SHOESTRING THEORY by Mariana Costa (EXCERPT) (2024)

We’re so excited to kick off Women in SFF 2024 with an exclusive excerpt!

Shoestring Theory is Mariana Costa’s debut novel, and is landing on its feet in bookshops October this year from Angry Robot. Before we dive into the excerpt, let’s find out a little more:

The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former Grand-Mage of the High Court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a ramshackle hut by the sea, trying to catch any remaining fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom’s ruin. For he played his part – for as the King, Eufrates Margrave, descended further and further into paranoia, violence and madness, his Grand-Mage – and husband – Cyril didn’t do a thing to stop him.

When Shoestring wanders away and dies one morning, Cyril knows his days are finally numbered. But are there enough left to have a last go at putting things right? With his remaining lifeblood, he casts a powerful spell that catapults him back in time to a happier period of Farsalan history – a time when it was Eufrates’s older sister Tig destined to ascend to the throne, before she died of a wasting disease, and a time when Cyril and Eufrates’s tentative romance had not yet bloomed. If he can just make sure Eufie never becomes King, then maybe he can prevent the kingdom’s tragic fate. But the magical oath he made to his husband at the altar, transcending both time and space, may prove to be his most enduring – and most dangerous – feat of magic to date…

Featuring a formidable Great Aunt, a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance, an awkward love quadrangle and a crow familiar called Ganache, this charming story is imminently easy to read and sure to satisfy fans of fanfiction who like their fantasy lite.

Shoestring Theory is due for publication October 2024. You can pre-order your copyHERE

Chapter 2

It was frustrating how many times he got lost navigating the forest. Nothing serious, no fatal wrong turns that would careen him headfirst into a ditch, he was too smart for that, but Cyril took enough wrong turns the pink on his knuckles from carrying such a heavy load began to match the flush on his cheeks. This wasn’t supposed to pose a significant challenge for him. Not the forest he loved, in the kingdom he grew up in. But he had to admit to himself that for the better part of a decade, his excursions had consisted of shuffling to and from the cottage and the sea, the sea and the cottage. Most days, as soon as he woke up, he screwed his eyes shut and went straight back to sleep, willing time to move faster.

This was a lot of adventure all at once for someone so unaccustomed to it.

Finally, he spotted the ruddy peak of the spires poking out through the mess of trees, red contrasting green and the blue of the sky so strongly it felt like a beacon just for him.

He quickened his step, then, stumbling over his own feet, which seemed to have become too sluggish from traipsing through the woods to move as quickly as his brain willed them to. By the time he reached the wrought-iron gates separating the palace grounds from the thick of forest, his calves ached – but not his lower back, he noted with almost tearful gratitude, as it had been plaguing him since his mid-thirties – and he had to put Shoestring down.

Cyril gave the cat a warning glance not to stray and, squaring his own shoulders, marched purposefully inside a place he only just realised he never thought he’d see again.

It was normal, expected even, for none of the staff to pay him any mind as he sauntered into the palace halls through the servant’s entrance, cutting a path from the kitchen up to the main halls. The most attention he got were the curious looks from younger serving maids and the occasional valet, who weren’t yet masters of the art of minding their own business, and he realised quite quickly it was because he looked a fright.

A polished brass shield mounted on a wall reflected a dishevelled, dirty young man, with kohl running down his eyes from his uncontrollable sobbing earlier, smudges of green staining every inch of his clothes and raw knuckles like he’d gotten himself into a tavern brawl.

Cyril flushed and quickly looked away from the shield. He clicked his tongue to will Shoestring to match his pace as he began a casual jog to his own chambers before anyone important saw him and started asking questions.

The family he had grown up with kept a particular tradition. Since recorded history began centuries ago, the royalty governing the kingdom had insisted upon relying on the power of mages to aid their rule. The current ruling family, the Margraves, valued their mages so fondly that they made sure to give them a permanent home in the palace. Thus, the palace had a peculiarity.

Still within its walls, towards the back centre of the palace, a king long ago had left ample room for a wide, open courtyard adorned with carefully manicured hanging-gardens. In its very middle, there was a tower that climbed seven storeys high, the tallest one in the entire kingdom. It had a red tiled roof the same colour as the rest of the spires flanking the palace walls.

It was a home within the palace, both separate from and attached to the main building, marking the mages of Farsala as both family and distinguished servants. Cyril had lived on the third floor of the tower with his aunt Heléne, the high-court witch for the current royal family, since he had first shown magical aptitude at the age of five.

In a sense, the Laverres had their own lineage that ran parallel to that of the de facto monarchs. He had lived the charmed life of a dukeling under his aunt’s tutelage, and the Margraves treated him like one of their own.

Aside from his years at the Academy for Arcane Arts from ages twelve to eighteen, the tower had been his home well into adulthood. Despite how foreign it felt to enter it now, no one batted an eye when he began the short ascent to his chambers, Shoestring following close behind.

He did still live on the third floor of the tower, which meant arthritic aunt Heléne was still clinging tooth and nail to her seat in court. He could hardly begrudge her: the kind of sway that came with having the ear of the most powerful people in all the land was at times intoxicating.

Nostalgia hit him like a brick to the head as soon as he opened the door to his living quarters. It painted such a clear portrait of a spoiled young man revelling in a luxury he never had need to earn that it made Cyril’s teeth hurt. Aunt Heléne had installed a series of complicated patterns and magic triggers when Cyril had initially moved in and she couldn’t be fussed to call a maidservant over every little childhood mess. Despite that, it still had the confused quality of being lived in by a youth who still hadn’t learned to be judicious with his keepsakes. He hadn’t properly gotten into his room yet – just the study where he liked to read and take his meals – but already paraphernalia clearly too important to be let go of was in every corner. Rolled up scrolls and maps of places he’d like to visit propped against the wall, clothes he’d shucked off and left on the sofa or on the chair or even on his writing desk, a frankly ridiculous assortments of pens and quills, two different stacks of notebooks, one filled to bursting with annotations and another with lofty plans to be penned in at a later date (half of which would be thrown out brand new the first time Cyril would try his hand at decluttering), souvenirs from distant lands, glorified paperweights or doorstops, vials of potions, scattered plates containing cherry pits or pistachio shells, stacked mugs of cold tea, three musical instruments he’d tried to learn and given up on just as quickly, scrying runes, a kaleidoscope (broken), a telescope (repaired), letters from his parents, from his school friends and from professors, a vanity permanently stained in pressed pigments and kohl, a cat tower fit for royalty and, for some reason, a tricycle.

You could put a knife to his throat and Cyril wouldn’t be able to make sense of what he was thinking when he hung a paper lantern off the leaf of a fern. After living so long in the ascetic seaside cottage, two steps into the third floor of the mage tower sent him into fits of mild claustrophobia.

And yet, part of him was indescribably comforted by it.

Had he been recounting the tale himself, of his intrepid escapade into the past in order to prevent a doomed future, Cyril would’ve remarked on his single-minded sense of purpose. After all, he did have a plan in mind. It wasn’t particularly complex, but he was sure it would destroy the root cause of all his suffering in one fell swoop. And once he did a bit of research into exactly where in time he was and acquired a few things he might need that he couldn’t immediately find in his own room, there would be nothing stopping him from setting his plan into motion.

Cyril had always been the meandering type, and he was tired in a way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with the weary sense of dread that prey gets from being hunted. For eight-to-ten years (he’d lost count), he had lived in squalor, weaving salt out of seawater and picking meat out of gritty, bony fish. Even if in his current state he found himself in the body of a well-fed, pampered young mage, there was still an entrenched memory of the grime of that cottage permeating the roots of his hair and the undersides of his fingernails.

Not to mention the actual grime and fresh stains on his clothes.

So he drew himself a bath, and while he waited for the tub to fill and for the salts and oils to fully perfume the water, he rang up a maid to bring him what he now realised was an early afternoon meal. He still felt full from the lunch he’d presumably partaken in before his body had unceremoniously been taken over by a suicidal old man, but he was determined to eat himself into nausea.

As he began taking off his earth-soiled clothes, any thoughts of lofty idealism in his mind had been replaced by the memory of jam-filled pastries and salted cuts of meat. Then, a sudden clink against a button on his shirt drew Cyril’s attention to his chest.

He stood in the middle of his washroom, half naked in front of a floor-length mirror, staring at the familiar brassy golden ring hanging from a dirty string around his neck.

Cyril blinked, hoping against all odds that by resetting his vision the strange apparition would clear away. But the ring remained steadfast where it lay, burrowing a hole into his chest.

He wasn’t supposed to have this. Not yet and, in this reality, not ever. Carefully, Cyril willed his pulse to slow and wrapped his hand around the band to tug it off himself. It was looped through such a threadbare string; it should have been pulled off easy.

But the ring wouldn’t budge. It stubbornly clung to the string around his neck regardless of how hard he yanked and attempted to prise it free from his neck. And upon realising he had brought the keepsake with him, a bubble of panic swelled in his gut as he considered the implications.

Aside from his last little foray with sacrificial magic in that gelid seaside cottage, Cyril had only ever performed one other spell potent enough to carry itself through entire realities. He didn’t expect it to bite him in the ass so completely as it seemed to be doing now.

Cyril thumbed the ring on his chest as he finally gave up trying to take it off and dunked himself into the bath. He hoped that against all odds, the hot water would corrode through the loop strung around it.

On his wedding day, he made an oath upon the band, binding himself and his betrothed for eternity in something greater and more powerful than any church-sanctioned vow of matrimony. He thought he was being romantic. And, to his credit, he was. It was plenty romantic, regardless of the repercussions. He had truly believed he would be in love for all eternity.

Honestly, it served him right being married at f*cking twenty-three, after a mere two months of courtship.

He decided that, until proven otherwise, he was dealing with a best-case scenario, because he couldn’t afford the migraine that a worse situation would beset him. The ring marked him as a spoken-for man, regardless of time or space or logic, and in some insidious way, it would prevent him from straying. Not that Cyril had flirtation on the mind much these days, not at his advanced age.

He soaked in the magically heated tub, alone with his thoughts long enough that the olive undertone of his skin took on a scalded-red hue. He only rose up from his parboil when he heard the tell-tale bell of food being placed upon his desk.

He dressed, applied some healing bandages around his knuckles to assuage the better part of Shoestring’s damage (the cat had settled nicely inside a cubby much too small for him), and finally got to work.

In retrospect, this all might’ve been easier if he’d still been a student. Sure, he’d need to make an excuse to leave the Academy and sneak back into the palace, but as a student, he was forced to keep a daily log of every class and lecture he attended, with detail so precise he could triangulate an exact date just by looking at a few timetables. The habit, unfortunately, didn’t stick with Cyril into adulthood. By the time he had finished flipping his pile of logs and notebooks inside-out-upside-down, he found that the last time he bothered scribbling anything of substance down at all was on February 12th.

One look outside the window confirmed he was long past that.

At least he had a year to pinpoint. The Cyril he’d usurped was in the beginning of his twenty-second cycle (he was a January baby, if it mattered) and, if his meagre journal entries were anything to go by, there was yet to be a single exciting event to have happened that year. He flipped through the book over bites of cream petit-fours and found the last event he’d bothered writing down was a shopping list of things he needed from town that his aunt had made him commit to ink.

He was going to need a more hands-on approach to situating himself. It struck him as odd, that he couldn’t remember anything important happening a year before his own wedding, but he chalked it up to old age. Honestly, if pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to name the precise date of his anniversary save for a sheepish “mid-April?”

Either way, he couldn’t put it off any longer. Cyril clicked his tongue in the direction Shoestring was hiding in to get him to follow.

“I’ll lock you in the bathroom until I get back if you don’t come with me,” he said for good measure.

The threat was met with a hiss, but it was enough for the cat to poke his head out of the discarded box of tomes he’d been hiding in and follow Cyril out the door. They made their way down the steps of the tower, back into the main building of the palace.

Cyril felt as though he was forgetting something tremendously important as he wandered the halls, looking for a recent newspaper or an idle serving maid or butler to casually ask the date. “Cyril!”

Cyril turned and his heart instantly dropped.

“I was just headed to the tower!” She bounded towards him without a care in the world and clapped both hands on his shoulders like greeting an old friend. “Thanks for saving me the trip.”

Tigris Margrave was the best, most charming and most beautiful girl he’d ever known. They had met when he was at the tender age of five, and Cyril had been instantly drawn by her full head of black hair, so dark it shone blue under the light, that perfectly dewy brown skin, stippled with delicate birthmarks only adding to her natural appeal, and that intoxicating grin so contagious Cyril was making a concentrated effort not to mirror her expression like a starstruck buffoon.

“I…” He nodded mechanically, suddenly unsure of what to do with himself. “Tigris,” he added, stupidly.

Tigris co*cked her head to the side and gave him a fond smirk. “Cyril, I’ve been gone for a month. Is it the hair? I’ve been wearing it loose, do you not like it?”

He shook his head, seeming to go into some kind of self-preservatory autopilot. “No! Of course not, I…” He racked his brain for any context clues that would allow him to smoothly continue the conversation and settled on a non-committal choke of, “Only… only a month, huh?”

It was ridiculous the way she looked at him, like a concerned older sister fussing over a particularly fragile baby sibling. Especially when Cyril felt old enough to be this woman’s father.

“Well, Atticus finally let go of the leash long enough to let me come back and visit.”

Cyril nodded along, putting together the most high-stakes mental jigsaw puzzle he’d ever had to assemble.

Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Tigris Margrave of Farsala, had been engaged to Atticus Wulfsbane, King of Cretea, just after her twenty-sixth birthday. Since the betrothal, the newly engaged couple had spent more and more time together, meaning Tigris’s trips to Cretea would increase in time and frequency. It had been a marriage of convenience, uniting two small kingdoms into a mutually beneficial political front, but from what Cyril could recall, Tigris was making the most of it. She seemed to think her fiancé genuinely handsome if nothing else.

“How’s Cretea?” he asked after much too long a pause. Tigris didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, wonderful this time of year. You should visit, it’s not like Auntie gives you anything important to do.”

The “ey!” that left his lips was almost a reflex.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m right, aren’t I? Well, when I’m queen, I’ll give her the retirement she desperately needs, and you and I can run this place.”

“Ostensibly, the grand mage isn’t meant to have political power.”

“Yes, but I’m stupid about all this magic stuff and I need your help,” she whined.

Cyril wouldn’t go as far as “stupid”, not for Tigris who, at age fourteen, had managed to wrap all the high nobility around her little finger with her natural graces. Still, academic knowledge and magical comprehension weren’t exactly the Princess’ forte.

“Don’t let your fiancé hear you say that, he’ll start firing up for a coup.”

Tigris giggled and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, serving as a reminder of how, in general, the Margraves had always towered over the Laverres. “He wouldn’t do that before the wedding.”

“You’re very confident in His Majesty.”

She recoiled like he’d vomited on her new shoes. “Don’t call him that, ugh. We’re practically family!”

“We’re not family, princess.” He mock bowed. “I am your humble servant.”

“Gross!” She pushed him away, still laughing to herself. “Don’t let Eufie catch you talking like that, you’ll break his heart.”

And just like that, Cyril was violently jerked back into the reality of his situation. The jovial grin he’d been sporting a second ago went slack on his face as Tigris, bless her heart, carried on.

“Oh, wait! That’s why I was going to the tower. He’s been asking for you.”

There wasn’t a spell on earth that could carry him normally through the rest of this conversation, so he decided he’d nod and nod and nod until Tigris decided she’d had enough of hearing her own voice and left to chatter somewhere else.

“Eufie, I mean. Not Atticus. Do you even know Atticus? Well, anyway–”

Cyril was nodding.

“I met him on his way back from a hunt this morning, and he was looking for you.”

“Uh huh.”

“But when isn’t he looking for you?” Here, she waggled her thick eyebrows in a meaningful serpentine.

“Right?”

“So I said, ‘Have you checked the tower?’ but he said you weren’t at the tower all morning! So I think you must’ve just missed each other.”

He realised he had to put a stop to this before she realised there was something wrong with him aside from typical youthful ennui, so he blurted out, “I’ll find him.”

And then, after clearing his throat, “I’m sure he’ll be at the dinner table, at least. It’s… good. I needed to speak to him as well.”

He extricated himself from the conversation with the social graces of a new-born foal, but in truth he felt as though if he spent one more second looking at Tigris, hearing Tigris speak to him about her brother, he was going to burst a major artery.

And truth be told, he was more than a little ashamed of himself for being so surprised to see her, to do something so normal as have a casual conversation with her. It just wasn’t something he’d prepared himself to do, had expected to do.

Because Tigris Margrave had been dead for over twenty years.

Of course he hadn’t forgotten about her. What kind of horrible, callous man would he be if he’d erased one of his best friends growing up entirely from his mind? But she had passed so long ago and reminiscing about it provided him with nothing but more grief than he already had.

How stupid of him. He had been so caught up in the simple joy of seeing her alive that he forgot to be concerned about her death.

As soon as she retreated from his line of sight, it was like a bolt of electricity shot through Cyril’s whole body. He scooped up Shoestring, who had been languidly cleaning himself throughout their conversation and provided absolutely zero support for what was likely one of many traumatic situations his master was going to have to live through for the foreseeable future. Then, paying no mind to the frustrated mewls and howls, he darted down the stairs of the palace underground, to the armoury.

Shoestring Theory is due for publication October 2024. You can pre-order your copyHERE