Queen of the Warrior Bees

by Jean Gill

  Once, she’d had to stand on a stool to see through the spyhole. Now, she had to stoop to go through the forge’s back door and shut it behind her. She crossed the yard where new adults usually trod a circular procession, keeping step with each other to symbolise their citizenship. She was already trespassing and yet the ground felt no different from the archery yard. She scuffed some of the greenery underfoot and it mended itself. Ordinary maintenance magecraft.

  The Maturity Barn was not stone, unlike the rest of the Citadel, but woodette, in rough vertical slats. Doorless and windowless. Probably password protected. Mielitta paused. She didn’t have to get into the place, just look as if she was coming from there. But it would be nice if she could get in, more convincing if she was questioned. Especially as her only way back to the Citadel lay through the forge and she didn’t want Declan becoming suspicious. He’d only worry.

  ‘Radium,’ she tried, without much hope. Nothing happened.

  The two Maturity Mages would have set the password, she reasoned.

  ‘Yacinthe,’ she tried. Then, ‘Puggy’. Nothing.

  Maybe the password had already been reset for Bastien’s use. Maybe it was mage-contact, not a word at all. Or set by voice. There was no chance of her getting in by magecraft or impersonation. What about more human means?

  She studied the construction. The woodette slats were ill-fitted, part of the rustic appearance presumably fashionable when it was built. The Citadel had no logic to much of its construction. It just existed, as it had always done. Nobody knew when ‘always’ had begun, unless the walls told the mages.

  Mielitta took the arrowhead she’d pinned to her bodice ‘for luck’ if anyone should ask. She slipped it between two slats and worked the space but the effort was futile. If she worked for several weeks, she could loosen enough slats to slip inside but she didn’t have several weeks. And there was only enough space for bees to get through.

  Bees could get through, they were quick to tell her.

  What if she could communicate with them? Not that they were real. But if she pretended they were, and could send them into the Barn, as if it were a kind of magecraft, nobody would know she’d tried something so crazy. And if she succeeded?

  For the first time, instead of using her willpower to quell the voices in her head, she sought them out. ‘Hmmm,’ she called to them. What did they respond to? What did they respect?

  ‘The One,’ she hummed, ‘help the One.’ She felt a ripple of wings on her thigh, a glow of power. They were awake.

  ‘In,’ she told them, felt their confusion – and their willingness.

  Where? Where?

  ‘In’ meant nothing to them, nor did ‘barn’.

  How had they helped her return through the Forest to the water gate? She closed her eyes, pictured the place where they were, in bee-sight colours, aquamarine grassette, dark grey barn. There were no scents to help but she pointed like the bees had, a dance of compass directions, going through the grey crack in the slats into the dark barn. She highlighted the route in ultraviolet arrows.

  ‘In.’ she said again and felt the buzz of understanding.

  Then the bee sigil on her thigh heated to burning, ripped itself from her body, filled her head with an imperial buzz until she had only one purpose. She must lead the colony into that dark place, be the One. She felt the rush of air, the company of her bodyguards as she followed the dance moves and slipped through the crack into darkness.

  Mielitta buzzed on the floor, enjoying the dark but not the space around her. Too empty, too empty. Too big to build a home, her people cried anxiously, seeking a corner to hide in. As she separated her body and mind from the bees, she observed that she was now inside the Barn, with no sign of any cracks bigger than a bee-space in the woodette slats. They filtered some light into the Barn but that made little difference as there was nothing to see. Even from a human viewpoint, the Barn was indeed too empty.

  Mielitta stood up, a little shaky on legs that suddenly seemed very long and surprisingly few in number. She could feel the heat of her thigh, even through the lavender dress, and as she rested her hand on where the bee head must be, pointing downwards as if flying off her thigh, she felt it vibrate.

  ‘Thank you,’ she hummed, then just left her hand where it was. The contact was strangely reassuring and she could feel her own heartbeat steady, as the thrumming of bees settled.

  One, the vibrations sang. One world, our world.

  Now what? Mielitta was in the Maturity Barn, where there was nothing but herself and a thousand bees. She walked around inside the building but all she saw was a pile of ashes in one corner. No clue as to what usually happened here. However, she was inside, which gave her all the credibility she needed – if she could get out. If not, she’d have to yell for help and her lies would be discovered.

  She felt the bees’ exhaustion and she was afraid to ask their help to try a reverse journey. Her thigh burned and she felt in no fit state to experiment again with whatever had happened. If she appeared through a bee-space in woodette slats and collapsed on the greensward, her credibility would not benefit.

  There must be another way. She looked at the walls, the pattern of light through the cracks and suddenly saw the outline of a rectangle – a doorway. Surely getting out of the barn must be easier than getting in, needed no wards? She reached out, traced the line of light from the ground up to the right-hand corner, along its top edge, down the left side to the ground again, waited. Nothing.

  What did you say when you wanted a door to open? If you were a new adult and not the most sparkling wit in the schoolroom? It was worth trying.

  ‘Open,’ she said. Come, she told her bees, sheltering them in her cosy darkness, where there were no empty spaces. She stepped out of the Maturity Barn through the doorway, in all her lavender finery and posed so anybody looking could see her. Did she imagine a slat of wood drawn quickly across a spy-hole in the forge’s back door?

  Even though there was not a speck of dirt on the grassette greensward, she picked up her long skirt in one hand and sashayed towards the forge. The door opened before she reached it and when she entered, seven men bowed respectfully, as was proper to a lady. The assistants were irrelevant but she inclined her head towards them, mindful of her new status.

  Declan held out an elbow, already too dusty for a handshake, and she touched his arm with dainty reserve.

  Kermon was bursting to speak and she acknowledged him last with another graceful bend of the neck. This was easy.

  ‘Lady Mielitta,’ he began, ‘I have your commission ready, to celebrate your maturity.’

  She fingered the chain around her throat. ‘Good. Please fetch it.’ Please was a nice touch, a sign that she’d retained more manners than most adults.

  ‘Where’s Maturity Mage Puggy?’ Declan asked, suspicion knitting his brows.

  He’d not catch her out so easily. ‘Mage Yacinthe,’ she corrected. ‘As I told you, she wanted my ceremony to go unremarked. She left as soon as I was – how did you put it? Forged. Yes, forged. Do you like my gown? I think it becoming. And I might rearrange my hair, perhaps one plait across the brow and two knotted behind. What do you think?’ If he wanted a lady’s conversation then he would have it. She had heard enough prattling to emulate it.

  His scowl deepened. ‘It’s not the way things should be done.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Two braids usually suffice. But I do have such thick, long hair…’

  Kermon returned, presented her with a blue velvet cushion, the setting on which to display her lucky arrowhead, his smith-piece.

  ‘I wanted you to see it first,’ he told her. ‘Before the Forge Mage’s judgement.’ His voice shook. Pride? Fear of failure? Hope?

  Mielitta picked up the arrowhead, felt its weight and balance in her hand. Forge-light caught its fine point and honed edges. Perfect. And deadly, in the right hands. Then she looked at the patterning and her breath caught.

  ‘What made you think such a pa
ttern would please me?’ she trilled.

  Fire danced in his eyes as he answered. ‘I’m a soul-reader,’ he told her. An assistant laughed nervously but Kermon showed no sense of his own foolishness. ‘Does it please you?’ he asked her.

  Mielitta looked at the pattern of Damascene waves, like translucent bee-wings, natural forces folded into steel. Her pattern, the one she’d imagined making for herself. He’d stolen her pattern! And given it back to her, a thousand times more beautiful than she’d imagined. It was hers, beautiful and deadly. She ached to see it in flight.

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ she fluted, adding a vapid smile for good measure. ‘But I’m just a woman.’ Which was probably even worse than being just a girl, if you didn’t have another life in another world. ‘What the Forge Mage thinks is what matters, for your smith-piece to be accepted.’ She passed it to Declan.

  The smith weighed it as she had, checked the evenness of the metal, tapped to detect flaws, ran his finger at ninety degrees to the honed edge to check its sharpness. Mielitta had learned at five years old that a knife edge cut along its edge but not across, and that you could hear a sharp edge. She knew every test Declan was carrying out and she knew the verdict before he gave it but she kept a bored expression throughout.

  ‘It’s good work,’ he declared. ‘You’ve earned the right to your own clients, under my supervision.’

  ‘Thank you, Forge Master.’ Kermon showed only quiet satisfaction, as would anyone capable of such a masterpiece. He knew his worth, as did Mielitta. That made two of them who’d achieved new status today.

  ‘We can both celebrate this day as the start of a new life,’ Kermon said. Was he really a soul-reader? ‘And if my smith-piece pleases my lady, that is all I ask.’

  Declan had finished with them and was collecting from the shelves what he needed for his day’s work. Without even turning around, he ordered Kermon, ‘Blunt it. A lady doesn’t want edges on her lucky piece.’

  Mielitta saw the raw pain in the apprentice’s eyes, reflecting her own. Mar such work! But he swallowed and set to work, sanding the arrowhead blunt. He tested the blade, filed it, sanded it again, an agony of malwork. Mielitta had crept up behind him to watch but she dared not intervene. She dashed one rebellious tear from her cheek and watched it fall onto the beautiful Damascene wings, blending with a second teardrop, not hers.

  Without looking up, Kermon whispered, naming the arrowhead in magecraft, an act he was strictly forbidden. ‘Steelwing, know one master, Mielitta; one aim, to protect her; one revenge, reverse all harm.’

  She put a hand on his shoulder, too choked to speak as he kissed the arrowhead, stood up to present it to her once more. Instinctively, she stepped back to avoid him touching her as he reached for the chain around her neck.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said hastily, and saw his hurt. Whatever a soul-searcher was, he was also a man with those feelings towards her. She shouldn’t have joked about him to Drianne. She undid the catch on her chain, with one-handed ease. She attached her new acquisition to the chain and dropped it out of sight beneath the cream scarf of her bodice, conscious that the artefact had been followed closely by at least one intense gaze.

  ‘Have you finished?’ Declan’s voice made her jump. ‘I need you to use the bellows.’

  ‘It is done,’ Kermon replied but his eyes still held Mielitta’s, hazel turned to warm gold in the forge-light.

  ‘I cannot linger,’ she told the men brightly. ‘And I’m sure you have men’s work to do.’ Was she over-doing it? Sounding as sarcastic as she felt? She searched their faces but no, they both accepted her new adult voice as real. More fool them.

  ‘I shall be too busy to visit often but we must stay in touch,’ she told Declan. He turned away, picked up a hammer.

  ‘Ay, we’ll stay in touch.’ His gruff voice brought tears to her eyes and if he’d spoken then, person to person, asked her if she was all right, told her he loved her, she’d have confessed about the Maturity Ceremony, the Forest, the bees – or tried to.

  ‘You have woman’s work to do,’ he said. ‘You’d best be getting on with it.’

  She stumbled on the threshold. Smoke. Fire. Fly. Stupid bees who didn’t know the difference between going into the forge and leaving! Then she left her childhood behind.

  She sashayed up the passageways, forcing servants out of her way. Was that Drianne she passed? No matter. She was a lady now and she must act the damned part. When she reached the second door down the passageway after the schoolroom, she knocked and waited.

  The door opened slowly, Mage Yacinthe looked quickly up and down the passageway, then asked, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Assistant Librarian, reporting for work,’ answered Mielitta firmly.

  ‘Thank the stones! Follow me,’ was the reply and the Assistant Librarian dutifully followed in the Mage’s wake until they reached the library.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mage Yacinthe’s instructions and subsequent absence had left Mielitta all the autonomy she hoped for. ‘Keep the books clean and organised.’ As a job description, it lacked detail, but no matter. When in service, Mielitta had frequently cleaned the library and sneaked some reading time so she felt at home among the book stacks.

  Cleaning was a familiar task so that’s where she would begin, from the top down among the natural history books. She perched on the top step of the ladder that slid along a stack and she ran an antistatic duster along Trees and their Fruit. Why, she wondered for the umpteenth time, did the mages not eliminate such menial tasks? Their governance and use of magecraft seemed without logic and they were never the ones to do the chores. Why should she have to? She might as well be a servant again.

  This was not how she’d imagined womanhood when she was growing up. She’d seen the ladies laughing with each other, escorted by their knights, and she’d wanted the respect they were given, the desire in men’s eyes, marriage and children.

  Instead here she was, cleaning again.

  Her head buzzed and she felt the bee sigil glow warm.

  Why should you have to? repeated the voices. You don’t. Let us out. Help.

  Nobody else was in the library. Where would be the harm in an experiment? She was wary after the bee break-in at the Maturity Barn but already curiosity was dimming the memory of how ill she’d felt. Whether the bees were a product of her imagination or not, she was channelling some force and she must learn to control it. She could hardly ask a mage to teach her. So, what better way to begin than with a small domestic task?

  Shutting her eyes helped her visualise the bees better, use their language. Communication seemed to work from intention, translating between her words and their vibrations, her mental pictures of places and their waggle-dance maps.

  Place was easy. She pictured the ladder, the bookshelves, felt the happy buzz of understanding. Explaining the work puzzled her. She pictured one book, blew the dust off its top, spine, the surrounding shelf. She pictured the next book, followed the same sequence, and then she waited for the sad hum of incomprehension.

  Instead, the buzz grew happier.

  To work, girls.

  Instead of the library stacks, Mielitta saw wax frames of hexagonal cells. Instead of books, there was a variety of contents, pollen, brood, capped honey, all needing to be cleaned. She could feel the bees’ need to do hive housework, their vast experience of shifting dust and debris.

  ‘To work, girls,’ she agreed, and opened her eyes.

  One book at a time and row by row, a thousand bees stirred the air by fluttering their wings, flicked the dust ever downwards to the woodette floor where the Citadel magecraft operated and not a speck remained.

  At first, Mielitta could only watch in fascination. The bees at work were beautiful, as they hovered and dived, singing a work-song. Never had she felt such unison, such joy in diligence, in completing a task within their competence. They filled her with resolution to do her own work and to do it well.

  She read along the titles, where
the bees had finished cleaning, and she rearranged the books, keeping some on the ladder to be placed elsewhere. A book on wilderness survival caught her attention and she skimmed its pages, wondering what she would eat on her next visit to the Forest. She could pack sustenance to take with her but surely there must be something tastier than Citadel food? Bark and leaves had not tasted good but her mouth watered as she recalled the flavours of Forest water and the scents all around her, edible scents.

  There. A chapter on food in the wild. She flicked pages quickly. Berries, fruit, different times of year… her stomach flipped. Insects. Killing and eating animals. Her hand shook as she put the book to one side, to take to her room and read at leisure. Sustenance was without taste but at least nothing died so she could eat. She had much to think about.

  The bees’ song was diminishing and their contented vibrations filled Mielitta with satisfaction as she welcomed the workers back into her consciousness. She felt in tune with them and they with her and they worked together in simple harmony. How amazing that such tiny creatures could do so much work and with such pleasure.

  Mielitta backed down the ladder, hugging her book and her feeling of well-being. She would make a plan of how the library should be reorganised. Then she heard the door open, male voices, and she climbed back up to the top of the ladder where she was invisible, unless somebody looked up.

  ‘We can talk in here.’

  ‘Thank the stones for that! How do you manage, when every word you say is analysed for treachery? I can’t even ask for the water jug without worrying I’ve stressed the word water in a sarcastic way that could be taken as criticism of the Provisions Mage. If I could even remember who the Provisions Mage is! I can remember the names of the Councillors but all the minor mages – too much!’