with the recollection, “some layer truth like a zanthyr, three-fold, four-fold deep; as though they knew others would be searching their words for meaning...as though written in code.”

  Valentina pushed from her chair and retrieved one of the books she’d read earlier that day...or yesterday.... She found her page of notes and quickly scanned the points she’d isolated. “In the years leading up to the second great cataclysm, something occurred
within the Quorum.”

  She retook her chair and settled the open book in her lap. “They were already splintered by then, warring among themselves. There are hundreds of accounts of battles where inverteré patterns left nothing but twisted corpses and char to mark where once something majestic had governed.

  “The random accountings are difficult to piece together into a coherent story, but it appears that the schism resulted in two primary camps: those who were attempting to manipulate Adept talent through experimentation and breeding programs; and those who were seeking something else, something dangerous and incredibly secretive.”

  Valentina closed the book and settled her hands upon it. “These accountings all speak of an event which was supposedly imminent. From everything I can piece together, this incident was supposed to have happened around the same time as the second cataclysm shook the world. There are almost no records to confirm if the event ever took place—or even what sort of activity it represented.”

  “The second cataclysm...” Liam arched a brow. “Twenty-five hundred years ago. Those were troubled times, and blessed times.”

  “Verily. My ancestor Hallian the First emerged with the Sobra I’ternin and drove the Varangians from our lands to establish the Empire; my great-uncle braved the welds between worlds to unite us with Illume Belliel and the Council of Realms to seal Warlocks forever beyond the reach of the Realms of Light; the earliest schools of Patterning were established, and Adepts began learning about the Laws and Esoterics. Momentous days indeed.”

  “Is the timing significant somehow?”

  “I cannot be sure.” Valentina leaned towards the Endoge. “But Liam, it’s my suspicion that the Literato N’abranaacht has been researching this so-called event.”

  Liam regarded her for a long time with deep lines of concern creasing his brow. “Aurelia...do you not think it prudent to...alert others to the literato’s true nature?”

  “You know what would happen if the truth were revealed.” Her gaze and tone were unequivocal.

  Verily, to claim the literato had faked his own death would require admitting to the world that a fifth-strand immortal had spent decades in the Sormitáge pretending to be na’turna—and no one had noticed. The Sormitáge would never recover from the ridicule. Yet if they didn’t find a way to discredit the literato, the damage to the Empire could prove greater still.

  The Endoge shifted with uncertainty. “I cannot help but feel that if others knew of the literato’s true nature—”

  “Have you really considered the cost of releasing such knowledge, Liam? Even if only to the Order of the Glass Sword? To tell Guiseppe di Creppo that Malorin’athgul exist? That they have such power as to be capable of destroying the Realms of Light, and that they are indistinguishable from Adepts?”

  The Endoge flinched, and his face paled. He saw clearly enough the ramifications that Valentina had already explored. Witch-hunts the likes of which the Empire had not seen since the Quorum had hunted na’turna like wild dogs.

  “No...” he bowed to her foresight, “you’re right. We cannot speak of it—especially to the Order.” Liam frowned ponderously at his lap. After a time, he absently straightened his violet robes over one knee. “So you don’t think the literato’s research into the Quorum was just a cover while he studied us?”

  Valentina grunted. “I think masquerading as a literato beneath our very noses was a cover for this research—”

  A sudden, blaring siren along elae’s fourth strand paused the words on her tongue, but it was the resulting turmoil in the currents that truly silenced her.

  In the next instant, she and the Endoge both were on their feet.

  Liam looked to her in shock. “I’ve never heard this alarm.”

  Valentina felt sick as she met his gaze. “No one living has heard this alarm.” She moved swiftly to the windows and shoved aside the drapes. Across the darkening city, the Order of the Glass Sword’s Tower was glowing red.

  What does it mean? Liam’s thoughts shouted in her skull.

  Valentina gripped the curtains with white knuckles. “Warlocks,” she breathed, hardly believing she was saying the word. She turned him a shocked stare. “Warlocks have returned to the Realms of Light.”

  ***

  The woman standing in line in front of Pelas wore a hat so bedecked with sugared fruits, ribbon and tulle that she might’ve opened her own confectionery right there in the vaulted passageway. Her and her companion’s faces were hidden from Pelas’s view by the hat’s wide brim and dangling veil, but their conversation filtered easily enough through the sweetmeats back to him.

  “...would not believe what I had to go through to get an invitation! Only the highest society are even being considered. The requests are apparently so plentiful that the literato’s estate is requiring letters of introduction along with two references to even place one’s request in the queue!”

  “Then, pray,” asked the other woman in a voice so soft that even Pelas had difficulty hearing her, “who are all these...others?”

  Pelas believed such others must refer to the commoners peppering the line of Faroqhar’s well-heeled elite with the drab hues of hemp and rough-spun wool.

  “Charity, darling,” the first woman replied with that patronizing drawl so common to salons and parlors of a certain size, as if something in the silk and velvet upholstery dragged out simple words to form multiple syllables. “Our esteemed literato was a Palmer, do recall. Palmers are all about caring for the people.”

  Clearly in the world these women belonged to, there was ‘society’ and then there was ‘the people’ and the two were not meant to intermingle.

  “Oh, look!” The first woman grabbed her friend’s hand. “They’re opening the doors!”

  Pelas had to peer around the confectionery to see two white-robed Palmers emerging through a set of opulent double doors. One of the Palmers unhooked a red velvet rope from in front of the doors, while the other started collecting invitations. The line inched forward.

  Pelas had to hand it to his brother: this delusion of grandeur exceeded even his own imagination’s farthest wanderings.

  First the literato’s body enshrined in divine light in the Palmer’s sanctuary in Faroqhar, for which people waited in line for days; now the ‘exclusive access’ to the literato’s ‘private home’ where he’d conducted his ‘important work,’ and a targeted approach to influence public opinion at extreme ends of the scale, which would no doubt have a filtering effect as opinion spread inward through the classes from both ends.

  Shail certainly had not been sitting idle through their centuries in Alorin. No wonder he looked upon Pelas’s artistic pursuits as a mediocre use of his talent. Pelas couldn’t even criticize his brother’s execution. There was fantastic artistry in this artifice. Shail had made the whole empire his canvas and painted guile upon it in mesmerizing, duplicitous strokes.

  When his turn came, Pelas handed over his invitation—expertly forged by his own hand under an assumed name—and headed through the open double doors, following the confectionery and her friend.

  See, brother? My talent hasn’t been entirely wasted.

  At least...he was trying to make up for any lapses now.

  Since Shail’s last tantrum, during which he and Darshan had nearly destroyed the Piazza della Studioso, Pelas had spent most of his time on a hill outside the city, observing the mortal tapestry.

  Phaedor could probably view it while picking apples, but Pelas still required the great wide open to view the tapestry properly. Finding that channel of awareness was not unlike opening oneself to study the currents, but to study the mortal pattern properly, Pelas needed to see it laid out across an open expanse of miles.

  In his recent study, he’d isolated Nadia’s thread, and Ean’s and Tanis’s. It had taken...singular concentration to find these Adepts’ strands at first. In some ways, the process had proven as uniquely challenging as unmaking a star; but after countless hours over untold days, he’d finally
isolated their three strands out of the millions of living threads that formed the woof and warp of the tapestry’s design, and now he knew them well enough to find them anywhere.

  Of the three, Ean’s had been the easiest to isolate, even though it appeared and vanished regularly in the fabric, because it was the only gold thread that bound others to it.

  Tanis’s thread bound others to it also, but it had assumed a paler hue during his time in Shadow.

  Nadia’s thread showed she remained in danger, but whatever threatened her wasn’t imminent, which gave Pelas some measure of relief. The only reason she had anything to fear at all was because Shail knew it would wound Pelas to see her come to harm.

  Most troubling was a darkness that affected a great swath of the pattern. An entire section representing untold thousands of lives lay beneath its influence. It was as though some mass hovered between the tapestry and its illuminating source, not so much casting a shadow as dimming the color of each individual strand. Pelas had no idea what to make of it.

  But he had no more time to ponder the mystery at that moment, for the line of visitors finally moved out of an antechamber to spread through spacious apartments, expensively furnished.

  Pelas had expected more austere accommodations of his brother, but then he recalled that Arcane Scholars, the dark horses of academia, were known to sell some of the rarer pieces they discovered while spelunking in abandoned temples and tombs—supposedly artifacts of the ‘not historically significant’ variety, which Pelas assumed meant the ones that would fetch the highest price on the black market. His brother would’ve paid attention to such details in constructing his disguise.

  Pelas’s eye fell upon an ornate lacquered cabinet that reminded him of a similar one in his mansion in Hallovia. Except that his version lacked the brass plaque explaining its important origins and the accompanying accounting, etched in glass, which detailed the exciting adventure where the Literato N’abranaacht had procured the piece.

  Nothing in the apartment had escaped this meticulous cataloging. Even the rugs had an origin story—or, more likely, one had been invented for them. Pelas felt he should’ve been encased in glass himself, perhaps wearing a brass plaque upon a chain of goracrosta around his neck. He wouldn’t have put it past his brother to have imagined the scenario.