Months pass. The seasons march on.

They hold the elections in early summer, and by midsummer, the Diet has declared the new Consul. By mid-autumn, with the trees shedding their leaves, Adena has changed. Walls are adorned with murals and slogans.

There is a heavy constabulary presence throughout the New Village. Someone beats a man to death in broad daylight for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread. Bystanders and lawmen alike do nothing.

And as wages stagnate, crime rises.

News comes of a young woman, stabbed in the neck for a pocketful of frintac. Not even enough to pay for a week’s eating. They wash the blood from the cobblestones and bury her, and it’s as though she never existed.

The Old City views those who live in the New Village as an abstraction, not people who have hopes. To the wealthy, they are but pairs of hands, ill-mannered people who wouldn’t know what to do with wealth even if they had it.

In this way, they can tell themselves that they are justified in their perpetuation of this system.

And now it is winter.

Cytalis Trelen can see her breath on the frigid air, wrapped as best she can in a cheap coat of coarse hair. But the cold finds places to reach in with its thin, bony fingers, and with every gust of wind she feels another pang as her skin braces against the cold. She has struggled to afford firewood, let alone gas. Thus, she lives her life cocooned.

The twin crescent moons hang together in the sky like two eyes closed in silent mourning.

She passes through Ubravit Square. It consists of a cobbled area, surrounded on all sides by high brick buildings, roughly four stories each. In the centre is a small fountain with a statue of Fel Grevast, the sixth Consul of Adena. Beside him, on lower plinths, there stand Belrenna and Sedolis, his wives, forever averting their gazes.

Looking to the north end of the square, there is a mural painted on the bricks. It’s very striking, with the dominant colours being vibrant reds and greens.

In the foreground, agricultural workers pick graingrass barefoot in the paddies. They smile as they kneel, slicing the stems with sickles, then thresh the stalks for the grains contained within.

Standing above them is a tall, thin man, blond-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in a red-and-green tunic. His arm extends in a gesture of good will, the palm facing down, the fingers extended. The Sun halos his head, and he smiles imperiously, surveying the land.

Block letters at the bottom identify him:

RO DANEST
CONSUL OF ADENA

In her hand, she clutches a letter. It came to her, unmarked, so much so that upon receiving it she thought it must be an eviction notice. But it isn’t.

It’s a very short letter.

Please come to the tower.

One week to the day.

Come after dark.

Knock three times.

She knows, of course, that Ro Danest has taken up a new residence in recent months – an annex affixed to the Diet – but Consuls are by no means required to surrender their other properties when elected.

This is, she presumes, why he has called her to the tower, that tower where they first met, almost a year ago. Much less opportunity for scandal. Word travels fast in the Republic.

After months of no communication, she had assumed he had simply forgotten about her.

She felt stupid, laying awake in bed at night, trying to ignore the sounds of breaking glass and shouting in the street. (She rarely felt safe going out when it was dark now, which was most of the time in winter.)

How does she feel about him? Really? She has tossed it around in her mind for months. On the surface, yes, she hates him. She hates everything he stands for. Tradition often depends on deprivation. The tide of history is dammed by the corpses of the impoverished, and what you have left is a reservoir of blood.

But still, she has known him on such an intimate level – far more intimately than most women he has ever met. He has made her come several times, and every time she has enjoyed it. She has enjoyed playing Goddess for him, holding him in her hand. It makes her feel so powerful, so beautiful, so...so in control.

Yet, as she watches life in the New Village get worse and worse, she feels that it is herself that is being toyed with. That she is in his hand. She wonders, what must it be like to gaze up at me, to feel so small and powerless?

The thing is, she couldn’t know. The entire experience is fundamentally different. For Ro Danest, to be Changed is to be removed for a short time from a position of power. For Cytalis Trelen, this is her reality. For her to be small, to gaze up at the vastness of him, would feel no different than it feels to gaze up at the Grand Diet from the dark and cluttered streets of home.

Even at his smallest, he is enormous. He casts shade over every aspect of her life. And she hates him for it.

She sees the tower come into view as she turns the corner. It is at the end of a long boulevard of little houses, their fronts all decorated with polished stones from the river. The river, she notes, that the people of the Old City never deign to visit.

All around her, she sees wealth – gas lights on full blast, statues of polished stone on balconies whose railings are of wrought metal in ornate patterns. These people do not know what it is to go without. She turns her gaze to the ground, as if she is trying to avoid making eye contact with her social betters. She draws the hood of her coat up over her head, and follows the road up the rest of the way.

It’s a steep incline, but one she is used to. She reaches the large metal gate that encloses the tower’s courtyard. She pushes on it, and it does not move.

For a moment, she thinks he must have changed his mind, and she will have to make the long, embarrassed journey home. But then she sees the bolt, and remembers that last time, there was a guard here to open the gate for her. The courtyard is empty but for moonlight. A wind blows, rustling the leaves of a decorative tree.

Shaking her head at her own stupidity, she unbolts the gate and opens it with a slight kreeeek. She passes through it, closing it behind her, and steps across the gravel of river stones broken up by well-manicured flowerbeds and shrubbery.

She stops for a moment to look up at the tower. It’s so tall. She has to bend her back to even see the underside of the conical roof.

Is that what that’s like?

She approaches the wooden door, which has a large metal knocker with the face of an ogre holding a ring between its teeth. At one time, people thought that such knockers could off evil spirits who might try to invite themselves into the home. These days, they only indicate that the owner can afford decorative metal ornaments.

She knocks three times, and waits.

Several moments later, she hears mechanical clicking behind the door, and it opens.

There, dressed in the plainest civil garb she has ever seen him wear, stands the Honourable Ro Danest, Consul of Adena.

Yet, he does not gaze at her with any condescension to speak of. He only inhales sharply, as if trying to stifle a sigh.

“Cytalis Trelen,” he says, with a soft smile. “Please, do come in.”

No guards flank him. He is alone. He steps into the darkness.

She watches him for a moment, then, looking over her shoulder, she crosses the threshold, and enters the tower.

She recalls the first time she came here, that smell she couldn’t place. She realises now that she wasn’t smelling anything at all, but the absence of it.

The stink of damp, the acrid stench of smoke, the sickly-sweet smell of spilled ale; not only will you not find it here, it has never been present here. The drainage has good upkeep, people do not burn their rubbish to keep warm here, and the only liquors to imbibe are fine wines. This is a place that has never known squalor.

It is a beautiful smell, and she hates it, because it reminds her of where she has come from, and where she is going, and what she can never have.

She removes her coat and hangs it from a hook by the fireplace, which is aglow with yellow flames. She’s wearing her best clothes, the ones she wore when she first met him – the mantle and the fine tunic.

Danest pours two glasses of wine, and offers it to her.

“Please,” he says. “Drink.”

Something in his voice. He’s hiding something.

She takes the glass, examines it, holds it under her nose. Nothing out of the ordinary. It just smells of wine. Nevertheless, she places her lips to the rim of the glass and lets the liquid touch only her lip. She does not drink.

Danest clasps his hands. He sits on a long chair beside the crackling fire. There is no sound but for the popping of burning wood.

“How is it?” he says, staring into the fire, not at her. That he averts his gaze seems almost perverse. He is the ruler of Adena. Yet, he does not look at her. As if she were his superior.

“It’s good,” she replies. The first words she has spoken all night.

“Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”

There is a long, quiet interval. Without thinking, Danest rubs his temples with the fingers and thumb of his left hand. She wants to ask him what’s the matter, but something holds her back from saying something.

It almost comes as a relief when he says: “So, this is it, I suppose.”

It takes her a few moments to understand.

Still, she says: “What?”

“It’s over.”

He sighs. Tears shimmer orange on the edges of his eyelids.

“I apologise,” he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I...tried so very hard. I wanted to keep seeing you, I did, but…”

She only stares at him, bewildered. Just like that?

“Look at me,” he says, his voice a whisper. “The Consul of Adena, crying like a child. What must you think of me?”

And she sits there in the flickering light of the fire, and she does not know how to react.

He’s crying because he thinks he loves me, and he thinks I love him. He expects me to mourn. He either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about my livelihood. He is breaking this off because it is politically expedient for him to do so. I should hate him. I do hate him.

A moment later, she breathes in, then places a hand on his shoulder.

“I want to make this special,” she says. “If it’s our last night together.”

Ro Danest wipes his eyes.

“I’d like that,” he says.

He stands, and she takes him by the hand.

Cytalis has walked the steep steps up to the top of the great tower many times. It is only now, as the reality of the situation dawns on her, that she realises how long it is, how exhausting it is. This monument to excess, serving no function but ornamentation.

In a sense, this tower represents everything wrong with Adena. Think of the labour, the hours, the resources, the materials and tools that went into crafting this tower. How perfectly hewn is every step. What care and effort went into this.

And yet, it exists for no reason. It leads nowhere but a dead end, to a modest bedroom. It exists for its own sake. It exists for no other reason than to be one of the tallest and most recognisable buildings in the city. It is a monument to ego.

And on the streets, people starve, people murder each other, and people drink themselves to death. That this tower exists is symbolic of the injustice at the heart of the Adeni way of life.

The Adeni armies fight the long wars and kill men in their thousands while annexing their lands. In return, men with soft hands commission towers such as this, while the poor languish in abject misery, doomed from birth.

Ro Danest could end it all in a heartbeat if he chose, but he does not. It isn’t only that he is opposed to the idea on a purely abstract level. It is that the nature of his ideals means that he sees such an act as impossible.

In some way, he thinks that Cytalis, and people like her, deserve to live the way they do: Uncomfortable, fidgeting, always struggling, never relaxing, most of their thoughts occupied by nothing but money.

Danest is at the wooden door at the top of the tower. He pushes it open, and holding the door, he gestures for her to go inside.

She smiles, entering the room. The familiar smell of perfumed bedsheets here, of old wood and cut stone.

Danest closes the door behind her, and bolts the door shut.

He stands for a moment at the door, as if in thought, then turns to face her.

Saying nothing, he walks up to her and places a kiss on her lips. It is a kiss she did not ask for and does not warmly receive. She tries to pull away, but now his arms are around her, and she feels trapped.

She finds him disgusting. So why is she reluctant to leave?

He lets go, at last.

“It’s so wonderful to see you again,” he whispers.

She feels something within her take hold.

“I want you on your knees,” she commands.

He pauses for a moment, stunned by her bluntness. Then, as though weighted down, he sinks to his knees, to the cold, hard, stone floor.

She slips her feet from her sandals and pads over to him, drawing his head to her lower stomach. Shaking her head, she runs her fingers through her long, wavy hair, pursing her lips.

Danest whimpers.

She grips the hem of her skirt in both hands and lifts it, revealing her vulva to him.

“I want you to eat me out,” she says. “I want my taste to never leave your tongue.”

Ro Danest goes red in the face.

“Really?” he says.

“Yes,” Cytalis replies. “I want you to make me come before I give you what you want.”

His lips tremble. He smiles as if drunk. And his head dips between her legs.

He kisses her labia. Her breathing quickens. She moans.

“Yes...ah...yes...”

She looks down at him, his hair still done up in pins.

She feels the warmth of his tongue now, licking, tasting inside her.

She sighs affirmations, guiding his head with her hands.

She feels as though she is on fire.

He licks the length of her, followed by smaller licks along each side. His tongue enters her. She gasps. She feels her hair stand on end.

Exaltations spill from her mouth. Things fall away from her for a moment. That hot bubble swallows up all her concerns, all her misgivings about Ro Danest, rising up through her entire body.

She comes with enough force that it almost knocks her flat on her back. She has to pull away from him, falling back on the bed with a moan, then a sigh. She places a hand to her chest and feels her heart hammering, the sweat pooling at her brow.

She looks to Ro Danest. He smiles a small smile, one that is happy, but concealing an infinite sadness. His eyes give it away. He is pleased to have pleased her, but he knows this will be one of the last times he ever sees her this pleased.

She sits up, still breathing heavily.

“Come here,” she says.

He comes to her, kneeling in front of her.

She bends down and kisses his forehead.

She slips her shoulders from her tunic, exposing her breasts.

Saying nothing, she draws his head to them. He asks no questions, he only takes what he wants. He kisses, running his tongue between them, under them. She, in turn, peppers his head with light kisses.

With deft finger, she pulls out the hair pins, one by one. His long yellow hair flows down his back and around his shoulders.

She lets the pins fall to the ground: Tok-tok-tok.

She watches as something stirs between his legs.

She smiles, kissing his cheeks and his neck. Don’t be embarrassed, darling.

“Please,” Ro says, in a quiet whisper. “I need you to…”

He pauses, shuddering. Poor thing, so horny he can’t even speak.

“Say it,” Cytalis says.

“Let me worship you. At your proper size. Goddess.”

She laughs, touching his forehead with a finger.

He sighs with gratitude, and she watches him start to dwindle at her feet.

She places her head in her hands, studying the way his clothes loosen as the limbs that bear them become thinner and weaker.

Almost unconsciously, her hand passes between her legs.

A few moments pass.

There before her lays a pile of fabric.

The fabric stirs, and she watches the miniature figure of a man pull himself out of it, his penis erect, his slim limbs betraying a life lived without even a moment of manual labour.

There is Ro Danest, the insect, gazing up at her in awe.

Cytalis stretches a leg towards him, pointing her toes at him. He looks down at them a moment, then back up at her.

“Worship me, insect,” she says, fingering herself. “Show your Goddess what she means to you.”

She raises her toes, then the sole of her foot.

The enormity of her foot compared to him seems to dawn on him. He is so reluctant to indulge, sometimes. She finds it rather endearing.

“Go on,” Cytalis urges, sternly. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Now Danest obeys. He kneels, placing his tiny hands on her heel, and kisses.

“Good boy,” she says. “This is what you really want, isn’t it?”

But he does not hear her, lost in worship.

“Where you belong,” she says.

She is vast. So much vaster than him. His view of her right now is a wall of flesh. She pleasures herself, imagining how she must see him, how much more powerful she must seem…

Must seem? She is more powerful than him. It is only by the violence of the state, and her own conscience, that she does not exercise that power. She has the most powerful politician on the planet under the sole of her foot. This is not an aberration. This is the world, just for a short time, balanced as it should be.

She gives a small smile, and a swift and gentle motion of the ball of her foot, knocks Danest on to his back.

She stands. Her shadow alone seems to have weight. He lays there stunned, gazing up at her, at the great monolith of her body, at the two vast trunks that are her legs.

He does not move.

He is so small she can scarcely see the expression on his face. But she does.

It’s terror. Pure, delicious terror.

She raises her foot, and he does not run, nor attempt an escape. He only cries out in shock as she lowers it inexorably upon him, at speeds that must seem so impossible for a being of her size.

Her sole engulfs him, eclipses him. He is beneath her. Right where he belongs. This is his true state of being. Insects belong at her feet. Not lording it over her with fine wine and obscene wealth.

Hate? Love? She doesn’t know any more. She wants to make him understand. Understand what it is like to not know what is going to happen next, to feel like it could all be gone at any moment. If she leaves him with one parting message, let it be this. She has to make him understand.

She shifts her weight on to the ball of her foot. He writhes beneath her, frantic with terror, but she does not care.

He screams once, and she feels something

snap

A wave of nausea rises in her stomach. She retches, stumbling backwards.

In the dim light, she can see him – his broken body, lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Like an insect.

To her surprise, he is still moving. He writhes in pain. Cytalis crouches to look at him. The weight of her has twisted his arm and his leg. He moans quietly, flinching almost from her gaze.

Part of her feels guilty, of course, as any person would, but another part of her seems only to examine him with curiosity.

I did that?

With nothing but a simple step?

But still that nausea bubbles in her stomach. She realises at once that it is guilt. She anticipates retribution.

Danest gazes up at her in disbelief.

“Why?” he says. His voice is almost inaudible for the weight of his despair.

She shakes her head.

“You’ll never understand,” she says.

“I thought…” he croaks, stifling a sob. “I thought you loved me…”

“I did, too,” Cytalis says, bitter as coal. “But then you showed me just what I meant to you.”

Now Danest’s misery turns into hatred and rage.

“You vicious whore,” he says, venomously. “I’ll see you hang for this. This is treason.”

Cytalis rises, standing to her full height.

“Is that all I’ve ever meant to you?” she says. “Another inferior? An underling? Just a second ago you were carrying on like you loved me. Now you want to hang me.”

And Danest seems to retreat from her gaze, with sudden awareness of the danger he is still in. For she has not restored him to his full size.

“Do you know what it’s like down there?” she asks. “Down in the New Village? With all the dirt and rubbish, as the price of bread climbs higher and higher? While you live up here, looking down on us as you sip wine and eat the finest meats.”

She bends, gently picking him up. He cries out.

“If you knew what a day in my life was like,” Cytalis says, “would you even care? Or would you just make excuses for it? Can you even conceive of a world in which I am anything more than a toy for you?”

As she holds him with coiled fingers about his waist, the irony of that statement is not lost on her. But she must not be complacent. This is still a very powerful and very dangerous man. But part of her still holds out hope, somehow.

She walks to the bed and, still keeping him held tight in her grip, seats herself, maintaining eye contact the whole way.

“This will be the last you see of me,” Cytalis says. “But by the time you are back at your normal size, I shall be long gone from here. And you will not find me.”

Danest sobs in pain, then snarls.

“You tried to assassinate the Consul of Adena,” he hisses through his teeth. “My men will find you. They will kill you.”

“Will they? Are you sure? Do you want to go screaming to all Adena that you’ve been fucking a – what was it you said, a moment ago? A vicious whore?”

Danest, wracked with pain and rage, seems lost for words.

“You duplicitous bitch,” Danest growls. “So, is that it? You’ve only ever been after my money?”

Cytalis raises her eyebrows.

“You really are a dumbshit, Ro.”

“Don’t you dare call me Ro,” Danest spits. “I am your superior—”

Cytalis squeezes him about the waist with the smallest movement, silencing him instantly.

“Not at the moment, you’re not,” Cytalis says. “Insect.”

Danest looks up at her, his mouth agape.

“All I’ve ever been to you is a trinket,” she says. “A toy to forget in the bottom of the chest. You only call me back here when you want a fuck. And you mistake that for love. And maybe I was stupid enough to mistake it for love, too. But I’m done now. You watch people suffer and die every day, and you think it’s your right to let it go on happening, because the alternative is unthinkable. You coward.”

She holds him right before her eyes, gazing at him so hard she wonders if he might burst into flames.

“You are not my superior, Ro Danest. You never were. I am more powerful than you will ever hope to be. I can do things you will never be able to do, experience things you will never be able to experience. You’re barely even worthy of worshipping my feet.”

Danest keeps his mouth closed, now. He only glares at her.

“You’ll return to your normal size within the hour,” she says. “Tell your men what really happened, if you must. But I’ll be long gone by then.”

“Gone?” Danest says. “And where, exactly, are you going to go?”

Cytalis Trelen wears a small smile on her lips.

For on top of Danest’s dresser is a coffer.

Despite the pain of his broken body, Ro Danest summons enough energy to make his eyes eyes bulge almost out of their sockets.

The coffer begins to shrink.

*

Beyond the river basin of the meander on which the antecedents built the great city of Eyros, there are a set of high hills. It is the main way out of Eyros, which, lacking defensive walls, relies on the hills. The hills are steep, rocky, and often cold.

And yet, to Cytalis Trelen, they mean freedom.

She does not know how much she took from Ro Danest. Definitely not enough to render him pauper, but enough for her to live on, for a little while. Yes, the journey ahead of her is dangerous. She does not know if Ro Danest will heed her words. Maybe he will stake his reputation on having her killed. Maybe he will succeed. Maybe he won’t. She cannot afford to live her life on maybes.

She comes to a rest at the top of a large hill, perching herself on a large rocky protrusion. She has with her a drinking flask, which she filled from a stream along the way. You can see all of Eyros from up here.

Below, people go about their daily routines. They work, eat, and sleep. And all around them are the wonders that labour made. Those ancient ones who once sheltered around embers in caves now live in warm brick houses. And the serf, who once had to spend all their time scraping together some meagre means of survival; fetching firewood or hunting game, now has time for reading.

Yes, what was once unimaginable is now normal. And she can only imagine that, even if they find her, even if they kill her, that someday, the world will belong to people like her. For in their hands is power greater than all the armies of Adena. Greater, even, than the Changing.

She is a Changer, that power is innate to her. But all the starving and dispossessed have a power, too; a power that takes the most miserable existence and from it creates wonders.

Ro Danest will rule, but she knows that she has taught him a lesson that he will not forget in a hurry.

Beggars exist not beneath the wealthy, but alongside them. That the ruling class are allowed to continue to live as they do is testament to the transcendental good will of the impoverished. But they can push even that to its breaking point. And when they do…

Her eyes scan the skyline, and she spots it.

A tower, poking out from the cityscape, that but a day ago she stared up at in awe.

How tiny it looks from up here, she thinks.

Then, saying nothing, the woman known as Cytalis Trelen slips away.

And even her footprints will be washed away by the rain.

End.