The Hive Queen

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Maybe someone ordered it from Wasp Hive, like your school librarian does,” Blue said. “It feels like the right thing to do.”

  “Arrgh, you are such a SilkWing,” Sundew groaned. “This is the worst idea. It’s basically leaving evidence behind.”

  “No one will guess it’s from the little dragonet who ran away from Cicada Hive,” Blue said. He slipped the strand into the lantern on the ceiling, and light filled the stall. “It could have come from any early morning customer.” He paused and rubbed his wrists with a small smile. “It’s kind of awesome knowing I have something everyone needs. I could give it away to anyone, anytime I want.”

  “Or,” Swordtail observed, “you could set your enemies on fire anytime you want.”

  Sundew pointed one claw at Swordtail. “You,” she said, “are growing on me.”

  Blue shook his head and met Cricket’s eyes with a faintly sick expression. She guessed he was trying to imagine being a dragon who could set another living creature on fire, and that it was beyond his abilities. She brushed one of his wings with hers. I like you as you are, the dragon who gifts fire to those who need it.

  “This stall is just silk,” Cricket said, glancing around. “Come on, we need some jewelry, too.”

  “Jeeeeeewwwwwwwelry,” Sundew complained. But even she had to admit, a little while later in a shrouded jewelry stall, that the long necklaces of little gold leaves Cricket found were kind of cool and she’d maybe be all right with wearing just one of them.

  She was less pleased with Cricket’s other discovery, the thing Cricket had really been looking for: a gold-and-jade headdress with so many points and squiggles and sparkles that it hid the fact that Sundew had no antennae. The LeafWing carried on as though Cricket was attaching actual snakes to her head, but the end result was quite dazzling and entirely distracting.

  “This is the WORST,” Sundew grumbled, glaring into a mirror. “Wil — my tribe would fall over laughing at me right now.”

  “I’m sure they’d understand that sometimes you have to sacrifice your dignity for a higher purpose,” Swordtail joked.

  Sundew swatted at him and he darted out of the way.

  In the same stall, they found bejeweled head coverings for Blue and Swordtail that hung like masks of dewdrops around their eyes, and a bright blue veil-shawl-tiara-thing that mostly hid Cricket’s face and glasses, plus was also gaudy enough that Sundew was a little mollified.

  “At least I’m not the only one who looks like an exploding peony,” she said, surveying the others.

  “I’m surprised these are allowed,” Blue said to Cricket, trailing his claws along the dangling leaves that ornamented a row of bracelets. “I would have thought leaves fit under the rules against trees.”

  “Maybe in Cicada Hive. Lady Jewel allows her dragons to fly a little closer to the edges of the rules than most Hive leaders,” Cricket pointed out.

  “What rules against trees?” Sundew asked sharply.

  “We, um.” Blue faltered under her outraged glare. “We’re forbidden to put any trees in our art. No tree sculptures, no trees in the background of our paintings.”

  “No planting trees in our terrariums,” Cricket said, thinking wistfully of her secret little tree, back at school. Would anyone take care of it now that she was gone? “Some fruit trees are allowed in the greenhouses, but only with special permission and strictly under supervision by Queen Wasp. No tree planting or anything that might make a tree grow in the savanna.”

  Sundew picked up a rope of pearls, wound it around her front talons, and snapped the cord with one violent tug. Pearls flew everywhere, clattering over the countertops.

  “Let’s go,” she growled at Cricket. With a whirl of her saffron silk cape, she stalked out into the market.

  “Whoa,” Swordtail said, looking up from a basket of turquoise earrings near the back of the stall. “Did she just get even angrier, or did I imagine that?”

  “Definitely angrier,” Cricket said. “I don’t know why, though. Do you, Blue?”

  “I think … I think maybe erasing trees even from our art is like Queen Wasp trying to wipe out the LeafWings all over again,” Blue said. “I mean, maybe that’s how it feels to Sundew.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Cricket said. She’d always thought it was a silly rule; trees were just another plant, and plants were useful for lots of things, and why not have more if they could? She’d never seen them as a symbol of the long-gone LeafWings, but now she realized that Queen Wasp must think of them that way.

  Blue left three little coils of flamesilk in a stone vase on the counter and ducked outside with Swordtail. As Cricket started to follow them, she heard a small clattering sound behind her.

  Probably a mouse, she told herself, but she edged back toward the counter with her heart thumping. If there was another dragon in here, who’d seen them putting on their disguises, or Blue creating flamesilk from his wrists …

  The baskets of jewelry behind the counter were still and quiet. Nobody could possibly be hiding back there; there weren’t any corners or shadows big enough for a dragon.

  But then something moved — something darted from one basket to another. Something smaller than a dragon, but bigger than a mouse. Something with dark fur and swift paws.

  A reading monkey!

  I really need a better name for them.

  Cricket leaned over the counter, staring at the basket where it had disappeared. A long moment passed, and then a small head poked out and stared back at her. Alert brown eyes. A sweet face, narrower than a monkey’s and furless except for the top of its head.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Cricket said softly. “I just want to know what you are.”

  The creature gazed at her. Was that curiosity in its eyes? Did it want to understand her, too?

  “Cricket!” Swordtail shouted, sticking his head back into the stall. The little animal jumped and vanished behind the baskets. “Dragons are coming from the Hive!”

  Oh, why couldn’t I have found one of you before all this started happening? Cricket cast one last longing look at the creature’s hiding spot and then turned to hurry outside.

  Swordtail was right. Dragons were starting to spill out of the Hive’s doors and flying ledges, swooping off into the sky or down toward the market. Jewel Hive was waking up for the day, or at least its SilkWings were.

  The tricky part was keeping out of sight until the market was relatively crowded. They managed by moving between stalls and staying in the corners of the ones Cricket guessed were run by HiveWings, and so more likely to open later. There was a close call with a SilkWing who was sweeping behind the tents, but soon the narrow pathways were full of dragons.

  Cricket breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been right about Jewel Hive; her memories hadn’t failed her. Everyone wore bright colors and piles of gemstones. Capes swirled beside wings everywhere and headdresses glittered from half of the heads around them. Even the SilkWings who swept the streets had adornments in their ears or silk scarves around their necks.

  They edged through the crowd, making their way slowly toward the Hive. Cricket tried to look as though she was shopping, pausing to examine the merchandise here and there, smiling faintly at the stall owners who tried to lure her inside.

  She was the only HiveWing in the group, so most dragons would assume the other three were her SilkWing servants. It was weird and uncomfortable to have them trailing behind her, heads down. It made her feel guilty to think about how many times she’d walked past their own SilkWing cook without saying hello or taken the SilkWing workers at the market for granted.

  She wished Sundew could lead the way. She wished Blue could walk alongside her, wing to wing, so she could laugh with him and talk to him and let everyone know he was wonderful and just as important and interesting and valuable as any HiveWing dragon in Pantala.

  But she kept up her part, acting like any other self-absorbed, fashion-obsessed HiveWing in Jewel Hive. Soon the main doors of
the Hive were ahead of them, swarming with dragons coming in and out of the central Glitterbazaar, which occupied the bottom three levels of the city. All the windows were open to let in the sun, and the streets and stalls ahead of them shone like a shattered frozen rainbow.

  Behind her, Sundew cleared her throat meaningfully. Cricket glanced around and noticed the HiveWing guards posted on either side of the doors. They wore sleek black armor and helmets that hid their faces, but Cricket guessed that the eyes glaring through the little slits would be dead white.

  Cricket felt a shiver of terrified despair.

  Queen Wasp was watching. Queen Wasp was everywhere. At the entrance to every Hive, flying patrols over the savanna, inside every HiveWing if she wanted to be.

  How could they possibly hope to sneak by her? How could they ever escape, when her gaze and her fury could follow them wherever they went?

  The closest guard turned his head sharply toward them.

  “Don’t look at them. Don’t react,” Sundew whispered fiercely, stepping on Cricket’s tail. Cricket turned toward her with what she hoped was a lofty HiveWing expression. This had the added benefit of curving her head away from the guard who was staring at them.

  “It’s all so boring,” Cricket said in the high, slow way that Jewel Hive dragons often talked. “I feel like I’ve seen everything a million times. Where’s the originality, I mean, yawn.”

  “You should try Raindrop Scales,” a HiveWing beside her in the crowd interjected unexpectedly. “They’re only open during the rainy season so everything feels brand-new! I love them. Have you heard of Pinacate? She’s the owner and the designer. She has a trillion innovative ideas every year; it’s incredible. I wish I were that creative!”

  “Wow, really? I don’t think I’ve been there,” Cricket said, surprised into using her real voice. The stranger was a summer-squash-yellow color with flecks of red and black scales and black wings, but she’d covered herself with webs of garnets and what Cricket guessed were fake diamonds, since there were so many of them. A long sea-green silk scarf was wound around her neck and body, all the way down her tail, pinned together with an enormous dragonfly brooch on her back.

  “It’s right by the Salvation Statue,” the other dragon confided. “Very expensive, though. I must admit I often go there for ideas and then see if I can find someone to imitate them. Don’t tell.” She giggled in a warm, friendly way.

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Cricket said, smiling back at her.

  But the reverse would not be true, she thought with a twinge of anxiety. The HiveWing was all smiles and stories now, but if this dragon discovered that Cricket was a fugitive, wouldn’t she turn her in immediately? Or, even if she understood and wanted to help them, she wouldn’t be able to, because at any moment Queen Wasp could steal her mind. This other HiveWing could never choose to run away like Cricket had; she could never be free of the queen. She didn’t have the choice to think for herself.

  She’d helped them inadvertently, though. Cricket snuck a sideways peek at the guards. The one who’d looked over must have seen two HiveWings gossiping and lost interest; he was now staring attentively at the movement of birds on the canopy.

  “Thank you very much,” Cricket said to the yellow dragon as they stepped inside. “I mean — um, for the recommendation.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you there!” the HiveWing chirped. She waved and bustled away.

  The walls around them were weirdly both comforting and claustrophobic. Cricket was so used to living in a Hive, with walls around her all the time. And yet she found her scales prickling anxiously, her eyes wishing for the sky overhead.

  It’s not the walls that are bothering me, she acknowledged to herself. It’s the dragons inside them.

  “She seemed really nice,” Blue whispered as they wound their way toward the center of the market.

  “For a HiveWing,” Sundew scoffed.

  “She did seem nice,” Cricket agreed, keeping her voice low. “That’s the kind of dragon I’m talking about, Sundew. What would she do if the queen didn’t control her? I mean — if she knew the truth about everything — the flamesilks, the Book of Clearsight — and she didn’t have the queen in her head, making her do things and messing with her thoughts. Then could we trust her? Maybe she would try to help us.”

  “Like you,” Blue said. “Maybe she’d be like you. Maybe a lot of them wish they could be free.”

  “Doubtful,” Sundew said. “Everything is easy for HiveWings like her. Why would she risk her own happy life?”

  “Yeah,” Swordtail said fervently. “HiveWings don’t care about anyone but themselves.”

  Cricket flinched, and Blue frowned at Swordtail. “That’s really unfair, Swordtail. You don’t know what’s going on in their hearts. The only HiveWing you know well is Cricket, and she cares a lot.”

  But I care because of you, Cricket thought, watching him. I might never have known any of this, if it wasn’t for you.

  “I know plenty,” Swordtail grumbled under his breath.

  “I think Cricket is different from all the others,” Sundew said. There was something in her voice … as though she needed to convince herself that was true.

  “Maybe not. What do you think, Cricket? Are there any other HiveWings who are … who can’t be … I mean, whose brains are like yours?” Blue asked Cricket, glancing around nervously.

  “Not that I’ve ever met,” Cricket said. “But we wouldn’t exactly introduce ourselves that way, so how would I know?” She thought of that first day she’d seen everyone’s eyes go white. “There was one dragon long ago; I think he was trying to fight it. But the queen used everyone in the Hive to catch him and bring him to her. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’d guess he’s not available for interviews.”

  Blue shivered, and she brushed his wing, trying to be as reassuring as she could be in public. The dragons around them were so loud and moving so quickly that she didn’t think they’d notice anything beyond the bargains in their talons, but still. They had to be careful, for Blue’s sake.

  “Is that the Salvation Statue?” Swordtail whispered.

  Cricket craned her neck up and spotted the head of the dragon that loomed over the center of the Glitterbazaar. It wasn’t the real Queen Wasp, but the details of the stonework were so accurate that Cricket half expected the statue to suddenly twist around and glare at her.

  But it didn’t. The stone queen stayed frozen in place, wings flung out triumphantly, one talon holding up the Book of Clearsight.

  Cricket stumbled, suddenly remembering the rest of the statue that commemorated the end of the war. The marble dragon that lay dead below the queen’s other talons, with one of her deadly wrist stingers plunged through his heart. She’d never stopped for a moment to think about that dragon, because he wasn’t anyone in particular. He was just “the enemy.” He was a blank nobody representing the tribe who’d been defeated and exterminated when the HiveWings “saved” the SilkWings from them.

  He was a LeafWing.

  She glanced back at Sundew. “I should have warned you,” she said quietly. “This could be upsetting.”

  “Don’t worry, HiveWing,” Sundew muttered, twitching her cape closer around her shoulders. “I’m at full rage all the time. It can’t get worse.”

  “All the time?” Blue said wonderingly. “Really? Don’t you get tired?”

  “Yes,” she growled. “And that makes me furious, too.”

  They stepped out of the crowd into the space around the statue. Like the Salvation Mosaic in Cicada Hive, this monument was also set apart from its surroundings. A tranquil circle of grass surrounded it, strangely peaceful in the chaotic bustle of the market. Cricket noticed that most of the shopping dragons carefully went around the circle to avoid treading on the grass, unless they were going up to admire the statue.

  It was really extraordinary, twice the size of any actual dragons, and carved from stone quarried in the northwest mountains of Pantala. An enor
mous ruby glinted from each of the queen’s eye sockets, and gold letters were inlaid on the cover of the marble Book of Clearsight.

  But the real book doesn’t look anything like that, Cricket thought, gazing up at the fake book. It’s not shiny or enormous; it doesn’t have a title emblazoned on it. It’s not what’s on the outside of the Book that counts; it’s what’s on the inside, and that’s the part Queen Wasp has been lying about to everyone.

  She glanced at the outline of the heavy pouch under Sundew’s cloak. We should make a copy of it, in case anything happens to it. But if anything did happen to it … who would believe us that the copy was real?

  Swordtail was circling the statue, frowning and fiddling anxiously with his jeweled mask.

  “Well?” Sundew hissed as he returned to them.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I don’t see a place to leave a message that wouldn’t immediately be seen. What would you do?”

  “Knock it over,” she muttered. “Smash it to pieces with my bare talons. Throw the broken rock chunks at everyone in this Hive.” But she stalked forward and studied the statue with sharp eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Blue whispered to Cricket.

  “Me?” she said, startled. “Sure. I don’t know … this statue makes me feel so guilty now. And the Book is all wrong. I wish dragons could read the real version.”

  He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about Clearsight,” he said softly. “She wouldn’t want a war or this life for her descendants or for the other two tribes. But I don’t know how we’re going to help everyone. We’re just four normal little dragons.”

  “I know,” Cricket agreed. “Well, three normal little dragons and one vengeful warrior dragon with an arsenal of terrifying bugs.”

  Sundew had paused near one corner of the statue’s base. She turned casually and met Cricket’s eyes. Swordtail stepped toward her and she poked him backward, tipping her head to beckon Cricket to her. There were only two other dragons on the grass circle with them: a father with a small dragonet, who were sitting on the far side of the statue, sharing a lemon pastry and talking about the story of the Salvation.