Strands of Fate

by R F Hurteau

  “It’s fine,” she insisted. “It’s fine. Just give me a moment.”

  The fight with the Envicti replayed in his mind in agonizing detail as he watched her.

  She’d given up everything to save him. Her chance at a life with her family was gone.

  Although she was one of the strongest, most stubborn people he knew, Gavin worried if this would be her breaking point.

  Her estranged son, Laevus, took a sick pleasure in her suffering and had given Gavin plenty of opportunities to doubt Onyx’s ability to cope. When Laevus had come to tell her that everyone in Sanctuary was dead, Gavin had believed that Onyx might never come out of the self-imposed prison of grief and regret that she’d retreated into. She had been forced out of Sanctuary, forced to leave her husband and eldest son Felix behind. Being torn away was torture enough, but to be told that they were dead...that would have been too much for most.

  Yet Onyx had sprung back to life on the fateful day that Felix had arrived in Solara. Not only had Sanctuary survived destruction, but Felix himself had helped save it. He’d come through the Evenmire on a mission, and Onyx had leapt at the opportunity to assist. She’d had a new sense of purpose, a new reason to live. Her son was alive, and when the mission ended, she had planned to go back to Earth with him, reunited after twenty long, painful years.

  And now Gavin had stolen that from her. His life seemed a poor trade for the life she could have experienced on Earth. Thanks to him, Onyx would never meet her daughter-in-law, or her grandchildren. Never see Felix again.

  If only he had been more careful, he wouldn’t have caused this. He’d been too slow to return through the Evenmire. He’d been too weak to fight off the Envicti on his own. The debt Gavin owed was one he could never hope to repay.

  He had never been very good with words, especially when they were important. He fumbled for the right thing to say. All he managed was, “I’m sorry.”

  The apology felt wholly inadequate.

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her wrist.

  “It isn’t your fault.” Her tone was sincere, but tired. “And you’d have done the same for me.”

  “You should have left me.”

  They had been through so much together. In her place, he would have saved her without hesitation, put her needs before his own desires.

  That was the way he’d been trained, as well as his own personal code of honor. Others before self. Starting with family.

  Onyx and the Weaver were the only family that he had. They came first.

  “You know I could never do that,” she said, sitting down beside him and wringing out a fresh cloth, wiping her hands with it in an absent-minded fashion.

  “Gavin, I really believed...I thought...” she paused and shook her head. “Never mind,” she finished with a sigh.

  It was at that moment that Gavin realized they were not alone. The severity of his injury must have dulled his instincts. Turning to his other side and looking toward the chair by the window, he found it was occupied.

  “Thank you.”

  Again, his words seemed inadequate. The Weaver did not respond.

  He hadn’t spoken at all since they’d arrived. He wasn’t staring out the window, as Onyx so often did. Instead, he stared down at his hands, his palms resting open on his lap.

  They were still soaked in Gavin’s blood.

  Gavin glanced at Onyx, who bit her lip and shook her head. “Not all wounds can be cauterized.”

  Then she reached down, picking up a basin of blood-soaked cloth.

  “I’m going to wash these. And I’ll get some food cooking. You need to eat something.”

  She looked up at the Weaver, addressing him with a sort of pleading in her voice. “Help me move him.” This was more of a command than a request.

  Once again, the Weaver offered no reply, no sign that he’d heard her at all.

  “It’s fine,” Gavin told her. “I’m not quite up for moving yet, anyway.”

  Onyx looked back and forth between the two men a few times before nodding and disappearing into the kitchen. The back door opened and shut quietly, signaling her exit.

  The room was silent for a long time after she left; Gavin staring up at the ceiling, the Weaver staring down at his upturned palms.

  It was not too long before the makings of a fine soup began releasing the savory scent of herbs, spices, and chicken into the air.

  It might have smelled good under different circumstances. But Gavin had no appetite, and the strong aroma only added to the nausea that kept threatening to overtake him.

  This was not the first time he had been gravely injured, nor the first time that the Weaver had sat beside him as he convalesced. In fact, the very first time they had met had been strikingly similar to this.

  The Great War had been raging long before Gavin was born, but the violence peaked during his early years.

  He did not remember many details from the night that the Forlorn overran his village. He was sometimes thankful for that small mercy, and other times angry about it. A part of him felt he owed it to his parents, to his friends and neighbors, to hold on to the horrors they had endured in their final hours.

  And yet, although he’d tried, the only memory he could recall was of their screams.

  The pain of his wound flared, and Gavin flinched, biting back a scream of his own.

  He did remember the aftermath of the attack in vivid detail. Waking up in an unfamiliar bed to find the Weaver’s unfamiliar face looking down at him. He remembered feeling confused and afraid.

  And the pain—it had been the first time Gavin had ever felt so much pain. For a young boy, it had been nearly unbearable.

  “Where am I?” had been the first question he’d mustered the strength to ask.

  “You are in Imradia, Gavin. You are safe now,” the Weaver had told him.

  “The White City?” Gavin had gazed around the room in awe, expecting to see something more grand than more beds filled with more injured. “Where are my parents?”

  He’d known the answer right away. It was written on this stranger’s face before the words had even formed.

  “I’m so sorry,” the Weaver had told him, a look of genuine regret shining in his eyes. “Your parents were lost. We tried to save them, we tried to save them all...but we were too late.”

  That was the day that Gavin had become a war orphan. The day his destiny had taken a sharp turn, steering him away from a simple life and into a world of death and chaos.

  The Weaver, then a member of the elite guard known as the Envicti, had claimed Gavin as his own. He had trained him, mentored him, and stepped in to fill the empty hole left by the loss of his parents.

  He didn’t have to do it. Imradia had many group homes for those displaced by the war. Gavin could have been sent to any one of them, lost among all the other forgotten youths.

  He wondered what would have become of him, if the Weaver had chosen not to offer him a home back then. Who would he be today?

  “I killed them,” the Weaver said at last, breaking the silence so abruptly that it startled Gavin, drawing him back to the present. “I’ve defied the First Order. Me, of all people.”

  Gavin sighed, feeling bile rise to the back of his throat once again. The Weaver, more than anyone he had ever known, had always held the First Order in the highest esteem.

  “You did it to save me,” he said, though he knew this statement would offer little comfort.

  “I did it because it was easy.” The Weaver’s words came out in a low growl. “I did it because, when it came down to it, I chose to take their lives instead of letting them take you. Because it was easier to break the First Order than to keep it. If anyone should be willing, honored, to keep the First Order, it should be me. And I failed. What kind of a person does that make me?”

  “The kind to whom I owe my life. And I will never forget it.”

  “No,” said the Weaver in a sad whisper, still staring unwaveringly down at his bloodstained h
ands. “Nor will I.”

  ***

  The Weaver disappeared that first night, when Gavin had finally slipped into a restless slumber.

  It was days before Gavin managed to hold down more than a few spoons of broth at a time, despite Onyx’s near-constant insistence that he try. He grew worse before he grew better, his body wracked with pain that kept him up through the nights and a fever that seemed to burn the flesh from his bones.

  A week passed, then two. Onyx continued to hover over him, watching for further signs of infection. She changed his dressing often, packing the wound with fresh ground herbs and assorted powders.

  Whenever he asked what she was doing, she would only retort, “I’m not going to set you on fire again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Beyond mild curiosity and a longing for a distraction, Gavin had no reason to question her care. Onyx’s background made her uniquely qualified to treat injuries and sickness. Though Therans were not prone to illness, the tiny village of Solara was a place where everyone toiled to provide sustenance for their families. Injuries were to be expected.

  As such, Onyx’s arrival had proven a boon to the people there, who lacked the knowledge and skill set that Onyx had gained in her years of service to the Elder Council. She was highly regarded by her neighbors and though she had always kept to herself, she had never turned her back on someone in need. She asked for nothing in return, perhaps her own way of paying penance for the past, and so had earned the trust and loyalty of the whole village over the years.

  Gavin had always been a fast healer, even by Theran standards. As he began to feel more and more like himself, he made it a point to walk a little farther each day.

  He chose to keep to the forest paths, enjoying the peaceful solitude of the trees. They took no notice of him, did not nag as the villagers did.

  When he returned, he was never surprised to find Onyx outside, waging war on the weeds in her garden. Gavin knew that this was her own way of working out her emotions, and so he gave her space. The plants here offered her the same quiet consideration that the forest gave him.

  Today, however, she had set out a chair for him in a sunny patch beside the fence. He sat for a while, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the slight breeze that kissed his face, carrying with it the familiar scent that was always the first hint of autumn’s approach.

  “Polly dropped off a couple of fish earlier,” Onyx said without looking up. “Nice big ones, too.”

  “That was kind.”

  “She asked after you.”

  He nodded. “That was kind, as well.”

  When he offered nothing further Onyx stood. Placing her hands on her hips and squinting in the bright sunlight she demanded, “Well?”

  Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Well what?”

  “Are we going to talk about it?”

  He shrugged. “The fish? What about them?”

  “Not the fish!”

  The chair, Gavin realized now, had been a trap.

  He knew what she wanted to talk about and he’d been avoiding it, mostly by taking longer than necessary on his walks. But he’d known it was only a matter of time before she brought it up. Now he was cornered.

  Onyx rolled her eyes. “Everything!”

  She wiped her soiled hands ineffectively against the sides of her pants. She rested against the old, rickety fence that surrounded the garden and spoke in a low voice, as if worried someone else might be listening.

  Gavin leaned in, cringing at the sharp sting of his wound.

  “You know what I did,” she said in a deadpan voice. “Thanks to me, Imradia is in an uproar. The Elder Council is gone, and Nero is in the perfect position to do whatever he wants. Meanwhile, his precious prototype has been stolen and the Ambassador disappeared from right under his nose. Not to mention that I’m sure he’s wondering what’s become of Laevus and the missing Envicti. It’s been three weeks, Gavin. How much longer do you suppose it will be?”

  Gavin frowned. “Before what?”

  She looked shocked at his ignorant reply.

  “Before he comes for us.”

  This caused a visceral reaction, and he glowered. “Let him come.”

  He did not want to discuss Nero.

  Once, a long time ago, the two of them had been friends. Comrades.

  But the appearance of the Evenmire had changed him, as it had changed so many other things. Nero had become a different person, distancing himself from those around him and focusing all of his attention on Earth.

  When he’d gone to Sanctuary, Gavin had been glad to see the back of him. But now Nero was once again on Thera, and in an even more powerful position than before.

  Gavin stood and moved toward the house, unwilling to discuss this further.

  A hint of motion caught his eye at the edge of the forest, stopping him in his tracks. A figure emerged from the trees. Exaggerated movements and a staggered gait suggested that whoever this was was either exhausted, injured, or both.

  The figure stumbled, righted himself, and took a few more paces. He repeated this sad pattern several times as Gavin watched, rooted to the spot.

  Then the man fell to his knees on the path and Gavin rushed forward. Onyx overtook him, dropping to the side of the fallen man. He looked familiar, but Gavin could not quite recall from where.

  Onyx spoke to him as if to a child.

  “What’s happened?” she asked in a soothing but urgent tone, “What’s wrong?”

  The man was young but appeared old at the same time. His skin was pale with a greyish tinge to it, his eyes heavy, sunken, and ringed with dark circles. Peeling lips that had lost some of their color gave his mouth the impression that it was attempting to blend in to the rest of his ravaged face.

  He reached up to take Onyx’s extended hand and Gavin could see him shaking.

  The man looked up at her for a moment, his eyes lingering on her lips and looking as though he wanted to say something before he slumped into her arms. Gavin helped her pull him up.

  “Be careful!” Onyx shot him a look of warning. “The last thing I need is for you to hurt yourself again.”

  Together they lifted. The man—Ollie, Gavin remembered now—was surprisingly light.

  They entered the house and Onyx toed the base of her bedroom door, pushing it open. They laid him down on the bed, the tired mattress barely registering the load.

  She looked him over, her gleaming eyes dark with worry as she examined him. Lifting his shirt, Onyx placed an ear against his chest, then pulled him onto his side to check his back.

  “I don’t see any wounds,” she declared, and Gavin, who had been watching over her shoulder, shook his head to confirm that he had also been unable to identify the problem.

  “Nor do I.” He reached out to touch Ollie’s neck. “Pulse is slow.”

  He looked to Onyx for answers as she stood, expecting her to at least have an idea of the source of the man’s suffering.

  “No fever. His breathing is fine.”

  “He’s Tapestry,” Gavin told her as they left the bedroom, closing the door behind them. “CEDAR, I think.”

  She didn’t even glance at him as she started pulling things off the shelves.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” she said with a bitter scowl.

  Onyx gave an angry shake of her head as she pulled a still-warm kettle from the stove, pouring steaming water over a teacup full of another of her signature blends of mystery substances.

  “Is this to be our existence, now?”

  Her voice was a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

  “Nero will wipe us out, one at a time, lacking even the compassion to finish the job?”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions,” Gavin said, attempting to calm her despite his own concerns. “We don’t know that it was Nero who did this to him.”

  Onyx turned her back on him, clasping the rim of the hutch with both hands so hard that her knuckles turned white.

  “You’re right,” she a
greed. “Nero didn’t do this to him. I did.”

  Gavin closed his eyes. Of course. She blamed herself for this, too.

  She would probably blame herself for every terrible thing she could attribute to Nero for the rest of her days. If there was one thing he knew about Onyx, it was that she had no trouble holding grudge—even against herself.

  Perhaps the Onyx of long ago, the one scorned by the Council and thirsting for vengeance, perhaps that woman could have lived without regret for what she’d done. But the Onyx of today, the one who was Felix’s mother, she lived in a prison where her drive and her compassion clashed in endless battle.

  She had done the wrong thing for the right reason, and now every unintended consequence of that action would haunt her forevermore.

  “If Nero is responsible for that young man’s current state,” Gavin said, speaking carefully, “it is not your fault.”

  “So thirsty,” came a weak voice from the direction of the bedroom.

  Ollie was standing, or rather leaning, against the doorframe, clutching his arm and breathing as though just making it from the bed to the door had cost him a great deal of effort.

  Onyx shook off her shock at the sight and set to scolding him.

  “What are you doing up?” she demanded. “You look like death warmed over. Here,” she said, moving to his side and assisting him back toward the bed.

  “I...can’t sleep,” he said with a little groan as he sunk into the mattress.

  “I have something to help with that.”

  Onyx looked to Gavin. “Hand me that cup?”

  Gavin did as she requested, and she held it out to Ollie, who took it in his still quivering hands with a quiet “Thank you.”

  He took a long, grateful sip before lowering the cup to his lap.

  “The Weaver sent me.”

  Gavin started. “You’ve seen the Weaver?” he asked. “Where is he? He’s been gone for weeks now.”

  He looked Ollie over, taking in his dirty, worn-out appearance once more, and felt himself filling with dread.

  What had happened to this boy? What had happened to the Weaver?

  “He was...” Ollie said, blinking sluggishly, “captured. Trying...trying to...”