Night in Eyros looks so quiet from above.

Dim, twinkling lights from windows, the wavering light of gas-lamps on quiet streets. It’s a clear night, and the moons are in crescent phase. Constellations twinkle in the firmament as if mirroring the tableau below the great tower.

Danest turns from the window and walks to the door, opening it.

In the stairwell, he hears the sound of clinking glass.

It has taken the strength of four men to heft the crate up the stairs. The tower was ostentatiously designed for a long-dead King of Adena some centuries ago, never intended to serve a practical purpose. As such, there exists no system for getting objects up the tower but sheer manpower, and the long stone stairs.

The men grunt and sweat as they reach the last few steps, all of them terrified to lose their grip. To cause such an inconvenience to such a respected Senator as Ro Danest would mean social embarrassment. Adeni workmen do not play games when it comes to their betters.

When, at last, they reach the top, they steadily march their way in through the arched stone doorway, kindly left open by their master, setting the crate down carefully with a soft thump.

“Well met, gentlemen,” Danest says, his back to his charges. “And very fine work, too.”

“Thank you, my superior, sir,” says the foreman.

Danest turns.

The foreman is a stocky man with a heavy brow and curled red hair. He is wearing a leather tunic, and there is the barest hint of a tremor as Danest gazes upon him. The senator is smaller and slighter than him, and yet, the most powerful man in this room. He almost forgets to avert his gaze, but looks away.

The men behind him avert their gazes also, and stand with their palms turned away from Danest. This is what is considered polite in Adena: for a worker to face his employer with his palms facing him, or worse, upturned, implies that the work was only undertaken with the expectation of reward.

In Adena, work is undertaken, first and foremost, for moral and spiritual fulfillment, not remuneration. Yes, there are laws setting minimum wage and maximum hours, but these are mere formalities. They do not override the careful balance of customs and etiquette that form the foundations of Adeni culture.

Danest smiles magnanimously, then ambles over to a small coffer on his dressing-table, opening it and removing several objects from it. He approaches the workers, who are only now permitted to turn up their palms.

Into each hand, he presses two coins, the obverse bearing the profile of Elb Presteyn, the first Consul of Adena, who took power after the Grand Overthrow of the Old Kingdom, two centuries prior.

“Two frintac for each of you. That’s eight frintac in total, gentlemen. Please, have an ale on me.”

“Aye, sir, my superior, sir,” the foreman says, bowing. “Thank you, my superior, sir.”

“Much obliged,” Danest replies. “Now, please, good sirs, leave me to my chambers. I must inspect the delivery in private.”

The men seem puzzled by this, but all are too terrified of Danest’s wrath to say anything, and quickly depart, back down the long stone staircase to the streets below.

Danest closes the wooden door behind them and bolts it shut, then walks over to a set of drawers, retrieving from it a tool: a large metal bar with a tapered end. He brings the tool over to the crate and wedges the tapered end into the gap between the lid and the frame, and with the weight of his body, levers it open with a loud crunch of wood and yielding nails.

Danest steps around the crate and crouches down, peering at the contents within.

Twenty bottles of Flodican wine, and a woman with reddish hair, barefoot and dressed in simple clothing.

“Well, well,” Cytalis Trelen says. “Fancy meeting you here, Senator.”

“My apologies,” Danest says, offering her a hand. “I do hope you understand – the election is not far off, now, and I simply cannot be seen doing anything that my opponents might use against me. I do appreciate your coming here, really, I do.”

“I understand,” Cytalis says, taking his hand and standing up. “You’re a politician, Ro. You have a reputation to uphold. The work we do here stays between you and me. You’ve no need to explain yourself.”

“Thank you, Cytalis,” Danest replies, allowing himself to relax.

He grabs a bottle that was dislodged from the crate as Cytalis climbed out, grabs a corkscrew and pops the bottle open, sniffing the neck.

“Meadowflowers and olefory wood,” he remarks. “Will you take a glass?”

“If you’re offering,” Cytalis replies. “I can’t say we get much in the way of fine wine down in the New Village.”

“No, I shouldn’t imagine you do.”

Danest fetches two crystal glasses from a cabinet and pours out two glasses of rich, amber-coloured liquid, offering one to his mistress. She takes it gingerly and goes to sip it.

“Ah-ah,” Danest utters, gently admonishing her. “Don’t just gulp it down. Smell it, first.”

Cytalis looks at him, then down at the glass. She holds it to her nose and sniffs.

“Mm,” she says. “Reminds me of perfume...and the woods.”

Danest nods.

“This particular wine is matured for ten years in a barrel made of greenwood, then five in a barrel made of olefory. It imparts a robustness, a richness to the wine’s palate. Take a sip.”

Cytalis does so.

“Now, don’t swallow it,” Danest says. “Hold it on your tongue for just a moment.”

She raises an eyebrow, hollowing her cheeks to hold the wine in place.

“Okay, now you may swallow,” Danest says. “What do you think?”

She licks her lips and smacks them a couple of times.

“I think I see what you mean,” she says. “It’s definitely not like any wine I’ve ever tasted. Much more...complex? Is that the word?”

“You know your terminology,” Danest replies, smiling. “What do you think?”

“I want to say...earthy?”

“Hmm, more nutty, I’d say,” Danest says, trying not to sound like a schoolmaster chiding a student. “It starts very floral, like wild hiding-petal and field-star, then the greenwood comes in. After that, you start to taste something like dried fruit and caramel, and the finish is like roasted milknuts. That’s the olefory.”

“Well, you certainly know from wine,” Cytalis says.

Danest laughs.

“Comes with my station, I suppose. Men of wealth and status need to know such things.”

Cytalis smiles slightly. She sips the wine again.

And her eyes begin to glow.

“Are you starting already?” Danest asks.

“But of course,” Cytalis says. “What can I say? You’ve got me in the mood.”

That strange feeling is back again, like someone is stretching him inwards to his core.

“That’s not a problem, is it?” she asks.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then relax, my superior.”

In the months they’ve been seeing each other, Cytalis has stopped referring to Danest as “my superior” as a matter of custom. Were someone else to find out, it would be considered highly unorthodox at best, a serious breach of the Adeni social contract at worst. And yet, Danest trusts her with with his secret persuasions. There is a piece of him that belongs to her and nobody else.

He watches her undress herself, unveiling once again that muscled body of a working woman, the sort of body you will never see in the Old City. As he dwindles, the wooden pins fall out of his hair, clattering to the ground with soft tok-tok sounds. That sound has almost become an hypnotic cue for him, a sign that he is leaving the world of high politics, culture and cuisine, and entering a base world, a world outside society, one where he is free to be someone else – to be hers.

He has, in this time, got the knack for untangling himself from the crumpled canopy that is his political dress. In seconds, he’s sitting, small and nude, atop the debased fabrics, gazing up at her, looming before him like a great stone monolith. After a few moments, she returns his gaze, looking down at him disdainfully, haughtily, yet with some traces of affection and warmth.

In this expression, he knows that, while she may not have physically transformed, she has become someone else, assumed her role in this night-play, becoming, yes, his Goddess.

She stands resolute, holding her glass of wine by the stem, the top of her right foot against the back of her left calf, leaning against the dresser.

“Come here, insect,” she says.

She crouches down and extends the upturned palm of her left hand to him, and he, in turn, obeys without question. It feels good to obey her commands.

He scampers over and gives himself over to the warm palm of her hand, and she lifts him so effortlessly that it is dizzying.

With skilful movement, she pushes him on to his back, and then coils her fingers around him, until she has him gripped in a fist. In her other hand, she holds the stem of the wine glass delicately. The contrast is obvious.

“You know, I had a wonderful idea on the way up here,” she says, holding him up to eyes large enough that it almost seems her pupils could swallow his whole head. “But I wasn’t going to say anything unless you opened up a bottle.”

He looks back at her.

“What did you have in mind, goddess?”

With her thumb, she strokes his head, ruffling the hair that is hanging around his shoulders dishonorably.

“You’re a sweet little thing,” she says, smiling. “I don’t even have to correct you about my proper name any more.”

“I’ve...learned, goddess.”

“That you have, insect. That you have.”

Swiftly, she takes him and dangles him by the leg. She turns him and plants a soft kiss on his bare back. He shudders, feeling his penis twitch between his legs.

Then, without another word, she draws him over to the rim of the glass in her right hand, and lets go.

What must sound like a tiny plop to her sounds like the crashing of ocean waves to him.

Spluttering, he thrashes in the glass, finding that it comes about up to his nipples, but the rounded bottom keeps him from finding any footing. He realises with some terror and excitement that he’s at risk of drowning in wine.

Nevertheless, he scrambles for the lip of the glass and heaves himself up, keeping himself from slipping back beneath the surface by hooking his arms over the side.

“What a lovely garnish you make,” she says.

“Thank you, goddess,” he chokes.

She smiles coyly.

The glass begins to tip.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” he stammers, gravity seeming almost to shift as he scrambles against the glass’s edge.

Her mouth opens, and frantically, he begins to swim away from her. But swim where? The bottom of the rapidly draining glass?

The glass touches her lips, and as she sips, she sucks, and within seconds, his lower body has slipped into her mouth. Her lips close around him, and he feels the sharp edges of her teeth, like rocks in a cavern. She could bite him in half if she wanted to. Yet, she holds him here like this. It is by her grace and mercy that he, in this moment, can continue to live.

The warmth of her tongue shifts and clicks, pushing out air bubbles that pop against his skin. She is pushing his penis into his belly. Something else moves, and he hears something like a length of rope in a dockyard tightening. He realises it’s the sound of her jaw muscles working around him, her lips curling into a devious smile.

With a slight movement she sucks him completely in.

He’s inside her body, now. He is terrified. He is aroused. Something in him reverts to a prey animal. Were she to swig the wine now, move her tongue in such a way, he could slip down past her tonsils and vanish forever in her belly, left to putresce like a lump of meat.

From the aperture of her lips, he sees light shining off the top and bottom rows of front teeth, the slight protrusion and gap in her upper two incisors, an imperfect bottom incisor that has grown in at an angle. He is in a mouth. By Adena, he is in a mouth!

Wasting no time, he strikes her tongue three times, and immediately finds himself projected into a hand, dripping in wine-scented spit.

“Everything alright?” she asks, genuinely concerned. He is looking into the kindly face of Cytalis, not the cruel face of the goddess she inhabits.

“Yes,” Danest says, sitting up. “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“Would you like to carry on?”

“Yes,” he says.

Without hesitation, the goddess sets down her glass of wine, clutching Danest tightly in her fist. She reaches down for Danest’s fine National tunic and wipes her mouth with it, but offers no such grace to him. She leaves him wet with her spit, coated in her essence.

She sits herself on the bed, and then reclines, drawing up her right leg into an arch and letting her left dangle off the edge, and holds Danest in her fist, such that he is looking down at her.

“Now, insect. I want you to tell me how I look.”

He gazes at her, at the living landscape of her body. The muscle that ripples under her freckled skin, at her pink lips, her straight nose, the slight misalignment of her front teeth, the clavicles that protrude from her upper chest just above her breasts, and her hazel eyes, which stare back at him, demanding an answer.

“You are beautiful, goddess,” he says. “Beautiful beyond comparison. I live to worship you. I live to worship your body. You possess something no other woman possesses. I don’t know if I’d be able to live without you. You are the empress of my world. I want to be yours, forever and ever.”

She smiles, bringing him up to her lips, and kisses him.

“Good boy,” she purrs.

She drops him on to her chest. Beneath him, he can hear the working of her heart, loud as machinery. His penis is hard, tumescent. It prods his belly as he lies, looking up at the ceiling beams from the crevice between her breasts. They appear out of focus. He is so small that the mere rafters in the ceiling are as distant as celestial spheres.

He sits up, and watches as a hand heavier than a ship soars past at seemingly impossible speed, and comes to rest between her legs. The movement of muscle in her shoulders makes a sound like thunder rolling over distant hills.

He turns, and meets her eyes, and her face, flushed red with arousal, beads of sweat appearing on her forehead.

“Worship me,” she whispers.

Before he even knows himself, he finds that he is planting his lips on her skin. How soft and yielding, and yet how powerful. He crawls the meadow of her stomach, the muscle of her abdomen tensing under his feet. He kneels, kisses there, too.

He wants her. Wants all of her. Wishes to possess her, tame her.

Make her his concubine, like the kings of old; his worship and her divine revelation, reserved for each other, for ever. All this flesh, this perfect, living flesh.

Let it be his. He would give up everything, if it could only be his.

He comes to rest just before the small mound at the base of her trunk, between her legs, where curled red hairs sprout from her skin like a small garden. Her vast hand is moving rhythmically.

She is masturbating. Just at the minuscule weight of him, making tiny depressions in her flesh. At the knowledge that he is adoring her body, at the fact that he sees her as the goddess she truly is. In this moment, she is his, as much as he is hers.

He drops to his knees and masturbates with her, keeping time with all the care of a musician. He yields to her movements, syncopates. The gyrations of her own body move his hand back and forth along his shaft. His hands are sticky-sweet with wine and her saliva, and he doesn’t care.

Right now, he is not Senator Ro Danest, favourite to be Consul of Adena.

He is merely a nameless insect. A squirming thing, that exists for the amusement of immortal Woman.

Forgive me, Adena, he thinks. If this moment could last forever, he would betray this nation a thousand times over.

Yes, yes, yes—!

Hot semen runs between his fingers, and above him, he hears the goddess exhale a soft moan. Before him, the enormous hand ascends like a sunrise.

Its fingers are sparkling with thick, whitish strands.

An earthquake of warm flesh shivers beneath him, and he collapses on to his back, glowing, warm.

Then only silence.

It seems like hours pass, but it is probably only minutes, before she peels him from her skin.

“Well, insect,” she says, breathing heavily. “I’d like to think you enjoyed that.”

And without either of them uttering a word, she cleans him with her tongue. When he is sufficiently soaked, she gently places him between her breasts once more, placing a hand on top of him, and running a thumb along his back.

Surrounded by her heartbeat, her flesh, her touch, her embrace, he feels a peace that he has never before felt. Within minutes, he finds himself drifting off to sleep. In the morning, he will awake, and he will have to be Ro Danest once again.

But not right now.

Right now, he is her adoring little insect, and she is his world.

And that is all that matters.

*

The splinter in her thumb took two weeks to heal.

It was tricky, getting out of there without being noticed. Cytalis had to clean and dress herself, then climb back into the crate. Danest had arranged it with a different courier, claimed it was an important item that had to be down in the dockyard by midday the next day.

The men came, nailed the crate shut, and carried her out, and she arrived in the dockyard a little before noon. A trusted handler opened the crate, letting her out. She never said a word to him. She went home, having slept hardly a wink.

Eyros was built on the meander in a river. From its founding, the city has been a major shipping port and naval garrison. Indeed, there still exists a system of complicated canals and locks, built in the time of the Old Kingdom, forming a level harbour lined with lifting machines and warehouses.

For her day-job, Cytalis, as many who live in the New Village, works on the docks. She hauls crates and barrels off of barges, emptying them and inventorying their contents.

It doesn’t pay well. Much of what they bring in goes to the Old City: Wooden furniture with carven patterns and designs; the most beautiful gas-lamps, made from fine coloured glass and shiny metal; perfumes from distant Adeni possessions. All things she will never be able to afford. She resents that, resents that so much of this world remains inaccessible to her.

It’s a market day. She has one day off per week, in accordance with Adeni labour law, and she is spending that day shopping for necessities, so that she will be able to eat during the working week.

The marketplace is located in Terlos Square. It’s wide, canopied in translucent cloths of different colours, casting coloured lights on the hawkers and patrons below.

Cytalis casts her eye over a table arrayed with vegetables of every colour and type: roots, stalks, leaves, shoots. A small selection of these, boiled in water with a broth made from leftover bones, will provide her with hearty evening meals for the next week. She cannot afford variety, only energy density.

She asks the vendor for a selection of each. She pays, and he hands her a paper bag filled with vegetables, which she lays at the bottom of a wicker basket hanging from her arm. Her biceps ache, and she can feel every bruise in the soles of her feet as her sandals press into the cobbled ground.

Next is the baker’s stall. On one end is a selection of cakes and pastries. She considers getting one, but she doesn’t have much money left.

She instead examines the breads, and picks out her usual wholegrass loaf. It has a dark brown crust and greenish crumb, made from whole kernels of graingrass. That’s breakfast and lunch for a week or so. Possibly suppers, too, if she can make it stretch that far. The trick is to slice it thin.

“One terac,” the vendor says.

“A terac?” Cytalis replies. “Wasn’t it a couple of droac last week?”

“Sorry, love. Bit of a flour shortage at the mo’. Got to keep the bakery open somehow.”

Begrudgingly, she reaches into her coin purse and retrieves a terac, which she hands to the man. He inspects the coin for a few seconds – a flat, yellow disc – and, satisfied, nods.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he says.

She leaves Terlos Square shortly afterwards. She plans to fill up the pantry, then spend the remainder of the day in bed, trying to rest her tired bones until she goes back to the docks tomorrow morning.

To get back home, she has to walk down Presteyn Street, the main thoroughfare. It was once used for driving livestock up to Terlos Square from the harbour, where they would be sold to abattoirs. It’s now the New Village’s busiest street, often crowded with people and carriages.

Drunkards and tramps mill about around the disreputable watering holes and beer halls. Further along, the pick-pockets and swindlers do their trade, stealing from those who already have nothing.

Today, there is noise on Presteyn. A crowd has formed outside the Guildhall of Stevedores, Longshoremen and Dockworkers. The Industrial faction have a presence at the Guildhall, being the preferred faction of many manual labourers.

There are people holding placards and chanting slogans. Like her, their skins are swarthy and tanned from working out of doors all day, and their muscles bulge through their tunics.

“Brothers! Sisters!” shouts a bearded syndic. He is wearing a brown tunic, clearly resewn and patched up many times. “The dock bosses are refusing to increase wages, even with prices going up! Is our work worth less?”

“NO!” roars the crowd.

“Will we work longer hours for less pay?”

“NO!”

“Will we stand for this?”

“NO!”

Cytalis finds herself joining in with the shout. This makes her feel guilty. She is only tangentially associated with the Guildhall; you have to be member of the Guild to work on most of the docks.

“Don’t let their threats and promises break your principles!” the syndic shouts. “The Nationals are set to win the Diet. Senator Ro Danest is pegged for the consulship! Do we think wages will improve under his leadership?”

“NO!”

“The time has now come for us to prepare, O my brothers and sisters!” the syndic bellows. “Join the Guildhall now! Vote Industrial! Close the port!”

“CLOSE THE PORT!”

A sound blares from behind them. Cytalis turns.

Men in the blue-and-white tunics of the Eyrosi constabulary are walking towards the crowd, wearing the traditional black leather coif with a feather protruding from the top. Among them is a man carrying a curved horn, made from polished bone.

“Right, then, right, then!” one of them shouts, the epaulettes on his tunic signifying his seniority. “This unauthorised assembly is ordered to disperse!”

“By what law?” someone shouts.

“Hear me!” the senior constable shouts. “Political subversion in the lead-up to an election is to be considered an attempt to unduly influence voters. All Guilds were warned! You are once again ordered to disperse!”

“That’s no law I’ve ever heard of!” the syndic shouts.

“That’s no concern of mine, sir!”

“Fuck off!” someone else shouts. The crowd begins to jeer. The anger is now palpable.

“This is your final warning!” the senior constable barks. “If you will not disperse, we shall use force!”

A glass bottle sails through the air and strikes one of the constables on the head. He goes down with a cry of pain, and before Cytalis knows what’s happening, there is a torrent of violence flying around her. It’s not long before the constables have grasped their wooden batons, and every few seconds, it seems, there’s the soft thunk of wood hitting bone and muscle.

She grasps her basket tight to her, tries to weave her way out of the tumult, but only finds herself blocked in. A constable walks towards her, grinning. She tries to tell him that she’s leaving, she needs to get home, but in seconds, he’s swinging the baton at her.

He’s enjoying this.

His baton comes down on her basket, knocking it from her hands, scattering its contents on the pavement. As she instinctively goes to save what she can, the constable raises his baton again.

“Get away from her, blackguard!”

She looks up. The bearded syndic is holding a plank of wood. He swings it at the constable, and it cracks into the man’s jaw, knocking him to the ground.

Cytalis frantically grabs her items and tries to find her way out of the melee, but she’s stopped by a shout. She turns. The syndic is shouting for help. Where did all these constables come from? He’s holding the plank aloft, swinging it wildly, but the constables are bearing down on him.

The wood falls from his hands, and the constables go to work on him in a dreadful pell-mell. Five at first, then ten, then fifteen of them, all bringing their batons down on his body. His wide chest takes more blows than any man can bear. She cannot help but stand by helplessly as the thuds come and come, and his cries get quieter and quieter.

It seems that hours pass, and when they finish with him, the constables step back, laughing and jeering, to survey their work.

Cytalis gasps and covers her mouth.

The syndic is left almost unrecognisable. His face is disfigured, black and blue, and one of his eyes, swollen shut, weeps blood. Two constables hook their arms under his, lifting him.

As they do, he purses his lips and spits blood on the ground. In the blood, Cytalis sees white fragments, and knows at once that they have smashed his teeth.

The man groans softly. His tunic is torn and tattered. His muscles, broad and well-kept, now seem almost wasted. His broad back, a back that could carry the whole world, seems crumpled, concaved. He cannot walk. They drag him away.

Cytalis doesn’t quite know how she makes it home. Her feet carry her away from there faster than she can dither.

She comes to as she enters, locking the door behind her.

The constabulary has never been so emboldened.

She has seen the future, and it is Ro Danest.

End of part two