A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  “It is. And parents aren’t an option in my case.”

  “Sorry.”

  I shrug. “So what do I do?”

  Adithi scrunches up her face, uncertain. “I think you’re supposed to flirt. I’ve heard people use that word but I don’t really know what it means. It might involve playing with your hair and giggling.”

  “What kind of nonsense is that? I’m not doing that.”

  Adithi throws up her hands, helpless. “People who have food and shelter all the time think up wild stuff to do, you know?”

  * * *

  —

  Either Jahi or Tamhan asks me every day if I’ve been struck by divine inspiration yet, and I keep telling them no, because it’s true. But they’re getting nervous; rumors are spreading that Hennedigha is coming with a huge army of ten thousand, and folks are wondering aloud if maybe we’ve made a fatal mistake by declaring independence. These rumors are being spread, no doubt, by advance members of Hennedigha’s forces, slipping into the city on this boat or that. He’s clearly much better at his job than Varman is. And those same spies are most likely reporting that Viceroy Senesh is still isolated in his compound and that we are woefully unprepared to stand a siege, because in the conventional sense that’s true. We have very little traditional manpower. We have instead a flexible plan that hinges on keeping most of the beast callers in hiding for now. With spies roaming about and some people loyal to monarchists, we don’t want to advertise what we can do or who can do it. Let them think we’re all about bugs.

  But Tamhan gets tired of waiting and does something to make me mad. I wake up one morning and see broadsides of my face everywhere. It’s a flattering portrait, so that part is nice. I look unusual and striking because my hair is still short, and I’m not sure if I’ll grow it long now or not; I kind of like the reminder that I was once so destitute that I slept in the mud and long hair wasn’t an option. But above my head it says COMPASSION IS THE ONLY MORAL USE OF POWER, and then underneath my shoulders it says HANIMA.

  I stomp into Minister Khatri’s council office, because he has one now in the Embassy District and so do I, though I don’t use it. I spend most of my time at the teahouse, because my bees are there. “Tamhan, what are you doing? I told you, I’m not a prophet!”

  “You’re talking about the posters? It doesn’t say you’re a prophet on there. I checked.”

  “But men keep coming up to me to say, ‘Actually, it’s not the only moral use,’ and I liked my life before that, when they had nothing to actually say to me.”

  He smiles at me and chuckles. “I am sorry about that. But not sorry at all at spreading your idea. It fits perfectly with what we are trying to accomplish in our claves and government, and we need the people to buy in. We need to shift away from the mindset that greed doesn’t matter and that we have no responsibility for others, nor they for us. Your words move us there. Your deeds move us there. People have noticed what you’ve done for the poor.”

  “Because you’ve been telling them, right?”

  “Right. But they’ve also noticed that you have put people to work—what’s this business you’re starting up?”

  “The Hivemistress Hothouse! Vegetables year-round, thanks to my Fornish partners and my workers, who are the best— Hey, you changed the subject! I’m still mad at you!”

  “I liked the new subject better. Why are your workers the best?”

  “Well, they’re so happy and productive. Because they have jobs and a place to sleep now and they know that they are sharing all profits equally with me.”

  “You’re not taking the double share allowed by the new law for business owners?”

  “Nope. Reward beyond need is greed.”

  Tamhan’s face lights up and he claps, followed by a victorious fist pump. “That’s it! That’s the next broadside.”

  My head drops and I cover my eyes. “Tamhan, no, please. The men will come up to me and say, ‘How do you actually know what someone needs?’ And then they’ll ask what about this, or what about that? Every minute in public will be sparring with someone over where the line is.”

  “Defining the line can be the next broadside after that. This series is going to do wonders for our new culture. People need to be challenged on this, Hanima, and, yes, they’re going to respond. Challenges to the established order are always questioned. We have to question them all the same.”

  I like arguing with Tamhan, because he’s not a condescending dingus but he’s often right and I see things differently afterward. But since I don’t like losing, I often wind up telling him in a huff that he’s never getting any honey from my hive.

  Jahi interrupts before I can respond, bursting into the office. “Minister! The king’s army is coming. It’s big.”

  “By river?”

  “On land, south shore like us. And they’re hauling siege towers.”

  “How far?”

  “Two days.”

  “So if we leave now, we can catch them a day away in the night?”

  The herald grins. “Indeed we can.”

  “Let’s go, then. According to plan, Hivemistress?”

  “Sure. But I plan on resuming this conversation.”

  “I would be disappointed if you didn’t. But know before you go that I appreciate you.”

  Tamhan doesn’t come with us, because he has other preparations to make. Adithi, Jahi, a few other new beast callers, and I ride out, performing our contracted duty to defend the city. Hennedigha, who I’ve heard is quite competent, is clearly coming to subdue us. Perhaps even burn us down on the orders of King Kalaad the Unwell. We need to remove his ability to do that before he reaches the city, because then our walls and the ability to snipe at them over time will give us the win.

  My ass is sore and it’s late when we reach the army camped for the evening, but, unlike them, we have nothing to fear from the night.

  We dismount, reach out with our kennings to those creatures with whom we have an affinity, and get to work.

  Talikha Ghowal, the bat girl, begins. She brings a cloud of hopper bats to fly over the army and shriek until they’re all awake and feel like they have to do something. That something is, inevitably, the use of archery. As soon as the bows and crossbows come out, my burrow wasps, Jahi’s blackwings, and Talikha’s bats note their positions. The bats and blackwings bank away into the night, and then it’s time for Vibodh and Charvi to bring the pain. The archers are clustered near the rear of the army, along with much of the supply train. The part where they thought it would be safest, in other words, against a traditional foe.

  The ground underneath the army begins to quake and rumble. They’re not sure what’s coming—they can’t see much beyond the lights of their fires, but they probably assume it’s a cavalry charge.

  It’s just a regular charge, though. A regular, unstoppable charge of ebon-armored rhinos, called by Vibodh. The army doesn’t see them in the darkness until they’re trampling through their campfires, tossing men up into the air with their horns or just shattering them with brute force. The few who get off shots quickly realize the truth of the saying that the only way to knock down an armored rhino is with a bigger rhino. The archers either get out of the way or get plowed. Those who do get out of the way and mutter a prayer to Kalaad over the close call soon realize that we’re not done. Because Charvi brings a herd of stampeding thunder yaks behind the rhinos and everyone gets plowed anyway. And since her affinity includes wart oxen, close relatives to the thunder yaks, all the supply-train oxen go wild and kick the carts over and stomp on the food.

  The rhinos and thunder yaks turn west at the riverbank, only a small number of the yaks having fallen to retaliatory strikes. They leave the back quarter of Hennedigha’s army in ruins, broken and bloody on the plains. The rest of the army is panicked, putting their backs to
the river, paranoid about another stampede.

  That’s when the last member of our party, Manu Samman, does his thing. Out of the mud and the soft soils full of worms and such come the worst of the creepy crawlies: wheelmouths and carver centipedes. They slither up boots unnoticed, lightly scampering up the backs of pants and tunics, and only when the centipedes bite an exposed neck or the wheelmouths bore into an eyeball with their rotary mouthparts do the soldiers realize that they’ve been outflanked.

  I feel confident in saying that more than one man loses his shit at that point. And even though it’s probably only fifty or so men targeted by crawly critters, they make enough noise about it to scare the rest.

  We have no idea if we’ve managed to hurt Hennedigha personally in our attack, since we don’t know what he looks like, but we can hope. We do know that they won’t sleep well after that, but neither will we. We need to get back to the city.

  We switch to a fresh team of horses, and I wince against the damage my backside and legs are taking. I’m going to need a few days of lying on my stomach, I think, after this.

  A couple of hours into our return, Jahi notes that the army has apparently decided to march on through the night, having their sleep and supplies ruined. They’ll reach the city tomorrow afternoon and probably assault it right away, since they know now what happens if they stop to rest.

  “On the one hand, this is probably good,” Jahi muses, “because they’re going to be exhausted by the time they get to us. But on the other hand, they’ll be desperate to get to us, because they know what will happen in the night if they don’t. And we did nothing to their siege towers.”

  That argument—whether or not to go after the siege towers—had raged for some while in our planning session. In the end, we weren’t sure that the rhinos could take them down and we were positive the thunder yaks couldn’t, and to try would mean greater risk to our animal friends than simply trampling a bunch of scrawny humans.

  “But we got their archers, and that’s what we needed, right?” Adithi says. “We didn’t want them shooting fire arrows into the city.”

  Vibodh says, “We may have gotten the archers, but we didn’t get all their bows and arrows. Someone else can still pick those up and use them.”

  That’s a sobering thought, as is the fact that we don’t have much of a plan for the siege towers. The only animals we’re sure can take them down would be a boil of kherns, but the only one capable of calling them would be Abhi, and he’s who-knows-where now.

  Fire arrows would work, except that Commander Dhawan says we don’t have any and can’t easily make them, which is disappointing but perhaps not all that surprising. It’s not like Khul Bashab was expecting to be under siege before we came along.

  When we get back to Khul Bashab, I ask if there’s a vat of ointment or salve or something I can just swim in.

  “My nethers,” I whimper at Adithi. “They’re tender.”

  She grins. “Stop whining. You heal fast now, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah! I forgot! Thanks, buddy! I feel better already.”

  I’m thinking I’ll check in with Tamhan before wandering off to take a pre-battle nap. And then, abruptly, I’m thinking I won’t. Because someone shoots a flaming arrow—the sort we supposedly did not have—out of the Tower of Kalaad right toward the magnificent tree that forms the Red Pheasant Teahouse.

  “My bees!” I cry. “My lovelies!”

  And then another arrow shoots toward the Tanner District. Another arcs toward the River District.

  Bhamet Senesh is setting his former city on fire in advance of the monarchist arrival. He wants us weak and distracted, and I have to admit, fires throughout the city are going to distract us.

  Commander Dhawan had wanted to storm the tower before this, and I’d argued against it because someone would wind up dying and we couldn’t go on saying we used power morally if we attacked monarchists for being stupid.

  But leaving him alone, I now saw, was pretty stupid of me. I thought that he would surrender if we defeated Hennedigha in the field and that would be the end of it; he couldn’t hope for someone to come save him after that.

  I send a message to my hive that they must evacuate immediately—even the queen. Because the smoke from the fire could put them to sleep and make evacuation impossible later.

  “Jahi, can you send a few blackwings into his tower windows to mess with him? Peck his head, scratch him up, but don’t kill him?”

  My hornets and wasps could get there, but not as quickly, and I was afraid that they’d sense how upset I was and go too far.

  “Sure, but why do we care if he lives?”

  “Because we are more powerful than he is. So we have to have the morals to match.”

  “Oh. Right. A higher moral standard than the viceroy is a pretty low bar, but we should exceed it anyway.” He closes his eyes for a few seconds, reaching out with his kenning. I see three blackwings flying toward the tower. “Done.”

  “Thanks. Now let’s go get him out of there.”

  “By ourselves?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s no need to bring reinforcements, but they meet us there anyway. By the time we get to the tower’s gates, Commander Dhawan is already talking through it to someone inside, with a squad of his men behind him. His demands to be let in, however, are not persuasive. Jahi and I ask to be allowed through, and the city watch parts before us until we’re at the gate, standing next to the commander. He’s shouting at a snarling man on the other side of the gate. The snarling man takes a breath to shout back and then he sees me and his eyes go wide, his expression turning from anger to surprise.

  “Hello,” I say. “It looks like you might recognize me. I’m Hanima Bhandury, the hivemistress.”

  “Yes,” the man says. He’s stout and shorter than Dhawan, with his hair stuffed underneath a hat, the way many guards do to keep it from being used against them in a fight. “I’ve seen the broadsides.”

  If those turn out to help me here, I’ll have to give Tamhan some honey after all.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gunin.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gunin. So, hey, listen, the viceroy is trying to burn down the city, which is pretty rude when we’ve been super considerate of you all here. You understand that I could have sent my bees and hornets and wasps to sting him to death at any time, right?”

  He nods and gulps, his eyes looking for hornets in the air around me. “Right.”

  “But I didn’t do that, because I don’t like to hurt people. I’m not here to hurt him now. I just need him to stop hurting the people he’s supposed to be caring for. That’s why we had a rebellion in the first place.”

  “You’re disloyal—”

  “Yes. You’re absolutely right. We can’t be loyal to someone without compassion, who would burn down his own city out of spite. But we don’t want to hurt him or hurt you or anyone here. We want him to stop, and we’d like to send him down the river to his cousin, alive and well. And I’d like to give you a choice, neither of which involves punishment: You can go with the viceroy if you like, or you can stay here with us and join the city watch.”

  “No, he can’t,” Dhawan growls, and I have to round on him.

  “Yes, he can. Gunin can change his mind and his heart, Commander Dhawan, and if he does, we should welcome him. Gunin, if you open this gate so we can stop the viceroy, then help the commander and the watch put out the fires he’s started, you’ll have a job here and all will be forgiven. Same goes for anyone in the compound who wishes to join us instead of fight. It would be such a better day for all of us if you did that. Because we don’t want to hurt anyone. But we will if we must to prevent the rest of the city from being hurt, and, unfortunately, we would need to start with you. Please come work for us, okay?”

>   “Never been asked please before,” he says. “I got your word and I believe it. But what about him?” He points at Dhawan. I turn my head and stare accusingly at the watch commander. He knows what he did. His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t contradict me.

  “Let us in, help put out the fires, and you have a job on the watch. Same pay. You have my word.”

  “Good enough,” Gunin says. He reaches to unlock the gate and as he does so, a few other guard folk spill out of the actual tower and shout at him, calling him a traitor. Since he’s gone too far to pretend he didn’t mean it, Gunin follows through and lets us in. But it’s also too late for him to defend himself. Gunin gets run through on the spot by some monarchist, and then there’s an awful lot of swordplay between the two sides while Jahi and I dart around the knot of men and head for the tower door.

  “He’s out of his room,” Jahi says. “He escaped to the landing and shut the door behind him, a little bloody but otherwise okay. I have my birds removing the remaining arrows, one at a time. There are quite a lot of them.”

  “Good,” I say, and enter the tower with Jahi behind me. There’s a foyer of sorts with plush carpets and tapestries and shiny stuff and things in it, and beyond that an expansive lounge bleeds red like an open wound, with a cherrywood bar and dozens of liquor bottles in front of a mirror and lots of soft cushions for important buttocks to sit on when the viceroy is having a reception. Off to the left there’s a staircase that winds up into the ceiling, which means that it spirals around the outside and the rooms of the tower are in the center. We have to go up to find the viceroy, but two burly meatsacks with swords grunt at us and appear unmoved by my words of peace. I’m pretty sure I’m faster than they are, so rather than argue, I just sprint for the stairs, Jahi close behind. As we slip by, the grunting becomes aggrieved protests, then shouted accusations of incompetence as one guard blames the other for not blocking the stairs. They start clomping after us, but they won’t catch up as long as we maintain speed.