thinks you his grateful pawn,

ambition lost, fire quenched—

hush, my king, be easy.

Forget my words,

they are nothing but air.

Going, gone.

Fian, turning him over and oiling his chest:

My people are crushed.

So long, it has been so long

they do not remember freedom.

My mother, and my mother’s mother,

and their mothers before them,

waiting, always waiting.

Fian, atop him:

Now. Waiting. Ends.

Fian, licking him clean:

The great victory is already yours.

Done. Won.

Fian, giving him more spiced wine:

I ask only a token:

two kings out hunting,

an accident, a tragic fall,

poor young king Xau—

hush, be easy! Hush.

Fian, rubbing his arms, his shoulders:

Hush, there are other ways.

Forget my words,

they are nothing but air. Going, gone.

Let it be as your heart wishes.

Go to Xau, become his friend.

Fian, kissing Donal’s closed eyes:

Only invite him here.

Only that.

Fian, whispering, hand on his forehead:

My words are air.

Only bring Xau to me.

DEMON STAIN

Dusk on a moonless evening,

Queen Fian herself

went down on her knees

to scrub flagstones,

squeezed black water

into a silver bucket,

lifted her head

to smile at the crowd.

Men and women cheered:

their Queen herself

had come to rinse away

the stain of the demon.

∗

Midnight at moon dark,

unattended, unwatched,

the Queen placed a hair

in a vial of black liquid,

one strand of her hair—

the demon liquid hissed

in a foam of bubbles.

The hair dissolved.

She stoppered the vial,

thinking of her mother,

and her mother’s mother,

of vengeance coming.

DARK HARVEST

High on her mountain,

the dragon woke—

A fell foulness flared

at the far periphery

of her awareness,

north and east of her,

across the Innish border.

As if the demon walked again.

No, not quite.

The corruption tainted, altered,

as if someone had harvested

the demon’s strength,

claimed it for their own.

The dragon’s eyes black,

the gold in them gone.

The night dark, moonless,

the stars obscured.

BRIGHID

Six years old,

youngest of the demon’s servants,

didn’t cry when the king

roused her after the demon’s death;

nor when, an hour later, she remembered

her father’s scorched scream,

his flesh aflame;

nor when, toward evening,

a fishmonger recognized her

and offered to see her back to her aunt;

nor when, weeks later, the fishmonger

delivered her to her aunt, who hugged her—

and hugged the fishmonger—

and wept.

That night the farm tomcat,

a gray and surly mouser

not inclined to affection,

lay down on Brighid’s blanket

and matter-of-factly licked her arm,

her bare shoulder, her face,

his rough tongue rasping her skin,

and she cried,

thinking not of her father,

or their burnt home, their burnt town,

but of her mother’s voice,

a voice she’d forgotten

until the demon borrowed it,

that she’d known to be a lie

but followed anyhow.

MATTERS OF STATE

“This is the shortened guest list?”

King Xau waved three closely-inked sheets

at Artoch, his senior advisor.