by Unknown
“I’m not surprised, with the attacks on outlying villages and the like,” James said, rubbing his chin as he looked around. “The question is, can we join you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m not going! I’m not much good in a fight, I’m a secretary. Someone has to keep track of the books while the Guildmaster is away,” Viper hastily corrected, shaking his head. “As to joining the caravan, that depends. You aren’t asking for spots in the wagons or supplies, are you?”
“No, we can handle things like that ourselves,” Cora said, shaking her head. “We’re mostly not wanting to go there with only nine of us. Maybe more if some of the apis join us on our trip to Clarion.”
“Ah, of course! As to that, the Guildmaster said that as long as anyone can defend themselves and doesn’t slow the caravan down, he’s willing to let people accompany them,” Viper said, visibly relaxing. “We’ve had a few merchants who thought that a free escort would be wonderful and that the caravan would be moving at a much slower pace than it will be.”
“What about the apis? If they want to come with, would they be able to?” Joy asked quickly, grinning at Viper. “I’m sure they can defend themselves! They’re close to my level.”
“I don’t see why not,” Viper said, pausing as a man trotted up to him, holding a rolled-up piece of paper, and the varana added, “My apologies, but I need to go. I have plenty more to do if I’m to get the caravan moving even close to the time I’d like.”
“Thank you for your time, Viper,” James said, bowing his head slightly, then turned to step away from the chaos. Cora and the others followed, and he cleared his throat. “Well, it seems that they’re leaving even earlier than I expected. I honestly thought that they’d be leaving tomorrow, not today. Do we go with them?”
“I’d say yes,” Brianna said, tapping the hilt of her sword restlessly. “We don’t want to be on the roads by ourselves. Which, of course, means we need to get the supplies we need.”
“Agreed,” Helen chimed in, frowning. “That and gather our gear from the hotel.”
“Fortunately, we’re essentially ready,” Stella said, glancing at Brianna as she added, “I’ve had some poor experiences with thieves, so I pack my things every morning.”
Cora grimaced, then nodded. “I understand that. I had one too many times with other people snooping through my things, so I do the same. Mostly, I think we need food.”
“I don’t!” Joy chimed in happily. “I’ve got everything I need, except for water!”
“Right, mostly because you eat different food than us,” Brianna agreed. “Which means we need enough food for three of us for about… two weeks, on our side. I’d rather have enough for both ways than just one way, in case of a siege.”
James nodded, glancing at his companions as he spoke. “That sounds about right. I’d say we should split up and meet back here since we need to pack. What do you think?”
Cora nodded, looking at Joy as she added, “In that case, how about you and Stella go get the food, Bri? I think someone needs to let the apis know about this, and I figure Joy and I are the best ones for that.”
“Sure, I can do that. You can pay me back later,” Brianna agreed after looking at Stella, who nodded. “Are you okay with that, Joy?”
“Yep!” Joy said, almost bouncing as she grinned broadly. “They’ll want to join the caravan, I bet!”
“Well, since we’ve all got our tasks, let’s go. See you a little later,” Jean said, and turned to leave.
With a wave, Brianna and Stella followed them, and Joy laughed, grinning at Cora as she asked, “Do you know where they are? The apis, I mean?”
“Oh? And you don’t, for once?” Cora asked, a teasing note to her voice.
“Nope! The smells in the city cover it up,” Joy replied readily, looking around curiously. “I could probably find them, but that would take flying, and you say not to do that in the city.”
“True. As to that, I asked yesterday, and I heard that they purchased an old building for their embassy,” Cora said, gesturing for Joy to follow her as she started down the road. “I think they’ll be there.”
“Okay!” Joy said, quickly following the elf as she led the way. “I’m glad you asked where they were!”
“So am I,” Cora said, smiling warmly back at Joy, moving at a quick pace. “Hopefully they’re ready for something like this, but… based on our experiences at the Shadebough Hive, I doubt it will matter. Most of your people seem to be able to prepare incredibly quickly.”
“Yep! If we decide we need to do something, we just do it. Spending lots of time isn’t worth it. That’s time that workers could be out collecting nectar and pollen!” Joy replied promptly, smiling at the elf happily.
“It also makes sense when I consider your shorter lifespans,” the elf replied, her tone musing. “I think it just startles everyone else, since I can only think of a handful of people who act as quickly, and most of them are impulsive. Your people aren’t really impulsive, though.”
Joy nodded in agreement, not answering this time since it didn’t seem like Cora was wanting one. She was getting better at telling when others were talking to themselves.
They wound their way through the bustling city streets, having to stop a few times due to wagons blocking the roads, and as they did, Joy couldn’t help her amusement. The streets were even less crowded than those of a hive, yet at the same time everyone moved so much slower. People bumped into one another, didn’t take advantage of openings, and generally seemed ignorant of how much better things could flow if they just paused to let others through the gaps. Joy didn’t understand it, but she didn’t need to. She did wish she was allowed to fly down the streets, though… it would make this much faster.
Once they were about halfway across the city, Joy perked up as she caught the scent of other apis. Their pheromones were distinctive, and they were upwind from her, so she sniffed a couple of times, then smiled as she said, “I smell them!”
“Really, from this far away, in a city?” Cora asked, pausing to look at Joy in surprise. “I thought you said their scent was covered by the city’s smells.”
“They’re very easy to tell apart from humans, if you’re close enough,” Joy informed her, grinning. “Besides, they’re upwind! They’re just on the other side of that row, right?”
She pointed at a row of townhouses, and Cora nodded, her surprise turning to amusement as she replied. “That’s right. They purchased a building to use as their embassy, and Viper said that it was surprisingly old and run-down.”
“Ah, that explains it!” Joy said, grinning even more as she took the lead, darting through gaps in the crowd with ease.
“It explains what?” Cora asked, the elf seeming to struggle to keep up.
“They’re building stuff! I don’t know what, but something,” Joy said, slowing down slightly to let Cora keep up more easily. “I can smell the wax.”
“Of course you can. I should’ve expected that,” Cora said, following Joy as they circled the end of the row of townhouses. “It does explain why they’d… oh. Oh my.”
They’d just come into sight of the lot where the apis were, and Joy could easily pick it out for several reasons. For one, there was a half-dismantled building in the middle of a rather large lot, with apis swarming over it, prying off wooden panels and bricks. For another, there was an enormous crowd of people surrounding the grounds, along with a group of harried-looking guards trying to keep them back.
Around the lot, the apis were industriously at work, a dozen of them sorting through the dismantled parts of the building, while several others were making huge sheets of wax in ways that looked a lot like walls to Cora, and still others were tearing out the gardens. To Cora it looked like they’d been at work for several days, even though she knew they’d only purchased the property the previous day.
“Why are they dismantling the building?” Cora asked, a little confused. “I mean, it makes sense for them to repair the building, or add new outbui
ldings, but why tear down the old one?”
“Humans waste a lot of space in their buildings,” Joy replied instantly, moving more slowly as she watched them. “I think they’re using the useful parts of the building for framing and things like that.”
“Ah,” Cora replied, a little startled for a moment, but her surprise faded as she thought about the way space had been used in the hive she’d spent time in. Add to that Joy not being comfortable even in a small room alone, and it made more sense. After a few seconds she added, “It looks like the main problem will be getting to them, though, with the guards there.”
“Nope! I’m apis too, remember?” Joy said, grinning broadly at Cora. “I think the guards will let us past! That or an attendant will come talk to us.”
“True enough,” Cora said, moving a little more quickly at the thought, at the same time watching the apis work.
The women and handful of men were astoundingly efficient, she noticed. They didn’t even explain what they were doing to one another, almost seeming like they were instinctively determining what their role in the construction project was. If she remembered right, that was likely their pheromones at work, since the apis didn’t seem to communicate entirely aloud, at least not among themselves.
One apis was breaking free the bricks from a chimney with her crowbar, each movement carefully designed to do the most work with the least effort, and almost before the brick had settled back into place she was moving to the next brick while another apis snatched up the brick and handed it to another to set in a pile nearby for the other apis to sort through.
Nearby, two apis were doing similar work removing nails strategically along a wooden wall, then they pulled out the last nails and almost effortlessly caught the section of wall before it could fall, hauling it over to where another couple of apis could move it outside for examination as well. The ones examining the reclaimed material were also working quickly, separating them into piles. Cora suspected that they were sorting them according to what could be reused, and what couldn’t.
Then they reached the crowd, and Joy wormed her way through to the front with remarkable ease, assisted in part by how a lot of the people pulled back, gawking at her as they realized that she was apis as well. Cora simply took advantage of those openings to follow Joy, thankful that the apis was as good at making her way through crowds as she was. They made it through to the front in a handful of moments, at which point Joy stopped in front of the blinking guard.
“Hi! I need to talk to the attendants!” Joy told the man, whose jaw worked a couple of times as she added, “Cora is with me!”
“I… alright, I thought all of you were here already, though,” the guard said, stepping slightly to the side so they could slip past. Joy did, and Cora followed, replying as she did so.
“Joy’s an adventurer, not part of their hive,” the elf explained, a bit relieved to be past the crowd. “We escorted them here.”
“Oh, that explains it. I’ve heard about her,” the guard said, understanding dawning on his face, and Joy giggled ahead of Cora. Cora smiled as well, a part of her happy that Joy was starting to be so well-regarded around the city.
One of the attendants took the moment to break away from her work helping with the wax walls, wiping her hands off as she approached, smiling warmly as she did so. The woman looked at them curiously, her antennae waving, then nodded.
“Hello, Joy, Cora. What brings you here today?” the attendant asked, looking at them curiously, and Cora quickly shuffled her thoughts back into order.
“We’re getting ready to leave for Clarion, and the caravan we’re going to join is leaving by noon at the latest,” Cora replied. “There have been raids on caravans by groups from the Kingdoms of Darkness, so it’s rather dangerous to go there in small groups. We thought that if you wanted to send a delegation to the apis in the Shimmerwood, going with the caravan would be the best choice.”
The attendant’s smile broadened as she nodded quickly, reaching up to tap her lip as she spoke. “I understand! That’s good to know, and may change our plans. Did all of you hear that?”
As she spoke, the attendant turned to look at the construction site, and the other apis didn’t even pause in working as they responded.
“Yes!” the apis chorused, prompting a blink of surprise from Cora. It was mostly how coordinated their response had been that surprised her.
Another attendant working in the former entryway of the building spoke a moment later, dismantling a cabinet as she spoke. “If that is the case, the Shimmerwood delegation should leave with them. It will slow down the construction of the embassy slightly, but making contact with the Shimmerwood hive is far more important than this.”
“Agreed!” another attendant called out from the scrap pile.
“In that case, who wants to lead the expedition?” the first attendant asked, looking at the other two attendants, who were working on another chimney and a wax wall respectively.
“I will,” the one at the scrap pile said, looking up from her work. “The queen spoke to you about the expedition to the human capital, so you should lead that.”
The other apis nodded in agreement, and one spoke up. “Workers, we need three drones and twenty workers for the trip. Choose which ones are going to the Shimmerwood, and be ready to go well before noon.”
Another chorus of agreement came in reply, to Cora’s private amusement, though they didn’t stop working. The attendant turned back to her as she asked, “Will that work?”
“It should work just fine,” Cora assured her, glancing at Joy, who had her hands behind her back, and the elf could see that Joy was holding them there firmly. After a moment more she asked, “Is something wrong, Joy?”
“I’m trying to resist the urge to help,” Joy said, her gaze intense as she focused on the scene in front of her. “There’s so much work to do!”
“There is,” the attendant agreed with a smile.
“Speaking of which… why are you dismantling the building?” Cora asked, gesturing at the building. “It looks like a lot of it was solid enough.”
“Yes, much of it was, but it also had lots of holes and pests that we didn’t want to deal with,” the attendant said, looking at the remains of the building. “Some parts of it might have collapsed soon as well, and there were parts we had no need for, such as the kitchen. After some discussion, we decided what we wanted to do. We’re going to dismantle all of it, and use what we can to frame the walls and roof, building living spaces around the edge of the property, and one of the workers who is a crafter says she can make something called amber in panes. We believe we can make most of the land into a greenhouse like the ones we were shown for gardens. That will be needed in the winter, and will also help feed apis here.”
“Amber… oh! I didn’t know you could make panes of that!” Cora said, remembering the substance. Her mother had used it in her jewelry at times, and had told her that it was hardened sap originally, but she could make it via alchemy relatively easily.
“The humblebees said that it was something we could use instead of glass, using the plants we like,” the attendant said.
“Ooh… I look forward to seeing that!” Joy said, her eyes brightening. “I’ll definitely come by when we’re done in Clarion!”
“Agreed. But now I think that we need to go find the others,” Cora said, tugging on the apis’s sleeve gently. “Just so you know, the caravan is forming in front of the Adventurer’s Guild.”
“Thank you; we’ll make sure to be there in time,” the attendant assured Cora, nodding politely, then turned back to the work.
“See you later!” Joy said cheerfully, and turned to leave with Cora.
Making their way out of the grounds was a little easier, and as they did, Cora saw something that made her smile. Sitting on a house balcony that neighbored the apis, she could see a man sitting in front of an easel, furiously painting as quickly as he could. He probably wished that the apis would slow down, Cora suspe
cted, but he certainly wasn’t going to have that happen.
“So… you think the building will be done by the time we get back?” Cora asked Joy, stepping past a couple of men that were looking at them in a way that made Cora self-conscious.
“Yep! I think they’ll be done within a week!” Joy replied happily, prompting Cora to look at her in surprise.
“Really? That fast? I mean, I saw how quickly they were building the Tulip Hive, but I didn’t think that they would be able to build something as complicated as a greenhouse that quickly,” Cora said, considering the greenhouses she’d seen.
“They’ll probably surprise you,” Joy said, grinning even more. “The main problem is going to be materials! They only can make so much wax each day, so that will slow them down, once they run out of the wax they stocked on the trip here. Remember, we work a lot!”
“Fair enough. Now, let’s go find Brianna and Stella. I want to make sure she doesn’t get all salted pork or something like that for food,” Cora said, shaking her head again.
“Sure!” Joy agreed, following Cora as they left the apis embassy behind.
Though she didn’t say it aloud, Cora agreed with Joy. She was really curious to see what the embassy looked like when it was done. For now, they had other concerns, though.
Chapter 15
The caravan moved at a decent enough pace, though even so it was slower than Joy liked. She wanted to move faster, to feel the wind against her skin, and yet she really couldn’t. Silverhoof didn’t want people leaving the caravan without permission, and while he’d grudgingly allowed half of the other apis to forage as they moved, functioning as scouts at the same time, he’d flat-out refused to let her join them since she was part of an adventuring party instead.
On the other hand, the caravan was also larger and more eclectic than she’d expected. There were some merchants with them, though not many, and the majority of other people were adventurers in a wide variety. Some of them were rather imposing to Joy, in armor that was brightly colored and who exuded auras like the leaders of the Skyfishers who’d been in the Teeming Jungle, while others felt more like Brianna, Cora, and Stella, or even weaker. More interesting to her were a handful of people they were escorting, a group that Silverhoof had called engineers, and the bits of their conversation that Joy had caught intrigued her, because it sounded to her like they built things. She wasn’t sure what these ‘siege engines’ were, but she was curious to find out what they were talking about so intensely around the campfire at night.