“I want for my people,” I told him, my voice quiet. “I want to serve the Three-Faced God.”
“I will,” said another voice. “If—if it pleases my king and my God.” I turned around, and another woman raised her hand. Some spoke, some nodded. More women agreed.
Calix held out his hand to me, beckoning me, and I walked up the stairs to him. He caught my hand and drew me close, bringing my knuckles up to his mouth to kiss. “My love, I will leave these people in your capable hands. The Three-Faced God is most pleased with your care.”
I nodded, and Calix released my hand to stare at me for a moment, almost as if he cared for me in the way he claimed. And then his hands slid around my waist and he tugged me closer, kissing me. My body was stiff, unyielding, not expecting such a display and unable to adapt before he let go of me. People were clapping behind us as he pulled me to his side, waving and smiling at them.
And then he let me go, and he made his way through the mill, and several guards followed him. I took a breath and turned to the overseer. “Very well,” I said. “Show us how to grind grain.”
The stations were all large, flat circular stones that were in stacks of two and as wide across as my outstretched arms. They had a basket beneath and a hole in the top stone, and the overseer and the more practiced men showed us how to pour grain in the hole in the top and then turn the top stone with a handle. The grain was ground between the two stones, and came out the edges into the basket. The stones rumbled as they turned, and soon the floor was trembling, shuddering with the effort, in a way that felt almost joyous.
The overseer also showed us curved stones with a shaped rock where women could make the flour even more fine, something he had ceased to do when there weren’t enough men.
Quickly the women organized themselves, some porting grain and moving baskets, some turning stones, some packing it up when it was finished. Zeph and Adria both helped, the former far too delighted with the idea of pounding grain by hand, and the latter thoroughly distraught with the idea of her hands potentially revealing that she had done physical labor.
I took my place at the second stage of grinding, my hands eager to touch the stone. I closed my eyes as I learned the motion of it, and running one stone over another felt like plucking the strings of an instrument. I felt the different hums deep in my bones, and when no one could hear me over the unyielding noise of grinding, I hummed back.
But it wasn’t just the imaginary strings of a nonexistent instrument. There were strings there, tightly packed in the stone, vibrating with noise and life at my touch. My power was alive and strong, rushing around me as all the stones scraped against one another.
The stone I was holding grew warm under my fingers, pushing against my hand, and I could feel the slight unevenness of it, the places where the curve of the stone didn’t meet the curve of the bowl in perfect alignment, and it felt like a snag, a grating that was scratching inside my ears. Glancing around, I focused on the stone, revising the shape of it like a blacksmith would sharpen a blade, pressing it to sit perfectly in the bowl.
I moved the stone around the new curve, and it seemed like music, like playing my fingers across the threads had created a low, thrilling tune that resonated deep in my bones and shivered up my spine with delight.
With each sweep and turn of the stone, the pleasure of it washed over me again—this was a stunning gift, to be able to take the rough and uneven and perfect it, to improve what nature had given us. In my hands, every motion felt like hope.
“My queen?”
I dropped the rock with a gasp. One of the women was there, nervous to ask me a question about distributing the grain, and I stepped away from the stone to help her, the warmth of it still making my fingers tingle.
Fool. What was I thinking, using my power like that? It was hidden and small, but even the smallest suggestion of magic would get me killed with sure and swift finality. Even though Calix had left us to our task, how many minutes would the greedy overseer wait to turn me in if he suspected my power? How quickly would the Saepia guard betray their newborn loyalty to me?
Shivering, I took up the cart full of bags of flour and wheeled it down the long hallway. There were still many more people there than could work in the mill, and I helped the men in the back hand it out as quickly as we could, far enough from the moving pieces of stone that the trembling power inside me was more like a murmur than a roar. Just before we ran out, Zeph came with his giant arms full of more bags.
By the time the overseer rang a bell to signal the day was done, the sky was blushing dark. The line had been cut in half, and it seemed a small thing, but with a few days’ work, there would be no line.
Adria came to join me outside, looking at her hands, worrying a bit of skin between her finger and thumb. “I think I’m getting a blister,” she said.
“You’ll know if you get a blister,” I told her with a deep sigh. “We should start walking. Zeph?”
“Here, my queen,” he said, emerging from the mill with a mighty stretch that caused mysterious parts of his anatomy to crack and pop. He gave a monstrous yawn that sounded like some kind of animal call and then smiled. “I like milling.”
“Of course you like milling—it isn’t difficult for you,” Adria whined.
His shoulders lifted. “If I’m being honest, not much is difficult for me.”
“Hiding is probably difficult for you,” I told him with a smile.
“And you probably sink like a stone in the water,” Adria said, crossing her arms.
“I’m an excellent swimmer,” he said defensively.
“You must have been hit by a tree branch or two riding on a horse,” I said. “You’re so very tall.”
His brows knit together. “Occasionally.”
“What do you do when you have a wound?” Adria asked, a hint of a smile on her face. “There’s no way you could hold a needle with your giant, calloused hands.”
“I rub some dirt in it and move on with my life,” he grunted. “I don’t like this conversation anymore.”
Adria snorted. “You started it.”
Calix and I arrived separately to dinner, but neither Danae nor Galen appeared for the meal. Calix took my hand as soon as I sat, kissing it, smiling at me. “How was your day of labor, my love?” he asked.
I smiled back, though it didn’t feel as real as I wished. “Difficult,” I said. “There was much work to be done, but they all took to it. We fed everyone who needed food.”
“Fantastic,” he said. “Quite an endearing display.”
I nodded. “Your people love you, Calix,” I told him.
His smile grew thin. “And yet this Resistance continues. They rebel. They don’t trust my rule.”
“No,” I assured him. “It’s just difficult to look past a hungry belly.”