Palace Dance

Downstairs was a room like none other. How many Qurls could say they'd worked out in Chekena's dance hall? Massaging her crackling wrists, Mikial walked over to her doorway and gave it a quick rap with her knuckles. "The Steward has given me permission to use the dance floor," she stated to the bleary-eyed guards who opened the door.

"At Eight Chime?" one of them gulped.

She gave a hiss that backed him up a step. "The Steward could hardly allow me to use it while everyone's awake, could he?"

"I'd better fetch the Watch Commander," the other spoke up with a frown.

"He can find me in the dance hall," she retorted with a cross look, squeezing her way out into the hall. If they hadn't pulled their pistols by now, she had a chance of blustering her way downstairs. Not that it mattered, came the dark thought. Mikial fixed the other guard, a short haired man near her age, with a haughty glare worthy of a Taqurl. "Are you going to follow me or not?" She headed downstairs for the dance hall.

Opening the rooms ornate double doors, she saw that the gas lights inside had been turned off. What did they expect her to do? Dance by the lightning? She looked back at her guard's uneasy face. No help there. Soon enough the other would be waking his perturbed superior to chase her off. Mikial's fingers brushed across the gems set within the door post. Running her hands along them, she felt her palms settle into cool depressions suggesting charging plates. Biting her lip, she slowly discharged. Nothing. Her hopes fell. She inspected the beads of sweat on her palms. She'd discharged into something or those droplets wouldn't be there. Her guard stared at her like she was mad.

Already feeling like a walking battery, Mikial began a steady release as if charging her glow stones at home. Her reward was a series of clicking sounds. Gasping, she stood back as the lights came on. Not the feeble waver of gas lamps, but the pearly radiance of the room's hemisphere's. They glowed like rainbows between the mirrors, rising toward the central ceiling's sphere in iridescent beads.

"What are you doing?" the guard demanded, stepping forward to gape at the interior.

"Turning on the lights," she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Mikial stared at the rows of gems and crystals above the recharge plates. The top row was glowing! Yellow, blue, red, and amber...sect colors. She glanced at her escort. He was too enraptured by the glowing orbs to pay her any mind. Her finger touched the red gem. The rows of crystal below the gems lit up. Glowing inside each was a bright crimson pattern. A dance pattern? She touched a familiar flower pattern often used for the Rah Keeran style reserved for story telling.

"I think you'd better stop this," the guard warned, his eyes fixed on the bright red lines abruptly appearing in the floor.

"Isn't it incredible?" she laughed, walking to the center beneath the main hemisphere. The globe began to pulse with an amber and crimson beat above her. Recorded music? "Can you hear it?" Delighted, she arced her back, poising her legs in a ready stance. With all the available musicians in her Holding, recorded music was rare, but this? The last to hear it were probably Taqurl dancers.

Her escort blanched as horns and shries burst from the walls in a furious rhythm seemingly tailored for a Dathia. She obliged, rocketing herself into the air in an opening leap that brought her spinning into the pattern. The loose bottom of her camouflage blouse whipped around her hips as she captured the pound of the base beat. She'd give that Kiorannan guardsman something to drop his jaw at! Her arms and legs took up the second beat as Mikial applied herself to the dance in earnest, letting the shries carry away the turmoil pent up in her heart and body. She danced as if the floor's lines were drawn in hot embers, her toes barely touching the ground in hops and arcing movements. Behind the pounding drums and racing shries her ears caught horns in yet another movement. A slow sonorous cadence. Mikial sought it out, using the muscles along her midriff to display the counter rhythm as only a Three Beat dancer could. Eyes half closed, she leapt and spun through the pattern, letting it come alive in an intensity that drove out all else. It was as if she were back in Shadow Canyon again. Just letting go.

"Stop this!"

Giving an enraged scream, Mikial cut her pattern short. She glared up at a tall dark haired woman in an elaborate turquoise and black house coat. The stranger leaned over the upper balcony that led to other rooms. Probably hers. "You dare interrupt me like this!"

"As this hall's mistress I most certainly do!" the woman fumed, pounding at the railing. She spread her hands out. "What have you done here? Turn off that wretched noise. This is not a corral for beasts!"

"I've more right here than you, woman," Mikial sneered back. "And until I came here this probably was more like a corral!"

"That's quite enough," Alad's voice cut in over the woman's stung look.

She looked around, realizing that she'd attracted quite an audience of soldiers and others during her impromptu performance. The Steward was standing in doorway wearing a turquoise night robe, his arms folded. His expression was torn between required disapproval and fascination.

Scowling up at the hall's apparent First Dancer, Mikial strode over and hit the same red button she'd brought the pattern up with, hoping that the music would fade with the crystal's radiance. It did.

Alad walked over and took her arm. "Time to leave, Mikial."

"Past time," she hissed, sending the First Dancer a final cold look. Her voice raised. "Even in my Holding we understand the common courtesy of allowing a dancer to finish!"

"Then return to it!"

Alad walked in front of her, his hands raised. "Ladies, enough!" He looked up at her antagonist. "Lady Corel, Mikial had my permission to use the floor." He gave Mikial a strained expression. "Not that I expected its use so early and without proper introduction with yourself, of course."

The woman was silent for a moment, as if reconsidering some scathing reply. "Can you at least get her to return my hall to normal and extinguish these Taqurl contraptions?"

The Steward gave a short nod of acquiescence and turned to Mikial. "I think it's best you turn the lights off."

Mikial studied the control panel before giving her head a hopeless shake. "I have no idea how they turn off. It's best to let the batteries run down again."

The woman's irritation grew as she looked across the balcony at the glowing orbs. "And when is that going to be?

Mikial couldn't help the smile that crept across her lips. "Perhaps in your lifetime...Lady."