The great hall was a wooden drum, rattling with bitter fury. Tired, empty threats, sworn oaths, and petty insults resonated in the thick timbers of the capital’s heart. Siren of the Burgis felt it quaking beneath her feet, through the pale, bare floorboards, and heard it shivering in the leafy vines which crawled the trellis walls.

She slouched into her throne.

“Greedy--”

“Craven--”

“Stingy--”

“Barbarian!”

Braided golden wires, which entwined the smooth, stained wood, bit into her hands, pressed against the chair’s stalwart arms. She bit the inside of her lip, fighting not to scowl. She exemplified silence.

her councilors didn’t take the hint.

“Whoreson--”

“Two-faced--”

“Strumpet!”

“Enough!” The shout, like the rumbling of a distant landslide. It shook through all the beams and the central pillar, a redwood trunk which backed the throne ominously, rising clear up into the ceiling. It stuck in her councilors’ gem encrusted ears like stinging bugs, convulsing their jaws and forcing their knees to wobble. They fell like beaten dogs to the order, back onto their benches with faces demurred and pathetic--except for Bultric of the Felktis, eldest of the clan heads, who simply looked bewildered, eyes scanning blindly from side to side. He was propping his hunched shoulders up with both shaking arms pressed into the table. His many-ringed fingers at once swollen and shriveled. Did I wake you, Bultric, Siren sneered, you doddering, old bastard.

She glared over the lot of them like a matron over her unruly servants. Their proud eyes averted from her glowering appraisal. Vallan of the Burgisfel alone met her gaze. His cool, dark eyes glittered, charming folds of wrinkles smiling from their corners. He winked at her. His lips parted dashingly, gold and pearl teeth glimmering beneath a thick mustache.

A cold shiver ran up Siren’s spine, like a fat glob of arbor wolf spittle had just dripped onto her shoulder.

“Slander, I say!” muttered Paldrun of the Bilkta. He’d clearly wanted to shout it, and he adjusted himself awkwardly in the surrounding silence.

Old, foppish, and balding--not unlike sleepy Bultric. A mean grin might have crept over her face, but gave way as she bemusedly realized that all seven of her councilors were some combination of those three things: old, foppish, and bald.

She shook her head for a moment, the room all silent but for a bold little songbird which had returned to the open windows, twittering as it hopped about the living walls. Its little, golden breast heaved proudly, and yet the seven heads of the seven clans--like petulant children--were moping.

Then Siren of the Burgis--Archon and Namesake of the Free City of Sirennica, who had fought back the Gothesgalites at Gurtrod, and repelled the Barbarian King at Nonnur’s Pass, who had brought these seven clans from Burgisnor, and slew the elven hordes to found a better land--sighed, defeated.

“Listen, Paldrun…”

How they’d managed in the first place--amidst a dispute about grain tariffs--to broach the subject of clan Bilkta’s purported promiscuity rather escaped her. But it did not surprise her. Even highborn men had a penchant for low blows.

“While I do not condone the council’s incessant slandering of your young women,” she said sternly, “I will be issuing no punishment.”

His face contorted, outraged and impotent.

“Now listen!” she said, staving off a chuckle. “Consider the last hour’s public berating your own punishment--for forcing me to cede still more of your monopolies to Deltric.”

Deltric of the Terodor bowed in his seat while Paldrun--still predictably--cried out injuriously, his face a glowing, shivering red.

These pale-skinned people can’t hide anything…

Siren raised her own hand to her face--no doubt the same, cool black as always. But she hid nothing, her long, calloused fingers rubbing at her temples, massaging the cumulative stresses of a decade’s rule. Would they ever cease this factionalism? This money-grubbing? Come to understand that the good of the city was the good of the clans?

No, she thought, resigned, and her headache panged with the sufferings of still many decades to come. But at least Deltric will keep the grain prices stable, and low…

And leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow. Siren opened her eyes, lowered her hands, and pressed herself up in the uncomfortable throne, leaning forward. Paldrun was muttering discontentedly to the adjacent Dakur, matriarch of Clan Tandun, who was either ignoring him or, more simply, couldn’t hear his whimpering. The songbird twittered--laughing at them, Siren hoped.

“Consider this precedent!” she shouted, and the room was brought once more to violent silence. “Anytime there is so much as a grumble about grain prices, Deltric will take over the concerned monopoly. Now, unless there has been some act of the gods, some further development in the violence out east, or one of you needs to be fucking hanged...” She gave them her best pleading grimace, and a second to let it really sink in. “Then I think we can, finally, adjourn?”

“Actually, I seem to recall hearing of just the thing,” one perky voice professed. There was an audible groan from the others, and much wringing of knobby, old fingers. Bultric frowned with senior consternation, completely lost in the proceedings.

Vallan of the Burgisfel stood, the silly grin still eking from his tanned, handsome face. “In the forest,” he continued, looking curiously at the other six, who neglected to conceal the daggers they were staring back at him. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.” Then he shot his dark, shining eyes back at Siren. “They say a star landed in the night. Fires burning so hot you could feel it at the city walls.”

“Hm,” Siren rubbed the back of her neck, searching hard at the other six. “Thank you, Vallan,” she uttered it like a recitation, divorced from its own meaning.

These cowards, she thought. It had been almost a dozen years since Siren and the seven clans had come to the forest’s edge, and founded their city. A dozen years under the forest’s protection, under Lady Burgis, whose city they once inhabited.

And they didn’t trust her as far as they could throw one of her divine logs--didn’t trust Siren to communicate with this…essentially benevolent deity. Hells, scoffed Siren silently, if anyone ought to have a problem with Burgis, it’s me…

“Does our lady have orders?” Vallan cooed, self-consciously servile.

Always reveling in his petty victories, she derided. And Deltric--well, Deltric was ever the gentle subject. Quietly amassing all the wealth of this young city beneath his cynical thumb with many a modest bow, and a measured, capable enthusiasm.

But Deltric had not told her of this business in the forest. It had been Vallan, and he had thus, rather unfortunately, earned her favor.

“Ugh. Yes, Vallan. We’ll go out to see this disturbance…together. The rest of you--I don’t know…think on your sins. And do try to settle these trade disputes on your own. I don’t want Deltric to see one more copper bit of it.” Siren stood, nodding dismissal. The councilors all bowed in their seats, and the several guards standing about the perimeter stiffened slightly as Siren came down from the throne. She beckoned Vallan with a wag of her finger, but did not look his way.

Together they marched through the great hall’s wide and darkened wooden doors, covered in an array of careful reliefs depicting all her greatest martial feats. Shaking her head slowly, she hoped her councilors might remember to take stock of those scenes on their way out.

Shields and swords, after all. That’s what had brought them all together. Shields and swords. And a lot of words, and blood, too. Still, it was hard to imagine Vallan holding a sword or shield anymore.

Not that he’d changed, really, but that it was so alien to his person. Tallish, slender, vaguely consumptive looking (though his skin generally appeared flushed--and far from as pale as the bookish Deltric). He was all straight features--just one parallel set of long, thin lines. Not sturdy, nor rugged--just lines. Like an unusually tall sapling, just on the verge of withering rather than…well, becoming an actual tree. He escorted the archon most graciously--though with a mildly self-righteous smirk on his usually drawn and harmlessly pleasant face.

Was the only reason Vallan bothered being honest with Siren the opportunity to screw over the other six? Really, the business of adventuring had been so much better than the business of government. Never a back stabbed, in the good old days. But alas, there was nothing to be done about it. She hadn’t taken up rulership for personal gain--nor even altruistically. She hadn’t taken it up at all. It had been blessedly bestowed upon her--by a capricious, obtuse, condescending, and borderline evil goddess.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Essentially benevolent, she reminded herself. A dozen years of blessings…

“Lovely day for a ride,” said Vallan, interrupting the preferable silence. Why she hadn’t protested to sharing a chariot escaped her.

“In more suitable company, maybe even romantic.”

“Oh,” Vallan waved his hand, “don’t say that. You’re excellent company. Peerless, even.”

“I meant you, Vallan.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable…” His shimmering, gilded teeth were showing again, and he was obviously blushing.

Of course, Siren realized. If he isn’t trying to screw the other six…

“Vallan,” she said straightly, “you must take some perverse gratification from my rebukes--and I am determined to continue rebuking you. Destined, even. We will never be married, Vallan. If…when I do marry--” Siren paused, gritting her teeth in embarrassment. Vallan offered her a pleasant smile.

“Well, I’d better get it done quickly, anyway,” she sighed. “For both of us.”

Vallan’s lips tightened slyly. “And how would that solve our mutual woes?”

“There is nothing mutual about our woes, Vallan. Anyway, I should say my as-of-yet hypothetical husband will likely be a king. One who would not hesitate, nor find himself on the wrong side of the law, to kill you. And we’d both be free of this redundant awkwardness.”

Vallan looked at her skeptically. “You’re oddly well-spoken today, mistress. Rehearsed? Have you been thinking about me?”

“Fuck you, Vallan.” And though he spoke at length, for the next two hours, about the trees, and the birds, and the industries of young Sirennica, she did not once respond. Words could not wound Vallan. Apparently silence couldn’t either, but it was a whole lot easier.

In the meantime, she remembered that she’d owed him her favor. Was it some recompense that he’d rather woo than beg?

No, she decided, maybe a bit more than an hour in. And so she carried on silent until they’d reached the burned land.

Vallan hummed thoughtfully. “It looks less like a wound,” he said, “and more like…like a garden, I suppose. A garden of dust.”

It looked, thought Siren, like a black and white desert had eaten up miles of the most verdant forest in the world. Small, black nubs of scorched stumps dotted the banking dunes of feathery ash. A bright, gray haze hung over the waste while papery, black scales of ash still skittered through the air like mutant snowflakes.

“Vallan,” she spoke softly, “that’s the first insightful thing you’ve said all day.” And she stepped into the first pillowed pile of soot.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as she pressed on through the staining

“To commune with nature,” she replied, but not loud enough for him to hear it. Anyway, he wouldn’t follow--he remained as superstitious as any of his peers. Hornier, maybe--but hardly braver.

Besides, he couldn’t see what she saw. Who she saw. He couldn’t see the little girl with the long white robes, brilliant, without a stain of ash. He couldn’t see the way her hair appeared to flow like water (actually, Siren couldn’t either--but she knew it did). He couldn’t hear her laugh, sucked out through the trees like some monstrous breath, nor her song, which was softer than a chickadee’s from downwind.

He was lucky, too, that he wouldn’t have to speak with her, because--although essentially benevolent--she still was a capricious, obtuse, and likely enough evil goddess.

The ground was still hot, or at least it felt that way, and the air was parched and white-tinted as the sun beat through the old, diffuse smoke. Siren’s scalp was just beginning to sting in the parts between her knotted braids when she’d reached the white-robed girl.

“What the hell is this?” Siren chided.

The little girl rose to her feet as if pulled up by her belly. Not a speck of ash rose with her. Her hair shivered in the breeze, a rapid, trickling stream the color of cedar bark.. An illusion, Siren understood, caused by the countless tree rings, which defined her age, therein.

“You came,” she said, like some pompous, jilted lover. Like she was about to break things off with Siren, despite it all.

Like she wanted to be conciliated.

“Hurt yourself?” Siren asked, ignoring that.

Burgis stepped lightly up to Siren, her toes alone just contacting the fluff floor, and flicked her hard on the forehead. “Did that hurt?”

Was a demonstration necessary? Siren blinked hard and patiently wet her lips. Truly, the gods do work in mysterious ways…

Now the goddess reclined against thin air, as if a couch, and wisps of suddenly settling smoke twisted around the contours of her seat.

“I got you a gift,” she continued, sounding exactly like she’d just decided not to give it. he pirouetted in slow motion, windmilling about her waste so her hair was a disorienting torrent of coppery threads. She rested finally upon her belly, upon the air with one arm pointing off to a mounded divot in the fluffed, gray field. Siren started hiking, and the girl pranced alongside her like the perfect child--if the perfect child had a deer’s gait.

“Why’d you do this, Burgis?” Siren asked.

“I told you, it’s a gift.” She sounded oddly childlike, as if the answer was copiously sufficient. She crawled up the mound like a monkey and pointed down.

Siren kicked up great gouts of powdery ash, marching forward, and choked herself when she tripped over a rise in the actual earth beneath it. Wiping the acrid powder from her dry lips, she looked down into a crater, and saw at its center a lump of glossy, black rock posed in a circle of chalky-white ash.

“It’s like a fingernail clipping,” Burgis mused, with an amoral smile, turning somersaults slowly over the bank, “or a lock of hair.” She looked at Siren with the kind of humored disdain which one gives to a pervert.

“Eck,” Siren grunted.

It certainly was quite a gesture--one Siren would be remiss not to receive. Besides, she’d dealt with so much unpleasantness so far in the day. What was a little abuse from the divinity which held her very soul in hand? She clambered down into the crater, sliding at times, ash caking in the strung beads of her tunic, covering her dark skin so she looked pale--paler even than her subject Noriacs. Pale like the red-bearded Ellusenese--like the barbarian king she’d slain at Nonnur’s Pass. The glare from it all stung her eyes, and it didn’t help to be buffeted by puffing clouds of airborne ash.

But a sort of humming had begun in the back of her mind, ameliorating all the pain, all the unease--and yes, even the morning’s irritations. It filled Siren with a cool sense, with peace and focus. She felt like sharpened steel. She felt like power.

And her pace increased. She raced off, tripping and stumbling, hands planted in the soft ground, then bounding like a scrawny bear. She chased the boon…her boon. “This thing…”

She saw at it now, within arms reach. It was blacker than the darkest gray around. Blacker, perhaps, than the pit of Siren’s eyes. It didn’t shimmer, but had the sort of smooth luster of well-used iron. There were no runes etched upon it, no clever assortment of jewels. But she could feel as soon as she touched it…an enchantment the likes of which she’d never seen before.

“Why?” she asked again, whispering--more in wonder than fear.

Burgis back-dove into her peripherals, a quizzical sneer on her face. “No ‘thank you?’”

That snapped Siren out of it. She turned the rock in her hand, and her dumb face creased into a grimace.

“Thanks,” she said, and looked at Burgis expectantly.

“You know, I plan to do basically the same thing with the rest of the forest.” She pretend bit at her pretend nails, reclined to her side on a pretend chaise. Her hair, madly glaring, flowed freely beneath her.

“My people rely on this forest Burgis--you made sure of that.”

“You mean they rely on me,” the goddess corrected, staring with a convincing, mock concern at her champion’s stupidity.

“Then what do you mean you’re going to burn the whole forest down?”

“I don’t like elves,” she declared with a pout, “I think I prefer humans. The ideas of those detestable little creatures all burning--”

“Those elves worship you,” Siren snapped, “made you what you are.”

Burgis rolled her eyes heavily. “Well, not that it should be fathomable to your…mortal mind,” she snickered as if that had been a cleverer insult, “but their worship is…self-serving. Do you know how many elves try to make love to me--”

“Don’t--really…”

“Imagine the pretention! They just grab a branch and get to work. Sometimes they even do it--”

“Stop!” Siren shouted, and Burgis wore a harlequin smile. It wasn’t like Siren hadn’t seen what the elves could get up to--and she knew she didn’t want to picture it. “I’ll take the fucking rock. Just tell me: why...the rock? Why now?”

Burgis’ head, still grinning, dropped, and her body followed in a cartwheel. Siren looked her in her perfect nostrils.

“You’ve been doing my work for years. Why question it now?” It was never easy with Burgis. Siren wondered whether all the elder gods were so insufferably opaque, or if it was just this one.

“Actually, I’ve been questioning it the whole time--you’ve just never bothered explaining yourself. Besides…it’s never been like this. You’ve never done this.” She looked out on the waste, feeling even more flummoxed than before. Feeling the waste of it.

Burgis was parallel to the ground again, her face now floating out the side of Siren’s peripherals. “Oh, Siren,” she cooed. “I’m just getting started with you…” and her voice became an echo in the emptiness, the breeze through ashen banks, and she was gone.