Page 5 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

“ A re you still reading those papers?” Seth asked. “You already know them backwards.”

In this nook of the East Wing’s library, daylight was a foreign concept. Here, there was only musty paper, spilled ink pots, and the flickering light of cobwebbed tallow candles. Three walls of bookshelves hemmed me in, the desk barely wider than my knees.

“Pot, kettle, Seth,” I said, rubbing my thumbs over my temples and turning to him. His shadow was enough to turn the light from poor to unworkable, and I welcomed the break.

“They aren’t going to ask you anything you don’t already know.”

“And what if they do?”

“Then you get all the answers wrong and end up in Service,” he replied.

“And get stuck here for a span or two? No, thank you,” I said. Then I realised what I had said and looked at him with contrition. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

He shrugged. “That’s alright, I’ve made my peace with it. I’m halfway done, and where I’m posted next might be worse.”

“Where could be worse than this?”

As if Eavenfold was listening, a sinking candle in the corner fell off its iron holder, the soft wax smattering into the pile of scattered books on the floor. I gestured to it.

“Lots of places,” he replied, and he looked so serious that it sobered me entirely. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Is it still raining?”

“Yep.” He shook out the ends of his wet hair.

I grimaced.

“Tomorrow may be your last day on this island,” he said. “Last night, I saw us walking, and you were laughing, so I know you can be persuaded.”

“That sounds like a lie,” I grumbled.

Seth only smirked. He had the gift of foresight, though since he had no control over it, the Threads hardly knew what to do with him.

So far, the dreams were solely of his own future, and often only hours or a few days ahead of the present.

He frequently complained that if he wanted to see himself slaving away at his worn desk, he need only install a mirror.

Once he’d completed his Service Fate, he might see near futures affecting others or hold more agency into the visions of his own future to make some practical use of them in the present.

If his foresight proved helpful enough, one of the royal houses of the Triad could offer him a role in their court.

Worst case, some minor lord would be interested.

A cushy life of advisorship awaited him no matter what the result, which was far more than any reassurance the Threads would give me .

Nonetheless, I looked back at the stacks of paper on the desk and the dregs of the candle melted down to the wooden surface, its light clinging to the wick by sheer willpower alone. It looked nearly as tired as I felt.

I blew it out. “Let me get my cloak.”

He pulled his hand around from behind his back, holding my cloak aloft. “This one?”

I smiled as I took it from him, pulling the thick grey fabric around my shoulders, somehow still not fully dry from my dash across the courtyard over three hours ago.

“Can you test me?” I asked as we stepped out into the drizzle.

Seth groaned. “Really?”

“Please.”

The Ceremony wasn’t as splendid as it sounded.

I would step into the room and place my wrist on a needle, and as my blood flowed out, each Thread would ask one question.

That was all I would be privy to. Behind closed doors, my aptitude for each Fate would be discussed, they would deliberate on the path my Fate should be bound to, and grant me the condition to unlock my full abilities.

One of five Fates. Death, Knowledge, Acquisition, Marriage, and Service.

Some thought our Fates were chosen long before the Ceremony, but I had to believe it mattered. I had to believe there was some way to choose my own destiny.

“Why do they call Edrin ‘the Shepherd’?”

It was a droll question born of rote regurgitation of one of my least favourite tomes, The History of the Five.

The writings suggested that there was an innate sanctity to the number five, embedded into every part of life.

That, I agreed with well enough. Five kingdoms, five fingers to a hand, five seasons to a year each with fifty days, and five years to a span.

Though those who believed too directly in the teachings of The History of the Five might be simple enough to accept that Edrin, one of the so-called ‘Five Founders’, created this natural order.

After all, in the allied Triad, namely the Scentlands, Sightlands, and Tastelands, it was akin to a foundational religious text.

To me, learning my own history and that of the forgotten sixth Founder, Tavedwen, their version of our history felt reductive at best. The magic of fives was far more ancient than the quintuplet who once killed a monster.

Still, I delivered the answer with as much nuance as the Threads would permit.

“Edrin is seen to this day as the guiding force of the Founders, known as the Five. He watched over the many lands, casting his foresight to help the Five eventually defeat the Oktorok. It is largely his legacy as a leader of flocks of men that granted him the title, though some suspect that before his founding of the Sightlands, he was a common sheep herder.”

Seth only nodded and asked another question as we trudged down the edge of a shrubbery leading to the main courtyard and gate. “What is it that makes the venison from the Scentlands taste so damned good?”

I shot a look at Seth. “What kind of question is that?”

“Is that what you’d say if Thread Groulin asked you that tomorrow?”

“He wouldn’t,” I replied.

“Humour me.”

I sighed but thought it through nonetheless as we reached the empty bleak courtyard. Well, not entirely empty.

The three pillars still stood from Harum’s Death Fate, as they had to until the fiftieth day.

The temporary wooden structures clawed up nearly thirty feet high.

It was an old tradition passed down by the Five; the bodies of the dead were placed high above, so that only the ancient beings above may look upon them and judge their life and their death .

Places such as this, with no significant natural high point, were expected to create them. From my research, those who still followed the tradition used a nearby hill to give their offering. Many did not bother at all, but the Brotherhood of Eavenfold were nothing if not traditional.

Harum had found his three easily once he gave up hope of finding me.

He hadn’t been so barbaric as to target the nursery, as I fleetingly thought he might.

Instead, he killed three teen boys in cold blood with a stolen kitchen knife.

Two of the three had insulted him a season ago; the last was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Half a dozen other boys had held them still as Harum cut their throats, and I hoped the guilt shamed them for spans to come.

Their Fates ended there, up on that parapet of sticks, so that he could start his immediately.

They had stopped smelling after the fourth week, when heavy rain had washed the worst of it away.

Tomorrow they would burn, once the full fifty days had passed.

Their rotting corpses were our only company as we crossed to the unmanned gates.

Apparently, Harum’s Mark resembled an arrow, and I thought that fitting. At least everyone in the Tastelands would know him to be a predator, not prey.

“The deer probably graze in Junisper, known for its salt marsh grass and floral weeds. Maybe what they eat travels through their body and makes their meat more flavourful. Maybe they get better exercise.”

“That was two maybes.”

“Maybe you should ask better questions,” I replied.

He smiled and held his hands up. “All I can think about is food. The ferry comes tomorrow, and the cooks clearly didn’t plan ahead at all. Yesterday was barely more than gruel.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “You’re probably right. I know as much as I can know. ”

We walked through the main gate and out into the moors as the steady rain soaked through my hood.

“I have a question,” Seth announced.

I looked at him, and my hood fell back, water catching on my eyelashes. He smirked and pulled it back up, touching my cheek with the back of his finger.

Expectation, nervousness, and warmth grazed through his touch.

“I’m waiting,” I said.

The tenderness wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t have the space in my mind to think about it right now, to think about missing him or the fact we might not see each other again for years. I could only think of tomorrow and finally getting off this island.

“You’re advising a queen as one of her ladies-in-waiting. She is nearing the end of her childbearing years and is newly a widow, her husband killed in a hunting accident. She needs a legitimate heir to secure her line. Who would you advise her to marry?”

“Of the current selection of marriageable nobles?” I asked.

“Yes, imagine this happened this very morning.”

“Which land?”

“Let’s say the Touchlands,” he said, referencing my home nation.

I shook my head without a pause, not willing to concede the pedantic point. “You know that if Konidren died, Kalidwen would step down. There can be no Shield without the Sword, and we don’t pass our title through heirs.”

I didn’t need to finish the rest for him.

It was part of the reason the Triad had denounced us, due to our barbaric practice of Blood Trials to pick our rulers, whom we called the Shieldblood and the Swordblood.

To say nothing of their own jousts and hunts and warmongering, it was our once-in-a-generation contests that were the true evil of the Senselands .

“Suspend reality for a moment and answer the question,” he said. “You’re stalling.”

I grinned up at him. “Suspend the reality that most eligible men in the Triad would rather dance a jig on their father’s remains than marry a Shieldblood?”