by K. J. Parker
Chapter Seventeen
Menin Aeide was gathering flowers. She’d found a dense thicket of rhododendrons, half a mile inside the woods and over on the west side, and today her basket was full of the fat red blooms, which grew so well here (not like at home); particular favourites of hers, for a reason she hugged close to herself, and which made her smile every time she thought of it. The air was still and cool this far into the wood, and all she could hear was the dull, soothing hum of bees, busy robbing the flowers, like miners working a claim.
They liked it when she brought flowers home. Even General Kunessin made a point of thanking her, saying how nice they looked, how they brightened up the barn. She knew for a fact that none of them gave a damn about flowers (men didn’t), but she realised that what gave them pleasure was Menin Aeide acting normally, doing an accepted female thing - not acting crazy, in other words. Fine: she could do that, if that was what it took. Cooking nice meals, picking flowers, chattering, dusting. Any fool could do that.
She’d found the hive the day before she gave her dinner party. It was an ugly growth on the trunk of a dead tree, hollowed out by damp and rot, now teeming with construction and industry. The busy bee: epitome of all the female virtues. She grinned like anything when she thought of that; almost wished there was someone she could share the joke with.
Since she was both cautious and patient by nature, she hadn’t stripped the combs of every last drop. Instead, she’d taken a little honey each day, just enough to fill her little horn cup, and each evening she’d added that day’s achievement to the store, which she kept in a jar hidden in the chimney of the burnt-out house. She didn’t bother with a ceremony, the way Aidi Proiapsen did, and there was no need to seal the jar, because nobody else knew about it. It was her secret, the second beautiful secret thing in her life, and today, if she’d judged it right, the jar would be full.
Danger was, of course, that the bees would swarm and move away. You couldn’t tell with bees, sometimes they just upped and went, abandoning their settlements and their workings and their store of hard-won gold. It all depended on the whim of the leader, so she’d heard, because bees were violently loyal; they lived for the queen, unquestioning, devoted. She’d always wondered about that, but she understood it perfectly now.
The bees were still there. As she approached the dead tree she could hear them. She walked right up close, knowing they wouldn’t sting her, even though they must suspect she had designs on their treasury. She laughed; maybe she could do a deal with them. They could keep the wood if they gave her the honey.
She stood and listened to them for half an hour, until she fancied she was beginning to understand their language - not worth the effort, she had to admit; all bees have to talk about is work, where the flowers are, how much pollen we got today, weigh it and store it in the comb, how rich we’re getting, how rich we’d be if we all flew away tomorrow with our individual shares smeared on our legs. She realised that there was a great big happy grin all over her face, but it didn’t bother her. She’d learned that the bees weren’t planning on going anywhere; their queen had brought them here from far away, right the other side of the wood, to this corner where the rhododendrons bloomed, and here she intended to stay. So that was all right.
Instead of going home the direct way, she followed the edge of the wood on the seaward side, so she could look out from the top of the round, pudding-shaped hill; a pudding with a slice out of it, where the wind and tides had undermined its base, and all the crumbs had fallen into the sea. It was the best lookout on the island - Kunessin and the men hadn’t found it yet; they used the watchtower or the tall rocky spike down on the coast by the bay when they wanted to watch for ships, but Pudding Hill gave a clear view right out to sea. If a ship came, she’d see it from here a full two hours before they could. She’d proved that, the day the courier sloop came.
On the edge of Pudding Slice, the cliff that had fallen down, there was a little platform of rabbit-cropped short grass, practically a lawn, and she liked to sit there when she came here to watch. Later, there would be flowers in the grass, buttercups and angel’s eyes and small, shrewd white daisies, but of course she wouldn’t be there to see them.
As usual, she occupied her mind as she stared at the wide blue sea by making the list. It varied from day to day, according to her moods. Some days there were two: Enyo and either Chaere or Clea, if she was feeling particularly charitable. Some days, nobody at all, if something had happened to upset or annoy her. On the days when there was just one, it’d be either Enyo or Chaere. It was never just Clea, though. She hated Clea.
She yawned. Peaceful. In summer, it’d be quite delightful here. As usual, having done the list for the day (Enyo and Chaere; she was particularly good-natured today), she ran once through the sequence of events and schedule of Things to Do, and then fell to musing about recipes; though, if she was honest with herself, that was overambitious and unnecessary. When all was said and done, you couldn’t beat just plain fresh cornbread, smeared with lashings of rich golden honey.
And (secret smile) the barn decorated with great big bunches of rhododendron flowers, purely for her sake. Private joke.
She must have dozed off. She opened her eyes, and there it was: a white speck on the blue sea, like spit. She looked again. Two specks. Her eyes opened wide, and she laughed out loud. Two ships! Two ships, and how many soldiers would there be on each? Obviously the government wasn’t taking any chances. Or - mild disappointment, as she rationalised - one ship full of troops, the other one carrying the miners for the gold works. Even so and never mind. She jumped up, did a little twirl for sheer joy of living, and skipped down off the Pudding back into the woods.
The bees didn’t sting her when she robbed them. It was as though they understood.
It was pure chance that she found them all together in one place. Aidi had convened the meeting. The issue being debated was his latest pet project, the scud mill. The idea was to build a simple waterwheel on the river, where a fast-running branch stream forked off and ran down to the beach about two hundred yards from the settlement perimeter. The wheel, Aidi said, would power all sorts of things: grindstones to grind corn, a take-off to run a circular saw for planking and slabbing lumber, a triphammer for ironworking. How they’d planned to survive on Sphoe without it, he simply couldn’t understand. All that remained was the simple, straightforward business of building it, and there’d never be a better time, when they had nothing to do except wait for the artichokes to grow.
Aidi Proiapsen, Nuctos had once remarked, was the sort of man who wouldn’t take yes for an answer. Kunessin had approved the project in outline, leaving Aidi to get on with it. Aidi had drawn up plans, using the coarse brown paper used to line the seedcorn chests and a stick of alder charcoal. He’d insisted on showing and explaining the plans in detail to the assembled company, and they’d been approved. Now he’d been at the mill site, marking out the footprint with wooden pegs and twine, and he’d marched them all down there - the women too - to give their blessing to his proposals. Kunessin, who’d said, “Yes, that’s fine” at least a dozen times without seeming to make any impression at all, was standing with his weight on one foot, gazing back at the settlement. Kudei was yawning, fidgeting; he’d never managed to find a way to cope with being bored. Muri was following it all very carefully, squinting along the lines of twine. Alces was trying to think up objections to raise and problems to point out, just for the hell of it. The women just looked cold.
“There you all are.” She smiled indiscriminately at them, and held up the broad wooden trencher. “Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?”
Aidi would’ve said yes if he’d had the chance, but Kunessin was too quick for him. “Hello,” he said, moving abruptly in her direction. “What’ve you got there?”
“Cornbread and honey,” she replied cheerfully. “I’ll put it down here and you can help yourselves.”
“Honey,” Kunessin echoed. “Where’d you find that?”
>
Just a fraction of a second before she answered. “There’s a wild hive up in the woods. First of the season,” she added seductively. “I managed to fill four pint jars, so we’ll be all right for a while.”
Kunessin was already chewing; she knew how much he liked honey, and sweet things generally. Kudei had scooped up a slice. He held it at nose height and turned his head so the drips off the side of the bread would drop into his mouth. Clea and Enyo were scoffing; no other word for it. Alces bit his slice of bread in half, then used the severed edge to wipe up pooled honey off the trencher. “Go on, Muri,” she said. “There’s plenty to go round.”
He was still fussing round Aidi’s bits of string and stick. “I’m not all that hungry, thanks.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, then grabbed a slice and shoved it in his mouth. Golden globs dripped down his beard on either side of his chin.
“Aren’t you having any?” Chaere asked with her mouth full. But she’d already thought of an answer to that.
“Already had three slices,” she replied. “One slice left. Now, who wants it?”
Aidi had already had a slice and a half, but he shot out a thumb and forefinger and snatched the last slice off the plate. “This is good honey,” he pronounced. “Particularly delicate flavour.”
“It should be,” she said, taking a long step back, away from them all. The last corner of Aidi’s last slice was vanishing into his mouth. “It’s always better when the bees’ve been feeding on just one type of pollen. You get a purer taste, my aunt used to say.”
“I’m glad there’s more of this,” Kunessin said. “So, what’s the secret ingredient?”
And she smiled; she produced the smile like a weapon and covered them all with it. “It’s rhododendron honey,” she said.
Kunessin was still smiling. Aidi and Muri were chewing. Chaere was trying to get stickiness off her hands with the edge of her shawl. It was Kudei who looked up - he was smiling too - and said, “Oh. But isn’t rhododendron honey supposed to be poisonous?”
“Yes,” Menin said.
Kunessin’s face was good-natured, interested. “So what’ve you done to it to make it edible?”
“Nothing.”
Silence. Their faces didn’t change. Don’t pull faces, or the wind’ll shift and you’ll be stuck like it. Dear God, she thought, have I got to spell it out for them?
“You’ve all been poisoned,” she said. “Quite soon, you’ll all be dead. Oh, and there’s two ships in the bay. I had to wait for the ships, to take me home.”
Kunessin was about to say something along the lines of a joke being a joke; then it was as though someone had stabbed him, just above the navel. He knew about being stabbed: the sudden weakness, the mind coming apart. He tried to breathe, but it was like drinking mud. He saw Aidi take a huge stride in Menin’s direction, then stop dead, as though he’d hit an invisible wall, and slowly double up, the exaggerated slow movement of a falling tree. Enyo was standing staring. Clea had her fingers down her throat - far too late for that. Chaere was clutching her stomach, rocking backwards and forwards. Another stab - he felt that one - and he had no strength left at all.
She’d thought of all sorts of things to say at this point: bitter speeches, gloating speeches, explanations, accusations. She’d thought how proper it would be for them to die with her savage, justified complaints in their ears, so that the last thing that crossed their minds was that she’d been right to kill them; it was only fair, what they deserved. But that was based on the assumption that she’d be the centre of attention, that they’d actually be listening, and she didn’t think they were. Oh well, she thought, not that it matters. She took a few more steps back, though none of them showed any further signs of coming after her, and composed herself to watch.
Aidi kept his feet the longest. She’d thought it would be Kunessin, but he went down before Kudei. It was the knees that went first, she noticed, in every case. She sat down on the grass beside the stream, and settled herself comfortably. She’d brought a chunk of bread - no honey, ha, ha - and a fistful of stale cake, for herself.
She watched as Enyo, then Chaere, then finally Clea drained to clay white and stopped twitching. It would have been nice to leave at least one of them alive - she’d given so much thought to the list - but in the event it simply wasn’t practical. Muri had rolled over on to his side and she could only see the back of his head. Kudei was rolled up in a ball, still moving. Alces had tried to crawl over to his wife (sweet) but hadn’t got far. He was lying on his chest, his elbows drawn up under him, which reminded her of a dead spider, and each breath he drew was like a saw in green wood. Kunessin looked like he was asleep on his back, breathing very shallow, just sips of air every now and again. Aidi was still trying to get up.
She frowned. Of all the things she’d expected it to be, she hadn’t counted on dull.
Time passed. She thought: they’re fighting. Everything’s got to be a battle where they’re concerned, even something so everyday as death. It was almost admirable in a way, but time was getting on; the ships would be at the quay before too much longer and she still had things she had to do. She got up, brushed crumbs off her front, and walked delicately between them, looking down, feeling more than a little impatient. She’d wanted so much to see them actually die, but now it looked like she’d have to leave before the end. Of course, she reflected, some people are like that. Some people just go out like snuffed candles; others drag on and make a meal of it. She bent down to look at Alces, almost sure he’d gone, and saw him blink. Damn the man. Stubborn.
She walked away, feeling cheated, like a child who’s been promised cake.
Major Thumos Anogei had fought in the war. He’d been in the Pharous campaign, where he saw action in all the major battles, and he’d been assigned to General Euteuchida’s expeditionary force, although he hadn’t joined it in time and was therefore not among the thousands who died in the ambush. That, among other reasons, was why he’d been given this job. He knew all about A Company, of course. He fancied he’d seen them once, at some transfer depot in some place whose name he couldn’t remember, one early evening in the rain, and someone had pointed at a clump of weary-looking men sitting on boxes. The incredibly famous A Company, he’d been told, Di’Ambrosies’ men. He’d glanced, seen a clump of men sitting on boxes, slumped forward, too far off to make out details of faces, and he’d had other things on his mind. Since then, since the end of the war, he’d improved on that. Many times, when the conversation in the mess or with civilians had thrown up the exciting name, A Company, he’d looked very modest and said, I knew them, actually, when I was out east; and eyes had widened, and men had bought him drinks.
About Sphoe he knew nothing at all. It was an island, it had been one of those nothing-doing postings during the war, the sort of place you secretly longed to be sent to, but you were ever so scornful about men who’d spent their war there. Now, apparently, they’d found gold here, which of course changed everything. That, fortunately, wasn’t his concern.
His feet itched in his boots, and he went and found the captain.
“How much longer?” he asked.
The captain gave him a patient look. “You tell me,” he said. “Can’t do anything without the wind. Soon as it picks up, we’ll put in. Till then,” and he shrugged, a tradesman’s shrug, a waiting-for-the-parts shrug. “Just got to be patient.”
Major Anogei tried to think like a soldier. “How about launching a boat?” he said. “Could we do that?”
The captain thought about it. “Could do,” he said. “Take, what, four hours to row in from here. Wind should’ve got up by then, I’d have thought, and we’d get there before the boat. But it might not, you don’t know.”
Major Anogei looked away, at the thin string of smoke rising from the blur that presumably marked the settlement. No hurry, of course. It was an island, and the targets didn’t have a ship, so they weren’t going anywhere. “We’ll launch a boat,” he said.
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br /> He went below and announced the change of plan: he wanted a dozen volunteers who could row. Nobody moved. It was, of course, a nuisance that word had got out about why they’d come here. He couldn’t blame the men.
“All right,” he said, and reeled off a dozen names. He had no idea whether any of them could row; they were names he happened to be able to remember. Then he stumped back on deck, unrolled his map of the island, and tried to think.
The Military College; amphibious landings. Opposed or unopposed? Well. He had no reason to believe that A Company suspected anything. They knew soldiers were on their way; they’d done their deal with the civilian commissioner, Straton. That said, if things got nasty, as he was fairly certain they would, it’d be plain common sense to take a few basic precautions, such as drop off half a dozen men on the way in, to act as a reserve in waiting. On the other hand, he ought to work on the assumption that A Company were watching, and if they saw him doing that, they’d immediately know he was up to something.
In the boat, cramped up in the stern with the rudderman’s elbow in his ribs, he did the arithmetic yet again. He had twenty men, and there were five of them. He didn’t like that at all. Bloody fool, he thought; should’ve waited for the wind, landed both ships together at the quay, made his deployments with the advantage of overwhelming force. Instead, here he was bobbing about on a stupid little boat with twenty men, on his way to pick a fight with A Company. At least the sea was calm. He’d suffered on the way out - not conducive to proper military spirit, watching your commanding officer barfing his guts out over the rail - and he was glad that he wouldn’t have to land and develop precise tactical solutions with his mouth full of refluxed acid. Both his feet had gone to sleep. He felt totally unprepared and generally unfit for duty. It reminded him of the old days.