Shoestring Theory

TWENTY-FIVE

The entire palace was crumbling around them. The earth quaked, causing pillars to strain overhead. Wooden floor splintered into slats and fragmented chips, the ceiling cracked ominously over their heads and they were just barely staying ahead of it.

All but one of them.

Eufrates lingered behind, failing to disguise his limp and an inability to run at full speed through his injuries. Even Cyril, who on a good day ran as fast as a courtier on a leisurely stroll, was outpacing him.

“Eufrates!”

He was about to double back, help Eufrates out under threat of both of them being crushed by debris, but a rush of golden-orange and dark brown hues flew past him. Before he knew what was happening, Tigris had thrown her brother over her shoulder and was running back to him, keeping with his pace. Eufrates was half a head taller than her, but she carried him like she would a sack of barley.

“I have always wanted to do this,” she said brightly.

Cyril merely blinked at her, trying to conserve breath as they ran.

“Granted, I thought the one I would be picking up was you,” she added.

Eufrates grumbled from her shoulder. “Tig, if you tell anyone about this–”

“Who will I not tell?!”

As they made it to the great hall of the palace, Cyril wheezing with exertion, he began to feel confident enough that they would make it out of this alive and unsplattered that he could speak.

“Tig, I… what happened ? How are you…?”

He had not released her spell, though he had every intention of doing so once she was out of range of the web (he had not entirely thought of how on earth he would time this out, but, at the time, as far as he was concerned, a Shoestringed Tigris was still much safer than a vulnerable human one). Tigris had apparently somehow managed to get herself out of it on her own. He was eternally grateful for the stroke of luck, but curiosity burned a hole in his gut.

Then, he blinked, suddenly hit by a stroke of insight. “Did you destroy my pattern ?” He balked.

Any gratitude he held for her cooled in a blaze of alarm. Certainly, it was not as grandiose as Atticus’s web, but the combination of both his and Heléne’s spells had the deadly potential to backfire so stupendously he was agog over the fact that Tigris still had all her limbs accounted for.

Tigris, seeing the shock bloom on his face, vehemently shook her head to dispel his theory. “What? No! Though, I’ll admit, I did try it.”

“ Tig ,” he said urgently.

“What?” Eufrates, who looked a fright balancing precariously on his sister’s broad shoulders, helplessly craned his neck to partake in their exchange. “What’s happened? What’s she done?”

“Nothing!” Tigris protested.

“At best you could be missing an eye!” Cyril said, then turned to Eufrates. “Your sister is playing fast and loose with the most dangerous manipulations of magic.”

“I said ,” Tigris snapped, scowling deeply. “That I tried to destroy the pattern. I was not given the chance. Frankly, I thought you had done it, Cy.”

Cyril shook his head, slowly, despite the punishing pace at which they ran. “I couldn’t. My hands were bound.”

“Is that why you resorted to pugilism?”

“Yes, yes, this will be a very good and very funny story to tell once we make it out of here .”

“Well.” Tigris sniffed, almost petulant over not having been believed. “I didn’t break the spell. And you know I’m telling the truth, because I’d be boasting about it otherwise.”

That did make sense. Tigris was not a humble woman. If she had managed to outweave – in the loosest of ways – the self-proclaimed ‘greatest mage of his generation’, she would be screaming it from rooftops for years to come.

“Then… what was it?” Cyril couldn’t help but ask, even though his lungs felt like they’d catch fire.

Tigris pursed her lips, in true and genuine search of a satisfactory answer that wasn’t ‘I don’t know’. Finally, she said, “You’ll remember whenever you asked me how it felt to be in that body.”

He nodded. “Uncomfortable. It was a mystery to me as well, if I’ll be honest. I wish I could have done something.”

“Not just uncomfortable . Well, perhaps at first, yes. It was just discomfort. And sometimes, when we were in Cretea, or when you’d gone to see Eufie, it was even tolerable.

“But there were moments when – oh, I can’t think of a better way to describe it. I was being rejected . Like I was some virulent thing that had no business being inside Shoestring. And not only that but it also felt like I was being pushed out. Like there was something that was meant to take my place, but couldn’t, because I had made myself at home. Truly, it was one of the worst things I’d ever felt. Like being trapped inside an ever-shrinking cage, waiting to be spat out in one piece or multiple.”

Cyril had slowed his pace to listen to her speak. Both of them had slowed, really, being well enough out of danger. And though the strain of contorting himself was too much for Eufrates’s current condition, it was clear he was listening just as intently.

It would be too much to hope. Too big an ask.

Tigris continued. “At the very end, when I was running and running and running towards you, when I saw you defencelessly run into a man’s sword, I wished very hard that there were anything I could do to prevent it.

“But there wasn’t. You hobbled –” (“ hobbled?” ) “– your way directly into Atticus’s face with your fist and it was so stupid, but it wasn’t…” Here, she hesitated. Suddenly at a loss for words, breathing shallowly as she jogged through the palace’s pebbled entryway.

“It wasn’t surrender,” Eufrates said.

Both Cyril and Tigris turned to him. He had settled precariously on Tigris’s shoulders as though this wasn’t highly humiliating. Neither one would mock him with how serious he looked.

Ironically, Cyril thought he appeared very regal.

“Cyril.” Eufrates looked at him. “I’ve seen you throw yourself recklessly into danger. My spies in Farol told me, days before I was transported back, that you had been drawing circles on the ground with your own blood. You ran into my sword . Do not think any of us forget the day you went into the woods, a child , with the sole purpose of dying quietly like an aging dog.

“That was different. Had Tigris not shown up to save us all, you looked like you would have thrown inadequate punch after punch until you had bought enough time to escape.”

“I wanted you to live,” Cyril said in a very small, very self-conscious voice.

“You wanted you to live.”

Tigris clapped him on the shoulder, light, but firm, like she’d done a thousand times before in their youth. “You wanted all of us to live.”

“I cannot think of a more soulful thing than the absolute zest for life,” Eufrates finished his thought.

It was too much, all at once, to be laid so bare by his friends. By his love . He did not know whether to feel proud or mortified. He would surely have to return to Farsala immediately to share with his aunt the happy news that perhaps he wasn’t a shambling, empty ghoul personified.

Yet, it did not entirely make sense. Tigris had escaped her prison, true. She had returned to her rightful body.

He looked around, as though he had just missed him. As though if he squinted very hard, he would find he had been stalking them all along, dashing through pillars and jumping off debris.

“Shoestring?”

Cyril had meant to make a full sentence out of it, but his breath was already coming up short from his overtaxed lungs. Tigris’s face fell.

“I… that is the other thing. I told you I’d felt like a parasite sometimes, in that body. As though it were trying to get me to leave it. Those last few moments the feeling got so bad I had to escape. It was like it was trying to expel me. I did not realise it was because it was going to disappear.”

He was silent a moment. Stinging pricked at the corners of his eyes, but he blinked it back. He felt a warm hand on his face and was surprised to see it wasn’t Tigris, but Eufrates, who had reached for him as they were running alongside each other.

Cyril looked at both Margraves and smiled. “It is alright. I am lucky I had that stupid cat as long as I did.”

He would miss Shoestring. He would miss him as anyone would miss a part of their soul, even if that wasn’t what the animal was anymore. But he wasn’t alone. He was not desperate for connection, as he was in that cottage, and mad and suicidal. Shoestring had served his purpose for him. He was a crutch Cyril had carried for years, giving him an excuse to stay alive despite his uneasy temperament. He did not need an excuse anymore. He wanted this life, very desperately.

It felt right that he was being made to let Shoestring go. Perhaps losing a familiar did not necessarily mean losing one’s essence. Perhaps, sometimes, it meant outgrowing who you were.

The stables were mercifully unaffected by the earthquake by the time they got there. Titania would not be enough for the three of them and, besides, Tigris wanted to set all the horses free.

She took another mare for herself, who she declared to be her second favourite after Titania and, as she did not know this one’s name, she started calling it Shoestring. Cyril wasn’t sure if the noble steed was very content with its new name, but he appreciated the gesture anyway.

Tigris took the newly named Shoestring, a tawny mount with a silvery white mane, and she helped Cyril and her brother onto their trusty Titania. Cyril held the reins, despite Eufrates’s meek protests that he was perfectly hale to ride. After some discussion, the prince grudgingly wrapped his arms around Cyril’s waist and let him steer.

Cyril was exhausted. He did not have it in him to perform the same miracle that had made their horse fly its way to their destination mere hours ago, so they rode fast, but not paranormally. The full brunt of the storm that had threatened them before finally thundered around them and at least Cyril still had the magic to shield them from that.

Despite the weariness, he still needed to keep vigilant. Eufrates was behind him, burning up from his injuries, and he would not let the man fall asleep. He had never before been grateful for the insomnia that had plagued him most his life, but now, red-eyed and alert, he thanked it every time he felt Eufrates loosen his grip on his waist or slump into his back. They had come this far together; he would not let the man’s demise be by falling off a moving horse.

They did not speak as it would’ve worn them out far too much, but Cyril hummed to him to keep his attention. It was one of Eufrates’s own compositions. A favourite of his, that he had written before they were even engaged. It was esoteric. About a dandelion that grew inside a stone tower and lit up every corner of the drab, frightening place as though it emitted a light of its own. The singer wanted to pluck it and keep it for themselves, but they knew it was not their place.

In retrospect, Eufrates had been very brazen with this one, and Cyril had been very oblivious not to understand.

He heard Eufrates croak a couple of lines from the song alongside the melody in his rough, unpolished baritone. Then, he felt him lean his face against his hair.

“I will die a million deaths before I let go of you again,” he murmured against Cyril’s ear.

Cyril’s heart beat faster in his chest and he missed a note in the song. It did not matter. He urged the horse to move faster and smiled.

“No one is dying today, darling.”

Once again, they returned to Farsala at dusk, rain-soaked and weary from the journey. Cyril could not believe it had been a mere twenty-four hours since he broke into Eufrates’s study and walked into the end of his sword. It felt as though the events of the day had happened over the span of weeks , not a few precious moments of daylight followed by pouring skies.

It was at least a small blessing that, as they were riding closer to the palace, the weather changed from heavy and ominous to gently overcast, with pink skies and orange clouds hovering overhead. The wind from the journey that had whipped at their hands and faces had also managed to dry them out sufficiently that they were not dripping water onto the frozen courtyard of the palace grounds.

Cyril wanted more than anything to crawl into his bed and collapse from exertion, but there was work to be done. He gave Eufrates over to Tigris for safekeeping and had them stand aside as he delved into the bowels of the palace dungeons in search of the miasmic weave cloistering his home.

He found his answer in an emptied cell. The miasma had been delivered by an invasive species of rat, known for their diminutive size and nimble bodies, found just on the border between the two kingdoms. The rats seemed to have died as soon as their grim work was done. The dungeons had not held proper captives in some time – there were jailhouses in the city for that effect – but there were still guards and servants who maintained its upkeep and he’d needed to sidestep their pockmarked bodies in his search. Cyril was not a particularly religious man, but he hoped the casualties of the day found peace wherever they were meant to go. He did not dare get close to the corpses, did not want to disturb their eternal sleep, but he knew Tigris would make sure everyone who deserved them would receive the proper burial rites.

It weighed him down all over again, seeing the destruction wreaked by Atticus, but he persevered. He reached up to touch the strands, untangling them one by one. He was at it for at least an hour, handling the pattern so delicately he felt like he was sitting at a loom. Instead of putting together a fine tapestry, though, he was tearing it apart, string by microscopic string. Dismantling the portrait of destruction etched upon it.

When he was done, he went upstairs, all the way up, to the topmost tower, where Heléne still stood stock still in the middle of her cast. Very gently, Cyril dispelled his own magic upon her and the palace, and guided her hands so she could put a stop to hers.

He told her, briefly and breathlessly, that they had succeeded. More importantly, though, he told her about Eufrates. Heléne was not a physician by trade, but she was superior to him by far, and she did not have all the magic in her body sapped over the course of a full, arduous day. She would be able to right him as he could not.

He would tell her of Shoestring later, when his lungs and his throat hurt just a little less, but he was eager to do so, beaming with pride that he had not turned out to be her misery after all.

As though reading his thoughts, Heléne brought a hand to his cheek, tender and parental, and kissed him on his brow. It was an expression of love so rare and so unconditional that, had Cyril not sworn off reckless ideation, he would think that he could die right then, completely content.

Then, she ordered him to retire to his room.

Cyril did as he was told, with no desire or energy to change into sleeping clothes or wash himself. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was gone.