Page 7 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

I waited, stood entirely still, in the antechamber of the South Wing as dawn broke on the first day of Ergreen.

Today marked twenty years since my birth.

All of my Brothers were born on the first day of a season, at midnight when the moon was at its fullest. There was no equality over which land might be given the touch of the moon that night, and not all welcomed its children.

The less spoken of the Soundlander practice of leaving the infants out in the snow, the better.

Some years the Brotherhood brought all five Moontouched to Eavenfold; some years, none.

I scratched my nose, fidgeting with the beaded veil covering half my face. It was unexpected, finding the beads lying on my bed last night, not least because it required someone to remember I existed. There was a small note to accompany it, which simply read: For Propriety.

Though I did not recognise the penmanship, I recognised the garment from illustrations of the women of Droundhaven.

If I had any uncertainty about the identity of Eavenfold’s new guest, this rid me of it.

It was a custom in the Sightlands that unmarried women covered their faces in public from their first bleed until their wedding day.

The first glimpse of a woman’s face was reserved for the wedding and was a sacred rite for those brought up with the Sightlander customs.

It wasn’t usually expected of visitors. Clearly, the Threads were overcompensating in their diligence to their esteemed patrons. I put it on nonetheless, the beads hanging down from the bridge of my nose, covering everything below my white eyes.

The Ergreen dawn bells ended their twinkling refrain, and someone pulled the doors open from the inside.

My heart fluttered as I saw the five Threads sat behind a grand wooden bench in various states of alertness.

Light came through pocked glass windows behind them, and the wooden floor had been recently swabbed.

Unless chosen to serve a Thread, this was the one and only time I would be invited into this hall.

My hands shook as I stepped inside, my steps echoing in the silence.

I walked straight to the centre of the hall, as Seth had advised me, and stopped before the carved wooden plinth.

I ducked my head in deference, which gave me the perfect excuse to study the carved floor under the plinth.

Five thin lines engraved in its base in a V shape, like geese.

Each path was only the width of my thumb; a metal tube cut lengthways and set into the floor, reaching from the plinth to the edge of the Threads’ bench, ready to carry my blood in their tracks.

I heard a chair shift from behind me and fought the urge to turn and look. No one had said anything about there being anyone else in the hall, every account I’d heard only mentioned the Threads. I put it to the back of my mind. I couldn’t afford the distraction .

I glanced up at them through my lowered eyes as Thread Isillim stood from the middle position.

He was the youngest of the five, not yet eight spans to his name.

From his strong brow, I supposed he could be considered handsome.

But the sternness of his birdlike features coupled with his scattered white Mark covering a third of his face made him unnerving to behold.

I hoped whatever Mark the Fates bestowed when I made my Fate was less…

off-putting. His was a forked lightning bolt, starting at his right hairline and splaying heavily across his cheek, but the irregularity of it against his pale Sightlander skin always reminded me more of a painful scarring burn, and not a powerful weather storm.

He cleared his throat. “Tanidwen Treleftir, unbound Brother, you are welcomed on the first day of your fourth span to be bound to your Fate.”

Brother. I had wondered if today might be the day they called me sister, but it seemed they were determined to change none of the words.

I scanned the other Threads, catching the white eyes of both Groulin and Rasturnin, both watching me with a rare curiosity.

That pair had taught me and my fellow Brothers until my third span.

Whilst many of the boys stayed in class right up until their Ceremony, I had been permitted to transition to independent studies with minimal oversight for the last five years.

I liked to believe it was due to their faith in my work ethic and intellect, but I knew it was far more to do with not having to deal with a girl in the class.

Say what you like about Braxthorn, but he had chosen well on the Threads, since none of them had even the remotest interest in spending time around women.

“Open the top of the wooden box before you,” Thread Isillim commanded.

I looked down at the plinth then, the simply carved rectangular prism extending to my waist. On its top, lay a smaller wooden box. I opened it, the stiff hinge reminding me of Sollie’s music box. But there was no dusty dancer inside, only a thick needle, its sharp end pointed straight up.

“You come here to be measured and bound. From your words and your blood, your path will be determined. Pierce your wrist upon the needle.”

I swallowed, my fingers shaking a little as I lifted my hand. I was so consumed with not making a noise, or crying out, that I forgot to breathe. I inhaled twice and then lanced the needle into my right wrist.

The pain was sharp but bearable, with a cold itchiness I wanted to move away from.

Instead, I forced myself to look at the Thread of Death.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to see my blood start to pool in the lines below, I’d heard of boys fainting from that sight alone.

The quicker I answered my questions, the quicker I could remove my wrist.

“Will you accept the Fate you are given later today?” Isillim asked.

“I will,” I said, proud my voice did not crack.

“And will you endeavour to answer all questions to the best of your ability?”

“I will,” I lied.

“Then we shall begin.”

This was it. All my studying would now come down to five questions. I swallowed past the dryness in my throat.

Thread Groulin came first, positioned on the far left, and I looked to him with my full attention.

I’d place him in his fifties, though I was certain all his years hunched over his research made him look a span or two older than he was.

His Fated Mark was two semicircles, spaced apart on the left side of his forehead.

He was a gruff but pleasant enough man, and as the Thread of Knowledge, he was one of my preferred paths.

He stood and grumbled out his question. “How does the Cloven choose their regent?”

I paused. I couldn’t quite believe this was the question. There must be more to it. I could have answered that question when I was barely off the ferry from Verdusk. I swallowed again, wondering if there was some part to the question I wasn’t understanding, some complication I had missed.

Thread Groulin sighed.

“By combat,” I said quickly, wincing a little when my small jolt cut the needle deeper into my wrist. “When the current leader grows weak, younger men may challenge him for the right to be Bluff Leader.”

He nodded and glanced at the next in line, Thread Urskalli of Service.

That couldn’t be it. “But their method for choosing their wives is far more interesting,” I blurted.

“That’ll be all.” Thread Groulin held up his hand, and I quietened immediately.

Why had he asked me such an inane question? Maybe he wanted to prove my competence without question. If he’d asked me a harder question, I might have failed and caused him embarrassment.

Thread Urskalli peered at me as I tried in vain to reassure myself, his white eyes squinting through his monocle. He asked me an equally inane question about how I would prepare a tincture for sleeplessness.

I replied with the basic recipe for a tincture of rosehilt, lavendell, and domil, giving the locations for each plant and the best time to serve it to improve drowsiness.

Thread Urskalli nodded at my answer and leaned back. I did not embellish nor recommend the slightly improved remedy where you added ground meganweed from the Touchlands. I merely wanted to pass Service, not pander to it .

By now my forearm was cold with blood loss, and I flexed my fingers to stave off the numbness.

I also risked a quick glance down at the floor.

The red of my blood forged an ichorous dark trail down the five paths, slowly rolling down the grooves in the floor towards the bench.

Someone somewhere had created a rumour that we bled silver, but it wasn’t so.

The moon had left that aspect of our humanity untouched.

Of course, I believed there was natural magic in all blood, as all Touchlanders did, but that was my faith, and not one shared by the men in front of me.

Thread Isillim stood up once more. He was a Sightlander, as were Groulin and Rasturnin.

Urskalli hailed from the Scentlands, and Ersimmon from Taste.

Unsurprisingly, Sound and Touch were not represented on the Council of Fates.

The Threads were chosen, not through some extra sixth Fate path, but by King Braxthorn, and therefore, the Triad were its sole diviners.

He smiled down at me. “Same question as Thread Urskalli. Your lord comes to you complaining of sleeplessness and asks you to prepare something to aid him. How would you go about poisoning him instead? You must achieve this without detection.”

The solution came to me in an instant.