Revenge12 min read
The Shuttle and the Red Threads
ButterPicks17 views
I learn the shape of a lie by touching it.
"You think you are set apart because you loved Evan Smirnov ten lives?" the whisperers say in the palace halls.
"You're nothing but his passing trial," another adds. "When he returns to his station, he will marry Sigrid Andersen, the destined mate. Don't hope."
I used to believe them. I used to believe the man who told me, with a silver-clear voice, "You are my mortal tribulation. It is your luck to have had me as your calamity." He said he would marry Sigrid when he returns to the Celestial Council. He called it duty. He called it fate. He smiled like a ruler who had swallowed the world.
"You're Lesly James," Sigrid tells me the first time we meet, though the name is one she gives me. "Lesly, you will be a servant of my house. Live for yourself from now on."
"Serve you?" I want to shout. "No, I climbed the doorways of ten lives. I came here by my debts and merits. I am not borrowed light."
"Then don't be foolish," one attendant sneers as she pushes me toward the corrosive basin. "You're a mortal made into a lowly attendant. What right do you have to stand near the great?"
They shove me into the basin. Its water eats at skin and flesh in that violet cold way the punishers of old used. It is meant for criminals, not for devotion. I choke. I see the face of Evan Smirnov as if he were a moon over the pit.
"Such luck to be a lesson for him," the crowd murmurs. "Bow down to fate."
"Do you think he even remembers?" one says. "He has his mate waiting."
I have ten lives stitched inside me like a bundle of moth-eaten scarves. Each life gives a name, and sometimes I have to choose which name I will carry. On the day Sigrid calls me Lesly, I take it. "Lesly — fresh, bright," she says, and I like a name that is not made from him.
After the basin, Sigrid appears. She is cool and steady and older in a way that makes her feel like granite. Her voice is soft yet iron-edged. "Take her in," she tells her attendants. "She will be ours."
"You're only taking her because of his history," the attendants huff. "How dare she be near him?"
"Stop," Sigrid says quietly, and they obey. She helps me stand. Her hands are rough, not soft. She is no delicate statue. "You will be named Lesly," she says, and I feel ownership and relief at once.
"Do not cling to the past," she repeats in private. "You are free of the thread. Live for yourself."
That sounds easy in words but hard in bone. I can feel ten lives like ashes at my throat. For the first months in Sigrid's hall, people stop slandering me openly. They smile with knives in their teeth; they keep me at the corner of the world. Sometimes I sneak into Sigrid's back chambers with a little bottle of starlight—a thing I call a flow-glass—to repay the kindness she gave me. She is suspicious at first, then softer. "You wasted yourself on him for ten lives," she says once. "Let me give you steadiness instead."
Night after night she bathes alone. One night I find the courage and the petty mischief to bring the flow-glass to her. She lifts her head and says, "What is this?"
"Star shards," I lie. "They smooth the soul. I gathered them because I'm grateful."
"Are you still thinking of Smirnov?" she asks almost sharply. "Don't, Lesly. You will only make trouble."
"I am not," I say. I give her the bottle. She drinks the scent, and for a second she is only a woman stripped of the weight of expectation. That night when I brush her cloak, I see a little red thread like a hair across her chest. It twitches.
What an odd thing to see. I have gifts—little tricks that only revealed themselves after my ascension. I can pull things from people that look like thin shining threads. They shimmer red when they are of love, gray when sorrow, braided when bound by duty. That night as I retreat, a single thread slips into my palm and slides into me like a quiet fire.
After that, Sigrid keeps me near. "You have a knack," she admits. "Do not use it to harm me."
"I would never harm you."
"Then keep doing what you do."
Sooner than I expected, I learn more than gratitude. I learn history. Sigrid once was a battle-worn hero—told to me in whispers by the attendants she used to lead into war—she became the swiftest of the upper ranks. She could have risen all the way if not for the invisible hand of fate that tied her to Evan. It shocks me that someone so iron-willed could be softened.
"She loves him foolishly," I mutter once to the others. "She was made soft by him."
"Don't," they say. "Love does that."
The strange truth comes slowly: when I touch Sigrid's heart, I can pull out more than threads. I can take a knot, a little curl of fixation—and often when that knot looses, she looks at him and is calmer, more herself. It is not because she never loved him; it is because the love was threaded into her by another hand. The threads were not natural.
"Could someone plant them?" I ask quietly.
"Impossible," one guardian snorts. "Not even the old ones dare alter hearts."
But I find the place where the world keeps such things: a towering, rootless tree of thread—an ancient matchmaker's legend. I go, and there the tree reveals visions. I touch it and see an image: Sigrid's glow, Evan a dim shadow. The match is not equal.
"What if the shadow planted the red?" I whisper at the tree.
When I learn how to find the thing to make and unmake threads—an ancient shuttle of old gods, called the Intent Shuttle—I am not humble. I find it in Evan Smirnov's quarters, secreted in his inner being like a lie inside a fist. I cannot find it until the day before his marriage when I finally spot it within him. He keeps it buried in his spirit.
"Why would he hide it in himself?" I ask my small circle. "Why not keep it behind his chest like others hide knives?"
They only shrug and warn me again to stay away. A marriage is near. Even I, once of ten lives, am cast aside now. I sneak in on the morning of the wedding and manage to take the shuttle. It is small and cold and feels like a needle wrapped in glass. When I hold it, a cut opens on my palm from the sharp edge, and it drinks a line of my blood like a thirsty thing. My head swims and I black out.
I wake to jail. Sentry at the door is called James Allen—a blunt, efficient man who has no time for my drama. He says Evan had me caught. "You stole from a high lord," he says. "You will be judged."
Instead, I learn a new thing: when the shuttle tasted my blood, it linked. It glowed in my palms, and I could do another thing: not only pull threads, but plant them.
I turn the gift into a weapon. I seed, tentatively, a thread into the chest of a guard called Jason Lindstrom. It is tiny—more a thought than a chain—and his face warms as if a sun rose inside him. "Let her go," he says, and in a few minutes I am loose because the thread makes him my ally.
Free, I storm into the wedding hall.
"I object to this wedding!" I shout, and heads turn. The air tastes like iron.
"She still loves him," Evan says in that small cold voice, looking almost pleased at the commotion.
"You put threads into her," I say. "You have been playing with the Intent Shuttle. You plant and you pluck. You made her love you."
"Bold words," Evan says. "Prove it."
"Birgit Case," I call to the one who holds the hall's relics. "Show them."
Birgit pulls forth a mirror that records truth—she had been given it by a grateful guardian earlier and never knew how to use it. In my rush I had traded a portion of star shards for it. The mirror shivers, and then it speaks in images: Evan in Sigrid's room, the shuttle humming as he weaves red ribbons into her chest. The hall goes white as if lightning struck.
"It is the Intent Shuttle? He uses it?" someone cries.
Evan's face bleaches, then flushes. "Nonsense," he says at first, voice even. "You accuse me of tampering with fate."
"You're the one who told me fate," I say. "You wore it as a shield while you carved love into others. You have no threads in you. You plucked your own to seem a man of pain."
The crowd's murmurs swell into roars. Sigrid's eyes go blank, then well. She looks at Evan with a new crookedness and asks him, "Did you—did you make me this way?"
For the first time in ten lives, Evan's smile cracks. He goes through a slow, public undoing that tastes like a storm.
He is not cruel at first. He is cold, precise as sculpture. People clap as a polite thing; they watch with that hungry attention stations of power draw in. Then he grows defensive. "You do not know what you say," he hisses at me. "I have done nothing wrong."
"Watch," I say, and the mirror shows more: the tiny red stitches in Sigrid's heart that appear when he presses the shuttle to her, the way he rewove her into a pet. The attendants who once followed him drop their smiles. Their faces close like clam shells.
Evan's composure splinters. "You will not ruin me," he breathes. The crowd is heavy with curiosity and anger. "You—how dare you—"
He tries to reach for the shuttle, to claim it, but the shuttle is linked to my blood now. I can feel its hum in my veins like a second heartbeat. His hand clenches as if someone has set spikes into it. He tries to summon a retinue of white light, spells of authority, old commands that used to sway the court. The light chokes and dies in the air. He is losing.
Then the great mirror-holder, Birgit, speaks louder than the hall: "This is recorded. The record shows his acts. Let the council decide."
"Council?" Evan laughs bitterly. "They will see that I—"
He collapses mid-sentence. His face goes through a slow arc: first disbelief, then fury, then denial, and finally something that looks like hollow panic. Evidence piles up in the mirror. The attendants who adored him now step back and avert eyes. The ones who once wanted the seat he seeks now smirk; they see his weakness and their bravery blooms.
"This is not what it seems," Evan rasps. "I did it for duty. I did it to bind fate!"
"Bind fate?" Sigrid repeats, her voice small. "You were not binding. You were stealing."
"All of you," I say, "see him. He gave himself power over love and made us puppets. He robbed Sigrid of choice."
Sigrid's face crumples. People begin to shout all at once: "Treason!" "He is a deceiver!" The air sharpens.
Evan goes from anger to fear in a rush. He screams for justice, for armor, for trials. "You will not strip me," he threatens. "I will be avenged."
"You will be judged," Birgit says, and the judgement is fierce and swift. For once, the court moves like a blade.
They force him into the center of the hall. Sigrid's attendants form a ring; the guards make a place of white tile that catches all eyes. A thousand hearts watch.
"Why?" I ask. "Why would you make love into a leash?"
Evan's answer is a threadbare defense. "Because they would not love otherwise. Because I needed them. Because I was afraid of losing everything."
"Everything you built on theft," I spit.
"Look at him," someone calls. "He cries easily when cornered. He is a coward."
They begin to dismantle his honor in public—no shadow council, no secret sentence. It is exposure, uncombed and raw. Sigrid strips her ceremonial band from her hair and throws it at his feet. "You are not my mate," she says in a voice that is steady with newly found clarity.
Evan's reactions are a theater; he does not collapse immediately. First he clutches at his chest in a show of wounded pride.
"This is slander," he hisses. He lifts chin and plays the part of wounded noble. "You cannot destroy me by gossip."
"Not gossip," Birgit answers. "Proof."
Then they bring forth the Intent Shuttle. The object sits like a black seed. I speak of how it tastes of needle and intent; I let it hum in my palm. "He hid it in his soul. He used it on Sigrid. He used it on many."
One by one, people speak: the star-keeper Jason confirms he saw Evan planting threads; a former attendant says she felt a tug at her heart the night she was ordered to kneel; the guardian of the river gives an oath. The hall becomes a court of a thousand witnesses.
Evan's face goes white, hot, then red. He tries to cry that each act was necessary to save fate itself. "Without me," he says, "we would have chaos. I made the world ordered."
"Order bought with stolen choice is tyranny," I say. "You wanted power, not duty."
They take him to the basin that once ate me. It stands now as justice's instrument. He sputters, "This is hypocrisy!"
"You forced love into war and called it destiny," says Sigrid, and her voice is bright as a blade. "You took her life and called it fate."
The basin's waters are readied. They make him stand before everyone. The attendants, who once smiled at his feet, now line and point. Some cry out with anger; some clap like a crowd at a play. "Tear him bare of the tricks he used," they chant.
He starts to plead: "No! I meant to—"
"But you meant to," the hall replies.
Public punishment unfolds like a tide. They place him at the edge. The water hits his feet and hisses. It climbs up, silver and hungry. He thrashes. At first he tries to save the face of a ruler—sufficiently composed to still bark commands. "You will regret this," he spits, eyes like glass.
A witness laughs. "Regret? You will learn humility."
The basin's corrosive touch is not a metaphoric burn. It eats at memory and beauty. They strip his fine robes and leave him naked in the hall's harsh light. His hair clumps wet. He trembles.
"Do not leave our faces on your tongue when you lie," Sigrid says to him. "You had no right."
He claws at the air. Blood mixes with the buzz of the shuttle. He tries to appeal to any friends, but the old friends step away, their loyalty turned brittle. Those who once followed him now avoid his gaze.
His reactions change with the seconds. The first is fury: he spits and curses, tries to lash out. Then he hears strangers chant against him and anger ebbs into disbelief. He begins to shout denials, to call on fate, to dram the old language of nobility. "You will all be punished," he howls. "Without my guidance, you will fall!"
"Who would follow you after this?" someone shouts.
Denial breaks into bargaining. He begs Sigrid to take back a word, to intervene. He tells tales of imagined sacrifices he made for the world. His voice trembles, pleading for mercy. He tries to recall favors he once did, names he once bowed to.
The crowd does not relent. The attendants who once adored him now press forward with evidence and the mirror. The sound of the basin swallowing a man's pride is audible. He tries to kneel and kiss the tiles; some jeer, some film with the little glass-enchantments that record eye-witness truth. People take pictures with their palm-lenses and toss them up like stars—proof to be carried to every corner of the realm.
The final collapse is ugly and long. He loses control: he scratches at his eyes until his sight dulls and tears smear blood-lace down his cheeks. The basin eats his hair, then his skin droops. They cannot kill him; the law forbids such sudden executions. So they do what is worse in a place that worships order: they render him powerless.
"Strip him of his station," Birgit intones. "Let him live to repent."
They cast away his insignia. He is dragged through the lanes outside the hall and thrown onto the road that leads to the Forgetting Hollow, a place of exile and hush. People gather to spit—some cursed, some wept—and they take pictures and sing songs of his fall.
Evan's descent is slow and public: first the scorned look, then the understanding that no one will help, then the collapse of pride, and finally that animal of pleading. He cries for pity, for the old high court to restore him, but no one lifts a hand. He sits under the great matchmaker tree and gropes at the stump where the shuttle once lay. The matchmaker's roots will remember him, but not with sweetness.
Months later, rumors say the tree's knot has locked him in an endless loop: to love and never have the answer returned. They say he will wander, forever yearning and never quenched.
The crowd's reactions are brutal and varied. Some shout for blood and brand him a traitor. Some clap like they have watched a good play. Others weep because they had once loved him. The recording mirrors hum; the story leaves the hall and floods the sky. People who once bowed to him change the names on their doors.
In the quiet after, Sigrid stands by the hall, hands empty. She looks at the basin and says, "We were not perfect. But we have each other." Her attendants hold her arm and cry.
I, Lesly, walk away with the Intent Shuttle bound to my blood. The shuttle had accepted my offering—the one thing I had after everything—my life. The Shuttle hummed and showed me one last thing before Sigrid and her circle turned to the work of healing the broken world: a picture of small mercies.
I do not watch Evan until the day a guardian brings me a mirror. The mirror records him in exile—no grandeur, just a thin man who once pretended to be a god. He wanders among wildflowers and plagues himself with the faces he had sewn. His punishment is not enough. But it is perfect because it does not come from me; it comes from the world he abused.
He begs the matchmaker for mercy and gets instead the slow, cold price of his crimes: eyes that no longer trust, an ear tuned to accusations, a life of longing for that which he forced others to give him.
Later, when the council sets the new order, Sigrid takes her place and wears her name with a steadier hand. The attendants of the palace carry stories of Lesly James who once was a mortal lesson and refused to be a borrowed prize. They tell of the shuttle's destruction—how I took the Intent Shuttle and gave it to the chasm, where its teeth could harm no more. I do not become legend; I become a memory in the mouths of the saved.
At night I think of those ten lives like a string of lanterns. I think of Evan Smirnov's last face in the hall—scraped, small, and human. I think of Sigrid Andersen's sword-arm and how she gave everything she had to save us. I think of the mirror Birgit kept and the way it caught the small things: the shuttle's blade, the basin's hiss, the collective gasp.
"If you ever feel weak," Sigrid once told me in a quieter time, "remember your name."
Lesly. Bright and short, like a burst of sun. I tuck the name in my palm.
The Shuttle is gone. The red threads hang only where they are real. The matchmaker's tree hums like a patient heart. And the hall—oh, the hall will never forget the sound of a man who once called himself destiny being brought low by the truth it loved more than him.
The End
— Thank you for reading —