by A. R. Henle
She licked her lips to dry them. Wrenching her gaze upward, she watched his smile expand. Pleasure glinted in his eyes. She had not managed to conceal her admiration, but likewise his gaze moved over her in open appreciation and warmed her as much as the sun.
Letting her gaze drift down, she straightened so fast her the bones in her spine crackled.
Stevan’s large feet lay flat on the ground, with no layer of leather between skin and earth. Snapping her head to the side, Gisela ascertained Amara, too, was barefoot.
“You may take your sandals off for now.” Amara laughed.
“Why did you say princesses wear sandals to dance?”
“They do. But when they choose to exercise outside, most go barefoot. Since we are not at court, or in the dancing chambers, feel free to do as we do.”
Without further invitation, Gisela undid the straps, and let loose an immense sigh as her soles pressed against warming dirt.
Amara led her and Stevan through a series of stretches. To Gisela’s surprise, after the first fumbling attempts, her body readily followed the dam’s lead. The movements were familiar from her childhood, merely done in a different order—and to a greater extent.
The older dam arranged the exercises Gisela remembered as distinct into sequences. Except with more parts and repetitions, pushing her to do more.
The first sequence was solar, tracing the arc of the sun and gently warming her body to work.
Then birdlike, extending arms, torso, and back in ways that left Gisela's muscles with residual aches—but also energized with heightened vitality.
Lastly, an earth-based sequence wherein she lay on the ground and her legs mimicked plants growing and receding. The muscles in her lower body received similar treatment to her upper, and became imbued with the same new-growth energy.
All the while, she was all too aware of Stevan doing the same as her but with more grace. More familiarity. More speed. Where she fumbled and wound a beat behind Amara, he kept pace.
The more so as she had to keep from glancing his way to watch the smooth flow of muscles under skin. The sheen of skin glistening with sweat.
Her skin tingled when he peered at her. No matter that she could not see when he turned to watch her, she knew.
Her breath came in long pants by the end of the sequences, and not merely from the extent to which Amara had made her work.
Trills of desire ran along her arms, her legs. Made her toes twitch. She didn’t look at Stevan, even when he chuckled. The deep, resonant sound made her chest tighten.
“That’s enough for a first day.” Amara handed Gisela a clean cloth to wipe sweat from her brow and limbs. “We’ll do this each morning until we leave, then add more along the way.”
Gisela escaped the clearing as soon as she could. Did not linger even so long as to break the night’s fast there, despite the smell of sweet berry pancakes grilled over the fire.
Better to run back to her home, and hold tight to all that she’d soon have to let go. Even if this meant a meal of stale bread slathered with honey.
Back to the familiar—away from the strange. In particular, as far as she could get from Stevan. He’d turned her down. She didn’t want her body to wake to his gaze or touch. For him to note her watching him.
However would she manage to travel with him, being polite and courteous and not betraying how his rejection still stung.
How could she leave?
She would miss so many things. No matter how little she’d appreciated them because they were always there until now they wouldn’t be. Or, rather, they would, but she not there to know.
The way the roofs caught the sun.
How a child could start singing a song in the nursery and within a few lines everyone in the village would join in, whether humming or singing.
The frustration on Alvi’s face as they herded the counselors to the table.
In place of these familiar sights and sounds, she’d face hordes of people dressed as fine as she or better, even with the new clothes. Courtiers who knew how to interact with each other. What was expected of them. What they could get away with.
People who talked as Amara and Stevan and Emmi and Rik and the guards and other servants, putting the accents in the wrong places so that Gisela had to listen close to understand.
Anyone in the palace who cared would learn, sooner or later, that she was Escalli—and make assumptions based upon that knowledge. Look down upon her as simple folk, or consider her apt to fall into lewdness at a moment’s notice. Perhaps seek liberties. Would they take no for an answer?
Ilburna was the one to give the most open warning, whether or not that was her intent.
The elder arrived without warning in Gisela’s room right after the midday meal, at a time when most of the elders, indeed most of the village given the heat of midsummer, tended to nap.
Gisela had planned a last respite in her own bed and her own room, no matter how disarrayed it looked as she’d started packing the items she most cherished into a trunk with her new clothing.
Despite the disorder, Ilburna invited herself in and planted herself upon the foot of the bed. Both gnarled hands wrapped around the head of her cane, she motioned to Gisela to take a seat on her own cot.
“You are welcome, of course, but perhaps we could speak later?” Gisela rubbed her temples. Sweat slicked her skin, from the heat and her exertions.
“Now is best. When there is no one near to hear. It won’t take long.” Ilburna clicked her tongue. “If I can remain awake, you can as well. Sit.”
Gisela dropped onto her cot without grace. The soft layers cushioned her. Easing back, she leaned against the thick wall and waited.
“I make no apology for asking you to go.” Ilburna stared at the far wall. Her fingers twitched and shook, raising a soft rattle that underscored her words.
“You certainly gave me little choice.”
“There was little choice for anyone.” The elder whirled to glare at Gisela. “What the Terparchon and Marchon want, they get. The only questions are how fast and how much.”
“And the answers are fast and for a decrease in taxes, with the exact amount not even specified.” Gisela clenched her hands and glared back. “You did not wait a breath to agree.”
“Negotiations on the details are proceeding.” Ilburna looked away first.
“Then you’ll be able to put a price on my compliance.”
“That’s only part of your value to us, the smaller part.” The old dam thumped her cane against the floor.
Gisela crossed her arms over her chest, hands still fisted.
The chamber fell quiet. Distant sounds seeped in. The buzz of insects. The calls of birds overhead. The moans and thumps of those villagers who chose to spend their rest time indulging in the pleasures of the body.
A high cry of exultation rang out from the cottage two over, followed by a second.
Ilburna glanced that direction and shrugged a shoulder, lips twisting in a half smile. She didn’t say anything.
This time Gisela broke, her mind empty of what the other might mean. Her contributions to the village lay in her services as scribe, nothing more, until recently.
“What other value do you see in me, then?”
“Consider: you’ll be at the palace, at the center of the powers that rule these lands. You, not one of the flibbertigibbets still at the mercy of the heat of their blood.” Ilburna pointed her cane in the direction of yet another series of matching cries. “You, who knows how to read and write, who can keep secrets—and perhaps discover them as well.”
“What do you want?”
“Truth.”
Gisela’s jaw dropped as the implications began to dawn. She sucked in a deep breath, then snapped her head up to stare at the other. “Only truth?”
“I dare not ask for vengeance.” Ilburna grimaced. “That would cost more than I am willing to pay—especially when I might not be the one who had to pay the price. We live in a world where those
who do evil are rarely brought to account for their deeds.”
“Escalad.” The name hung in the air for a moment. The mere sound carried images, impressions. Even though Gisela had never seen it, and never would—at least not as those who’d fled had—the syllables evoked warmth and a haven.
“Our home.” Ilburna closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Moisture trickled down the sides of her face. “Oh, these lands here have taken us in and given us shelter. For you who are young—make no protest, child, for you’re too many years the younger for me not to consider you young—these are all you’ve ever known. But the oldest of us, we remember where we once belonged.”
“A spit of land with long views and long sights, from the high, snow-topped mounts to the far sea with its white-capped waves. Where the earth smelled sweet, and nurtured all plants. The sun shone six days out of seven, yet never did the sky withhold needed rain. All virtues sought in a home this had.” The words poured easily out of Gisela, although she half-quoted nursery memories and half-paraphrased. The original had held power. Her rendition didn’t, but still raised a faint shadow of a series of villages and fields covering a sloping hillside. The high end of the hill jutted out far above a wide river that curved around the land on three sides.
“Those are words to you, all of you. Oh I know you care, but it is different for those who never knew it as it was. Only a few are left.” Ilburna tapped her chest with one hand. “We were no great power, but we held our home. Controlled the river for a length, and earned a fair bit of coin by allowing passage across land for those who didn’t wish to risk the rapids. Lived there for generations without problem from the earth, our greatest threats the late summer storms that washed the river high . . . and the greed of those who desired the fees paid for passage.”
“Who do they pay now?”
“Who do you suppose?” Eyes now dry, Ilburna gave Gisela a level stare.
Gisela grunted, but kept her mouth shut. This was the court Ilburna wished her to join?
“We had one other thing: proximity to one of the Shadows of the Moon. The rulers of Codaros wanted to control them all. Build palaces next to every single Shadow. They don’t have them, not yet, but they will. For our land is gone. Shaken and fallen into rubble. I ventured back once, when I was still hale enough for the journey—you would have been a toddler at the time—and there now lies an immense villa close to where our villages once rose from the earth.”
“You think the Terparchon and the Marchon destroyed our homeland?” Hardly the first time Gisela had heard such suspicions. She’d never taken the matter much to heart before. Simpler to listen, nod, and curse the court, then go about her daily business.
It was the current Terparchon’s parents who Ilburna referred to as having stolen Escalad. If they were anything like the Terparchon the one time Gisela met her, she could believe they’d be that ruthless. Yet how could they shake the earth so much? No one had that much power. Or did they? Amara had said the princesses shaped storms, coaxed water, eased fires. The implication was they protected the land and people, but such powers might be turned in other directions.
Even so, a thread of slow-burning anger lit within Gisela from Ilburna’s intensity.
“Someone did.” Ilburna leaned forward, voice pitched for Gisela’s ears alone. “We never had quakes before and I heard nothing of any after. When I passed by the palace, I questioned the servants who tend the buildings and dwelling places when the rulers and their coterie are away. There’ve been Escalli before you who went to court to serve, or so they proclaimed, but also to see what they might find. There is one at the winter palace now, though he does not proclaim his origins far and wide. He sends word back as he can. Visit the libraries, and you will find him or he you.” She grabbed Gisela’s hand, tucking a small piece of paper within.
Gisela opened her fingers long enough to glimpse awkward letters, then closed her hand. Time enough later to study the contents—for Ilburna was not done.
“As a Dancing Princess, you will have access to different secrets than he.” The other’s grip tightened to the point of pain. “I do not ask you to betray them or to share with me anything you are told to keep secret—but if you can find proof that the Terparchon’s ancestors did or did not destroy Escalad, you will ease an old dam’s heart.”
With that, she thumped her cane again and left.
Gisela didn’t move. The thick wall was warm against her back. The paper within her fingers likewise grew warm, edges scratching at her skin. A sharp tang in the air made her nose twitch, then the rain came thundering down. Heavy torrents lashing against roofs and walls.
An apt match for Gisela’s mood.
Her head and feet hurt—and her heart as well. So many hopes and expectations placed on her. She’d yet to fully adjust to the year’s earlier blow and now . . . They asked her to trade her home for an unknown place where she would likely find a mixed welcome. Arrive with an added secret, an extra load. More to carry. More reason to be wary. More likelihood she’d be watched when she reached the court.
Yet this was something she could do for her people, to make up for her inability in other ways. The memory of which still brought tears to her eyes.
Her cozy chamber had already ceased to be a haven. Her work as scribe slipped from her hands into her successor’s. Even the garb she wore was unfamiliar and strange.
She missed home, even though she had yet to leave.
As the rain slowed, the torrent passing, she realized there was one more thing she would miss.
Donning one of her old tunics not yet taken away, she left her new clothes and sandals behind as she darted out into the humid mist that followed the rain.
Walked out the same way she did back in the spring, the day the Terparchon found her.
To dance and bid farewell to the fallow field.
Chapter 11
Dancing lured Stevan.
Humid air hissed and steamed around him, courtesy of a late afternoon shower. His tunic, a simple blue save for a thin vine embroidered at the neckline, clung instantly to his skin. His mantle, a lightweight fabric well-suited to summer, absorbed enough moisture that it hung heavy about his torso.
His sandals squelched against damp earth. The soles picked up clods of mud here and there, cast them off a step or two later, keeping him to a slow, steady pace.
The thick vegetation around him, mostly weeds and scraggly trees, gave off strong and not entirely pleasant odors that encouraged him not to stray from the trail. The cleared area was wide enough for a donkey or ox cart to pass through with humans walking on either side. Ample space for one lone man to pick his way as he tried to figure out where he was going.
The why he already knew.
He’d spent the storm enclosed within the council chambers reviewing old tax rolls and listening to tales of woe. Several of the oldest councilors pointed to this roll and that as they recounted harvests lost, plagues of weevils, and raids from bandits.
The contract guaranteeing the Escalli’s benefit for letting Gisela go had yet to be completely written, much less signed. They had every motive to see if they could raise the consideration from a fifth to a fourth, or more. They wouldn’t succeed—their initial joy had been too clear, and both sides knew they’d accept the fifth. Still, they tried.
So he sat with them. Ate and drank with them. Traded his own tales of the evils that plagued his kinfolk at the other side of the realm—lost harvests, weevils, raiders. All while the rains poured down about them. Dripped from the ceiling in a few places. Drops clanked into well-positioned buckets and chipped serving vessels. Such a convenient way to emphasize their claims of trouble and need for more monies that he almost suspected the leaks of being arranged. Except that they’d made clear earlier that the funds were allocated on strict principles of need and worth, and the council chamber did not top that list.
After the rains, the thick air encouraged yawns on the part of many, even all, the councilors. They drifted away,
to their beds for naps, and recommended the same course of action to him.
He might even have taken it, had he not caught a glimpse of black curly hair and an old, gray tunic heading out of town.
No suspicion of ill doing seized him, nor any doubt as to who had left.
With all the possible actions before him, he followed her out of the village.
Only to lose sight.
And sound.
Insects buzzed, and birds called in the distance, but otherwise he heard no sounds attributable to a woman out on her own.
Beneath his feet, however, a slow beat began to pulse. More than the stick and plop of mud clinging and releasing his sandals soles. A thrum that found purchase in his toes and heels and from there resounded in his bones.
It came from the left, a little back. When he turned and retraced his steps a short way, scattered small, light footprints in the mud and broken blades of grass revealed a narrow track.
Whomever walked the trail last was shorter and slighter than he. He had to push his way through. Branches pulled back and made way for him, scratching his arms and neck lightly.
Time to find a princess and clarify a few matters. She’d successfully avoided him for too long.
Oh, she had her reasons, ample ones and good for that matter. She spent hours in close consultation with the councilors—always different from those who accosted him—and the apprentice promoted to scribe in her place. Those he certainly couldn’t argue with.
She had to decide which of her own belongings to pack even though Amara promised she’d receive a full wardrobe due her station once she arrived. That he found less convincing, although he accepted that she was also needed for measurements as Rik and the other servant adapted the tunics and mantles Amara had brought to Gisela’s height.
When she kept slipping away with excuses about seeing to provisions, or farewelling persons he had seen her already speak to, it was not hard to realize Gisela did not wish to speak to him.