In the first day they're just dancing, and everyone who watches them claps because the steps are perfect. No reason they shouldn't be perfect. Marten Broadcloak is Gabrielle Deschain's Wizard, excuse me, her husband's wizard. Slip of the tongue, there.

The steps are picture perfect and every hair is in place. They smile with easy familiarity because, after all, they are of the same household. They know each other. And maybe that's what makes it perfect, both so skilled and both familiar with each other, enough to give them that edge over dancing partners who have just met at the occasion and still haven't gotten over the first stab of shyness. Or perhaps those who are still trying too hard to be someone else for someone else's benefit.

Marten wears his mask too, smiling with teeth. Gabrielle smiles and pretends she isn't bored by her husband's quiet stern attention. He loves her, she knows this, and he loves his son, but he loves honor and duty and the way of the gunslinger more.

So they dance. And they smile, and while they know they are wearing masks and veils for the sake of polite society they are still too well acquainted to be clumsy in each other's arms.

In the second day they begin with some conversation and a glass of wine, or maybe two. They laugh, and talk, and reign over their little circle that gathers around them as a court to a queen, and isn't Gabrielle queen in her own court? Of course she is; her husband is Steven Deschain, one of the most respected gunslingers in Gilead.

She laughs but her laughter has the ring of something else to it and Marten's eyes are on her far too often.

They talk about poetry and music and the implications of the latest series of essays and writs to come out of the edges of In-World, as it was called. They clash point and counterpoint with rapier sounds and the kind of swiftness that leaves the barons and ladies guessing. Her face flushes and his eyes sparkle with manic light and they laugh because this is the kind of ride they can't resist. Back and forth and it's a strain no one else sees but the effects of the enjoyment are plain to everyone else's eyes. A whisper starts and then quashes as they haven't done anything but talk. But their conversation is gaining more attention than the dancers on the floor.

When they take the dance back again they're still talking, if only in whispers and glances and subtle darting eye movements. It's the kind of conversation that gets even more attention. People watch them until they leave, hungry for a scandal.

She curtseys when the dance is over and raises her eyes two seconds before propriety allows. He smiles and his lips curve too high for sanity, or at least the public appearance of it. She raises one arm high, farewell.

People watch them until they starve.

In the third day they dance and they don't talk nearly as much, having exhausted the need for that kind of connection earlier and in private. They look satisfied, though, and since they come in together there are whispers of rumors of what they must have done before.

Nonsense, a woman raps out, she was with me all afternoon. He came by and played a round of Faro, very nice man.

Nice isn't really the word one uses for Marten Broadcloak but it's close enough. She seems to find him nice. The first dance is a fast one and they whirl and spin at the edge of their coordination, or maybe only his. Or maybe it's just the grace one allows a woman; a man's man isn't permitted to be that kind of beautiful. Marten's feet miss no steps. Gabrielle holds her head as though she's in a place in her mind, in her heart where the world can go hang itself as long as she keeps this moment.

Everything goes in a sped-up motion when they break apart, the dance ending sooner than it should. It's as though the drama has gone out of the evening and every petty little thing that comes after is merely backwash. No one can get the dissatisfied taste out of their mouth, and though she leaves early and Marten stays to lurk in the corners and glare everything's already done. Something has transpired. An action happens that none of you see.

In the fourth day they don't dance at all.

On the fourth day they hold palaver in a well-lit and cheerful corner of the ballroom. There is no sense of artifice about their posture or the fact that they have chosen one of the few standing areas not occupied by the hungry or the deaf. They talk, wine-glasses tilted from tingling fingers, shoulders back and heads high and at their ease.

After seeing that there will be no dancing tonight most of the others pass through, pass by, and leave them to their conversation. It's not until the back and forth becomes more rapid and their cheeks take on that flush so unmistakeable that they attract any attention. Little attention, at that. It's the sort of flush one would find in the bedroom but since they're both vertical, clothed, and the words they're using are the sort you could use in front of your grandmother, nothing's going on.

Something happens as things spiral to a close and neither of them move closer. There's a moment of almosts and might have beens that twangs in the air like a note badly struck and gives everyone a headache. His face flushes bright red, but not from anything good. Her face turns pale white and her lips thin. It wasn't what she had expected.

She doesn't turn away and that wasn't what he had expected either, so he turns and leaves early with his last gambit unplayed and a sensation that the killing blow missed.

In the fifth day the names are subjugated to the people behind them. Marten long since decided that the rules of polite society can go commit unspeakable and anatomically impossible acts. Particularly since rules, tropes, and paradigms have no anatomies, which vexes him. He wants to hurt the thing that hurts him most.

Gabrielle's smile has turned, not bitter, but tired. She loves her husband. She loves her son.

They talk in quiet murmurs, and it's barely talking at that. They walk around the edges of the room and maybe say a word here or there and it seems to be enough to carry on a conversation. No one hears much more of it than they do, not in words. No one else has the context necessary to hear the under-speech. They don't need to talk. He doesn't need to say a thing. Every step, a little further down the path that has so many turnings and both of them see it and neither of them take a one. His eyes, so near to closing.

He fools himself to think that he's fooling her, and she lets him. Her hand touches his arm and she turns when they reach the door again and two shakes of her falling hair later they're on the dance floor again. All eyes stop what they're doing to stare at them, even if they don't know why and can't remember the last time these two were the subject of so much gossip, even if it was only a day or two ago.

In the sixth day Gabrielle Deschain loves her husband. Marten Broadcloak is loyal to his master.

They come in arm and arm although she's been there an hour already, escorted by her husband and properly attentive. But when they step to the floor in front of the grand doors no one gives a thought to the falsity that they've just made the entrance of a lifetime.

The musicians stop before they start. There's a moment of silence and they're standing in the center of a vacated floor, looking at each other.

The music starts, swells, and they're off to the races. Red blossoms on maiden skin at watching them do what no one has dared do before and tonight some very foolish girls will dream of skin they should never try to touch. Gabrielle remains a constant, inviolate, the gunslingers forming a wall around the would-be and less-than gentlemen. The pace drives the heart beat up and the walls strain to hold it all in. Something is happening now, here, that changes the world and her chest heaves, his face pales with the effort of holding it in. Hold it in one more moment.

It's over. In a wash of uncouth sweat and a crescendo of applause they stand and part and look at each other. The musicians stare. Everyone stares. The gunslingers clap. It's a performance to last a lifetime.

Marten bows, smiles his mocking smile.

Gabrielle moves, alone, to the balcony.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.