“You’re over generalizing. The Dominion of the Sun is not inhabited entirely by priests and their sacrificial knives. That’d be equivalent of saying we were raised in an empire of headhunters.”
“That’s a flaming barrel of pig shit and you know it. Headhunting is mostly illegal. Sacrifice is their national sport.”
“I believe their warriors play some manner of game with hornet nests, yet that’s beside the point. Were I to fly over the City of Endless Day, now that would be inexcusable. I understand the City of Flowing Gold has a more peaceable outlook.”
“They’ll hear. Bet your butt they will.”
“Soon, I’ll have enough amethyst to feel safe.”
“They have jaguars. They have armies to send after you.”
“By then I’ll be ready.”
Hiresha hoped it would be so. Prickling sensations crisscrossed over her skin, and it wasn’t only because of the multitudes of bees.
The city resonated. The air throbbed with insect wings. The haze buzzed. The pollen-coated legs and banded abdomens thronged in shifting clouds from rooftop to rooftop. The bees parted around Hiresha. The current from her momentum pushed most aside. The rest she Repulsed so as to not collide and harm any of the industrious creatures. Her magic nudged them and their stingers away.
The city had modeled itself after the honeybees that had brought it wealth. The buildings were hexagonal and fit together to resemble hive combs. Six-sided towers were painted like flowers, with dots leading gusts of bees to open windows with flower planters.
What a joy for Hiresha to fly over such geometry. Tethiel had been right to recommend this place. The civic planning, the grid of streets, the adherence to a theme, it suggested a people that valued forethought and unity.
The stratified street and growth-stunted men suggested something else: rampant and senseless discrimination. In that regard, the city was not so different from home.
As a child, she had only tasted this city’s honey a scant three times, on festival days. How she had treasured its golden sweetness. Now its ultimate creators buzzed around her. The bees flitted between the streamers of her ribbon cape. The yellow fabric rippled behind her for forty-three feet.
The cloak did make her resemble a bird. Some children had named her so, hopping up and down on the street and chasing after her ribbons. Yet Hiresha may have been right to accept the wardrobe suggestion from Tethiel. She would have been too small to notice without it, quite lost in the bees. The cape matched her citrine-spiral dress while also covering her back. No one would see diamonds implanted there in the design of a kraken. She did have to think of how she presented herself. The first foot she put forward shouldn’t be a monstrous tentacle.
She flew onward. Warm air flowed into her dress and down her legs and toes. Her yellow train rippled behind her and looped around towers. She sprang off their flat sides: six faces, five towers. Hiresha would’ve preferred a grouping of six, and indeed, construction had begun on another foundation already.
Hiresha found the nearby market then skipped two blocks to the east. There waited a fountain exactly as Tethiel had described. A statue of a pregnant woman was smiling as water spurted from her belly button. Tethiel did have a penchant for oddity.
A familiar Feaster sprang from the fountain’s edge and prostrated herself before Hiresha. “Lady of Gems, welcome to the City of Gold.”
“It is hardly your right to welcome me, Minna. We are both of us guests.”
The Feaster was the daughter of Miss Barrows, and of all the women on the street, only she wore a veil. Now the citizens were looking from her to Hiresha.
Minna’s eyes blinked at a rate of three times a second in her panic. Her words rushed out with the halting rapidity of being rehearsed. “Lady of Gems, you have been invited to stay with priestess … with Purest Elbe. May I lead you to her home now?”
“You may.” Hiresha lifted her naked hand. Nothing covered it except her jewels. The amethysts gleamed with more than sunlight. Hiresha didn’t hide their dreamshine. Everyone was looking. People were seeing the real her for the first time.
Excitement crackled over Hiresha. Everything fluttered. Even her bones hummed.
One woman stepped over Hiresha’s ribbon train to approach. She had notable piercings of her own. Piranha dangled from her ears. Their teeth appeared to be biting her lobes, yet the fish were dead and preserved. Their eyes had been replaced with painted wood. Though Hiresha wouldn’t call the piranha “jewelry,” they were ornamentation of a kind.
The woman asked, “You flew with the bees?”
“Approximately, yes,” Hiresha said.
“Were you stung?” The woman reached out in a most forward manner to touch Hiresha’s wrist, above her jewel clusters, and then again on her cheek.
Hiresha stopped herself from Repulsing the hand away. “I am not stung.”
People started to murmur. One young woman with a fan of blue feathers protruding from her hair said, “Is she one of the Pure?”
“Couldn’t be,” another woman said. Hexagonal tattoos surrounded her drooping breasts.
“W-what are you?” The woman with the piranha was trembling now.
The poor Feaster, Minna, jerked her head up. She licked her lips, no doubt preparing to recite Hiresha’s title a third time. Hiresha spared her by answering.
“I am the dawn of a new age. I am Hiresha.”
Saying it would’ve made her blush, yet her magic clamped the minor blood vessels in her face. Maybe she was being inexcusably presumptive, or merely accurate. They might remember her as coming that morning with the dawn. They wouldn’t know that this was her dawn facet. Every sunrise she witnessed in this world, never a sunset. She could’ve said something else but nothing as true.
At least the women did not laugh. They refrained from telling Hiresha that her jewel piercings were an abomination. They didn’t mention that women of refinement only practiced magic behind closed doors. They made way for her. They accepted her, for the moment.
The Empire had seen her as a sleepy enchantress. Her colleagues in the Academy had known her as an eccentric savant. They would cast her out for breaking tradition and been right to do so. Hiresha hadn’t been one of them. She was far greater.
Hiresha was free at last. She was herself.
She couldn’t walk at a time like this. Hiresha’s toes only skimmed the street. The ribbons of her cape floated weightless behind her. They drifted through the air as if underwater. A woman snipped off one strand with her gardening shears, yet that was of little consequence. The woman clutched the yellow fabric against her chest.
Trees shaded the boulevard, and flowers grew on the branches. Orchids draped their petals. Flowers of different varieties demarcated other streets, hanging from signposts in planters. Hiresha could anticipate where she needed to go by Minna’s darting eyes.
The girl walked to the side and just behind. Her veil hid the wine-stain birthmark on her face. She concealed her paleness under a shawl patterned with intertwining snakes. A taxidermy viper circled her arm. Its yellow complemented her dress, in a scaly fashion.
“Minna, I know why you became as you are.”
“You do?” A mirror was tucked into the Feaster’s belt. She made a fist around its handle as if she gripped a weapon.
At night, she would unveil herself as Minara, an unblemished woman with a face free of any wine-stain birthmark. “We are taught to accept ourselves and our position in life. There is value in that,” Hiresha said, “yet I admit there’s nothing as liberating as appearing in the manner of your own choosing.”
Minna’s veil masked her face. Her grin still shone through her eyes.
People followed Hiresha down the boulevard. Some ran ahead. Children caught hold of her ribbons. Hiresha willed the fabric to split, leaving presents for the girls and boys. Hiresha came into a district of manor houses. The sea breeze suppressed some of the city stink. A salt wind blew past flowers. Terraces of limestone overflowed with b
looming vines. Ponds lined the street, and they were rich with imported lotuses.
Gates of ebonwood opened for Hiresha. Women shut them behind her, closing out the other citizens and leaving her alone with Minna.
“Purest Elbe is waiting for you in the Sapphire Palace,” Minna said. They neared a glass house. The panes of its walls and ceiling were tinted dark. “She’s afraid. She thinks she’ll lose her position.”
“For what reason?”
“She doesn’t think she’s worthy.”
“The Purests are more like monks than priests, is that right?”
“What’s the difference?” Minna asked.
“A monk secludes himself to gain a greater understanding of his gods. Hers, in this case.”
“Definitely that, then. They pretend men don’t exist.”
“I’m certain the Purests would not phrase it in those terms.”
“They own the city, anyway.”
A Purest would have the influence to sanction the wedding. Hiresha might well decide it should take place in the City of Gold.
Hiresha left Minna behind to enter the Sapphire Palace. Sadly, the glass house was not full of jewels but only plants and bees. These were not honeybees. They had no bands. They were dark bees. To be precise: blue bees or sapphire bees. Their exoskeleton glistened in iridescence of purple, azure, and teal. The insects would resemble flies if not for the sleeker abdomen covered on the bottom with pollen.
Hiresha had seen the species only once before. It had been in her other facet. A blue bee had lighted on her jeweled hand during her speech to a crowd of thousands. It had stayed there, fanning its wings, never trying to sting her. Hiresha had been meant to come to the City of Gold. Fate flowed around her in an endless rushing, and a vibration in her chest matched the buzz of the sapphire bees.
They whirled around her as she walked beneath apple trees and between blueberry bushes. The shrubs were not in season for fruit, and their flowers bloomed red.
Footpaths wandered through the glass house. Hiresha went straight to the Purest. A perfume of peppery sweetness led Hiresha on. She met no one else and was alone with the woman.
“Lord Tethiel promised you would come,” the Purest said. She sat on a padded bench, facing the beach windows. Bees walked over the nectar trails embroidered into her robes.
Hiresha thought her intriguing. The Purests were not to acknowledge men, yet this one had spoken with Tethiel. She might have broken her vows. Any pact made with him would be sacrilegious. Beneath her perfume came a whiff of rot.
The woman did have a fine head of feathers. A plumage of pastel blues was braided into her hair. The glistening spikes fluttered in the ventilation breeze as she spoke with a voice of resolution and quiet strength.
“I cannot hide myself from my sisters any longer. I cannot reveal myself. I am losing my hold on Purity.”
Hiresha passed to the other side of the bench. The Purest sat straight and showed no symptoms of pregnancy. She wasn’t with child. That would’ve been the height of awkwardness. Celibate women did tend to have remarkable fertility.
The Purest had a more obvious issue. A sleep mask covered her face. In place of her eyes were painted two blue flowers. From under the mask oozed tears and pus.
“You have eyeblight,” Hiresha said. She had seen blind men carrying water in the city. They had dragged their hands along the walls of the open-air sewers. A girl with the early stages of the same condition had run alongside Hiresha on the street. The child had wiped her tearing eyes with one of Hiresha’s yellow ribbons. Perhaps the girl had hoped the Lightening magic in the cloth would cure her. Eyeblight could make anyone desperate.
“I am infected by Strife.” The Purest removed her mask.
A tattoo of a sapphire bee glittered on the woman’s cheek. Real gemstone had been used in the pigments. Hiresha took it as another sign she had come to the right place. Tethiel had been right. Risking coming here had been correct. Caution would’ve left this woman suffering.
Her eyes had swollen shut. Black strands poked out at odd angles as if her eyelids had been sutured. The majority of her lashes would’ve turned inward, gouging her eyes.
This woman should have been sobbing. She had every right to be curled in a corner, wailing. Instead she rotated her blind gaze toward Hiresha, crying but composed. Her jaw had a forward jut, which gave her face a crescent bend.
When Hiresha touched the woman’s cheek, the Purest didn’t wince. Hiresha clasped her by the temples. The Purest placed her hands over each of Hiresha’s. The woman’s nails were all capped with lapis lazuli, with another gemstone-bee tattoo on her wrist. She had impeccable taste.
Magic seeped from Hiresha’s jewels into the Purest. Paired Attraction spells crushed all the infection units in the woman’s eyes. The inflammation was drained away. Hiresha folded the lashes right-side out. She flicked the globs of pus away into the bushes.
The Purest opened her eyes and focused. She could see; Hiresha had caught the illness early. Her eyes were reddened and scratched, and they shone like amber. Coppery strands wove forward and back within her irises. The citizens might’ve said her eyes were the color of honey.
“Your eyes will regenerate over the coming days.” Hiresha traced a finger over the smoothness of the Purest’s cheek and enchanted the gemstone in her bee tattoo. How convenient. “You’re free of disease and equal to your fellow Purests.”
Unless she had spoken to Tethiel, a male. If Hiresha understood this woman’s beliefs, then she was forsaken.
“I will cure your city of eyeblight.” Hiresha had only tended to the rich in the Empire. Now that she was free, she would do more. She would, and soon, before the Dominion’s warriors could catch up to her. No matter what else happened, her magic would accomplish something worthwhile. A warm brilliance filled Hiresha with tickling sparks of green and red. “A boat will bring amethyst crystals down the Gargantuan River. They will extract the illness from anyone who holds them.”
The enchantments would also cure crotch blight. The infection units were the same. However, the Purest might not care to hear of diseases spread by lust, especially if she had contracted the eyeblight by touching the wrong sort of someone. Of course, a virulent fly could have landed too close to her eye. Plenty of those buzzed among the bees of this city.
The Purest cupped Hiresha’s hand, running her fingers over the jewel piercings. “The only magic we know came from Strife.”
“The hexing.”
“Yours is a magic of beauty and harmony.”
The Empire had wished to believe the same of enchantment, to the exclusion of innovation. “Mine is the magic of dreams.”
“And of what do you dream?”
“The limitless.”
“Could your magic harm another? Could it kill?”
Hiresha had destroyed the infection to save the Purest, yet she was referring to hurting people. “I’d prefer not to.”
“We all carry Strife inside us.” The Purest coaxed Hiresha to sit beside her. Their hips touched. It was too close. The Purest stroked a finger down Hiresha’s hair, a lock of silver. “Does your curse blood yet flow?”
“Are you asking after my age?” Hiresha opened a space between them by sliding back and facing the Purest. “Or my menstrual blood?”
“The blood shed from our wombs by Strife’s curse.” The Purest slid closer, cupping Hiresha’s face with her palm. She was certainly free with her touching. “Have you reached the age of harmony when the curse flow ceases?”
“My magic has stopped the bleeding cycle for years.”
The Purest smiled a gemstone smile. Her false teeth were the dark blue of lapis lazuli. They glittered with white crystals and flecks of pyrite. “You do have power over Strife.”
“Is Strife a god?”
“No, a betrayer. The first hexer.” The Purest leaned close enough that her words puffed against Hiresha’s cheek. “Once there were only women. We lived in harmony, drinking from each other’s brea
sts and bearing only girls. All was peace.”
The bombardment of doctrine made Hiresha’s intestines quiver, not that she had the right to judge. In her homeland of Morimound, priests read the future in the webs of orb-weaver spiders. The rite tended to horrify other peoples in the Empire.
Hiresha didn’t embarrass herself with a grimace. She exercised her skill in speechcraft by saying nothing.
“Then Man came into the Garden of Purity. His name was Strife.”
“You teach that all evil came into the world through man?” Now that Hiresha had said it aloud, it seemed not entirely devoid of truth.
The woman nodded, and three feathers dipped over her brow like blue bangs. She spoke with a measured grace as if she painted each word with calligraphy. “Now Strife rules the Lands of Loam with blade and threats. I must try to see beyond and remember the better world of our foremothers. I will never be Pure. I am only Purest Elbe.”
“And I am Hiresha.”
The Purest slid her arms around Hiresha. The embrace held them too close to see eye to eye. “Lord Tethiel told me of you and your gems, Hiresha. I had no reason to believe but every reason to hope.”
A Purest couldn’t possibly admit to knowing him to anyone else. “We hope to wed, and this city will be our venue. Your sapphire bees appeared in my prophetic dream.”
Either the other facet was a dream, or this one was. Hiresha didn’t lie. The wedding had to be here. No precedent had been set in this place of kings suppressing free thinking with weapons. These citizens would listen to her.
The Purest said, “I was beginning to think you were not the kind of woman to believe in signs.”
“I trust in my intuition, and she speaks through dreams.”
“Then you must already know about Lord Tethiel,” the Purest said. “She is a Feaster.”
Hiresha leaned away and stood. She had not heard the Purest incorrectly. In one breath the woman had called Tethiel a lord and in the next a “she.”
The Purest rose with Hiresha. They were of the same height, or shortness rather. “She does what she can to fight Strife. Lord Tethiel only permits her Feasters to dazzle the willing.”
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