The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  I confess, it’s been helpful to me, knowing you’re safe, Trell admitted, catching her frustration. His mental voice held a hint of beleaguering doubt, the shadow of his own trials, which he preferred not to share with her, lest she worry—needlessly, he would say, though she was quite certain he was involved in highly speculative and dangerous undertakings that certainly necessitated worrying...which was precisely why he wouldn’t tell her about them.

  Alyneri sighed. Would that you were by my side to convince our host to make his decision and release us to our own affairs.

  Would that I was simply by your side, he replied with a mental caress.

  Alyneri paused in her steps and closed her eyes. She let the sensation carried on Trell’s thought pass along her skin and for a moment felt his hands holding her body close against his. She responded with wishes in kind and a sigh redolent of mutual longing.

  But thinking upon the miles and weeks that separated them never put her in a productive frame of mind, so she followed this moment with an ephemeral kiss that promised so much more when they were together again and murmured, I see Fynn waiting for me. He looks practically presentable. Perhaps today will be the day after all.

  Take care, my love. Trell flowed her his admiration, and his thoughts faded from her mind.

  Fynn and Carian were indeed waiting for Alyneri where the hallway intersected another corridor. The royal cousin looked usually pressed and polished that morning, wearing a burgundy coat with nary a wrinkle in sight, and with his dark hair brushed back and damp from a bath. He’d even shaved and trimmed his moustache and goatee.

  “You look fit for court this morning, my lord,” Alyneri remarked cheerily, if curiously, as she neared.

  “Only the best for you, Princess.” Carian puffed out his hairy chest, viewed between the undone buttons of his shirt.

  Alyneri ignored him. “What’s the occasion?” she asked Fynn.

  Fynn glowered at her with all the aplomb of a drenched cat. “Does a man need a reason to look his best, Your Grace?”

  “You usually do.”

  Carian took a long drag on his smoke. “Cassius sent women to Fynnlar’s rooms this morning to clean him up.” He blew a smoke ring in Fynn’s direction. “Said he needed the royal cousin looking respectable.”

  Fynn turned him a glare. “Whenever am I not respectable?”

  “Always,” Alyneri and Carian said together.

  Fynn scowled at them. Then he tugged importantly on his coat. “It’s time to set our collective feet on the road to productivity, as Her Grace would say, and demand that rapscallion who calls himself a truthreader answers our proposal or else.”

  “I’m thinking he’ll choose the ‘else’ option.” Carian pushed off the long table he’d been leaning against and started down the adjoining hall, trailing smoke.

  Alyneri followed the pirate with Fynn at her side. “I’m pleasantly surprised to hear these sentiments from you, my lord. Productivity is usually a curse word for you.”

  Fynn shook his head. “If I have to spend another week drinking Cassius’s bubbling wine, my stomach’s going to explode. How can the man live in the Rogue Valley and not have any Volgas? It’s a criminal tax levied on the indigent to make a man like me drink effervescent wine.”

  “Yes, you’re quite without means, mate,” the pirate observed drily.

  Fynn flung open his arms as he stalked behind Carian. “Can’t you see how impoverished I am?”

  Perhaps considering this a rhetorical question, the pirate continued leading an ambling charge down the hallway. His burgundy coat hung unhinged from his broad shoulders, and the legs of his pants bunched up around his calf-high boots. A perpetual five-day shadow clung to his jaw, and his wild mass of long, wavy hair was in definite need of brushing. He walked with a gait that reminded Alyneri of a colt just finding its legs.

  Carian must’ve felt Alyneri’s eyes on him, for he glanced invitingly over his shoulder. “See something you like, Princess?”

  “Only if those spider-legs of yours are taking us to the damned node,” Fynn grumbled.

  “I was speaking to the other princess.”

  Alyneri was regarding Carian quizzically. “I do believe a bird has begun nesting in your hair,” she observed.

  He snapped jeweled fingers. “I knew I felt something fluttering last night, but the three Avataren chickadees in my bed assured me it was just their hearts.”

  Alyneri rolled her eyes.

  Fynn looked affronted. “You took all three of those women to your bed? Couldn’t you have just pleasured two of them and sent the other one to my rooms?”

  “That hardly would’ve been fair to the one that got sent away,” Carian replied with a grin.

  Alyneri shook her head. “Only you could find a way to make Cassius of Rogue’s interminable fête into your own personal brothel.”

  Fynn sighed despondently. “I should’ve been born a pirate.”

  Carian clasped hands behind his head and rolled his hips around suggestively. “It’s all about the motion of the ocean, mate.”

  Alyneri was regretting having made a comment that opened the subject. Then again, there really was no safe topic with this pair. “Do either of you know why Cassius called for us this morning?”

  “Probably to stage another episode of horrendous gloating,” Fynn complained.

  Trying to stay chipper, Alyneri sighed. “Well, I suppose there’s as much chance that he’s made a decision as not made one. The glass needn’t always be half empty.”

  Fynn shook his head. “Your Grace should know by now that it never pays to harbor illusions of optimism.”

  “Half empty, half full, you’re both chasing the wind south of the mark.” Carian looked between the two of them, his brown eyes glinting. “The glass can be refilled, savvy?”

  Alyneri felt a smile trying to claim her lips. “That’s an unusual wisdom, coming from you.”

  “I’m a man of hidden depths, Princess.” Carian looked her up and down. “Take a turn beneath the sheets with me and you’ll learn that over and over again.”

  “I have fuel enough for my nightmares, thank you.”

  The corridor opened onto one of the many terraces that surrounded Cassius’s mansion. On the lawn, a score of women—all of them beautiful, many quite exotic—stood like delicate delphiniums amid a wash of cosmos daisies, the latter comprised of the roughly two dozen children flitting around in confectionary dresses or tidy coats. Not a one of them was above the age of ten or she’d entirely lost her eye. The women, some of whom held babies in their arms, were drinking Cassius’ ubiquitous sparkling wine while the children played, laughed or chased one another around the tables. It was quite the display of gaiety.

  Alyneri stopped at the terrace railing and took in the scene wonderingly. “How lovely,” she murmured.

  Fynn came to an abrupt standstill. “What are they doing here?”

  As if on cue, Cassius emerged from the archway behind them, wearing one of his more predatory smiles. “I took the liberty of inviting them, Fynnlar.”

  That morning their host was wearing a leopard-fur coat trimmed in violet ostrich feathers and a jaunty, low-crowned hat whose band matched his coat. Tight leather pants ended in suede boots dyed the same rich violet as the feathers. His chocolate skin looked luminous in the sunlight, and his perfect teeth were very white as he smiled.

  Fynn rounded on him. “I’ll have you know, you can’t hold us here any longer—especially not with all of them here!”

  “Fynnlar, you’re free to go at any time,” Cassius replied amiably.

  “Oh, sure.” Fynn snapped his fingers for Carian’s attention. “What’s it called again, vran Lea? A continuum loop?”

  Carian sucked on a tooth while eyeing the women in the yard. “I haven’t exactly figured out how he does it.”

  Fynn told Alyneri, “You can walk in a straight line for three days—”

  “Sometimes five, depending on how much you’ve irritated him
beforehand,” Carian interposed.

  “—and you come up over the hill, and there the damned house is again, exactly as you left it.”

  Cassius offered them a shadowy smile. “The world begins and ends at my abode, as they say.”

  “No one says that.” Fynn glowered at him. “That’s not a saying.”

  Cassius snapped for a servant, and the man rushed over with goblets of sparkling wine. As Cassius chose one, Alyneri renewed her suspicion that her host lived on wine, Eltanese siqarets and little else.

  Carian snorted as he took a glass. “And people claim I have a god complex.”

  Fynn turned him a look. “No one claims you have a god complex.”

  “I am a god, Fynnlar, as every woman I’ve taken to my bed has adamantly declared.” He downed the golden wine in large gulps while his brown eyes explored Alyneri’s curves. “Such a shame a pretty chase like Trell val Lorian claimed you first, Princess,” he remarked, returning his smoke to his lips. “I would’ve helped you discover a whole new religion.”

  Alyneri merely gazed at him. “You do realize that Gwynnleth is never going to sleep with you while you’re such a consummate and unprincipled flirt?”

  Carian’s eyes became buggishly large.

  Alyneri smiled serenely.

  Walking to the edge of a set of steps, Cassius spread his arms to the women and children who were enjoying the morning’s festivities on the lawn. “Behold, Fynnlar, your progeny.”

  Alyneri choked on her wine.

  Fynn glared at Cassius. “I don’t see why you had to go and invite them. Haven’t I suffered enough already?”

  Alyneri recovered her breath to gasp, “Fynn sired all of these children?”

  Carian barked a guffaw. Cassius rumbled a velvety laugh. The ladies within earshot suppressed little smiles. Fynn scowled.

  “Fynnlar the Paterfamilias.” Carian chortled around the smoke roll dangling between his lips. “Oh...that’s too rich.”

  Fynn glared indignantly at all of them. “I’ll have you know I am perfectly capable of having sired any or all of these...” he waved a hand while wincing at the children, “tiny humans.”

  The women were starting to collect the children together in the yard.

  Alyneri tried to make sense of the conflicting facts. “Can someone please explain to me what all of this is about?”

  “Humiliation,” Fynn grumbled.

  “This is the produce of one of Fynnlar’s business ventures, Princess—in a manner of speaking.” Carian was eying Fynn mirthfully. “It’s not exactly legitimate, but then, neither are these children.”

  Alyneri settled a firm look between the three men. “I really must insist that someone explain.”

  Cassius pressed a hand to his heart. “It would be my privilege.” He extended the same hand to the colorful assemblage. “You see before Your Grace the result of a business partnership between myself, Lord Fynnlar and another interested party, wherein we provide the, ah...” he tugged lightly at his nose, “raw material, and Lord Fynnlar provides the funds.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” Fynn said morosely.

  Alyneri crossed arms beneath her breasts and cast her gaze between Cassius and Fynn. “And?”

  Cassius held a hand to the women. “All of these ladies you see before you were once ladies of the night, to use the term best suited for polite company. Your Grace may perhaps recall meeting Ghislain D’Launier in Rethynnea?”

  Alyneri did a double-take at him. Ghislain D’Launier was one of the Mage’s contacts, as well as being the madam of the most respected house of pleasure in all of the Free Cities. It was through delivering a message to Ghislain that Alyneri and Trell had been reunited with Fynn and the others of Alyneri’s original party. How Cassius had known of Alyneri’s meeting with Ghislain, though, was anyone’s guess.

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “This partnership with Ghislain provides support for the lovely ladies you see here, who, as Your Grace may have observed, have at one time or another been...put in a delicate way...by their profession,” and he bowed slightly to his own allusion, “which situation prevents them from being able to continue their important work.”

  Cassius sipped from his own goblet as his colorless eyes took in the aesthetic decorations on his lawn. “Fynnlar’s donations support the ladies through their delicate time, and afterward help them find gainful employment better suited to motherhood, if that is their choice, or welcoming homes for their offspring if not.”

  Alyneri turned a demandingly bewildered stare at Fynn.

  “All of my good deeds have driven me to drink.” He stared at his wine, looking immensely dissatisfied with it.

  “It is indeed an unsightly stain on your mantle of debauchery, Fynnlar,” Carian smirked. He added confidentially to Alyneri, “Every time Fynn loses a game of Kings to Ghislain, she makes him donate for another courtesan.”

  Alyneri rapidly counted the many women in the yard, and her eyes widened considerably.

  Cassius added with a wink, “Fynn loses a lot.”

  All this time, Alyneri had thought Fynn was as irreputable as they came, but in fact he’d been giving away much of his income to a charitable cause? She couldn’t quite reconcile the two concepts of him in her head.

  She asked in a voice as soft as her gaze, “Is this the business venture you kept trying to discuss with His and Her Majesty back in Dannym?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Your Grace.” Fynn cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. “I can’t be seen doing something so respectable. I’d become the laughingstock of every pirate in the realm.”

  “Sure as silver,” Carian smirked.

  Cassius prodded the royal cousin towards the steps. “Off with you then, Fynnlar. Go and greet your grateful issue.”

  Fynn stared at the assemblage of women and children like he would’ve rather had razor blades driven beneath his fingernails than approach them. “I am far too sober for this.”

  Carian pointed out in a low voice, “There’s the slightest chance one of them might sleep with you purely out of gratitude, mate.”

  Fynn went.

  The moment he reached the lawn, the older children rushed up to him happily, while the mothers encouraged the younger children to overcome their shyness. Within short order, a gaggle of children surrounded the royal cousin, all of them demanding an apparently famous story about pirates, at which point Fynn’s scowl melted into a humble, caring smile that Alyneri had never seen on him before.

  Cassius observed low at Alyneri’s ear, “That smile suits him more nearly than the cynical inebriate, wouldn’t you say, Your Grace?”

  She shook her head, marveling. “Surprisingly so.”

  Then her expression found a more suspicious aspect, and she turned Cassius a stare. “What are you getting out of this partnership?” She’d well observed that Cassius of Rogue and philanthropy avoided each other like the plague.

  “Posh!” He waved airily with his glass. “I cannot be seen to partner with Fynnlar val Lorian. He’s a known associate of pirates.”

  Carian looked him up and down. “Every time you say that, mate, the cut bleeds the lie more profusely.”

  Cassius eyed him with a cool smile. “We cannot be but who we are, vran Lea.”

  “What we are is more germane, in your case.” Carian pulled out his pouch of tabac and began rolling himself another smoke, eying Cassius circumspectly beneath his fuzzy caterpillar brows. “When’re you going to admit to it?”

  Cassius withdrew a golden case from inside his coat and took out one of his own black-market siqarets imported from the realm of Eltanin. He placed it to his lips and lit it with a thought, and when he inhaled, the gold patterns printed on the black paper flared all the way back to the gold-wrapped filter.

  He exhaled pale smoke scented with cloves and a questionable herb that always gave Alyneri a headache. Then he smiled in that dangerous way of his. “Just what am I meant to admit to?”

&nbs
p; Down on the lawn, the children gasped at Fynn’s story.

  Carian plucked Cassius’s siqaret from his lips and used it to light his own. The pirate blew a cloud of bluish smoke in Cassius’s general direction, probably because he knew it irritated him, and handed him back his siqaret. “For starters, what a charade this whole truthreader gig of yours is.”

  Cassius blinked his colorless eyes. “Charade?”

  “You’re as much a Nodefinder as I am. Dare you deny it?”

  Cassius took a thoughtful draw on his siqaret. “I wear my Nodefinder’s ring proudly.”

  “But see now, that’s all part of the charade.” Carian hooked a leg over the corner of a table and swung his boot. “We see your eyes and truthreader’s ring and then the two rings of a stacked Nodefinder and think, ‘Oh he’s got Nodefinder’s rings, too,’ when really, it’s the other way around.”

  Cassius looked nonplussed. “Pray help me understand this logic.”

  “You’re a Nodefinder and a truthreader innately, you wily blaggard. Go on and deny that.”

  The hint of a smile teased one corner of Cassius’s mouth, part admiration, part quizzical contemplation. “Last I knew, Adepts were born to only one strand, vran Lea.”

  Carian looked to Alyneri. “Notice he didn’t deny it, Princess—truthreaders can’t lie, savvy?” Carian pointed at Cassius with his smoke caught between his fingers. “Here on Alorin we’re only born to one strand, but on Eltanin? Those in the know swear double-stranders happen all the time.”

  Cassius gave a low chuckle. “Eltanin. Is that your theory? That I’m...” he waved with his siqaret, searching for the right term, “an alien from the realm of Eltanin?”

  Carian shrugged his eyebrows meaningfully at Alyneri. “Notice he still ain’t denied it, Princess.”

  “Must one deny something so objectively outrageous? Should I deny it if you declared the sky green? Only an idiot argues with a fool.”

  Carian blew smoke at him. “This fool’s got your number, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Cassius’s expression sobered. He took a long draw on his siqaret and exhaled slowly, letting the scented smoke filter lazily up around his face. “That’s far from all you’re saying.”