Short Fiction: She Commands Me And I Obey

Quite frequently someone at a reading will ask me if I’ll ever explain about that icon Breq is carrying. And the answer is, I already have.

Residents of Noage Itray could look up and see the ballcourt hanging ten miles overhead, four meters wide and fifty long from goal line to goal line. Stands stretched along each side, row upon row of seats slanting up and back. For the station’s entire thirty-five-mile cylindrical length, buildings and gardens clung to its curving interior walls, bright with reflected sunlight. Noage Itray was the largest and wealthiest of the four stations in its Precinct—the second oldest of the four Precincts.
 
Under the ballcourt stands, proof of that antiquity, stood ranks of life-sized statues serving, crouching, springing to meet the ball. Elaborately painted wristguards, jewels on necks and arms, shimmered faintly in half shadow, each statue the result of the septennial elections decided on Noage Itray’s Blue Lily ballcourt.
 
They were called the Hundred, though Her-Breath-Contains-The-Universe had counted three hundred and seventy-two of them. On game days flowers decked each statue. The air would be heavy with their scent and the muttered prayers of worshipers as they streamed past, into the stands. Today the space echoed coldly, the stale remains of incense barely perceptible, the Hundred staring into empty, silent space.

I know I’ve linked it here before, but since I keep getting the question, I figure folks who have followed more recently might not have seen it.

2 thoughts on “Short Fiction: She Commands Me And I Obey

  1. Mike Glyer says:

    Thanks for pointing this out! You must sometimes wonder if we fans are really paying attention…

    1. Ann says:

      Nah. I just figure people have tuned in at different times, or are only paying attention to certain sources (twitter rather than the blog, for instance) or haven’t found my blog yet. Or sometimes something gets blogged/tweeted about when someone’s away from the computer or busy with other things. 😀

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