by Jean Gill
‘You’ll get used to it, son. That’s why I wanted time for us both with nobody watching us. We need to hide our full strength until the time is right.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Soon. The Council is already split into factions. Many have lost touch with the history in the walls, don’t accept our way of life, are open to approaches by the enemy without.’
‘I have felt it.’
‘Magaram dealt with the water gate breach – and caused bigger rifts because of how he dealt with it. The fool thinks that a show of public loyalty reflects private belief. When bullied, weak men will always swear one thing and do another. Magaram has opened them to our suggestions of a middle way.’
‘But I thought we were against compromise? That we must protect what can be sustained?’
‘Of course. But first we must fly different colours from Magaram. Not that he understands what he professes to protect. We will pull the Citadel back to strict observance of Perfection, from the tolerance I see creeping in, everywhere.’
‘But we’ll speak of the middle way?’
‘Now you see it. Everyone will support us and we will turn them to our ends by pressing on the pulse points of each man’s wishes, fears and prejudices. Each man has such points and if we appeal to them separately, we tailor our arguments to what they want to hear and win them all. You could learn much from listening to the walls and their tales of the past.’
‘But when we win? We can’t please them all.’
‘And we won’t try. We’ll be in power and we’ll do what we’ve been planning all these years. They’ll forget soon enough what we said beforehand – and we can deal with any who don’t face reality.’
A pause. ‘About my feelings, about the breach, the enemy. I didn’t just mean the water gate. I could sense the enemy, the enemy without, not the enemy within, in the Maturity Barn.’
‘When?’ The tone was sharp.
‘Yesterday afternoon. I went there to place my wards, to prepare for the next Ceremony and I sensed something, I can’t explain, some mockery around me.’
Bastien, for sure, thought Mielitta. With his father, the new Councillor. Her heart thumped as she realised what Bastien had sensed in the Maturity Barn yesterday afternoon.
‘Like I felt with that servant,’ Bastien continued. ‘The old child.’
‘You’re obsessed with her.’ Rinduran’s voice was full of disapproval. ‘You and Jannlou. And you’ve spent too much time with Jannlou. He is not at your level. And he is his father’s son as you are mine. He has served his purpose. It’s time to distance yourself.’
‘But he’s my friend. And he feels it too, the strangeness in that servant. Only he says she has a purpose and can be useful to the Citadel one day. If that’s his magecraft speaking, we should listen.’
Oh stones! Jannlou’s not another soul-reader, is he? wondered Mielitta in exasperation. Did all these men know her fate better than she did?
‘You did my bidding, harried her, tried to force her into the Citadel’s ways?’
‘I did, father. So did Jannlou and the others.’
‘And did it work?’
‘No. She’s more defiant than ever.’
Mielitta stayed very still. Maybe her new guise would hide her identity and maybe it wouldn’t but neither mage would look kindly on an eavesdropper.’
‘Then learn this: a rotten citizen is rotten to the core and cannot be changed, only suppressed for the good of others. Don’t waste your time again.’
‘She behaved oddly around the water gate. I think she’s corrupting a younger servant. I tried to correct the younger one–’
‘–and that didn’t work either.’
Mielitta wished she could jab an arrowhead into each of them. Their arrogance in speaking of correction and suppression! Her ‘corruption’ of Drianne! These men didn’t even know the names of the women whose lives they dismissed as inferior! Her head began to buzz in anger and she controlled herself. The last thing she wanted was a thousand enraged bees making her point, painfully.
‘No,’ admitted Bastien.
Huh! No mention of him being defeated by a mere girl and running away.
‘This is what you will do. You will invite both these females to the next Maturity Ceremony. You’re familiar with the ritual now? You can lead it?’
‘Yes. Mage Puggy has instructed me and I’ve spoken to the Mage-Smith.’
‘Then you can issue invitations and set the date. Mage Puggy is weak. She has ‘interpreted’ the Mage-Smith’s tests and saddled us with new adults who are weakening the quality of our society. Weak people are the result of weak tests. You won’t make that mistake.’
‘No, father.’
‘Also, it is time you chose a mate. My advice is that you use the Maturity Test to choose well.’
‘I could select the younger servant, the less difficult one? Of course, if it’s down to me, I’ll suppress the older girl, the freak. But the younger one will be pretty. Her stammer is ugly though.’
‘Who’d want to listen to a woman anyway?’ Rinduran followed his own thought. ‘Your kind heart will be the death of you, son. My advice is to suppress her too. But I remember the hot blood of youth. I could mute her and you could try to make her a good woman. How old is she?’
‘Twelve.’
‘A good age for a female mate, malleable. The consummation can wait a year if necessary. You’ll find ways to satisfy yourself. If her test shows suitable qualities, I won’t forbid it, but I think you’re taking a risk. Suppression is the wiser course but you must make your own decision. And if you detect latent magecraft in any of the female candidates, suppress them. The growing number of women mages – Councillors even! – these last few decades has upset the balance, upset the men. You can feel the discontent that they must sit quiet while women speak. This situation cannot be sustained so we will return to what we know works best.’
‘Yes, father. We could use that as our manifesto. What we know works best.’
‘Tried and tested. Perfection based on the wisdom of the walls – we need to get back to basics.’ Rinduran lectured his son. ‘Sovereignty is a good word to use, and references to the way the Citadel used to be, in the old days, before well-meaning liberals weakened our values. We have the walls’ truth on our side.’
‘What if mages, or even ordinary adults, wish to hear what the walls say?’ asked Bastien.
An unpleasant laugh. ‘It takes years to hear all the walls say and make appropriate selections. I think we can choose suitable extracts to project, if needed.’
‘Out of context?’
‘Of course, my boy. You have so much to learn but you’ve made a good start. I’m proud of you.’
‘Why bother keeping all these books? Most people can’t even read and the mages get their history from the walls. Who needs any more than that? Why don’t we just burn them all?’
‘I thought the same at your age but I have spent years exploring the walls. They are very instructive and one message often repeated is that suppressing books is counter-productive. There are many theories as to the cause but no clear rationale, only the overwhelming consensus that this is so. Whereas suppressing people has often proved effective. We’ll talk more of this another time. Let’s get back to our public selves now.’
The voices moved towards the door, increasing in volume so any passers-by could hear them.
‘Please pay my compliments on the state of the library to Mage Yacinthe when you visit her. I can see the results of her work already and we will all profit.’
‘I will, father. I have an appointment this afternoon to pay her my respects. I only hope I can do half the job she has done as Maturity Mage and I am very conscious of the honour given me, so young. I will seek her help and support to continue her work in such a prestigious job.’
The voices tailed off as the door closed, leaving Mielitta on the ladder, shaking with rage. How dare they threaten Drianne with suppression or with Bas
tien as a mate – she wasn’t sure which option was worse. Well, they’d missed their chance of suppressing her so easily. And as for plotting against Magaram to carry out their vile plans! They were more guilty of treason than she was but nobody would ever believe her if she accused them.
Underneath her outrage ran a darker unease. Declan was consulted by Maturity Mages, was responsible for their test? She didn’t like the link between the forge and the Ceremony being any closer than a path from the back door to the Barn but she saw no reason to doubt what she’d heard. She knew Declan worked on commissions but she’d never seen or heard this kind of discussion, nor any such test, in all the years she’d peeked in every corner of the smithy. And she’d seen no sign of smith-work in the Barn.
She shrugged off the unworthy suspicions. It was a mystery, as was much of what mages did. She could ask Declan about it next time she saw him, pretending she’d felt his work in her own testing. They would laugh about it together.
Help! Help! buzzed the voices in her head.
‘Not now,’ she told them. ‘Thank you but I don’t need help. I was just angry at what I heard. Nothing for you to worry about.’
Not us helping you. You help us. Needed, they buzzed wildly, more agitated than she’d felt them even when panicked by smoke and fire. The One has died and we are not prepared. You must take her place or we will all die. Until we are ready. Come now.
Her thigh throbbed and their need made the word ‘No’ impossible. Hadn’t they shown her what unity meant? As she was their responsibility, they were hers, indivisible. She barely had time to think indivisible when the bee on her thigh raised her head, rippled her wings and ripped Mielitta into the whirl of time and space that landed her in the Forest. In a dark box, crowded with miserable bees.
Home her voices told her in despair. Help us.
Chapter Twelve
A bodyguard of her bees protected Mielitta, fluttering their wings in agitation. Respect for the Queen, they told her. For you.
Clumsy on six legs, adjusting to her enlarged, blue vision, she stumbled forward, in more of a crawl than a walk.
Her bees rubbed against her, crowding her so closely she was almost being carried.
They’ll kill you if you smell wrong. You have to smell like us, like home hive.
She was in a narrow crevasse between vertical honeycomb cliffs and forward had many options; up, down, sideways. Her bodyguard directed her downwards and her instinct impelled her away from the lighter region of the heights, so she let herself be guided.
She could smell the misery in the hive. Beyond the bodies of her bees, she glimpsed others, drooping in apathy, idle. As she made her progress towards deepest darkness, she sensed a change in her wake: some activity and wary hope. Her bees clustered less tightly, allowed some brave scouts to investigate the intruder. To kill her if she didn’t fit in. The story of her life.
She could see their poison darts, big as the top part of her body, her thorax. It wouldn’t take many stings to end her little life but she was no longer afraid. She could feel the confidence of her bodyguard as they escorted her deeper into the hive, their pride in her.
You are our Queen, they told her, dancing respect with their wings, signalling to the other bees that she had come.
Their antennae tickled Mielitta as the scouts scented her. Bees had no sense of personal space. She could feel the brush of hairs, see the yellow trace of pollen on the empty sacks attached to their legs. The hexagonal cells of their huge eyes looked like a children’s board game but she didn’t know the rules and stared back at them, at risk of provoking an injection of the venom that pulsed in those huge darts.
Her body burned at the memory of the attack in the Forest, the thousand darts left in her body. Her queen bee’s body had no room for a thousand darts but one would no doubt suffice. Below her armour-plated thorax, the bee-skin of her abdomen felt so much thinner than human skin that the bee who killed her would keep her sting and her own life.
Maybe Mielitta could sting them instead. What equipment did she have on this body? Who could tell her what she needed to know to be queen? Her voices? They were all females, warriors and workers, cleaners and nursemaids, and so were these scouts, probing her. As if she hadn’t been tested enough these last few days!
I can tell you. A new voice spoke in her head, a voice she knew as a brand on her thigh, a connection to the hive, the queen who lived inside her.
Mielitta recalled the design, compared it to the worker bees surrounding her. The body was longer, the wings stubby and impractical. That was a disappointment. She’d hoped that she’d at least get to fly before she was killed as an imposter.
Look.
One of the scouts moved away from her, making the same wing-flutter as her bodyguard.
Respect for the Queen.
She’d passed the test. She held up one of her six legs to give a regal wave and made her cumbersome way past empty cells, downwards. The flutter dance surrounded her as she moved, taken up by all the bees who crowded to see her. She could get used to this.
Her coterie paused at the bottom of the vertical cliffs, where a passageway ran horizontally, just tall enough for her to walk along.
Your home. Explore. Fill them with hope.
She walked the length of the bottom, alongside a wooden wall, until she was stopped by another wall. Of course. She was in a box. She waddled back the way she’d come, counted ten vertical cliffs of double-sided wax comb, towering above her. She’d come down a cliff in the middle so she would explore one near the side wall. She could spread well-being amongst her people as she progressed, with pauses to observe and to listen to her inner queen.
Most of the comb in the middle cliffs had been empty but she had seen a thin scattering of covered cells.
Brood, bee babies. Females. Not enough.
Before she’d reached the bottom, there had been bigger, bumpy lids to a cluster of filled cells.
Brood. Male.
That was interesting. She’d only seen females and she wondered what the males did and where they were.
As she walked across the bottom to reach an end cliff, she had to duck and detour to avoid rocky outcrops dangling below the comb, shaped like peanuts
‘Brood. Male,’ she declared with satisfaction at how quickly she was catching on.
No, corrected her inner queen, quivering. Queen cells. Your rivals. Kill them!
‘I don’t think so!’ Mielitta had only just been accepted into the hive and she was not going to rush into killing anybody. She did want to understand what was going on and then she’d make her own mind up about what to do.
She climbed up the cliff nearest the wall.
‘No brood.’ Silence meant that she was right this time. Some cells were filled but again the pattern was patchy. Clusters of fluffy blue balls confused her for a minute as she adjusted to her bee vision, which showed no red and many violets. So the ball would be yellow and orange to a human.
‘Pollen.’ She poked her sticky tongue into a ball just for a taste. Better than Citadel sustenance. Like eating clouds. Unfortunately, she’d signalled that she was hungry and immediately she had courtiers offering pollen-balls and poking their probosces out at her, long bendy cones that dripped sticky stuff.
Open your mouth. She was no keener to be killed for improper behaviour than to kill, so she opened her mouth. Immediately there was a bee’s tongue in her mouth and she gagged instinctively. Then the nectar flowed down her throat and she no longer cared about the feeding method. This was what she wanted to drink for the rest of her life. Another bee was waiting anxiously and so she just opened her mouth to see what would come next.
The bee regurgitated a gelatinous substance and passed it on to Mielitta, who rolled the oily cream in her mouth and swallowed. The bitter aftertaste felt medicinal, like bark and leaves, food that was good for her rather than a treat.
Royal jelly. All brood begins life fed on royal jelly but those females chosen to be queens are s
urrounded by it in their cells, made royal by its magic.
Mielitta saw other filled, wax-capped cells on the furthest cliff. ‘Not brood?’ she queried but she didn’t wait for the answer. She could smell the dark amber sweetness and she had to taste it. She scraped away some wax and immediately the liquid trickled down, to the consternation of all the neighbouring workers. She lapped as much as she could before her courtiers cleaned up the mess she’d made.
You should not feed yourself. It is a criticism of your courtiers.
Their feelers gesturing anxiously, her courtiers brought her more royal jelly, pollen and nectar. At this rate, she’d be too big to move through the bee spaces! However, a queen had her duties to perform so Mielitta opened her mouth and added another stock of food to the delicacies in her stomach. Honey distilled the flavours of nectar and she’d only tasted one mix of flowers so far. This was the life.
Not flowers. That is forest honey made from sugared tree sap, honeydew. Aphids chew the sap, take what they need, give the rest back to the tree. And our people harvest the honeydew. You will taste many honeys in your lifetime.
Satiated and buoyed up by the love of her people, Mielitta was ready to find out what the hive’s problems were, or rather, had been. The coming of the Chosen Queen would no doubt solve everything. She waved a foreleg in regal benediction.
‘Why was there no queen here?’ she demanded.
There was a swarm. The old queen took a third of the colony, sought a new home. As was proper, the new queen hatched, took her mating flight and then disaster struck. A crow killed her.
‘But there are new queens growing. Couldn’t the hive manage on its own for a bit?’
It was weak, struggling. The old queen did not lay well. Not enough brood, no new babies for too long. We need brood or the new queen will have no people. You must be the Queen.
‘Well, if I kill the queens in their cells – and I have no idea how to do that – then there won’t be a new queen, will there. And I have to go back.’ Mielitta couldn’t remember why but she knew she was needed back at the Citadel, just as much as she was needed here. She couldn’t stay here too long.