The Red Threads of Fortune (Tensorate #2)



THE SUN LURCHED THROUGH the pale sky as they threaded through the empty shells of Bataanar’s streets. Second-sunfall wouldn’t be for another hour yet. Mokoya linked her arm with Thennjay’s, the yellow of her skin changing spectrum against his warmth.

Thennjay was silent, letting the heaviness of his footsteps and the uncharacteristic shallowness of his breath speak for him. Mokoya, squeezing his arm, allowed him his solitude. Her husband hardly ever talked about how Eien’s death affected him. In the tangle of months following the accident, he had been the calm center in the storm of Mokoya’s emotions, holding on to her as she raged and fought. It was easy to believe that he had simply risen above the base nature of humanity. Easy to believe that he, in his meditative way, had peacefully accepted what the fortunes had dealt him.

It had infuriated her. She wanted him to grieve as she had grieved. She would lash out at him, throw breakable items, call him heartless, monstrous. But she never managed to shatter his calm.

In the years that passed after she left him for a vagrant’s life, she’d had time to consider what those first few weeks must have been like for him: his child dead and his wife lying in a sickbed, fighting not to follow after her. After she recovered, he would often take her right hand and squeeze it, whether in bed or in the middle of an argument. At the time, she’d thought it was meant to comfort her, but she wasn’t the one who’d needed comforting. Mokoya pictured the way it had become reflex in the days he stood over her broken body and counted her breaths. How he would touch the flesh of her right arm, because as long as her body was accepting the new graft, it wasn’t dying.

Sometimes she would wonder: Did he cry? Or did he keep his emotions bound, as always?

“What really happened when you met Tan Khimyan?” he asked.

Bataanar became solid brick around her once more. “I told you,” she said. “She accused Rider of calling the naga to the city.”

“And you don’t believe her, do you?”

She remembered the conversation in the tent and the comforting conviction she had mustered. “Of course not. I trust Rider.”

“All right,” Thennjay said. “I’ll believe that.”

“What is this about, Thenn?”

“Back in the guardroom, you went somewhere else. Something really upset you. I thought it might have been Tan Khimyan.”

“No. It’s just . . .” Everything, she wanted to say. “The past two days have been very stressful. You do remember today’s the anniversary, don’t you?”

“Yes, Nao,” he said patiently. “I do.”

At least there was a specific trigger for the guardroom incident. “It was the generator,” she explained. “Its size, and the noise . . .” The ache of panic lingered in her chest, even with time and space insulating her from that room. Trying to ease Thennjay’s worry, she added, “Generators don’t usually affect me like this. It was just this one, and with everything that’s been going on . . .”

“Oh, Nao.” He tightened his grip on her arm.

Led by Thennjay, they kept a steady pace, each step crossing one of the flat rectangular tiles that made up Bataanar’s roads. With the curfew still on, it felt like the two of them were the only things left alive in the world.

“I’m not well,” she finally admitted, setting free the swarm of locusts that had nested inside her for far too long. “I thought I would return to the monastery when I got better. But I’m not getting any better. I’m afraid all the time, I can’t control my thoughts. I don’t know how long I can go on like this.”

Thennjay said nothing. Just listened.

She said, “You know what’s the worst part?”

His voice was soft. “What is, Nao?”

“I miss having prophecies.” She shook her head. “All my life I resented them. I hated being shown things and knowing I couldn’t change them. Now? I want them back. At least I could be sure of my prophecies.”

Thennjay walked a few steps in silence. “Do you think they’ll ever return to you?”

“No. I don’t know.” Something stirred in the depths of her consciousness, a memory of something odd. Mokoya’s steps slowed as she pulled on that murky thread, trying to reel in the thought attached to it. “Rider said something strange to me when they were teaching me to fold the Slack. They thought I had been actively seeking out prophecies.”

“Did you tell them the truth?”

“I did. And they left it alone. But it was a shocking thing to hear. As if I’d made a choice not to have them anymore.”

Mokoya’s thoughts rolled further than her words dared to. When she’d folded the Slack earlier, she’d been stunned by how easily it came to her. It felt almost like muscle memory, as though she were echoing something she’d done all her life.

An ice-water thought washed over her and cascaded down her spine. What if she could, in fact, choose where and when to see the prophecies?

Thennjay had turned down a different path of thought. “Are you sure you’d want the ability to control them?”

She had no answer to that.

As they came in sight of the raja’s palace, Thennjay said, “Nao. If you want something to be sure of, I can give you one.”

She met his gaze, and there was infinite tenderness in it. “The monastery will always be open to you,” he said. “And you will find me waiting there. Always. No matter how long it takes.”

*

“I don’t know what you think I can do,” Princess Wanbeng declared. “And I don’t know why you think I’d do it.” With her white-clad back to them, it was impossible to make out the girl’s expression, but the contempt in her voice made that unnecessary.

“This concerns the fate of Bataanar,” Thennjay said. “This city is your home. You must care about it, even just a little bit.”

Princess Wanbeng’s room occupied the top floor of the library tower, drowned in light pouring from stone-carved windows the right size and height to jump out of. High above them sat a dome of mountain glass. Woven with slackcraft, the glass was clear under starlight, and hard and opaque as mortar when the sun rose. Shelves and bookcases cluttered the circular room, whose contents told nothing of the owner save that she cared nothing for order and that she liked horses.

On their way up the tower, Thennjay and Mokoya had been stopped by an apologetic pair of palace guards. The princess wouldn’t be seeing anyone at the moment, they’d said. She was not well.

They had been close enough to the top that sounds echoed downward: somebody shouting. Mokoya had recognized Wanbeng’s voice. “Is the princess with someone?” she’d asked.

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