Daughter of Necessity 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.
    â€œMy 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. With a careful hand she lifts the warp threads, passes the shuttle through, reversing her movements from before. Undoing the work of hours with hours more, while her maid helps without understanding.
    I must weave a funeral shroud , she had told them. She’d intended it to be for them. Not for all her city.
    But the power was there: within her grasp, beyond her control.
    She retires for the night, trembling, exhausted. Frightened. And exhilarated. When morning comes, all is as it was before, her problems unchanged, her desperation the same. Gathering her courage, she goes back to the loom.
    Surely control may be learned.
    *   *   *
    After so many years enjoying the hospitality of the palace, the men will not be easily persuaded to leave. Frustration and failure will not do it; if those were sufficient, they would have departed long since. They stay on in perpetual hope of success, and will not leave until they believe that hope gone.
    She will choose her tool with care. Eurymachos is renowned for his silver tongue; he will bend it to her chosen end. A dropped hint here, a frank conversation over too much wine there. Why should a man stay, when he believes another has claimed the place he intended to take? An elegant man, well dressed and better spoken than his rivals—and they will see the proof of it, when she bestows smiles upon him she denies to all others. For him, she will drape herself in rich cloth, adorn her ears and neck with gold. For him, she will play the coquette.
    One by one, they will go. Grumbling, disappointed, a few vowing some revenge against Eurymachos for having stolen the place they thought to claim. But they will go, without a fight. Their numbers will dwindle: one hundred and eight, four score, two score, twelve. They will leave, and with each chamber emptied she will breathe more easily.
    Until only one remains. Smiling, smoothspoken Eurymachos, to whom she has shown much favor. He