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For the third time in her life, but the first with any joy, Nadama pa Nikeya, Dowager Queen and Warlord of Seiiki, scaled the sharp slopes of Mount Ipyeda.
Two young dragons flew overhead, drifting above the clouds she climbed through before diving, twining around each other as they sailed through the waterfall of spring meltwater coursing down the mountainside. New gods, already in the sky. Nikeya had seen them hatch, and after just a brief while protected by their forbearers in the calm waters of Ginura bay they had taken to the air.
Their presence made as good an excuse as any to visit the godsingers in their mountaintop temple. And to see if it was truly her.
She looked back at her guards and attendants, trudging through the crisp, shining snow. The only members of her entourage ahead of her were the guides from the village, and she wished to run past them, bounding to the summit alone.
But she would not forget what she had told her. Never goad the mountain. And she had her own kernels of wisdom, such as to not let rumours spread one could not turn to their own end.
So with caution and care, Nikeya put one spiked boot in front of the other, scaling and scrabbling up the path, facing snow and sleet, rising higher and higher until the clouds parted around her. The tallest spire of the temple peered over the next ridge, finally before her. She stopped when her guides did, looking back at the stragglers of her retinue, and gazed out over the landscape.
Fields once dusty brown grew green between shining, full rivers shepherded by the mountains out to the sea. The city of Antuma, glistening below, had always been fortunate to be situated in its river valley, but greenery now covered the rest of Seiiki after the rains had returned with the gods. They flew overhead across the island, sparking joy with the rain-clouds that trailed in their wake.
But whenever Nikeya looked up, all she could see was this mountaintop.
The sun melted into the horizon below the far edge when they crested the peak, the temple’s last long shadows sheltering them from the amber glare of the sky.
Nikeya adjusted the pack she was carrying herself – if she were to call herself Warlord, she had to display some strength – and squinted through her snow-covered eyelashes at the gathering before the temple. A few younger godsingers, bundled up warm and ready to take their possessions inside, and standing back on the raised porch—
It had to be her. The long robe and veil of the Mother Officiant whipped in the wind, the billowing of the fabric obscuring her features further still, but Nikeya held no doubt that behind that veil, warm brown eyes were locked with hers.
‘Welcome to Mount Ipyeda,’ the Mother Officiant said. Beneath the howling wind and behind the veil, all the tones and tics that marked a voice’s speaker were hidden. ‘We are honoured to receive the Warlord here.’
Nikeya breathed deeply to steady her breath and still her heart. Only then did she trust herself to speak. ‘My thanks, honoured godsingers. Despite the change that has come to Seiiki we still value your wisdom and counsel.’
‘We are pleased to hear so.’ The Mother Officiant gestured to the living quarters annexed to the temple with her left hand. Her right was still hidden in the folds of her robe. ‘But for now it is late, and you and your party have travelled far. Please, rest, and enjoy what comforts we can provide.’
It had to be her. It had to be. That was what she had said then, that she should visit whenever she needed counsel. Or comfort.
And how Nikeya longed for the comfort of those arms around her, or even just the certainty to know that this woman was who she was looking for, and not a ghost she was forlornly chasing. By all rights and all records she was dead – it was how Nikeya had her legitimacy as Dowager Queen – but she had visited her. It could not have been a wilful hallucination, nor a ghost, for Nikeya had the memento she had left behind, stowed safe in the pocket over her breast.
And yet, for the year she had been in Ginura since that mysterious visit, every glance towards the mountains felt like chasing a dream that had already ended. But here, now, on the cusp of collapsing from exhaustion, she was ready to find if this was a dream she could experience awake.
While the younger temple attendants took their packs, Nikeya kept her eyes on the Mother Officiant as she turned and entered the temple. She walked away, hands clasped in front of her, until, just as she crossed the threshold, she let her hands fall to her sides to reveal the three shortened fingers on her right.
Dumai.
The lacquered wood case was still safe.
Nikeya put it aside before shedding the layers of her travel-soiled clothes and donning the plain, provided robe. She knelt by the table in the centre of the sparse room, relishing the heat of the hot coals beneath it. When feeling returned to her fingers, she clicked open the case and lay it flat, gazing at the ornamental comb nestled securely against the velvet lining.
The whalebone teeth were as fine as ever beneath her fingers, and the golden dragon resting atop it still shone. It had not touched a hair since she had last run it though Dumai’s, making her not just presentable for court, but beautiful.
A knock sounded and Nikeya slammed the case shut. ‘Enter,’ she said after a moment.
An attendant sidled in, laying a tray containing dinner on the table before her. Silently, she moved to the coats and scarfs from the climb and picked them up. Without saying a word, she moved to leave.
‘Wait.’ Nikeya held up a hand as the attendant started closing the door. ‘Last I was here, there was a natural spring. Does it still run hot?’ Many such pools across Seiiki had turned cold. An indicator they truly had left an age of fire.
‘Indeed it does, Warlord. Shall I guide you?’
‘I will manage.’ Nikeya picked at her sweet rice as the attendant slid the door closed and listened as her footsteps retreated down the hall. She waited a moment longer, then grabbed the case and stole towards the door.
With careful steps, she navigated her way through the halls. Her guards likely slept now, exhausted from the climb, but they would still insist on keeping watch if they knew she ventured outside.
The night wind stung her exposed face and hands and its chilly grasp wound its way beneath her robe. Underfoot, the sheltered decking leading to the pool creaked, a mere extra note in the howl of the wind. It was far from a long walk, but Nikeya shivered as she arrived.
Before icy air or fear could drive her back, she unwound her sash, cast off her robe and stepped into the warm waters until they covered her chest.
Snow and cold and war and politics all fell far away, and she was back in that pool in the forest. She had not bathed in a wild spring since that night, and the rising bubbles against her skin and the small eddies from water spilling into a stream before it returned underground conjured memories of caring hands holding her close and slender limbs intertwined with hers.
She sank further, letting the water bob against her neck like Dumai’s kisses once had. Please let whatever happened mean it’s still you.
When Nikeya opened her eyes, a silhouette cut a shape in the swirling snow. The figure came closer until the torchlight revealed the robes of the Mother Officiant. She took off her headdress, and the attached veil fell away.
Nikeya was, as only Dumai could make her, at a loss for words. In the end, she just said, ‘It’s been quite a while hasn’t it?’
‘Oh, Nikeya!’ Dumai fell to her knees at the edge of the pool, casting the veil and her gloves aside. She took Nikeya’s hand in hers and held on tight. ‘I’m sorry it had to be so long.’
‘Well we could wait longer, talk about all that’s changed, reminisce about the past, marvel at how you’re alive, or you could just get out of the cold and join me.’
Dumai did not wait, disrobing in an instant, and the moment she was in the water, neither did Nikeya. She pulled her close – hips to hips, breasts to breasts and lips to lips – and drank her in.
For these sweet, passionate moments, it was as if the last year had never happened. They were still companions, freshly wed and freshly eager. The world beyond may as well be a dream Nikeya had woken from, rising safe and warm in her lover’s arms.
And what arms! Dumai held her tight, the muscle of mountain life regrown after all that time at court. Nikeya leaned back as Dumai poured kisses on her, from her mouth, down her neck to her chest, each spot her lips caressed made even warmer than the hot spring water could.
‘Dumai,’ she whispered as she leaned back until her hair entered the water, held steady with one of her lover’s hands placed between her shoulder blades.
‘You’ve kept your hair short.’ Dumai smiled down at her, looking more at ease than she ever had in all the time Nikeya had known her. No politics, no wyrms, no fate.
‘And you’ve grown yours out.’
She flicked the wet strands in front of her shoulder. ‘I guess I found I like it this way.’
Nikeya ran her hands through Dumai’s hair until they came to a tangled knot. ‘You still have no idea what to do with it, though. Hold on.’
The case lay with her discarded clothes. Nikeya withdrew the comb from it before pulling Dumai in to lie back against her.
It was like a once lost ritual, reverently placing the teeth of the comb to her head and drawing it gently through her hair. Lifting the strands with the knot from the water, the rest of Dumai’s hair spilled over her breasts like a waterfall. She teased at the tangle and then Dumai let out a small chuckle.
‘What?’
‘I never told you this – it never seemed that relevant – but that’s not actually the comb you gifted me.’
‘What!’
Dumai turned and plucked the comb from Nikeya’s hand. ‘Back then, none of us trusted you. Lady Opisa had the original destroyed and a replica made.’
The comb was pressed back into her grasp. Mistrust had been strong then, yes, but she had never known that was how careful Dumai’s allies were. ‘Well, Lady Opisa clearly knew some excellent craftspeople. Although it was genuinely just a pretty comb. What, did she think I had laced the teeth with some subtle poison to wear at you gradually over time, something no one could trace that could surely only be a natural sickness?’
‘Something like that, I imagine.’
Nikeya smiled as she worked at the tangle. ‘Well it was no more or less than a token of appreciation for a beautiful woman.’
‘I thought it was part of your attempt to seduce me back then.’
‘Well, yes, but I already came clean about those old Kuposa goals. Now it’s meaning has shifted.’ She readjusted her grip on the comb and returned to the hair in front of her. ‘Oh, let us not linger on the past. For the last year of it, I feared you a ghost.’
Dumai sat forward in the water. She drew her legs up close to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. ‘For a while I think I was.’
The whistle of the wind grew while Nikeya kept silent. She continued running the comb through Dumai’s hair.
‘By all rights I should have died,’ Dumai continued. ‘The arrow, Taugran’s fire, the fall – any should have killed me. But as I lay broken on the beach, Pajati the Wishgiver heard my dying thoughts.’
Nikeya slowed her movements until the comb come to a stop. She had scoured the beaches by Uramyesi and had even sailed to Muysima in search of her, or at least a body they could lay to rest. Dumai being alive was a miracle she would never dare question, even as her curiosity burned within her.
‘I could not say where I was, if I was in this realm at all, but the magic of the falling star knitted me back together. When I came to, months had passed. I returned here and heard of all you had achieved. I knew you were using the title of Queen, earned as my widow, to position yourself as the rightful ruler of Seiiki, and I could not jeopardise that. But I needed to see you, to let you know I was still here.’ Dumai sighed and let her arms fall into the water. ‘And I still cannot appear in public. Some clans would support any Noziken in a heartbeat, and you have so much left to build.’
Dumai’s hair fell even and clean. Bundling it up, Nikeya secured it in place with the comb, before wrapping her arms around her. ‘I can’t say I don’t appreciate the caution, but I’m not overly fond of being considered a widow. The only situation I’d accept that in is in our twilight years, for what I fully expect to be the no more than five minutes it takes us to die after each other, slipping away peacefully together in our bed.’
‘As romantic a notion as that is, I fear we’ll have to live apart a while longer.’
‘Oh, let me dream. But I’ll have you know, I fully intend to step down well before I can make enough enemies to be assassinated. I do intend to enjoy those twilight years with you, even if we have to retire to some remote corner of Seiiki to do it. Or maybe Sepul. Mozom Alph was lovely when we visited.’
‘I’m certain you’ve made plenty of allies by now too. Whenever we ask travellers about the Warlord, most are eager to sing her praises.’
‘Good to know.’ A spontaneous thought flitted through Nikeya’s mind. ‘Dragons also congregate here. Tell me, what do they think of me?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Are you not the one who can communicate with the gods with her mind alone?’
‘No longer.’
As Dumai fell silent, it became clear this was a great loss for her. All her life, she had had a link with the gods that none else in Seiiki possessed. A true godsinger if ever there was one.
Dumai held up her right hand, turning her palm up. Light had shone from there since she had grabbed the jewel, and only now did Nikeya notice it was gone. ‘It is a small price for my wish being granted. Pajati made it plain that the magic within me would be consumed, and I accepted.’
‘If I had been the one wishing, there is little I would not have given up to bring you back too.’
‘My wish was a little more specific than that.’ Dumai sat up and turned to face her, taking both hands in hers.
‘Oh sweetheart. Wanting to get back to me was what was on your mind then?’
‘More or less. I wished I could have more time with you. And here we are.’
‘Here we are.’ Nikeya curled her hand round Dumai’s right, cupping the three short fingers with her own. Solid and present, yes, but worries still festered in her mind. ‘Alas, I cannot help but recall all the stories where wishes never quite work out as intended.’
Dumai’s smile stood resolute. ‘I have faith. My mother wished for the rains to return to Afa, and they have. There is no reason for my wish to have limits.’ She pulled Nikeya’s hand to her chest, over her heart. It beat strong. ‘I’m alive. We have time, and it’s ours to control now. You’ve hardly sat back and let the world pass by thus far.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be in keeping for me to let anyone but you dictate where my heart takes me.’ Nikeya brushed a hair out of Dumai’s face. She let her hand linger, stroking her cheek. ‘Fate will have to try much harder if it wants to keep us apart.’
Amber torchlight danced in Dumai’s eyes as she pressed her lips to Nikeya’s wrist, savouring her pulse. ‘It often feels like fate has been arrayed against us, but dying makes that seem a lot less pressing. Now,’ she said, lifting herself from the pool, ‘as the Mother Officiant I have access to every room in this temple. Including its most secluded chambers.’
They tittered like young maids as they quickly dried and dressed themselves, then scampered through the halls. Holding hands, Nikeya let Dumai pull her along, whirling through silent corridors until she was brought to a small, thick-walled room at the back of the temple (was it sacrilegious to make love behind a shrine? Whatever the answer, she didn’t care and doubted any dragon would actually be bothered by it).
Their clothes did not remain on for long. Warm droplets still clung to them from the pool, but those were soon replaced by the sweat of passionate exertion.
With one leg still lying between Dumai’s, Nikeya reclined against her lover’s arm (her wife’s, she could say, even if the clandestine nature of their impromptu rain wedding and this meeting made it feel like a fleeting technicality). She traced Dumai’s side with her fingertips, hand rising and falling as she followed her curves, until she came to the new scar on her lower back.
New to her, at least. If not for that arrow, Dumai should have fully survived the battle. It had been an easy decision to abandon the Kuposa name.
She snuggled into Dumai’s side. For all the actual passage of events had allowed her to achieve, including the possibility of an eventual peaceful life together and not one shackled to the old throne, she still longed for the world in which every night was one she could lie in her wife’s arms. One where she could call her that without doubt.
A strong arm pulled her in closer, and Dumai ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’m not going anywhere this time.’
‘But I am. I’m the fool who decided to give running this country a shot.’
‘And I’ll always be here when you need me.’
‘Yes, I’ll just saunter up the mountain any time I’m feeling lonely.’
The silence that followed was eventually broken by Dumai sighing deeply. She turned onto her side to look Nikeya in the eyes, keeping her pressed in close. ‘It was never going to be simple between us. We both knew that.’
Nikeya hid her face against Dumai’s chest. ‘I just feel that having survived the end of the world, we deserve better. Falling for you was like chasing a dream for how impossible it felt.’
‘You do know what my name means?’
With a sigh, Nikeya looked up. ‘It’s literally a word for dream, yes, but you—’ she wrapped her arms around her tight ‘—are here. Now. Flesh and blood. Awake. I cannot bear going back to only seeing you when I sleep.’
Dumai rested her head above Nikeya’s. The beat of her heart was loud and clear and for a while they lay still, conjoined in each other’s embrace.
‘I hate it too,’ Dumai whispered. ‘And I hate there’s nothing I can do about it.’
Other than come with me, Nikeya thought. It was true, of course, though. Politics required thinking with her head in spite of how her heart lamented. That lesson from her father lingered – casting off his name had hardly undone all the years as the Lady of a Thousand Faces – even after her time with Dumai had swept any desire to be rational away. Attempting to seduce her back then had required approaching every meeting with precision and detachment, but Dumai had never been anything but her raw, passionate self.
At some point it had rubbed off on her. She was left with just one face – her own.
But all that passion meant Dumai would not abide her shirking a duty that could help so many, and by now Nikeya’s heart was drawn to help the people too. These fleeting instances with her would have to do.
The moonlight shifted past the bounds of the window, leaving only low candlelight. Dumai unwound her arms and sat up, one hand lingering in Nikeya’s. ‘We had best both return to our quarters. I wouldn’t want rumours to grow.’
‘Please.’ Nikeya closed her hand tight around Dumai’s fingers. ‘Let me have this night. If you must be a dream, then surely you would not abandon me before the sun rises?’
Dumai looked back at her, caution battling passion in her eyes. Then, with a soft smile, she lay beside her once more.
‘You’re right.’ She kissed her – tenderly, slowly, as if they had eternity to spend with their limbs intertwined. ‘Why should I ever limit my time with you?’
The next morning, when the crisp light of the mountain dawn inched across her eyes, Nikeya woke to find Dumai still in her arms.
She nuzzled into the back of her neck, content. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.