Bee Queen

by Bowes, K T

  My breath exhaled in a whoosh as I saw the sword’s image for the first time. I heard the shouts of men as a faint echo and the sound of its unsheathing over and over again. Wincing as the melodic clash of metal upon metal rang in my eardrums, a rising tide of hope filled my senses. I did know it. I had seen it, heard and touched it. The blade induced a sense of familiarity and safety which overrode my reverence at its ancient origins. The Bee Queen’s Champion existed before me, preceding Sonora and even Limah himself. And I knew its location.

  Sorrel’s squeal startled me and before my eyes fully opened, my sword spun into my hand and I took a fighting stance. Limah’s words echoed in my mind. “Be ready. Be ruthless. Serve your purpose.”

  “No, Este! No!” Sorrel sat in the snow drift, his arms covering his head. “You’re too hasty!”

  I looked around us, finding the empty landscape devoid of others, our laboured white footsteps our only pursuers. My revelation occupied my mind, accompanied by frustration. I couldn’t write it down and acting out a mime caused arguments. I sheathed my sword, allowing my foot to tap with impatience. Sorrel scrambled to his feet. “I know where we’re going,” he announced, his eyes wide in his pale face.

  A lead weight dropped into my chest, fearful our conclusions may pull us in opposite directions. I allowed him to talk first, unable to communicate my new knowledge, anyway. He bounced up from the snow and stood at my side, lifting his hands to show me the path-delineator. My gaze coasted over my own dial, disturbed to see it had edged upward further to reduce my allotted time. “Look!” Sorrel jabbed at the uppermost dial. “Just then, as I marked the position of your indicator, the needle for what we thought was the sword’s location shot into place and I captured it.” Victory flushed his cheeks pink and he grinned up at me. “There’s a catch inside the groove and each click sends a counter around the edge of the dial.” He nudged my elbow with his arm. “If it changes, we’ll know now.”

  I swallowed and pointed towards the dial to the right, my eyes feeling hollow in my head. Sorrel’s lips twitched and he nodded. “I see that too, Este. But don’t assume it’s death. I saw it rise, but remember Limah’s character, my friend. He dedicated his life to equipping you for your special purpose.” The boy closed the lid, hiding the verdict from me. “He would never carry a timer in his pocket which spoke of your ending. He loved you.”

  I swallowed and the effort almost stopped me breathing as the lump of sadness descended. Limah. I had his full attention and wisdom and never appreciated it. My agonised sigh sent a white puff of air into a sky darkening with gathering snow clouds. Sorrel tugged at my sleeve and urged me to take an unbalanced step forward. “I know where we’re going now,” he said. “But you won’t like it.” Cocking my head, I quirked an eyebrow as the moment arrived. We would part ways. “Forlornn,” Sorrel said. “We go north, to Forlornn.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Grass

  Relief flooded me so fast I was forced to take a knee, crouching in the snow with my thumb and forefinger squeezing the bridge of my nose. Hunger forgotten, Sorrel danced on the spot. “I know it’s the last place you want to go, Este,” he gushed. “But it’s where the sword is.” I saw him glance towards his snow domed town and sigh. “It’s possibly better than other places you might be sent. At least you have a right to go there.”

  My lips parted in an ugly gape which would have drawn an instant slap from Bliss. But Sorrel beamed, his eyes becoming slits of pleasure as he offered me a hand up. “You’re their Melanis Princessa, remember?” he urged. “You can walk right in and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  My sword clanked as I stood. How could I explain the circumstances of my last visit with hastily drawn pictures in the snow? I considered drawing a line across my throat to demonstrate the Forlornn king’s attempt to kill me, condemning me to the bowels of his castle to die. My thoughts turned to poor Kuiti and his empty eyes staring through me from the floor of the round keep. The prince of Forlornn died an inglorious death and no snow pictures could convey the horror of Galveston’s invasion. The birdlike men of war did not await my arrival. Something much worse turned its hopeful face towards my surrender.

  As an act of kindness, I allowed the boy to skip and dance ahead of me as we picked up our journey. I hid my misgivings from him and left him alone with his misplaced enthusiasm. Happiness filled his belly and hopeful thoughts occupied his head. He called over his shoulder as we picked up speed on the downward, listing off a menu of possible food groups available in a land he’d never set foot in. “I’ll eat anything but sprouts,” he babbled, his tone happy and his pace quickening. I stared at the back of his head, a wary expression which would have stopped him dead had he seen it. Neither of us knew what Galveston and his Wasp kind ate, but sensed I would find out.

  We trudged until the dark clouds gathered overhead and rendered the landscape dark and gloomy. It seemed as though the land groaned beneath the weight of its death and even night came early. We worked together to dig out a snow cave, finding a ridge to ensure our healthy exit in the morning. The slopes seemed precarious, the snow blanket shifting and plunging down in great waves of white through some minor and unseen shift below the surface. Sorrel found a place that had recently shucked its load, digging his sword through the white surface to the shoulder to discover rock beneath. “This will do,” he said, withdrawing his arm. “We’re high enough not to wake up buried, but have enough snow to build a shallow cave.” His gaze strayed east towards the last of his ruined town and he swallowed. Another flurry of flakes had buried the last of the roof tops and I knew he thought of his family. Holed inside rickety buildings without food or shelter meant a miserable end for his family. Though he never spoke of siblings, his manner suggested he bore the title of youngest. I reached out a gloved hand to squeeze his forearm and his gaze snapped back to me. “You’re lucky,” he breathed. “You have no one to care about and nothing at stake.”

  His words shocked me into immobility and a dart of pain shot through my chest. He spoke the truth and hopelessness engulfed me in its dark maw. All gone. Sonora, Bliss, Zinnia and Limah. I added my fake illusion of Galveston-the-lover to my catalogue of losses, his kindnesses part of a carefully crafted deception to win me to his cause. Nothing at stake.

  Sorrel covered his sadness with spite, digging with his hands and bailing soft snow onto the slope below. It crunched beneath his gloves, becoming icy as the temperature plummeted in lieu of night. “You think I’m your servant, Este?” he puffed, all trace of his former joviality gone as hunger bit into his stomach lining and exhaustion called. “Too royal to dig yer own nest.”

  I swallowed and removed my sword belt, jabbing it upright into the snow next to his. We’d learned the trick the hard way, after a wasted clamber downhill the previous night as the snow drift slid both our weapons away. Swallowing my sadness, pride and any other sense of the Princessa Estefania Melitto, I dug our hole. My shoulder bumped with Sorrel’s as the cave rounded out before us. The ridge shuddered and groaned as more high drifts let loose on its flanks and plunged down, obliterating the last of the forest in the direction we’d come. Sorrel looked that way no more. He hollowed out our hidey entrance to face our destination and the edge of Forlornn’s formidable kingdom.

  Something snagged at my glove, breaking my concentration at the same moment Sorrel gasped. “Grass!” he cried, hollowing out more snow to reveal the delicate, sickly green tendrils. “Tonight, we sleep on the earth, Este.” Satisfaction drove him on, digging like an animal and sending great white clods back between his legs. I removed myself after a face full of snow and soil, coughing and covering my mouth with the back of my hand. Rising, I turned in a slow circle to survey the panoramic greyness of our world. It occurred to me that while the gates of Forlornn may still exist, any hope of opening them might fade in reality.

  Sorrel stood and banged his gloves against his fur coat. His cheeks looked ruddy and his skin mottled from exertion. His lips peel
ed as dry flakes, leaving bloody gaps beneath. Soreness suggested mine looked the same. “Don’t worry,” he assured me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “With good fortune, the snow will be deep enough to step over the south facing gate like a low fence.” He chuckled. “It will be a story to tell my grandchildren.” My empty stomach churned, forced to consider the fact that the sword may have become unreachable. Buried beneath successive falls of snow, the building housing it could remain hidden for generations. I had honed my fighting skills to defeat guards who may not exist.

  We bedded down for the night, the flimsy grass tickling our cheeks and noses. I considered Limah’s cave system and wondered too late at our ease of access. We walked out of the labyrinth onto level ground, despite the weeks of snowfall. Closing my eyes, I pictured the narrow path and sloping walls of drifts concealing the giant firs, the conclusion obvious. Some part of the colony’s daily chore had been digging, clearing the entrance for access and creating a long, narrow tunnel impenetrable from any direction but air. The wide area around the labyrinth entrance still contained visible tree trunks and I remembered the archer’s hiding behind them. I shook my head against the grass and sighed at my naivety. If Limah and Galveston shared the same sense of survival, then our access to Forlornn’s gates may prove tenuous. He too would have bailed out his newly claimed city, using the compacted snow to create another barrier to the outside world. I’d hoped to sneak into the city without fanfare and find the sword, but as worry hovered above my slumber, I sensed a different kind of arrival.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Forlornn

  Two more nights in snow caves and three more days of walking took us to within sight of Forlornn’s stronghold. The call of the sword grew weaker instead of more insistent, heightening my sense of alarm. I agonised over our direction and forced Sorrel to stop many times to check the path-delineator. We followed the dial north, keeping our gaze locked on the first of the visible turrets. Sorrel reassured me as we twisted and turned, his marker on the sword’s dial remained true, though the needle had long since gone back to sleep.

  There seemed no point in subterfuge. The white landscape offered no chance to hide ourselves and observe the city before venturing onto the dirty downhill snow path. Despite the threatening grey skies overhead, only a dusting of snow fell the previous night and nothing the day before. It appeared as though the world stored something hideous in its laden sky sacks, a final momentous deluge to end all miserable life once and for all. As Sorrel paused to check the path-delineator again, I sighed. The lead roof of a turret pointed skyward within a day’s walk, marking the northern point with as much clarity as the expressionless face he spent so much time staring at. Venting caused only misunderstanding, so instead, I directed my hatred towards Galveston and imagined the many effective ways I might dispatch of him and end our world’s pain. The sword flared its call in my breast, the weak offering like a feather falling in an empty cavern.

  “Este?” Sorrel closed the lid and faced me, his eyes narrowed in a curious expression. “Did you just think something?” he demanded.

  Rolling my eyes, I clenched my jaw at the stupid question and splayed my hands. Any sensible answer fluttered out of reach, for only my slumber invited existence with no thought at all. I swallowed, remembering the barb of my former self and experiencing a moment of gratitude. Many times the boy should have celebrated my lack of speech, but never quite realised his lucky escape. Heaving out a sigh and channelling my simile’s unending sense of patience, I nodded.

  Sorrel squinted through one eye and his lips turned upward. “I thought so,” he said. With his strange reply hanging in the air, he shoved the path-delineator deep into his pocket, turned up his furry collar and took the lead across the white expanse between us and our fate.

  I followed, bending my body behind his furry outline to avoid the harsh wind which continued to strip the skin from our cheeks and foreheads. Hunger became a thing of the past for us both as our stomachs twisted into empty knots. We unravelled them with constant mouthfuls of ice, our tongues no longer burning from the sensation of it dissolving into a numbing drink. We imagined mirages as I had once before, learning to ignore the confusing sights and not speed up towards inevitable disappointment.

  A path of worn ice appeared at the exact point marked as north on the path-delineator. Sorrel examined its face and ignored my expectant palm. “No,” he said, flipping the lid closed. “You gave it to me. We’re right on track and should reach the city before nightfall.”

  Without the energy remaining to even stamp my foot in irritation, I accepted his usurped authority and followed. He refused to renounce his prediction by digging a final snow cave, jabbing a finger towards the rising spire which we craned our necks to see the top of. “It’s not safe on the path. Soon it will become too narrow and we’d need to burrow into the walls, Este. The Counselor taught us to consider our weaknesses with as much effort as admiring our strengths. Imagine defending yourself from attackers in a narrow aperture such as this will soon become. Or worse, buried alive in a drift collapse. No, we’re too exposed. We must aim to get into the city around dusk, before they close the gates.”

  The first signs of life began at the point the snow grew most slushy and unmanageable. Many feet had trodden it into wet, rutted paths. The new entrance to Forlornn displayed the craft of men, designed in lengths of walkway blunted by sharp angles. It offered poor visibility of the gate and easy points of ambush. Nothing about it favoured our circumstances. With room enough for two carriages side by side and the walls beginning to tower above us, I saw Sorrel’s logic. He stopped and turned his back on the city, his expression urgent and his eyes glittering with nervous excitement. “Will you take my lead?” he demanded.

  My gaze strayed past him to the first length of snow tunnel, the path disappearing around a blind right bend. I felt nothing, numbness pervading my mind and preventing any ability to plan. I gave a ready nod to the small boy who had silently become the general to a misplaced queen. He smiled, the flash of ecstasy so brilliant, it reminded me of sunshine and flowers. “Grand,” he said and held out his hand. “Then take off your sword.”

  I gaped and shook my head, generating a grave disappointment to slip across Sorrel’s expression. His jaw tightened and he wagged his hand. “Give me your sword.”

  My eyes widened at the sound of men, voices and footsteps echoing off the white walls. Sorrel clenched and released his outstretched fingers in impatience and waited as I unbuckled it. The tempered steel gave a sad clank as I relinquished it and a frisson of doubt slithered up my spine. Sorrel glanced behind him at the loud approach and in the dying seconds before the sound’s owners appeared, seized my wrist with his free hand and placed the path-delineator into my open palm.

  I should not have looked. The lid flipped up at my bidding and the dials faced me. The directional needle showed as north, overwriting the true north marker with an intricate flourish of brass. My Bee Queen’s Champion remained sleeping, its tiny marker no more than a dot at the uppermost edge of its dial and the needle flat. But the third dial measuring my declining lifeline wrought a gasp which rocked my body. My gaze held Sorrel’s in accusation and dismay.

  “I couldn’t let you see.” Remorse made his lower lip tremble and he gripped the belt of my sheath in both hands, twisting the leather in anguish. “You’re over half way to death, Este. I couldn’t tell you. Here is your destiny,” he breathed. “You need to believe me. I would have brought you here no matter what and altered the dials to fool you if I had needed.” He shrugged. “But the path-delineator complied and led us, anyway.” Bowing his head, he scuffed his shoe and pursed swollen, painful lips. “You complained of the spring in your mattress, so I knew you’d find it, but I regret my thievery of the Counselor. He was nothing but kind to me, even though he believed me bewitched by you and not able to think for myself.”

  I flew at him before he finished puffing out his chest with pride, my fingers closing around the
path-delineator in my palm. Sorrel’s head wobbled on his neck as I hit him, my knuckles harder for the the rounded object in my grasp. Rough hands dragged me upright as my arm pulled back for a second blow. I became a squirming mix of bones and muscle in their grasp, attempting to vent my fury on the boy. I saw a trickle of blood plummet from Sorrel’s nose onto his fur coat and wondered that he didn’t fight back, though Limah equipped him. More men arrived and Sorrel pushed back his shoulders and hardened his expression.

  A guard in the ochre and black of the Wasp nation slid around the corner, sounding unfit and out of breath. Sorrel addressed him as the others wrestled with me. “This is the Princessa Estefania Melitto. I have disarmed her.” He held my sword at right angles from his body, his spindly, malnourished arms too weak to heft it higher. “Take us to the Wasp Lord.” His eyelashes fluttered and his cracked lips parted with one final missive for me. “He taught us the fight would never be fair, Este. Remember?”

  The breath whooshed from my lips and his betrayal robbed me of oxygen to replace it with. But wherever he had gone, my Counselor’s pride flooded into my spine and kept me standing. The crumpled form of a petulant princessa no longer occupied any place in my warrior hardened body.

  The sword’s call flared in my breast and a new Estefania answered it. “I am coming.”

  From The Author

  Hey, thank you so much for supporting this fantasy trilogy.

  By now you might have guessed the true nature of what Este is up against.

  If not, you’ve a terrible shock coming.

  You should know that things are never as they seem, especially where the Wasp Lord is concerned.

  Do you know the location of the sword?