By Marie Brennan
The strands thrum faintly beneath her fingertips, like the strings of a lyre. Plain grey wool, held taut by the stone weights tied at the ends, awaiting her hand. She can feel the potential in the threads, the resonance. She has that much of the gift, at least.
But it is madness to think she can do more. It is hubris. It is desperation.
Her maid stands ready with the bone pick. She takes it up, slides its point beneath the first thread, and begins to weave.
Antinoös will be the most easily provoked. He has no care for the obligations of a guest, the courtesy due to his host; he sees only the pleasures to be had in food and drink. If these are restricted, marred -the meat burnt, the wine thin, the grapes too soon consumed – then he will complain. And it will take but one poorly phrased reassurance for his complaint to become more than mere words.
The guards will know to watch for this. When Antinoös draws his knife, they will be ready. Others will come to Antinoös aid, of course; the tables will be knocked aside, the feast trampled underfoot, the rich treasures of the hall smashed to pieces.
Antinoös will not be the first to die, though. That will be Peisandros, who will fall with a guard’s sword through his heart. After him, Klymenos, and then Pseras of the guards; then it will be a dozen, two score, three hundred and more dead, blood in a torrent, flames licking at the palace walls, smoke and death and devastation.
She drops the shuttle, shaking with horror. No, no. That was not how she meant it to go.
“My lady?” the maid asks, uncertain.
She almost takes up scissors and cuts her error away. Some fragment of wisdom stops her: that is not her gift, and to try must surely end in disaster. Instead she retrieves the shuttle, sends it back through without changing the shed. Unweaving the line that had been. “The pick,” she commands, and her maid gives it to her in silent confusion.
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