The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  But of course, Tanis knew Pelas would raze the city if it meant sparing Gemina more pain.

  Straightening with a deep inhale, Pelas looked around to capture everyone’s attention. “Here’s what we’re going to do...”

  And as he walked them through the plan that Tanis had conceptualized, the lad watched Gemina’s expression go slack with disbelief, constrict again with fear, and finally resolve into streaming tears of hope.

  As they took their leave of the princess, returning to the main hall via a different passageway, anticipation kept Tanis on edge. He retrieved their weapons from his coach and handed them to the others as they hurried down a corridor. The Eltanese concealed their blades beneath their robes.

  Gemina had assured them that Luftan would broach the topic of immortality with Pelas if given the opening to do so. They made themselves conspicuous once they regained the ballroom, and as Gemina had predicted, the Furie’s agents soon found them.

  The hall where the Furie’s men led them sat beneath an enormous dome. Gilt covered everything that wasn’t otherwise decorated in mind-boggling mosaics, designs within designs. Just looking up into the kaleidoscopic dome made Tanis feel spinny.

  Numerous couches and chairs created intimate settings in the carpeted room, and this was where the kingdom’s elite had apparently settled.

  Furies with their entourages, visiting dignitaries, ambassadors and diplomats sat enjoying refreshments while courtesans draped in silks and satins danced for their pleasure. Courtiers beyond counting hung about the fringes, waiting for notice or invitation to breathe the rarefied air closer to the center of the room.

  Elevated at one end was a dais, partially obscured by hanging silk draperies. It offered the most luxurious couches, the plushest carpets and the most glorious food and wine. Musicians stood just before the drapes, strumming lilting music that wove a magical ambience through the room like light through the dazzling chandeliers.

  The Furie’s agents in their long belted coats led Tanis and the others to the dais, thence to the Furie, who was seated in the middle of a plush couch wearing robes as ornate as the room.

  When he saw Pelas approaching, the Furie murmured a command and his attendants scattered. Only one collared truthreader remained standing in Luftan’s presence, along with the Furie’s guards, who maintained watchful poses by the pillars.

  Luftan waved Pelas and the others forward.

  The Furie looked very much like the man Tanis had seen in Gemina’s thoughts—enough, in fact, to make Pelas’s breath catch when he laid eyes on him.

  A torrent of emotions whirled through his bond-brother’s mind, a brief cyclone that dissipated as rapidly as it began, yet left Pelas’s heart raw and bare.

  Gemina might have warned him that her son so resembled his handsome father that one could be mistaken for the other.

  If she’d truly known how much Pelas had loved Gabriel, perhaps she would’ve been kinder to him in this way. Or perhaps her absence of warning had been purposeful, that Pelas might share anew in the heartache she lived every day; the subtle hint of remonstration, even, that whatever long life Pelas had bestowed upon her brother, it hadn’t been nearly long enough.

  Tanis was very glad they’d thought of another solution, because he saw right then that Pelas would never have been able to bring harm to Luftan. He might not have been the son Gemina and Gabriel had dreamed of having from Pelas, but to Pelas, Luftan was very clearly Gabriel’s son.

  “Immanuel di Nostri.” Luftan welcomed Pelas with open hands and a wide smile, so like and yet unlike his father’s. A hundred implications suffused those words, that smile, which felt conniving and cold.

  Because he was sharing Pelas’s thoughts, Tanis knew that Gabriel would have stood to embrace Pelas, and his smile would’ve been singularly warm. It was enough of a difference for Pelas to separate the son from the father.

  Pelas gave him a courtly bow, polished, suave, and utterly inaccessible. “En Furie, you do us honor.”

  The Furie’s hazel eyes shifted from Pelas across Tanis and the others. He had a calculating gaze, keenly assessing and shrewd beyond his apparent five and thirty years. Tanis couldn’t read his thoughts even though he was na’turna.

  The lad suspected this had something to do with the silver cuff the Furie wore on his wrist, which had patterns layered through it, or else his jeweled necklaces, which did as well—though Tanis thought the latter more likely linked to the Adepts the Furie was commanding.

  “I admit my curiosity at why the illustrious Immanuel di Nostri, of whom my late father never ceased speaking, comes to my city in the company of four foreign Adepts. Surely not to merely admire your fountain. Has some new commission brought you here? Are these Adepts your apprentices?”

  The question felt barbed in Tanis’s thoughts, loaded with insinuation.

  Pelas draped an arm behind his back, maintaining a polite formality he’d never needed with Gabriel. “I haven’t taken a commission since I completed the fountain for your father, as surely the Furie knows.”

  “Indeed.” Luftan’s probing gaze said he’d spent good money learning that truth, and even more searching for Pelas. “Is this to be a social call, then?” His tone implied he thought it anything but, unless it was to call intimately upon his mother. Verily, his tone implied that Pelas had come for some purpose illicit or otherwise counter to the Furie’s own desires.

  Or perhaps these were simply the steps of the dance one took in a Furie’s court. Pelas certainly seemed unruffled by them, but Pelas knew all the dances.

  “The Furie gives me too much credit,” Pelas returned, layering just as much meaning into his words as the Furie had put beneath his. “I am honored but unworthy.”

  Luftan opened palms again. “Why then? Inform my understanding.” He glanced to his truthreader, perhaps to accompany a subvocal command.

  Pelas chose his words carefully. Tanis could perceive him culling them, formulating intent with his phrasing, as a wielder channels intent into a pattern.

  “A fortuitous turn,” Pelas replied, “either of chance or of fate—I leave the final assessment to the wisdom of the Furie’s judgment. My companions and I found ourselves in your fair city and in need of a weld on the very night the Furie most generously opened his doors to all.”

  “You came to use my weld.” He glanced curiously to the truthreader, who nodded slightly. “Intriguing. For what purpose?”

  Pelas smiled. “To travel, my lord.”

  “How very innocuous you make it sound.” His hazel eyes studied Pelas intently. “And what do you offer me for the use of my weld? The Agasi lad mentioned something in his screening about an artifact? As you have seen, my collection of artifacts is unmatched. What could you possibly possess that would interest me?”

  Tanis held his breath. Pelas was about to bait the line.

  “Perhaps...” Pelas said as though the idea had only just occurred to him, “perhaps I might offer a service instead.” He tilted his head slightly, angling a look at the Furie that he could not misconstrue. “One that I bestowed upon your father.”

  The Furie’s gaze hardened. “Be clear what you offer. My father spoke freely of his and your affair to me.”

  “It is the service of which he didn’t speak, perhaps, but which you surely must’ve observed of him, that I reference.”

  The air between Luftan and Pelas grew taut, the line cast and drawn. Tanis breathed shallowly, lest he disturb the placid waters where floated the lure.

  Then the Furie looked to the rest of his guards. “Leave us.”

  They bowed and departed.

  The truthreader remained, seeming hardly more substantial than the filmy silk draping his form, his head bowed and his thoughts rigid, his mind bound to inaction save when the Furie demanded his attention.

  Tanis would’ve rather suffered a hundred years beneath a mountain of revenants than a week bound by one of those collars.

  Luftan rose from his seat. His robes trailed be
hind him as he walked. Bare feet draped in jeweled chains brushed his hems of layered silk before sinking deeply into the carpet.

  He stopped before Pelas, half a head shorter but equally broad of shoulder—a man in his prime—and studied him for a lengthy time, his gaze narrowed with suspicious speculation. Clearly he was assessing the bright lure on the line, tasting of its veracity.

  Tanis and the others tried to be as invisible as possible.

  “They told me it couldn’t be done,” Luftan finally said, low and fierce, but his gaze burned with possibility. “My father attributed the longevity of his youth to you, though he had no proof to offer. Instead, I saw his immortality even as I saw it fade. Explain this to me.”

  Pelas unshielded some of his own true self, just a slender opening in the lantern, the slimmest ray of light, yet it was enough to make the truthreader in the corner lift his head and stare.

  “The gift I bestowed upon your father faded because he was not fire-blessed, like your mother. To be fully immortal, en Furie, you would need to be.”

  Luftan withdrew as if singed by the idea. “Fire-blessed.” He looked Pelas over hotly. “It cannot be done...can it?”

  Pelas bowed his head to the perfect degree of solicitousness. “I can do it, yes.”

  Luftan spun to his truthreader.

  “He—he speaks the truth, en Furie,” the man stammered, gaping at Pelas.

  Luftan swung back to him, his eyes wide. Then a smile twitched on his lips, followed by a dubious guffaw, which grew into a boldly victorious laugh. “You can make me immortal?” He laughed loudly. It was the laughter of a man whose lengthy planning and pining had fortuitously found unanticipated fruition.

  “I can make you an Adept,” Pelas carefully replied. “Fire-blessed, like your mother. From that point, you can work the Pattern of Life yourself, as Princess Gemina has done and continues to do, on occasion, to maintain her youth.”

  Again, Luftan looked to his truthreader expectantly.

  The Adept bowed his head and choked out, “It is the truth, en Furie.”

  Tanis wished he might’ve been able to console the Adept in that moment, for never had a man radiated such anguish as did the truthreader, when in a flash of ill-fated insight, he’d glimpsed his eternity beneath the Furie’s immortal rule.

  Luftan paced a tight line twice, three times, already heady from just the whiff of triumph. Then he abruptly called for his guards.

  They rushed through the parting of drapes.

  “Find my mother,” he commanded, and they raced away to do his bidding.

  Luftan’s thoughts were blurred by the patterned jewelry he wore, but Tanis could sense he was tasting victory in all its nuances and liking very much its flavor.

  Luftan returned to his short pacing, brimming with anticipation, his cup too full to sit or stand. Several times he looked again at Pelas, who stood quietly waiting on the Furie’s pleasure.

  After five minutes more of this, Princess Gemina arrived mid a phalanx of guards in their long, belted kaftans. For the first time, Tanis noticed that the guards all wore metallic cuffs, similar to but less ornate than the cuff worn by the Furie.

  Gemina greeted her son with an austere kiss on both cheeks. She was guarding her thoughts carefully now, and a remoteness hooded her gaze. She’d put her necklace back on.

  “Mother.” Luftan looked her over with the hint of an unkind smile. “I assume you enjoyed your reunion with Sardaar di Nostri. That was the reason my gift found its way into the cushion, was it not?”

  Gemina replied calmly, “There are some things a woman never shares with her son, be he Furie or Fire King.”

  She looked him over in turn. It must’ve been so difficult for her to see her son and be reminded only of heartache and the loss of her brother, but her gaze reflected none of her thoughts. Nor did the faint smile that touched her lips betray her lingering sorrow. “I’ve come, as you requested, Luftan. How may I serve en Furie?”

  The Furie returned to his couch while the others remained standing. “Do you know what Sardaar di Nostri has offered me?”

  “I cannot imagine.”

  “Truly? You didn’t send him to me?”

  Gemina looked to Pelas gravely. “I sent him away, urgently, and bade him and his companions depart without ceremony.”

  Luftan chuckled. “Ever my staunchest supporter, mother. And you wonder why I gave you such a gift as that necklace.”

  She turned her aqua gaze back to him stoically. “I don’t wonder, Luftan.”

  He stared at her for the space of a slow exhale. Then he told the room at large, which included by that time many other of his retainers who had trailed back in on Gemina’s wake, “The illustrious artist Immanuel di Nostri claims he can make me immortal—fire-blessed, mother. Like you.”

  She turned a shocked stare to Pelas while whispers flitted like fireflies through the guests. “It...cannot be done, surely.”

  It was hard to say from her inflection if she meant to say, in fact, that it shouldn’t be done.

  Luftan seemed to take it that way, in any case, for his face became taut with the strain of holding his smile in place.

  “What I don’t quite understand,” he said, looking back to Pelas, “is why offer such a grand gift for the use of a simple weld?” There was challenge aplenty in his tone, and not a little accusation, redolent of a lingering suspicion.

  Pelas was gazing softly upon Gemina. He didn’t dissemble, but revealed his love as he replied with quiet introspection, “What wouldn’t I do for Gabriel’s son?”

  As much speculation bubbled in the wake of this confession as had followed Luftan’s declaration. Within the span of a few uncounted breaths, the entire room had been energized with shock and suspicion, aversion and awe; waves of disbelief beat against disconcertion in a churning sea of impossibility. Had he demanded his guests leave his presence, the Furie might’ve had a revolt on his hands, but he seemed content to bask in the frenzied energies the conversation had stirred.

  “How long will it take?” Luftan inquired.

  “A matter of moments.”

  “Moments!” Luftan looked around at the dozens of eyes upon him. “Imagine. After all this time. Moments.”

  One of his advisors approached diffidently but with an expression constricted by evident disagreement. “En Furie, should this not be given more consideration? To place yourself in this stranger’s power, whatever he is—” He looked Pelas up and down with evident distaste. He dropped his voice to say more plaintively, “You would let a baddha lay his hands upon you?”

  “I am no Adept.” Pelas’s tone implied that while the Furie might treat him as he would, the rest of them had best not take such liberty.

  “He speaks...a truth,” the Furie’s truthreader said, looking ever more bewildered.

  “Perhaps, if I may, en Furie...” A man stepped out of the mass of milling advisors. He wore his dark beard shorn close and a collarless tunic beneath his kaftan, the better to display the mercuric tattoo of a coiling snake wrapped around his neck. “Perhaps if Sardaar di Nostri might agree to be collared—”

  “Absolutely not!” Gemina’s horrified gaze flew to Pelas.

  “He just said he wasn’t a baddha, my lady,” the Vestian pointed out reasonably. “What harm could come of it?”

  Pelas’s eyes were molten. “Indeed. What harm?”

  “Immanuel, no,” Gemina whispered.

  Beside Tanis, the Eltanese stood tense and alert, keeping silent but at the ready. Everyone was more or less ignoring the four of them, in any case.

  Pelas’s gaze never strayed from Luftan’s. He bowed to the Furie. “As en Furie wills.”

  The Furie’s lips spread with slow pleasure. Not a person in the room couldn’t read his thoughts, for exultation was written all over his face. “Collar him.”

  While the hall reverberated with whispering, half of it speculating on Pelas’s nature, the other half asking how a man who wasn’t a baddha could make the Furie
into one of the fire-blessed, someone brought out a collar, and Pelas bent to allow the man to place it around his neck. The silver clasps in the back spun into each other as screws into their sockets.

  When Pelas straightened again, Gemina had tears in her eyes. Seeing Pelas enmeshed in those patterns drained all the blood from Tanis’s face.

  The same man who’d collared Pelas placed a ruby in the Furie’s open palm.

  Fixing Pelas with a darkly triumphant stare, the Furie closed his fingers around the stone. Only a fool would believe he was ever going to let Pelas out of that collar.

  “Then...let’s begin.”

  The room fell silent. Pelas bent to one knee before Luftan, whereupon the Furie looked him up and down with that dangerous smile. “Why not both knees?”

  Pelas accordingly lowered his other knee and remained there, a supplicant to the Furie’s will.

  “Well?” Luftan arched a brow.

  “I need to place my hands on your head.”

  “Use my hand instead.” He extended it to him.

  “Respectfully—”

  “Make it work, di Nostri,” Luftan growled.

  Pelas’s lips tightened. “Your will, en Furie.” He took the Furie’s hand between both of his and closed his eyes.

  Tanis felt him drawing on his power. Doubtless every person in the room felt it, Adept or no. But then, that was the point. They wanted no one to mistake what was taking place there.

  Viewed on the currents, elae funneled into the room in great washes of color—creative rose, elemental gold, kinetic bronze and the silver flitter of thought. Commingled with the others washed a greenish-blue tint that Tanis had come to recognize as the third strand of the lifeforce.

  The currents formed shifting veils across the faces of the onlookers. Some watched entranced, others with candid shock; some looked resentful and many appeared dismayed, disbelieving, or disgusted.

  Behind Tanis, the Eltanese were radiating edgy ridges into the currents, making a bizarre painting of rippling, striated colors.

  Tanis knew the moment Pelas had awoken elae in the Furie, for he felt a bloom of energy like a sudden pop, and an instant later, Luftan gasped.