“Go ahead. Speak with me, little sir. No one else will understand,” Daveena said, kindness entering her voice.
“I am from the Barley Lands,” he said, affecting some bluster. He had dark scattered spots across his broad nose and the round eyes and overbite typical of the working castes of the eastern nation. “But I am a Hulkrite who worships the One True God. Praise Lord Termite.”
They were quiet for a moment, averting each other’s eyes. “You should leave,” the boy said. “We have orders to destroy roach people on sight. Your corpses are worth a thousand pieces of gold pyrite and two thousand of silver.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” said Daveena. “The Hulkrites . . .”
“At any moment our warriors will be returning,” he interrupted. “The Second Prophet has no tolerance for you and your stinking insects. You will all be buried in a pit.”
“The Hulkrites will not be returning,” Daveena said. “I’m afraid that most of them are as dead as your ghost ants.”
“Our Holy Warriors are returning as soon as they slaughter every last idolater on the Slope. And we’ll bring a new egg-layer to this mound just as soon as they do. Our ghost ants will thrive, once again, in service to Lord Termite.”
Daveena sighed, shook her head. “The Hulkrites have lost the war. Few of them survive. The ghost ants have been poisoned here and at all the other mounds. Their corpses litter Hulkren.”
The boy trembled and struggled to find his voice. “You lie!” he said, his voice cracking. “You lie! You lie! You lie!”
The Hulkrish boy demanded a translation from his orange-haired companion. He relayed Daveena’s words in Hulkrish, his knees buckling and the words sticking in his throat to choke him. Both boys were sobbing, turning away in shame to hide their watering eyes, when they fell to the sand and shook. Daveena had no love for Hulkrites, but she looked at these boys in pity. She did not see them as rapists, looters, and killers, but as little boys leaking tears. The Hulkrish boy struggled to his feet and stumbled off in the direction of the mound. The red-haired boy looked up at her with his wet eyes.
“Why are you here?” he asked Daveena.
“I will tell you if you tell me your name.”
“Odwaznee,” he said, and Daveena smiled, for the name meant brave.
“I am Daveena,” she said.
“My mother told me never to talk to a roach woman.”
“I mean you no harm. And I am part Yatchminish, like you. We have come to invite these bee people and their insects to live in Bee-Jor.”
“Bee-Jor? Bee-Jor is not real. The prophets have made this clear. The only Promised Land is the one that a faithful Hulkrite goes to after his death.”
“We are making a Bee-Jor, which will need bees and their honey. You could live there too. You can’t go back to Yatchmina Nyatsay.”
“How do you speak my old tongue?”
“I learned it from my grandfather. He was like you, a villager in the Barley Lands who was forced all his life to the same dull tasks. His fate was to die as a sacrifice to the Mantis Riding Moon God. My grandmother, a roach woman, thought him clever and handsome and invited him to her parents’ sand-sled. His days were spent traveling and trading until he was seventy.”
“And just where is this Bee-Jor?” Odwaznee asked as he dried his eyes with the back of his hands. “Do you climb the tallest oak, then ride on a cloud of sugar-fluff for forty days to the west?”
“No. Our Bee-Jor is in what used to be Grizhabev Grizaboff,” she said, using the Yatchminish name for “Land of Mushroom Eaters.” She saw him wince.
“Why would anyone live among leaf-cutter ants?” he asked. “They are filthier than your roaches.”
“It is not a perfect place. But you could live there in honor—as the boy who brought the honey-makers.”
“I am a man,” he said.
“Well, certainly . . . you almost are.”
The Bulkokans had been quiet, but now they were buzzing again. Odwaznee turned and yelled at them, his mouth making the long vibrations that emulated the sound of bee wings.
“So you speak their tongue,” Daveena said.
“It is something like my own,” he said. “Barley and bee people are cousins. We share the same color hair and skin.”
Daveena looked over at Queestra and Ulatha, who were near the cage, crying out to the Bulkokans in the Slopeish and Carpenter tongues.
“What are those women doing?” Odwaznee shouted. “Tell them to get back!”
Daveena saw that Ulatha had entered into conversation with several of the bee people. She turned to the clan. “Some of them know the Carpenters’ tongue! They have traded with them!” Ulatha shouted into the cage in her loudest voice. When she finished speaking, the Bulkokans who understood burst into what sounded like cheers and then spread her words.
“What is she telling them?” Odwaznee shouted at Daveena.
“That we are freeing them, opening their cage, taking them to Bee-Jor.”
“No!” he shouted. “Those are infidels! They are servants to Hulkro! Their honey is only for the True Believers!”
The Bulkokans ran for the ladders in their cages and then slid them between its bars. The roach-men set the ladders against the cage’s door and climbed to its heavy rope-lock. Using the toothed sides of their daggers, they cut the lock’s intricate knot, then dropped its ropes to the men on the floor. The cage’s door was pulled open as the Bulkokans cheered and sang what had to be a buzz-filled prayer of thanks as they looked to the sky. They poured out of the cage and ran into the arms of their roach-riding rescuers.
Odwaznee shook with anger as he watched. He walked towards Daveena, who stepped back and reached for her dagger. The boy hung his head and dropped his sword.
“I’ll be killed,” he said, looking up and into her eyes. “For letting this happen.”
“Come with us,” she said. “We’ll protect you.”
Freed Bulkokan women were coming towards Daveena, their arms open, their mouths curling with little smiles. Daveena saw that these were a chubby people and their mouths were full of rotting teeth—if they had any teeth at all. Too much honey! she thought as they took turns embracing her.
After hugging Daveena, the Bulkokan women gathered together, whispered among themselves, then turned on the boy who had been their warden. Like a swarm of bees, their mouths buzzed as they surrounded Odwaznee and pulled daggers of bee stingers from their jackets’ pouches. “No!” Daveena screamed, and attempted to tear him away as they stabbed the boy in his arms, his legs, his face, and neck.
Chapter 6
Monsters Big and Small
“No,” said Anand, again scratching at the exposed part of his thighs, which were raw and moist. “We are not sitting on the Mushroom Thrones.”
“Why not?” Trellana asked. “They are perfectly comfortable.”
“For one thing, they’re at the top of one hundred and twenty-three stairs.”
“We can sit on litters and be brought up to them. That’s how it’s always been done.”
“That will require the labor of four men.”
“What else have they got to do?” said Trellana, using her chin to point at Anand’s guards. “And why are you all scratching yourselves?” she asked as she watched them claw at their legs. “That is something to be done in private if it cannot be done discreetly.”
“We are so sorry to offend,” said Anand, who restrained himself from scraping again at something that moved in slow, agonizing circles under his skin. He wished he were alone for a moment to be able to use his dagger to excise whatever had taken up house inside him. Just how and when had he been infected?
“Creet-creet,” called Polexima as she and Terraclon entered her old palace reception chamber through the flaps of the portal. As Terraclon helped her through the portal’s slits, Anand could see she was wearing the braces that strengthened her legs and straightened her back. No longer leaning on crutches, she clutched a staff topped with the ca
rved knob of a cricket’s head. Her shin-length robe of woven grass fibers was painted a deep blue, and spattered with swirls of yellow stars to suggest the night sky. As she walked she rustled like a leaf in the wind and her second pair of antennae, twice the length of her body, floated like frail, thin pennants in a breeze.
Terraclon plodded behind her, like an upright caterpillar, in a striped robe of yellow and purple. He had tailored it to hide his meager frame and sewn an excess of cloth to the back as a train, which made him lean forward, as if walking into the wind. His dark face was caked and stiff with yellow pollen on one side, a thick red paint on the right, while his brown complexion was left to shine in the middle. Over his hood were purple antennae spangled with flecks of amethyst.
Emerging more slowly from the portal flaps was Pious Dolgeeno, dressed in a similar garment, but resembling a floating tent as his robe bloomed outwards in its unfolding. Under his eyes were drooping bags of a muddy purple that looked darker against his sallow complexion. Behind him were guards with sharpened pikes that seemed at the ready to prod the Ultimate Holy’s behind if he slowed or veered off path.
“You look absolutely interesting, Mother,” said Trellana with a smirk as Polexima pulled back her hood to reset her antennae over her shaved head. “A bit on the dark side for morning, but, well, most daring.”
“The compliments go to Terraclon,” said Polexima. “Perhaps he can come up with a few things for you . . . something more suitable to the new era.”
“I wouldn’t dare to put him to the trouble.”
“You might find what he makes very comfortable.”
“I am not so interested in being comfortable. I am interested in being beautifully dressed.”
“Something dark might suit you quite well,” said Terraclon. “Black can be so slimming, did you know?”
Trellana glared at Terraclon in silence. Anand tried not to grin. “Well, Ter, congratulations. I believe that was your first understated riposte.”
“It is not my last,” he said, and glared at Trellana. “As I am terribly inspired.”
“Speaking of comfort,” Trellana said, turning to Anand. “I am sure my mother would enjoy sitting on a nice, comfortable throne this morning instead of some wretched stool.”
“I don’t know that I’m up for a climb,” said Polexima, looking up the long flight of steps. “And I wouldn’t impose on anyone to bring me up there.”
“Agreed,” said Anand with a smile. “And we don’t want people having to shout up to us—as if we were the gods in the Heavenly Treetop. Let’s have a throne for all of us, but bring them down here.”
Anand gave orders to his men in the dialect of his old caste, which he knew Trellana found both hard to understand and harsh to the ear. She wandered over to the large quartz viewing window and looked in disdain at dark-skinned children riding on ants. She gasped with disgust when some held tight to their saddle-knobs and crawled up the window to block her view.
“What are you staring at, Trelly?” Polexima asked.
“Why are children, and these kind of children, riding ants?”
“It’s permitted now,” said Anand. “Anyone may ride an ant.”
“Shouldn’t they be at work?” asked Trellana.
“Every eighth day is a time to rest now—and to have a bit of fun.”
“In a time of mourning? Should anyone be having fun?”
“Children, especially, should have a little fun. We’ve all been shut up inside due to the rains, and should all be enjoying some sunshine.”
“More of your charming notions from Dranveria, I presume. Remind me again, please, just who it is we’re receiving today.”
“Our fellow citizens,” said Anand, “with grievances against fellow citizens that our government might correct.”
“Citizen. This is a Dranverish word.”
“Yes, a citizen is anyone who owes allegiance to our nation and benefits from its laws and protections.”
“Are you telling me that just anyone can come in here? Anyone with an accusation?”
“Not just anyone,” said Anand. “Citizens of Bee-Jor. We will adjudicate as best we can in hopes of retaining order in our new nation.” Trellana turned from the window with a sour, then a bored, look on her face.
“Let us welcome our first plaintiffs,” said Anand after the thrones were set in a semicircle. “Dolgeeno, will you be so kind as to record for us?”
“I don’t believe I have a choice,” said the high priest, who turned to see Polexima’s son, Pious Nuvao, walking towards him with a cylinder of scratching paper and an implement and brush to sweep the scrapings. One of Polexima’s Cricket acolytes, a young woman in the same priestly dress, laid a writing plank over the armrests of Dolgeeno’s throne. He began scratching furiously, and Anand wondered if he might be drawing more than writing.
The guards escorted in two dark-skinned and heavyset men, who brought with them the familiar stink of the midden. They were followed by two other middenites, a meek-looking married couple who had dressed in simple but clean garments. As the first two approached, Anand stiffened with shock, then hatred. He looked to Terraclon, who was gripping the armrests of his throne and gritting his teeth. Here in the palace were Keel and his son, Tal. Neither of them had a shred of humility, but looked menacing as they strutted their bulk. Both wore quilted silk tunics that were stretched to the point of ripping, but indicated their new wealth as operators of the midden with rights to sell its salvage. When they reached the reception area, Tal used his thumb to pull his greasy locks over his ear to reveal its clipped lobe.
“Well,” said Terraclon, loud enough so that all could hear him. “It looks like someone is even better fed these days.”
“Well, Terraclon. Looks like you’re doing all right for yourself too,” said Tal.
Anand looked from Keel and Tal to the married couple, whom he recognized as his distant kin from the midden, some fourth or fifth cousins. The husband had worked at trash- and corpse-sorting with Yormu, his father. He made the traditional bow before the royals by showing hands empty of weapons, followed by a deep lowering of the head, while his wife attempted a curtsy as she raised the cloth of an imaginary gown.
“It is proper to bow before your queen and your highest priest,” said Dolgeeno to Keel and Tal.
“Is it now? We thought those ways was over, Your Holiness,” said Keel.
“They are not,” shouted Trellana, not looking at them, but at Anand. “These are middenites!” she said in something between a shriek and a whisper. “Here, in my palace, speaking in their filthy voices to royals!”
“Pardon me, Your Majesty,” said Tal with a mock curtsy. “But we thought you was married to a middenite. Why, I believe that two of their dirty asses are mucking up your thrones at the moment.”
Anand leapt up at the same instant the pain in his thighs became unbearable. He could not help but scratch himself as he spoke. “We will all speak in a respectful way to each other. Good Bee-Jorites, who has the grievance?”
“The grievance is ours, Commander,” said the salvager. “I am Gelk, and this is my wife, Canathy. I fought the night of the war against the Hulkrites, in the second division, protecting the tunnel to Gagumji.”
Gelk turned his leg to show how most of his left calf had been sliced away by a Hulkrish arrow. “As was promised me, I moved my family up to the black-sand barracks and into the house of a dead Slopeish soldier. We’d made ourselves a nice home, but when we got back one night, our chambers was taken over by Keel and his son here, and all their family. He said as foreman of our caste, it was his right to take our place and that we should move elsewhere. They grabbed my little sons by the throats and threatened to snap their heads off their necks if we didn’t leave.”
“We did no such thing,” said Tal. “He’s lying!”
“The house is ours!” blasted Keel. “Didn’t Vof Quegdoth, the Son of Locust hisself, promise that all who fought in the war could move up the mound to a soldier’
s quarters?”
Anand squinted at his old nemeses. “I thank you for your service, Good Bee-Jorites, but . . . I do not recognize you as having been among our Laborers’ Army.”
“We was there—among the hundreds of thousands,” said Tal through his thin and almost lipless mouth. “Fought bravely, we did, and even coated ourselves in roach muck.”
“What division were you in?” asked Terraclon.
“We was both in the Twenty-ninth,” said Keel. “Joined right up after you and Yormu left for the border. Took us days to walk there since they wouldn’t let us ride on speed ants or fly us on a locust.”
Yormu! Anand thought, and his heart quickened. Where is my father? “And where was the Twenty-ninth posted?” he asked, shaking himself out of his worry.
“I dunno,” said Keel. “Where they put us. Somewhere before the Tar Marsh.”
“Who was your captain?” Anand pressed.
“Some yellow fellow. I don’t remember his name and I couldn’t pronounce it if I did. Killed, he was, by Hulkrish arrows—the big ones, missiles.”
“Who else fought with you and will vouch for your honor?”
“Half of us in our division died that night,” said Tal. “We hid in the marsh grass and climbed up in the punk weeds after retreat was called. The others that survived were men from different mounds. Never saw ’em again.”
Anand stared at Keel and Tal, then looked to Terraclon for confirmation of his doubts. Terraclon faintly shook his head.
“Your caste’s idols keeper will know where you were before the war and the night of it,” said Anand. “He is bound by his oaths to the gods to speak the truth before his queen and highest priest. Shall we send for him . . . for Reverend Glurmu the Floppy-Eared?”
“Glurmu told us not to go—he said the Son of Locust was none other than a fraud, a false prophet, and if we joined up with him we’d be betraying the duties of our caste.”
“But he’d know how many days you were gone or not,” said Anand, “and whether you had left for the border in time to train for the battle.”
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 6
