Dance, Diplomacy, and Dissolved FaithAnna Clark
5800 words The night was stale, and no one had asked the queen to dance. I was no practiced courtier, but they were doing it wrong. She sat atop the dais, surveying the wasteland of dance floor down a curved nose, dark eyes rebuffing the witch lights' gleam, long fingers stroking a castle cat, regal and inscrutable as she. Beneath her study, what dancers persisted swayed like seaweed anchored to storm-worn rocks, frayed and diffuse. Those with a better read on the currents shoaled along the walls. They didn’t dance, but neither were they still; the moon chamber was stalked by agitation, tilted heads and sideways glances, well-shod feet tapping to flee. Priestess of a vanquished adversary that I was, I should have been shrinking in a corner, but fascination rose buoyant above all other emotions. I’d dwelt so long in the rarefied world of deities, and the queen was substance and presence; even cushioned in magic and the envelope of subject demands, she was accessible in a way rarely encountered by the devout. Alon touched my sleeve. “We should leave. We’ll make no deals tonight.” A witch light hung like stardust by his ear, gilding the folds of his silk gown with pearl and tracing silver thread into the new crease lines on his face. His mouth was drawn. Alon was a practiced courtier, but navigating these waters had eroded him. “You go,” I said. “I’ll see the night through. I can’t return home to greet our supplicants with empty hands for another prayerless harvest.” Guilt supplanted intrigue. How much of my offer stemmed from confidence I could sway the court into restoring the severed link to our deity, and how much from preoccupation with the woman who'd broken it? My eyes strayed to the queen again. I wondered if she liked to dance. “It’s late,” began Alon, before noticing the tilt of my head. His jaw clicked. “Don’t look at her so long. She’s an uncanny way of noticing, even in a crowd.” And didn’t that make it hard to look away? Sometimes, I thought her stare lingered as mine dropped. The thought was fanciful and traitorous, born from a hunger to know interest returned—if only in measured curiosity. The goddess’s gaze, in its encompassing knowledge, never sought answers. “I mean it, Seri,” said Alon. “Stop. We want her advisors’ attention, not hers.” I wasn't so sure. Most here had done well by the dissolution of the Atuevez Order, this island's sect of the goddess, and those that lost out saw the fate of the Faith-Allied Fleet and kept their distance. “Because that’s going so well.” He huffed. Witch lights didn’t flatter the exhausted. “Go,” I told him. Surrender dropped his chin, bowed deeper the curve of his shoulders. Two moons ago, when the solstice sun spurned the horizon and our ship was fresh in the harbor, Alon would have baulked at ceding the night. Now, all he offered was, “Be careful. Better to flee home and pray in empty temples than be dead and beyond prayer entirely. The goddess wouldn’t ask more.” When he was gone, I was still turning over his truth; she wouldn’t, however much I wished it of her. People of influence congregated towards the back of the chamber, away from their sorcerous ruler. As was the style here, their gowns were jeweled with purloined temple ornaments, repurposed but undisguised. They flaunted their power in goddess-eye brooches, but the expanse of oiled floor between them and the dais spoke its limits. An entreaty: return our goddess, and with her loose, live in dread of two great women. Little wonder they turned us away. Alon was right to predict no deals from this faction. Time for a different tack. He knew officials, but I knew gods, and with the power to splinter a hundred masts and lock a deity apart from her devoted, the queen was close—but crucially different—to the latter. She gave me nothing as I bent obeisance before her step, no crack in her countenance, no hitch in the rhythm of her stroking. The cat yawned at me. “Your Majesty, I am Seri of the Kafalai Order. I sailed from Fenarin to speak with you on a matter of much importance to my people.” The cat jumped from the queen’s lap and stalked away. Not quite a wrathful omen, but hardly auspicious. She tracked its progress into the arms of an attendant, tapping a finger on the green satin arm of her chair, before pressing me beneath shadowed eyes. “So speak.” “Thank you, Majesty.” Here was my gap in the clouds to present our case. The goddess had required more chanting. From my years of service at the Kafalai temple, I was good at distilling miracles from higher beings, but my insides shriveled to play another supplicant, offering prayer, begging deliverance for my deity behind clasped hands and hardened knees. I needed her to see me, to know me as a person besides my vassal state. A question caught me: how long had I wanted to be something other than a priestess? I didn’t know. “In truth, I have two requests,” I said. “One for my people, and one for myself. For my own—will you dance with me?” Quiet. Hers, but also rippling out to encompass all in our circle of hearing, shifting tides convening through breathless, vicarious terror. They couldn’t ignore me now. A vision of Alon shook his head, the icon of rebuke. She was a winter lake, smooth surface hiding fathoms, and I sensed the deep peering out. I might have been in terrible error, but the flare of nerves felt exquisite. One side of her mouth lifted into a sickle moon smile. “I will,” said the queen. She stood; music stuttered. Her voice, unraised: “Continue.” Timidly, it did. Her walk was fluid, controlled, and I was left in the transfer of her stillness, anticipating. Then she was before me, and I could see the play of muscles beneath draped summer fabric, the elegant slope of her shoulders framed over a wide neckline, winged collar bones, the dip between breasts. Notable in their absence on her person were repurposed symbols of the goddess. Traces of the dissolution gilded everyone but its architect, leaving her stark, embossed in rumors and reputation beyond ordinary luster. I should have seen a jailor, her magic a stockade blocking the divine from the pious. But here, close enough to read her blood’s tempo under the lines of her throat, it was hard to see the queen as anything less—or more—than a person. Who was I to judge one who’d marshalled a collapsing state and halted a holy war? “You look beautiful tonight, Majesty,” I said. “And not the other nights you watched me?” “Then, too.” The other side of her mouth curled up—a full smile. Still dangerous. We were similar in height, level eyes and level lips as she drew close, placed a palm on my waist, thumb brushing ribs. A touch like magic. I rested my arm above hers, hand to her shoulder, and hoped for magic adjacence. The answer to my question was clear in her first assured steps: yes, she liked to dance. And it was well we were proficient, with melody and rhythm striking such weak guides. Notes flowed tepid around us, lacking the convection of early evening and bypassing the warm languor appropriate for this hour on tension-stiff fingers. No matter. If this wasn't the transcendent musicality favored by gods, I was grateful. We didn’t fly or float, ethereal beings, but danced to the beat of the ground, close and tangible. I wanted to be closer. My oaths were to another. The queen’s hand slid higher on my back. “Tell me your second request.” Even on solid, temporal dance floor, there was no escaping my divine purpose. I’d have sworn the goddess had a hand in its raising were she not locked beyond reach, leaving only the queen’s machinations at play. The words I had prepared were plain. Too many supplicants to the temple of Kafalai, whose twisting spires I called home, couched their prayers in the language of abasement, repetitions of ‘most humbly’ and ‘your unworthy servant’ stirring a soup so thick that the sediment obscured intention. “Fenarin misses our goddess. I’m here to ask for her release.” She instigated a sharp turn, skirt flaring, drawing me with her. “You’re asking me to unbind the wind behind the sails of a fleet that stormed my shores.” No surprise steeped her tone, but a summer storm brewed thickly around us. The last clinging weeds of other dancers washed into the crowd. “The goddess was no orchestrator,” I said, acceding to her lead up the chamber, away from the dais. “Any gusts of hers manifested from sailors’ prayers and were granted without malice towards you. She sees the worshipper. Nothing else.” Never anything else. For Alon, born to mercurial parents who weighed their children’s contributions and returned affection in correspondence, that parity was her most cherished aspect. It spoke badly of me that it wasn’t mine. “They sailed here to restore the goddess’s shrines,” said the queen. “As pretext for conquest and enrichment.” She laughed, dispelling none of the threat—but what a lovely timbre. “You put your case so eloquently. Give a greedy people back their weapon of a god.” “She’s goddess to more than the invaders. My land had no part in the alliance, and the goddess means many things to different people: hope and harvest, an arbiter who won’t act for coin, a healer who won’t cure an ailment at the price of starvation. Your people have you to magic the land. We rely on gods for our miracles.” Another pivot, quick and smooth as a hawk dropped into its dive. Was I a caught rabbit? Another hawk? The shift resolved with me facing a tapestried vista, thread the unfaded tones of spring, but a temple belfry peeking above verdant forest suggested it was pre-dissolution. There was a witch light above my head, turning my vision silver when I blinked. I was posed for her scrutiny. “What does the goddess mean to you?” asked the queen. A well of contradictory answers was there for the delving, each sifted out and pored through on the voyage from Fenarin. Refuge. Dependence. Longing. A receptacle for the brightest pieces of my love, mined in the depths of my being, burnished with passion, and returned impartially. I chose the least complex. “I am my Order’s mediator, her second mouth and ears.” “That’s not the answer to my question.” “The goddess means devotion.” I wasn’t lying, even if devotion felt more like sodden feathers on my back than wings made for soaring. “Why?” Before, I would have said “Whyever not?” and meant it sincerely. The goddess meant devotion; the sea tasted of salt. So simple. I didn’t know when my belief had blemished, had only recognised resentment’s stain when the queen’s magic cocooned god from follower. I required an answer as much for me as for my dance partner. “Because I offered it,” I said in the end, “when I needed to know I had something to offer.” “You would have offered devotion to anyone?” asked the queen. “No.” And then—"I'm actually quite discerning.” Amusement creased from her eyes. The storm had broken. “If I release her, what will you give me in return?” Did she enquire of all Fenarin or only me? I’d lost who led and who followed to a scattering of smaller sensations, to the press of each finger and thumb, to the brush of our legs—like skimming fresh ocean beneath a fevered sky. “What do you want?” We spun out, twined back. No easy capitulation showed in her expression. I tried to define what it was that I saw—curiosity? Admiration? Or was she crafting a dismissal in terms we could never assent to? “Dance with me tomorrow,” she said. “And then?” “Ask me again at the end of tomorrow’s dance.” Next evening arrived on an exhale and an ebbing tide of questions. The deluge began at dawn’s first blush and only stemmed when Alon and I left the consulate for the moon chamber. What possibly compelled your action? What to read from the queen’s response? Read that we enjoy dancing, was my answer, but the delegates favored interpretations they understood, and the questions eddied without conclusion beyond Alon vowing to weather each full gathering. Alon posed his question as we paused under a shadow-striped colonnade to breathe before entering the chamber. “What are you doing, Seri?” Alon was the least ambiguous of my compatriots, hiding no motive other than to do right by the goddess, an aim to which he dedicated himself quietly and without zealotry. He deserved reassurance. “I’m negotiating with the only authority these people recognise.” “By hanging yourself as bait?” Sharp words bit into my tongue before he shook his head and continued, “No, wait—I'm not implying that. But you understand she’s not the goddess?” Dryly, I said, “I think I’m aware.” He nodded acknowledgement, waved a hand that marked stress in dry discoloration. “I only mean that the goddess acts for others, not herself. Her power is directed by love, but never desire.” “I said as much last night to the queen,” I commented, eyes caught on his hand. Before, I would have prayed for him, but it was his own prayer he needed, one asking nothing other than to be received. I couldn’t give him that. “Then remember your queen doesn’t have those constraints. King Harry wasn’t a sorcerer until his coronation, and he became a monster. She had magic before it was vested in her. What does that do to a mind? Just think about it, and remember who you deal with. You can’t treat her like the goddess.” “They treat her like a goddess,” I told him. “Removed. Not quite human. I know what she is. That’s why I asked her to dance.” “I…” Alon went to smooth a non-existent crease on his sleeve, caught himself, and smiled ruefully. “I worry. Every step feels precarious without the goddess to catch us, and I don’t want to fail her.” “It’s not all on you.” I touched his elbow. His fingers briefly reached to brush mine. “Courage, friend. Let us see what progress can be made this evening.” And I strode for the dendrite-patterned doors. The chamber seethed tonight. Like wasps in a beehive, we were swarmed by buzzing courtiers, silk gowns shimmering with anxious vibration. They pressed for threat and intrigue, in full reversal of our previous cool reception. I knew the queen’s entrance from fluttered gasps and breathed a sigh. “She wears the colors of the goddess,” murmured Alon through lips stiff as his jaw. “Does she suit them?” I craned, resenting his vantage. “I'd rather decipher their message.” “Her message may be that she suits them.” He dropped a keen glance. “Meant for us or for you?” That, I dearly wished to know. She mounted the dais into my line of vision, pausing at the front to regard the court. Regal, displayed, considering. Off. Her gown looked stitched from swathes of sky, cloudless noon at the chest, following her curves down to midnight. Little suns and stars, yellow and white, gave conflict to her light-spurning eyes like buttercups in tar. If the goddess was cut from above, air given shape, the queen was formed from the ore of her land; these colors and motifs were too ephemeral for one so present. “I’m wrong. They don't flatter her.” “By the goddess, don't share that too loud.” Our words were a low rill to the waterfall of other voices, but it was this moment that she found me in the crowd, passed a challenge in a gaze. “She knows.” Alon had the look a sailor gets sighting lead depths on the horizon. “Tread with caution, Seri. There aren’t centuries of doctrine to glean a queen’s moods.” Sound wisdom. How exhilarating it was, though, to dance an uncharted course. “I never blindly followed doctrine,” I said, “but I take your warning.” Tonight’s music was frenetic, plucked and strummed and fluted with the energy of evening crickets. No controlled burn for these performers; they would slur or trip before the hour matured, but now, the queen and I would blaze across the floor. I left Alon, pushed through whorled courtiers—did the notes move them so, or did they wilfully impede?—to meet her challenge. The pressure of the room was against me, subtlety blunting in measure with my progress until I was blocked entirely. My obstacle: a rakish man whose beard strained with pearls, excess joviality, and ill-concealed agenda. “There you are! I’ve been looking for a Fenarin delegate.” His arms spread wide, effuse and fencing. “You’ve the best wine and weavers north of Almir, and the worst trade policies in the Brinik Sea. I’ve a proposal to change that, one that’ll profit us all—and you know, if the right people can be urged to the table, a clever emissary might stand to gain significantly. My agents tell me your wool tariffs—” The upswell of strings took his remaining words, and I used the opportunity to say, “You speak to the wrong Fenaran, sir. My mandate is purely a spiritual one, though if you’d care to visit the consulate next morning, I’m sure your proposals would meet with interest.” A pause in which he smiled through bristling pearls. “Then you have very little mandate, but all the more reason to consider my offer. Why cling to a sinking vocation when you can ride rising tides to wealth and glory? This could set you up comfortably.” “Comfort of body, perhaps. Call me excessive, but I find I value comfort of mind quite as much.” He was still smiling as he said, “Your obsolete Order won’t blight these shores again. Find a new occupation before your people see you for the drain you are. They've no more need for priestesses. You won't change that, no matter how prettily you dance.” “Enough, Arbrique.” The queen was beside us, sudden as the snuff of a candle flame. Gravity shifted to make room. Beard tucked to his chest, pearls dimming like morning stars, the man wilted. “Your Majesty,” we both said, mine greeting, his bleat. He curled a bow and scuttled, still bent, into the shrinking wave of peers displaced by the queen’s appearance. His words remained, lingering like a sour smell. My eyes compassed to her before he was lost, thrilled in her features. “You were just over by the dais.” “Yes.” “Clever trick.” In the early days of our arrival, stinging from salt residue and laic disdain, we had been invited to watch her pull water to a desiccated well. This was the only time I’d seen her work magic since then, though it clung to her shadow, never lost in bright courtly colors. I liked to think that meant something, a demonstration that she was amenable to our cause. I should have followed with charm, but when I reached for wit, I came up with anxiety. “I didn’t join the Order to extort souls for silver,” I told her. “I’m no paragon, but I did my best to help people. Those who feared authority too much to invoke it, those whose awe stilted their need. We all—and if not all then most—tried to help people.” Unsaid were the words, My Order isn’t your Order, for all its flaws. Her courtier likened us to blight. If she thought the same… then he was right: no pretty dancing would resurrect a need for priestesses. I would fail. The identity might chafe, but shucking my duty like poorly fitted vestments would make me something worse, and leave Alon, and every desperate person I’d ever promised succor, to the elements. The queen contemplated me, head tilted. “I didn’t take you as greedy.” “Not materially,” I agreed, then amended, “or not more than is common.” I craved affection the goddess could never return in kind. That was greed. Perhaps I even harboured greed for the queen. “And as established, you aren’t prone to awe and fear.” Now she sounded amused. “I imagine you were a good mediator.” “Thank you.” She’d made no judgement on the Order as a whole, but I’d settle for this. “That fellow, Arbrique, does he always weave his hair with pearls?” “These last years, yes.” “Then he did well from the dissolution?” Dispossessing the Atuevez Order of their land and wealth had filled more than the queen’s vacant treasury. “Very.” She looked pleased at my discernment. There were many here who resented our cause. Complex reasons, selfish reasons. My own thoughts were increasingly worm-ridden. “The goddess for lower wool tariffs?” I tried. “I think not.” But she said it with a ring of humor. She took my hands, held me at arm’s length, cool touch a relief in the oven of bodies and walls retaining the memory of red afternoon. “No compliment?” she asked. “You told me I looked beautiful before.” “Always. But these aren’t your colors. Too airy.” “Hm. A contingent of my advisors counselled I claim her mantle. I told them I wouldn’t wear it well.” I tugged her nearer. Music thrummed between us. “Do you want to be a god?” “Not most of the time.” Her teeth flashed a rare grin. “Though they attract interesting devotees.” Pleasure dug roots, and the small fissure in my devotion spread a hair. Then we danced, and it made us lightning. Through wildfire melody we hewed a serrated line, crooked elbows and knees, split and sparked and struck the boards with our heels. Immediate. Demanding. There was no breath to talk, but our bodies screamed: Watch me. I am alive. At its end, ember-limbed, duty cooled me. A part, a twirl, a final clinch. “What do you ask for the goddess’s return?” I asked. The world was volatile, but her eyes were steady. “I’m not yet sure of my price.” She skimmed a thumb across my knuckles, then dropped my hands. “Tomorrow. Another dance.” “And after, ask you again?” “If that’s what you desire.” I would always desire the goddess free. But what else I desired… needed examining. Later, in the rooms of the consulate, more questioning: What does she want from us? And from Alon: What does she want from you? I had my own question, nursed into sunrise, examined for petals and thorns: What do I want from her? The bees descended after morning meal, Arbrique and faction buzzing defense of their queen—and, more importantly, their temple-purloined treasure. Tongues laden with honey, they spilled oblique bribes and threats on the same breath, and though we weren’t chased from their shores come evening, I could see the wear on Alon and our cohort. Another night; a different dance. Pensive music set the pace. “Why did they choose you?” asked the queen. “Because I’m close to the goddess and dispensable to current Order workings.” I was watching Alon evade courtier drones and slipped her a sideways glance. “Because I deal well with powerful women.” Her laugh could have shifted continents. “Priestesses usually claim humility.” I lifted my shoulders, half apology. “No, that’s not a trait one needs to commune with the gods. It requires brashness. Arrogance. A certain disregard of self, perhaps, but not humility.” “The same might be said for communing with a queen. Tell me honestly, would you have me restore her temples here?” My pulse was near the surface tonight, and I felt it pass into her palm, greedy to be held. “Would you countenance it if I did?” “I would explain how incredibly impractical I find the endeavor.” “Meaning you can't afford to.” “A certain disregard of self? Yes. I inherited a bare-coffered kingdom and a corrupt and incalcitrant branch of the faith. Dissolution wasn't my first choice, but I won’t reverse course now. Not for a score of war fleets.” The music concluded a phrase, compounding her final sentence. “We wish her returned where she's wanted and needed, not imposed on your land.” This assurance I could extend; discounting a clique of ambitious dissidents, our delegation was too pragmatic to presume otherwise. The queen nodded concession. “I'll ensure the likes of Arbrique leave you be.” “I wouldn’t ask that.” “You don’t need to.” No need to ask. No need for prayer. One less wave to batter Alon’s rock. It was a perfectly calibrated gift for a goddess devotee. Carve a tenancy in your heart, furnish with joys and sorrows, hang your facets on the walls, set a feast of devotion—this was worship. In return, feel the goddess’s warmth, her faith in you. And if you needed more, ask. Always ask, because the channel of her caring, deep and potent as it was, required a bell call to action. I missed the goddess’s warmth. But the missing lessened each day, each dance. It was through dance I spoke my gratitude, bracing and yielding in partnership that transcended hierarchy—my gift to the queen. We mapped constellations across the floor, and I wondered how many nights we would need to leave no grain of wood untrodden. More than we had the funds for. Her focus never left me, though the music dipped. “What are you thinking?” I said. One song bridged to the next. I held her through it, resetting the night’s timer before the last sand fell and I had to ask the question returning me to another’s service. I was all too aware of the timer these nights. Soon, our purses would yield no silver. We’d sail then, just as we’d sail if the queen set terms and granted us the goddess. “I’m considering what might compel a woman who loves to dance as you do to swear to a goddess who can only ever be above it.” “Are you content speculating?” “Please, enlighten me.” How much of myself to give? Laic questions on the choosing of this path weren’t new, but most desired a pious answer, rooted in the virtues of the goddess instead of knotted mortal wants. Most, but not, I suspected, the queen. It wouldn’t hurt to show her this. My road to the Order was paved with long-acknowledged flaws and spoke to the benign side of the goddess, far removed from war fleets. “My family are goldsmiths. Very skilled and respected. I haven’t the knack.” “Not everyone does, from my understanding. They rejected you?” “No. They were good people. They took care of me. I helped with lesser jobs, tried to assist in other ways, but I hadn’t the vision to excel.” The unwavering pools of her pupils promised nothing and everything. No shallow reflection ghosted in their darkness. After years of earnest supplicant eyes painting me a flat prelude to the goddess, I could be anything in her vision, and it was rain to scale-parched earth. “A hard portrait to reconcile,” she said. I shrugged. “They were great, and at best, I was adequate. Everyone saw it. Worse, I envied them.” Skated fingertips soothed and scalded my back. “Is a young girl’s envy so bad?” “A better woman wouldn’t resent her family.” A better woman might have been worthy of the goddess’s undivided love. Or be contented with the portion given. Here I was, bark peeled away, pitted heartwood bare for reading. She shrugged. “Better women don’t match my step. I can’t offer the perspective of a better woman. A better queen may have mended her land without provoking invasion. Leave them to their own.” And us to ours? How else to interpret her words? A taste bloomed in my mouth, sweet and intoxicating. I had moved in high circles long enough to know that all rulers had their defects. Some worked to compensate; others, oblivious, let their faults sweep the land like a bridal train through dirt. But even the most aware seldom voiced imperfections. This kinship was vulnerable. Almost… an invitation. Wisdom clashed with want. I was still the goddess’s creature, though my soul now sought a different charge in the arms of a flesh and blood partner. “Perhaps you’re right.” I tested the ice, committed to a step, saying, “Perhaps I should stop chasing better women and find one better for me.” The queen’s quiet was unreadable, accentuated by the swell of the music building to a pivotal phrase, and I wondered: did I overstep? Then her lips twitched, and I comprehended a challenge in her smile. “Leap,” she murmured as the melody crested. I leapt. Her arms lifted me in flight, strong and solid and certain. In the cessation of notes between movements, strings humming under stilled fingers, I slid down her body: a beautiful descent. The music resumed, and we embraced to a lazy tempo. Her breath caressed the shell of my ear. “Now finish your story. What brought you to the goddess?” “A flood.” Tracing my roots felt melancholy after tasting the canopy. “Their shop sits beside a canal. When the great storm passed over and the runoffs failed, we came close to losing everything. I remember asking what I could do. They told me to pray.” I spoke in cadence with our swaying, regret blunted by warmth and closeness. “It’s likely coincidence that she descended when I joined in entreaty—the whole city was pleading for deliverance. Grey sky tore to show blue, and from the blue knit the goddess, all the beauty of the stars condensed in one being. She saw each of us who’d called her. And when she looked on me, I knew she didn’t find my prayer lesser. I think… I think I fell in love right then. Or into an infatuation preceding love. I asked her to save my family's shop. She kissed my cheek”—which prickled in echo, though it was a cool remembrance—“and drank the flood water into herself until the walkways were bare. “I told my family I was joining the Kafalai Order. And I left.” The queen’s hold loosened. Distance worked between us, though there was nothing inattentive in the lines of her face. “And then? Did your ardor grow under her roof?” “Tenfold,” I confessed. “In the temple, I found my awe and respect. I was good at reaching the goddess and good at reaching the supplicants in need of her. I was good at the politics, too. I learned to dance. She gave me a place to find myself. I’ll forever love that.” Our contact had reduced to interwoven fingers. A witch light’s glow fell through the hollow of our arms, and we viewed each other through its burn. “You were content in your devotion.” We had reached the crossroads. I could affirm her statement, drop her hands, hope I’d said enough to assure the goddess’s return. But the same instinct that spurred my first request to dance kept the truth unspooling. “I thought I was. I only realized my discontent after news reached us of the Atuevez queen dissolving their Order, after our neighbors declared war to restore the goddess’s standing, and the goddess came to the aid of those sailors: when you bound and took her.” There was nothing inscrutable in the intensity of her expression that moment. The sea of courtiers was banished, leaving us and the specter of the goddess and a dance. “What discontent did her absence expose?” “That my prayers weren’t special. I pleaded for her not to cross you, and it weighed nothing more than any other heartfelt prayer. She couldn’t ignore a thousand voices crying for help in clear terms. Not for her, and not for me. Unselfish love is all the goddess is capable of. Even my position as mediator, where I found purpose, is only the job of a conduit. I taste more love and devotion in a year than many receive in a lifetime, but only as courier. I love selfishly, and I crave selfish love.” In uttering, I’d made it solid, pulling the thorn I’d nursed too long. We were at rest, music abated. “The dance has ended,” observed the queen. With the reluctance of surf sinking into the sand, I let her go. No words remained for me but the question. “What do you ask for the goddess’s return?” She peered at me with all her depths, winter lake melted. “I would ask for you,” she said. And added, “Selfishly. But that’s not my price. Take her. I can’t calm all floods beyond my borders and wish no ruin on those who mean no harm.” She stepped close and kissed me. The feel of her mouth was exquisitely carnal. Under sublime pressure, the plates of my world shifted, entering a new era. I reached to cup her cheek, but she was already drawing away, leaving me on the wasteland of dance floor while she reclaimed her throne. Our talks were done. I took my leave before her courtiers mobbed me. Sleep was impossible after. I threaded my way through consulate demands of explanation to arrive at Alon’s chambers. He was still in his gown, composed and waiting. “The queen has agreed to the goddess’s release,” I told him. Free the grip of turbulent waters, I half expected him to gulp air. Instead, he poured us drinks from a crystal decanter and regarded me with diplomat focus as I took a sip. “For what price?” “If I say for me, what will you answer?” His shoulders stayed square, steadfast. “We sail tomorrow. Without the goddess.” “Why? Bigger concessions have been made, and this concludes our task neatly.” “It would diminish the goddess and our worship. And me.” I rolled the drink over my tongue, but its taste was lost beneath joy, sadness, and gratitude. He was the unselfish complement to the goddess I could never be. “Thank you.” “It’s what the goddess would wish.” “Even so, you’re a good person and a good friend. But it’s not the queen’s price. It’s mine.” Now he straightened, posture subtly aligning in a way I hadn’t seen since leaving Fenarin, a mast emerging from a storm battered but unbroken. He raised his glass, saluted. “Be careful, Seri,” said Alon one final time, and there was a smile in the crosshatching of his face. Fenarin’s delegation sailed the next day, and the following evening I trod through the moon chamber unburdened by divine purpose. The queen tracked my progress through the crowd, fingers curled around the ornate ends of her armrests. When I was at the foot of the dais, she said, “I don’t have any more goddesses stashed away.” “No. Your Majesty, I am Seri, late of the Kafalai Order. I come here to speak with you on a matter quite dear to me.” There were two worlds: one of movement and color and curious whispers, and the other the warmth in her earth-dark eyes. “Oh?” “Will you dance with me?” “I will.” |
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Anna Clark
Anna Clark is a queer shipyard pipefitter in Cornwall, UK. When not fixing boats or swimming in the sea, she can be found writing speculative fiction on the rocks by the beach. Her fiction has been published in Factor Four Magazine, Gwyllion, Wyldblood.
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