The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  The senators all exchanged glances at this. Even Schiavone stood briefly wordless.

  Valentina looked them all over beneath a dangerously arched brow while the entire hall held their breath in silence. When the senators weren’t forthcoming with an answer, the Empress offered, “The Agasi imperial code, as set forth by the Senate and ratified by my ancestor, Hallian the Third, stipulates the rights held by citizens of the Empire. One,” and she lifted a finger, “the Empire shall not establish any uniform religion, nor infringe upon a citizen’s right of conscience to choose his own gods. Two, the Empire shall not deprive the people of their right to speak or write their sentiments, or peaceably assemble for the same. Three...” she looked all the senators over cuttingly, giving them time to interrupt. “Shall I continue through the entire code, Senators? Perhaps you will stop me when I reach the right that declares the people’s license to randomly experiment with potentially deadly patterns.”

  Senator Lombardo glanced at Schiavone while clearing his throat. “Perhaps we misspoke, Aurelia. Our petition is on behalf of the people, yes, but...surely the experimentation would need to be handled by highly trained personnel.”

  “Such as my Adeptus, or scholars from the Sormitáge, Senator? These types of personnel?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Because these are the very personnel who declared the pattern dangerous and speculative to begin with.”

  “The pattern must be tested, Aurelia,” Senator Aldo protested. “The thousands of signatures on our petition are simply asking that it be further explored beyond the confines of theoretical study.”

  “Beyond the confines of theoretical study,” she repeated slowly, each word dripping skepticism. “Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Senator Aldo, but what this petition of yours is actually asking—no, demanding—is for the empire to sanction human trials—experimentation, in fact—on na’turna.”

  The hall erupted.

  “Volunteers, Aurelia!” Senator van Diek shouted desperately above the clamor.

  The Lord Chamberlain slammed his gavel repeatedly, calling for order. People were shouting at each other, at the senators, at no one and anyone who would listen. Nadia imagined many among the crowd had placed their own names on the petition, not realizing what they were actually supporting.

  Contention and dismay made turbulent waves of the fourth strand throughout the vast hall. Nadia’s head was soon pounding from all of the bombarding thoughts.

  “Should we retreat one step further to regain the shores of reason,” the Empress’s husky voice could be heard above even the most aggressive shouters, “we must ask, by what right did the Literato N’abranaacht bequeath this pattern to the people? Where is his deed of ownership dictating what must be a lengthy manifest of the pattern’s provenance? Where is the legal document in which the literato committed this pattern, his purported personal property, into the people’s care?”

  The crowd finally started to quiet. All eyes fixed demandingly upon the senators. Most of the latter had the sense to look chagrined, though Schiavone’s expression was dark.

  The Lord Chamberlain set his gavel on his desk and his gaze on the senators. “You have such documentation in your possession, surely?”

  Most of the senators remained mute. Just as Schiavone was inhaling to reply, the Empress said, “You’ve misappropriated these Twelfth-day proceedings to cast aspersions on my motives, Senators. I shall take the same liberty with yours now.”

  The hall fell instantly silent.

  That was fast, Caspar whispered on a thought.

  Nadia mentally grunted. The people wouldn’t want to miss even one remark of the Empress putting five senators in their place.

  “As the senators have kindly brought to our attention,” the Empress addressed the entire hall with her smile, “Warlocks have returned to the Realms of Light. Is it not a strange coincidence that we have before us here a document masquerading as humanitarian aid, but which, if executed as stated, would in truth return us forthwith to the darkest days of the Quorum of the Sixth Truth?”

  Vast murmuring met this question.

  “Though millennia have passed, need any of us be reminded of the Quorum’s revolting undertakings at a time when Warlocks from the Shadow Realms bound armies beneath the darkest compulsion? When the most basic right of free will was held as a currency in trade?”

  Schiavone really walked himself right into that, didn’t he? Caspar asked.

  Nadia gave a minute shake of her head. He was a fool to try to get the better of the Empress in her own court.

  Even so, the crowd’s allegiances that day had seemed to turn on a pin, one minute for and another against, but the current passionate outcry left no debate now about whose opinion had the upper hand.

  The sun had already fallen below the goldline—that band of gilded statues that ran in a frieze along the length of the chamber’s westerly wall, just below the high windows—heralding the end of Twelfth-day proceedings.

  At a glance from the Empress, the Lord Chamberlain stood from behind his ornate desk and clapped his gavel five times for silence. “The senators may leave their petition for the Empress’s consideration.” He clapped his gavel again, and everyone dispersed.

  Nadia’s Praetorians rushed forward to escort her from the dais.

  She sighed as she pushed to her feet. Now would come the reception and what always felt an endless parade of false smiles and invading eyes. It was the one day she was grateful for the sheer silk that veiled her gaze.

  As her Praetorians surrounded her and Caspar joined her side, Nadia adjusted the band of emeralds that held her veil in place and puffed a dramatic exhale.

  At least there will be wine, Caspar darted a faint smile down at her.

  He was half a head taller and always walked at her side like a wielder-protector, with his hands clasped behind his back and his pearl-grey eyes scanning the crowd for dangers. Nadia just wished she might’ve looked at him without always finding his form so attractive, or his gaze so attentive, or his manner so protective yet...validating of her own capability. Her world was in turmoil enough without adding complications of the heart, but Cephrael seemed to be testing her in every quarter these days.

  She glanced at Caspar through the shadow of her veil. Wine would be welcome.

  The day’s proceedings had shown her that things were far worse than she’d imagined. The populace had been thoroughly beguiled into believing N’abranaacht’s pattern could help them, despite having no proof or certainty of its intent; and rather than trusting those who were trying to navigate these treacherous waters, they kept listening to the call of seditionist sirens who would only see them all dashed on the rocks or drowned.

  To make matters worse, Warlocks had somehow regained access to the Realms of Light—the Demon Lord himself, if rumors were true. He’d supposedly visited a duke in the Solvayre and the lord’s entire estate had gone mad. The Empress’s Red Guard found but one survivor still with her wits about her—a little girl, a truthreader. The horrifying tale she told came straight out of legend.

  Nadia felt so isolated. Within the palace, people just went about their business as if nothing had changed, yet Nadia knew everything had changed. Malorin’athgul, Warlocks from the Shadow Realms, the invading Danes, their dying race...the realm was teetering on the edge of a precipice, and no one was even throwing a line to try to rescue it!

  As they walked to the reception hall amid a red froth of guards, Nadia drew in a tremulous breath. Have you ever felt mixed up in something far beyond you, Caspar? Something truly outside the realm of anything you could understand or even do anything about?

  The Marquiin turned her a look of disbelief. You’re asking me this?

  Nadia let out a slow exhale and closed her eyes. Without even thinking, she reached for his hand. I wish we could leave this place.

  She sensed his startlement an instant before he closed his fingers around hers. His hand was warm, large...surpr
isingly strong. Where would we go?

  Somewhere they couldn’t find us...just anywhere that isn’t here.

  Nadia thought of the peace she’d known while recovering at Pelas’s Hallovian estate, but returning there now would only remind her of Tanis, and thinking of Tanis these days just confused her.

  What is your home like, Caspar?

  The Marquiin’s mouth curled faintly upwards. His memories floated to her across the bond, images of snowbound mountains and dark lakes bitten with ice; of meadows blanketed with grass so deep a grown man could vanish within them, and waterfalls churning mist like fog. She felt Caspar’s love for these places, and his sadness at the idea of never seeing them again.

  But...she glanced quickly to him, why can’t you see them again?

  He looked to her with his lips pressed together and a sudden stillness in the shared space of their minds—he was carefully concealing his thoughts from her now.

  Nadia’s brows furrowed. What don’t you want to tell me?

  Another time, Princess. Caspar nodded significantly to direct her attention, and Nadia turned her head to see they’d arrived at the reception hall.

  There followed round after round of greetings from the aristocracy, followed by the well-practiced dance of dodging the probing eyes and indecorous questions—often about Caspar—that ever accompanied free-flowing wine and lords and ladies with nothing better to do than pry for gossip about their royals.

  “It’s a cry heard round the world,” a resonant male voice said suddenly from behind Nadia.

  Turning, she stood face to face—or rather, face to chest, for he was really quite tall—with a dark-haired man she’d never seen before. She might’ve thought him thirty and five if he hadn’t obviously been an Adept of some sort and therefore probably much older. His eyes were an electric blue that practically charged her skin...or perhaps it was just the impact of his handsome gaze as he swept it across her.

  The hint of an irreverent smile curled his lips. “Wouldn’t you agree, Princess?”

  The world seemed to spin. Nadia blinked, her vision momentarily blurred. She reached for Caspar’s arm and everything was suddenly back to normal.

  Nothing was close to normal.

  “I’m...” she searched the stranger’s face, feeling inexplicably faint. It was like he was holding her in phantom arms too strong for her fragile bones. She couldn’t breathe beneath his gaze. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  Nadia, are you all right? Caspar held her elbow tightly.

  She fought to drag breath into her lungs. “I’m afraid...I didn’t hear you clearly, my lord.” Her voice sounded choked to her own ears.

  ‘My lord’...I like the sound of those words coming from your lips.

  The meager breath Nadia had claimed fled in a dismayed puff.

  Had she heard the man’s thought, or merely imagined it?

  The calculating smile that hinted on his sensuous mouth seemed to imply the former, but the thought felt barbed in her mind and far from innocuous, much like his smile—like everything about him.

  She could still feel his thought tumbling down the hillsides of her memory, scraping off whole patches of perception, leaving a blotched and ragged path.

  In a moment of startled discomposure, she couldn’t even tell if her shields were up—yet...she never went anywhere without shielding her thoughts.

  He pushed a hand through his full, dark hair and swept it smoothly back from his face to curl just below his ears. Sapphires flashed at his cuffs.

  Nadia looked quickly around with physical and mental eyes to see what others were saying or thinking of the stranger at her side, but for the first time, well...ever, no one was looking at her, or thinking about her, or even apparently aware of her existence in the room.

  The smirk on the man’s lips seemed to imply he’d had something to do with this. “I was speaking to the sentiment you voiced on the aristocracy just now, Princess.” He lifted a flute of sparkling wine as if in salute to her.

  Nadia didn’t recall saying anything about the aristocracy...at least not out loud.

  Nadia...? Caspar was practically vibrating beside her.

  She finally found the wherewithal to answer him. I’m...all right, I think. I don’t know what’s happening.

  “Perhaps more wine for the Princess Heir?” the man suggested solicitously.

  “Yes,” Caspar gave her a worried look. “Of course.”

  No—don’t leave me with him! Nadia flung the desperate thought at Caspar, but he was already moving away to see to her needs. It was like he hadn’t even heard her. Even her Praetorians were nowhere to be seen.

  A jittery apprehension beset her, that sense that something was terribly wrong, but the reception buzzed with its usual carping murmur; people milled, laughed, drank her mother’s free-flowing wine. Nadia had barely touched hers, yet her head felt fuzzy and her stomach aflutter.

  “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

  “I believe you were saying it, actually.” His smile held her as captive as his gaze. “Society has a desperate need to segregate itself into classes, and each class necessarily must vilify all the others in order to prove their own superiority. The nobility cannot but ridicule their royalty, the gentry the nobility, the merchant class the gentry. Even beggars must find someone to show themselves greater than. It is society’s ultimate failing, this fanatical aversion to collective strength.” He sipped his wine. “Free will cannot help but engender a mantra of ‘every man for himself.’”

  Nadia struggled to put a coherent voice to her thoughts. Focusing them was like trying to corral snakes. “Are you actually speaking against free will?”

  He opened a hand to the room at large. “It is the talk of the moment, Princess.”

  Suddenly, everyone seemed to be speaking of the senators’ petition, the Quorum of the Sixth Truth, and what the world had been like when Warlocks from the Shadow Realms bound entire kingdoms beneath compulsion. The tides of the fourth carried as many thoughts condemning the Warlocks as advocating for them.

  The latter made Nadia cold.

  She studied the tall stranger through the veil draping her vision. Her thoughts felt equally veiled. “I’m sorry, have we been introduced? I can’t seem to recall your name.”

  “I’m merely an observer here.” He gave her a polite smile. “You might think of me as a guest of Senator Schiavone.”

  “And do you share the senator’s view on the Pattern of Awakening?”

  “I think that pattern could be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.”

  “This implies there are right hands to wield such a pattern.”

  He sipped his wine. “You feel differently?”

  Nadia knew better than to admit to anything that someone could use against her mother politically, yet the words tumbled right out in spite of this. “I think the literato’s pattern is incredibly dangerous and should never be worked by anyone.”

  The moment the words left her mouth, Nadia knew with frightening certainty that the man before her was compelling her responses as effortlessly as Darshan had. She couldn’t sense elae in him at all, yet his presence reminded her of the way Malorin’athgul crackled on the currents.

  Only...if Shail had been an exploding red star, this man would be a singularity, the core of the black hole, out of whose event horizon nothing could escape.

  Nadia forced a swallow.

  A smile teased his lips. “But a pattern is neither good nor bad, Princess. It’s the wielder who gives it intent.”

  “I don’t trust that pattern any more than I trust the literato—he isn’t who he claimed to be.”

  Again, her tongue betrayed her!

  Nadia felt the edges of panic. She could no more move away from this stranger than she could stop her tongue from giving him whatever he asked. It was Darshan all over again.

  Nay, Princess...Malorin’athgul are not true gods.

  The thought was both a flaming bolt and a caress. It burned and en
ticed with equal power, exploding through her mind like living lightning.

  These beings who think themselves gods, stomping around wielding lashing winds...they are as children throwing a tantrum. True gods have no need to display their power. They are power.

  He looked around the room idly, sipping his wine. With a thought, I could erase not only your life but the memory of you from everyone who had ever known you existed.

  The smile he returned to her brought tears to her eyes. She knew he was speaking the truth.

  Trembling, Nadia whispered, “What do you want?”

  “Many things.” He lifted back her veil and ran a finger across her cheek. “There is a man in your thoughts who works the fifth.”

  “Ean val Lorian,” she whispered tremulously. His finger brushing her skin felt like velvet, like down, like Caspar’s silken kiss from a dream. It terrified her.

  “Where might I find him?”

  Nadia shook her head. “I don’t know. Pelas said Shail sent Ean into Shadow—” Her voice broke beneath cresting grief. “Please...”

  He tilted her a look beneath those blazing eyes. “Please what, Nadia?”

  “Let me go,” she whispered.

  For some reason, her plea made him smile. “I will do more than that.”

  Abruptly everyone in the room was speaking of the Literato N’abranaacht. Whispers darted from cluster to cluster as a rumor spread that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. Nadia watched the tide of opinion sweep in a tumbling crest all the way to the back of the reception hall, where, quite suddenly, Senator Schiavone spun a violent stare directly at the man standing beside Nadia.

  Who flashed a lightning smile.

  Looking back to Nadia, he took her hand and kissed it. “My gift to you, Princess. Use it well.”

  Nadia’s world spun.

  “Nadia...?” Caspar was practically vibrating beside her.