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Updated: June 22, 2025
When she reached a quiet spot, where one of the walks ended suddenly in a little circle among the rose-trees, far down from the palace, she had her carpet spread, and her cushion was placed upon it, and she wearily sat down. The fan-girl began to ply her palm-leaf, as much to cool the heated summer air as to drive away the swarms of tiny gnats which abounded in the garden.
I can cook, I can shoot a good arrow, and I can make garments, yes, though they were cut from the skins of beasts and had to be sewn with backbone sinews. Because you despise fine clothes, and because you have seen me only decked out as fan-girl, you think I am useless. Bah, Deucalion! Never let people prate to me about your perfection. You know less about a woman than a boy new from school."
The fan-girl tried to follow her mistress, and her small red eyes watched cautiously every one of Nehushta's movements. But the queen waved her off and the slave went and stood beside the chair where she had sat, her fan hanging idly in her hand. At that moment, the Median woman entered the chamber. "Where is he?" asked Nehushta, turning suddenly upon her.
Nehushta sat with her hands pressed to her temples, that throbbed as though the fever would burst her brain, and the black fan-girl plied the palm-leaf with all her might, thinking that her mistress suffered from the heat. The other women she dismissed; and she sat waiting beneath the soft light of the perfumed lamp, the very figure and incarnation of anxiety.
She was curiously like, so both my eyes and hearing said, to Ylga, the fan-girl of Phorenice, but as she had told me of no parentage I asked for none then. Still her talk alone let me know that she was bred of none of the common people, and I made up my mind towards definite understanding. "Nais," I said, "you wish to kill me.
You make me blush with your fine pleasantries, Deucalion, and there is no fan-girl here to-night to cool my cheek. I must choose me another fan-girl. But it shall not be Ylga.
But as it was, she stood in her place, swaying easily to the earth-waves as a sailor sways on a ship's deck, and beside her, crouched on the same great flagstone, and overcome with nausea was Ylga, who again was raised to be her fan-girl.
You have spoken of Nais in your narrative before, and although your tongue was shrewd and you did not say much, I am a woman and I could read between the lines. Now regard, my rebel, I have no wish to be unduly hard upon you, though once you were my fan-girl, and so your running away to these ill-kempt malcontents, who beat their heads against my city walls, is all the more naughty.
Her two children lay in the litter at her feet. On her right hand marched Tatho gorgeously apparelled, and with a beard curled and plaited into a thousand ringlets. On the other side, plying her industry with unruffled defence, walked Ylga, once again fan-girl, and so still second lady in this dwindling kingdom. The party of them halted half a score of paces from the Ark by Phorenice's order.
But the place of the fan-girl behind was empty, and what we said as we rode back through the streets there was none to overhear. She was eager to know what had befallen me after the attack on the gate, and I told her the tale, laying stress on the worthiness of Nais, and uttering an opinion that with care the girl might be won back to allegiance again.
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