The Dancer, part two
The story of the Great Fire continues
The story of the Dancer continues in part two as Maya tries to uncover what she remembers about the events that led up to the Great Fire. Make sure you don’t miss an instalment and subscribe to verse today.
The Great Fire is designed to be read in any order but you can catch up on the previous stories here:
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The Dancer
Part two
The two guards escorted me to my room and I was surprised to find my mother waiting for me when we entered. There were no windows in that room either. The furniture was covered in richly coloured cloth, but beneath that I could smell that the wood had begun to rot.
I followed my mother’s example and waited in silence; back straight, eyes gently gazing to the ground, hands loosely clasped in front.
My body itched all over, as if all the uncertainty were bugs crawling across my skin, biting me with every step. As soon as we were alone, my mother turned to me.
“Listen to me and listen well,” she said, “None of this is right. We left in peace, but they are prepared for war.” I had never seen her so anxious. We hadn’t planned for it. They knew something we didn’t. “We will do what we came here to do. I will meet with him, talk to Favian and his council and then you will perform.”
“But what if something is wrong?”
“We both know what to do then,” she said. “We owe these people nothing. So, we do whatever we need to do to get out. Then we go back to Baline and we prepare for war ourselves. But not a moment sooner, we cannot risk destroying something because of ghosts.”
In that moment I knew that it was more than a ghost of doubt, I think we both did, but we couldn’t risk it. Our soldiers might have been well trained but there were fewer within our ranks. At the time, we couldn’t risk a war.
I nodded my agreement and then she helped me get ready for my performance. I was dressed in silks of emerald green and gold that were tied firmly around my waist with a thick sash of aquamarine, they were my colours.
My trousers slightly grazed the floor and the base of my sleeves trailed on the ground behind me. I would use them later to show the flow of air and water; or I could use them to strangle a life into silence.
I braided nineteen coins into my hair, so that my movements would create a song, and my mother secured the small gold crown atop my head. Once I was dressed she took five pins from her own hair, barely larger than my thumb and pinned them into the inside of my sleeve without saying a word. When she finished she looked up to me and smiled.
“Just in case,” she whispered. She hugged me for the first time that I can remember. “Sahrayah-li.”
Neeran?
Yes. The words sounded foreign on her tongue, but they were bound by truth. They were words of love and of respect, but more than anything -
A goodbye.
She was telling me that she knew who I was and that she loved who I was. Yet for her to say those words she must have believed, with every inch of her being, that we would never see each other again.
“Sahrayah-li,” I said. She hugged me once more before leaving me to meet the King.
Do you know what happened at that meeting?
Favian came and told me, nothing about what was said, just what he did. He gloated about it. How he killed her. How he never planned on dealing with us. He left my mother’s head in here for a week.
But I also remember the guard that stood by him, the nervous sweat on his brow and how they flinched when I moved against my chains. Even bound and at my weakest, they were scared of me.
How long were you waiting?
In that room? I’m not quite sure how long, but there were a few times when I thought about ignoring my mother and running away before something could go wrong. It’s hard to explain that feeling; to know so surely that there’s something wrong but without being able to describe what that thing is.
I continued to thumb the pins that my mother had left in my sleeve, making sure that they were still there. I had no doubt that I could use them, but still the thought nagged at me that it was all too late. That our end had already begun.
Eventually a guard returned to escort me to my performance. He was alone, but he carried a spear along with the sword at his waist, presumably because he believed that it would save him.
But as soon as you move past the spears point, it’s nothing more than a long stick.
Then they took me to perform, which was where I met you.
Tell me what happened next.
You already know.
I know what I saw, not what you did. Please.
Against my instincts I followed him once more through the castle, we walked in a similar fashion to when I arrived, he tried to confuse me before we finally exited outside into a walled courtyard filled with manicured gardens and the stage that was set in the centre.
The stage was a few steps above the ground with a screen that was painted with a scene of the Baline countryside. The light from the torches set around the garden cast shadows onto the screen but I searched through them for the shadows of someone waiting behind it.
Because when I entered the courtyard, it took less than a moment to realise that I was alone. The guard that escorted me left me to walk to the stage by myself and he exited by the door we came. There was no one else in the garden and even though there were four chairs on the upper balcony facing the stage, they were all empty.
I didn’t know what to do. Dancing for no one isn’t performing – it’s practising. I moved one of my mother’s pins from my sleeve to my waist as I walked, quickly aware that the walled garden could also be seen as a large pit, waiting to trap me inside. There were four doors like the one I entered through, one on each wall, but all of them were made with iron and locked from the inside. I could have broken the lock but that would take time and I couldn’t be sure how much I had.
So I stood in the centre of the stage, studying the walls.
They were carved with vines that twisted their way around, but from where I stood, the carvings didn’t look deep enough for me to climb to the balcony. There were torches scattered around the garden but only two were embedded on each wall. I thought that I might be able to use them as leverage, but that was assuming they were well-made and wouldn’t crumble underneath my weight.
I was plotting my escape when the balcony doors opened and a woman stepped out.
At first I saw my mother. But it wasn’t, it was you. From where you sat, I could only assume that you were the Queen of Teron. The one we were told had died. You didn’t say anything.
I was distracted.
You were rude. You called down in the common tongue:
“Well, aren’t you going to do something?” I didn’t know what to do. I was told you were dead and that if negotiations went well that I was to take your place. I was told that I would be dancing for a King. I spoke back, my voice nearly lost in the garden.
“Isn’t King Favian coming?”
“Not likely,” you said. I couldn’t think of what else to say but the silence was like a wall between us.
I thought you were there to kill me.
Well somebody certainly was. Before I could begin, a dagger came flying towards my throat, I deflected the knife and it stuck in the wooden frame behind me but I was too slow to stop the second. It grazed my shoulder and pinned the top of my dress to the ground. When I looked up, I saw you battling two men that were there to kill you.
The pain in my shoulder was nothing that I hadn’t felt before and I removed both knifes from where they rested, wiped away the blood, and took aim myself. They were too distracted with you to deflect my attack and so my knives took two of the men down. Then I ran for the wall.
As quick as I could, I unbound the sash at my waist and placed the pins in my hair before I tied my sleeves to my arm. I took steps up the wall and swung from the torch to the balcony. The metal didn’t bend at my weight but the stone of the wall broke as I swung so I had to grab the base of the balcony and climb up in two more movements.
When I swung onto the balcony floor a man had you by the throat. I pulled him away from you and pierced his eye with my mother’s pin before throwing him over the balcony to the ground.
You were gasping for breath and one of them must have cut you – which I see now has scarred. I could tell that you were just as shocked as I was. I didn’t know why they were there but I was under attack just as much as you. That made us allies.
I couldn’t think of the right words to explain so I spoke in my own language, Balese, trying to sound as powerful as my mother did when she ordered armies across worlds.
“More will come.” You grabbed my hand before responding in your own native tongue,
Run.
The rest you do know and I refuse to speak about.
I thought you were behind me. It wasn’t until I was in the city that I realised you weren’t. And then I thought you were dead.
I don’t blame you. Not for everything. You’ve come back, after all. My mother used to always say not to judge anyone on how they leave but on how they return. You came back, so what will you do now?
I’m getting you out. I know a way to get you back to Baline, but what will you do?
Favian killed my mother. He locked me in this cell for over thirty years. You let me go and I will return with thousands. And we won’t rest until it’s done.
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