by Jean Gill
‘Bastien,’ a voice gasped, breathing with difficulty.
Mielitta had forgotten the sleeping children and the fact that one of them was as impervious to magecraft as she was to the Forest. Verity was sitting where she had been all along, opposite the beehive, watching everything that happened. If she’d spoken at all, the Forest must have dismissed her words. If she’d tried to move, the Forest must have held her, gently, without the judgement passed on the three mages held prisoner.
At the sound of Verity’s voice, a change came over Bastien. He stopped trying to fight the bear, stumbled as he was abruptly released and began to sob, gulping ugly sounds. Controlling himself with difficulty, he walked over to his sister and took her in an embrace as vital as the bear’s.
‘We’re orphans now,’ she said to him. ‘So we must look after each other. Daddy would want that.’ She looked at Mielitta. ‘You’ve won. You’ve killed our father. Are you going to kill me and Bastien too?’
‘No,’ whispered Mielitta, her eyes on the bear, which glared back at her, dropped to four feet and lumbered off into the Forest. ‘No.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Call the other mages here,’ Mielitta told Bastien. ‘So we can talk.’ She consulted her scouts. ‘You have enough to contact them? There are three left. And don’t try anything silly. The Forest is still angry.’
Four-footed shadows prowled around the glade, striped with sun and shade. Or just striped. But they came no closer. Oblivious to all danger, the children still slept. Hostages, Mielitta reminded herself. Winning the war was a responsibility she hadn’t fully considered and she should not make decisions alone. Bees would never make decisions alone.
‘Drianne,’ she called and her friend became visible, sitting against a tree, a dormouse and two rabbits snuggling on her lap. She tenderly lifted the creatures onto the ground and they scampered off. Then she stood up, glided towards Mielitta as if the rough ground was smooth as a dance floor.
A shaft of sunlight caught her face and Mielitta gasped at the changes. Bastien stepped back, held his sister tighter. A silver network like a spiderweb was etched over the fine young skin of her face, puckering it, distorting her features so that one eye was higher than the other, her nose tipped sideways and her mouth skewed, one half laughing, the other sour.
‘What have you done to her?’ asked Bastien, eyeing his young fiancée with revulsion. ‘She was so pretty!’
‘What should I say?’ Mielitta asked Drianne, ashamed that her instinctive response was the same as Bastien’s.
Tell him I belong to the Forest and chose to bear its mark. I release him from his vows. He doesn’t need to know I kept my magecraft despite his Test. Let him pity me.
Hamel and another member of the Council joined them in the clearing. The metallic sheen of the second mage identified him as Veebo, the keeper of the water gate. He’d been so keen to take the position vacated by Crimvert and now he was responsible for the biggest breach of its defences the Citadel had ever suffered. Mielitta should thank him.
Instead, she transmitted Drianne’s words to Bastien, whose face smoothed in relief then darkened again as Jannlou came through the trees. And joined Mielitta and Drianne.
‘In this place, Mielitta is our Chief Mage,’ Jannlou said, his deep voice carrying as if by speechcraft in the Great Hall. ‘Let this be our Council Chamber. If I can put my grievances aside to discuss what is best for the future, so can all of you. The children sleep and we adults can sit and talk.’
Mielitta’s body obeyed his courtier’s gesture and she sat first, as a queen should. Cross-legged in the dappled sunlight, she weighed her options, as one after the other, all the adults sat. Somehow, the very act of sitting diffused some of the tension. The prowling beasts distanced themselves further and the trees stilled, as the wind died down. A child burbled in sleep, a honey-dream sound.
On her right hand, Jannlou looked at Mielitta, giving her leader’s status. He was his father’s son and more. But she must not think of fathers or three hearts would break, four including Verity, who also had a place at this Council, leaning on her brother, her eyes sharp, unforgiving.
Bees give me strength, prayed Mielitta as she chose her words. ‘We have stopped you destroying the Forest. That was all we wanted, not to destroy you.’
The silence told her the power she held and she continued, ‘You are destroying yourselves. The stronger the barriers you erect against the Forest, the more fragile you are, the more people have allergy.’
Verity interrupted her. ‘That’s a lie! Daddy has kept me alive.’
‘And you’re here,’ pointed out Mielitta. ‘And you’re still alive. Maybe Daddy caused your allergy. Maybe he wanted an enemy so he made the Forest into one, so he could imprison you. You’re the perfect example of Perfection and where it leads!’
Bastien shushed his sister gently, then spoke up for her. ‘That’s cheap, even for you. Lashing out at a sick girl and sullying the memory of a man who can’t defend himself. You haven’t studied the walls, understood why the Citadel needs defences. Not only my father, but his father–’ he nodded at Jannlou ‘–and all the Councils for centuries, have dedicated their lives to our protection. And you think you know better?’
Mielitta swallowed. ‘All those centuries eliminating people like me,’ she said. ‘All those centuries forging people’s minds, making men and women, against their natures! I could have been a Mage-Smith. I would have been happy, found a compromise within Perfection.’
She was glad Kermon had not shown himself. She had enough complications to consider. But Jannlou was here so she added, ‘Centuries where people survived but never lived.’ His mother’s words. ‘Is that what you want for all the people of the Citadel? Are you happy that only mages keep their minds? Sorry, I mean that only male mages keep their minds? And everybody else is mentally raped.’
Hamel sneered, the effect diminished by his evident discomfort sitting on the grass, pointed boots stuck out straight in front of him. ‘You exaggerate, over-emotional like all women. History has shown what happens when women wield power. Nobody is happy with the violence that ensues. You pontificate about mental rape – such emotive language! But you’ve never risked physical rape. Perfection has kept you safe in your room, until you should marry.’
Mielitta opened her mouth to argue but Drianne’s words stopped her.
You’re being drawn onto their ground. We know marriages can be sanctified rape, that my marriage would have been so, but they will never understand that. You’re wasting words. Keep to the point.
Drianne was right. ‘We will live by our rules not yours. We hold all your children.’ Mielitta was cold, precise. ‘And these are our terms for their release. You will return to the Citadel and make changes there. Your Maturity Test will cease. Forging will no longer take place. Nobody will die because of affinity with the Forest. Those who choose to leave the Citadel may do so. Women with magecraft will have the right to be mages. All women will have the right to marry or not marry, to have children or not have children.’
‘And men? What will their rights be?’ Hamel asked sarcastically.
‘You’ll figure that out,’ Jannlou added his weight to Mielitta’s words. ‘Real men will manage just fine.’
Mielitta said. ‘But that won’t be your job. You’ve never been Chief Mage and your hostility now suggests you’re too emotional for the job.’ For the first time, she turned to the man who’d grown up heir to the Chief Mage, the man who’d fought at her side.
Jannlou didn’t hesitate. ‘There are two natural heirs to the position of Chief Mage and we should only keep the Forest to this pact if Bastien and Verity are equal leaders in the new regime.’
‘But she’s not even a mage!’ objected Hamel, his fingernails unsheathing, digging holes in the ground beside his little legs.
‘Then she can represent those who aren’t,’ snapped Mielitta. ‘I don’t like either of them but I trust Jannlou’s judgement of Citadel pol
itics. If he thinks Bastien and Verity can bring about the changes I demand and stay in power, I’m willing to negotiate with them in future.’
‘No, you have to negotiate now. I hope never to see you again after this,’ Bastien told her, then glanced at Jannlou. ‘Or your friends. What’s to stop us giving our word and then going back on it once the children are returned?’
‘You signed a blood oath,’ said Jannlou quietly.
‘Like the one we made to each other!’ Bastien spat. ‘After all I did for you. I m–’ His attempt to speak died in a choking fit. He clutched his throat, eyes bulging and face red.
‘He cannot tell you because he swore on a blood oath to keep this secret but I will,’ Jannlou spoke quietly. ‘It is my secret to tell and reflects only honour on Bastien. You should take this truth back to the Citadel. I have no magecraft and Bastien, my friend, covered for me by using his.’
‘Not possible!’ exclaimed Hamel. ‘Shenagra would have noticed! Your father!’
Sweaty and smeared from battle, he outfaced the mages’ hostility. His face was chiselled flint as he spoke.
‘Nobody examined the Chief Mage’s son too closely. Bastien and I were inseparable and his magecraft was so strong–’
‘Is so strong!’ wheezed Bastien, recovering his voice. ‘Oathbreaker!’
Jannlou shook his head. ‘I have not broken the oath of friendship. But we also owe loyalty to different causes. And people. My reasons are my own business.’
Mielitta recalled the conversation in the library between Rinduran and Bastien. Hannah and friendship in what Bastien had done for Jannlou? Or expedience, to gain power in secret before the take-over that killed Jannlou’s father. Whatever her own thoughts, Jannlou would never believe his friend to be so calculating, so there was no point telling him.
‘Your requirements are not impossible,’ Bastien told Mielitta. ‘But I have some too. The boundary remains. The Citadel stays Perfect, purified and sterile, so that my sister and those like her can live.’
They have different beliefs, Drianne reminded her. You can’t convince them.
Mielitta bit her lip but said nothing.
‘And,’ continued Bastien, ‘those who leave the Citadel, who choose the Forest, are exiled forever. Including you. We don’t want you.’ His scathing glance swept all three of them: Jannlou, Drianne and herself.
She shivered. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Not the cosy chamber in greylight. Not safety. Not the Courtship Dance and marriage to Jannlou. But four-legged prowlers and storms.
‘And if you need to discuss boundaries?’ asked Jannlou.
‘Then I will let you know.’ Bastien was curt, his expression making it clear how unlikely such an event was.
‘You will let Lady Mielitta know,’ Jannlou corrected.
‘Oh, I don’t think she’s a lady any longer,’ Bastien said.
‘If not, then she’s much, much more.’
‘Enough of swapping petty insults,’ Mielitta told them, uncomfortable that she was enjoying the exchange. ‘I agree to your terms.’ Drianne and Jannlou nodded. ‘When the new Chief Mage has signed his blood oath, you may go. The children will return before nightfall.’
Watched closely by Jannlou, Bastien drew his knife, scored his hand and swore by the blood beads to enact each of the demands Mielitta had made.
‘Is the wording tight? Can he wriggle out of any of our demands?’ she asked Jannlou quietly.
He shook his head. ‘The blood oath merges words to intention. Any attempt to twist or renege, poisons the oath-breaker. If he’s a Mage,’ he added. And she knew that Jannlou was not a mage, as Bastien had known for years. She could only guess what they had sworn to each other.
Jannlou spoke low, for her ears only. ‘I keep my promises, without being forced.’
It was none of her business. ‘Go,’ Mielitta told the mages. ‘If you come back, come in peace. I hope one day you will be open to the Forest.’
‘One day,’ Verity told her, ‘I will find you and kill you for what you’ve done.’
‘Then you’ll still be alive,’ Mielitta replied, ‘and I will be pleased for you.’
The mages vanished, Bastien carrying Verity, as Kermon had done earlier.
As if summoned by Mielitta’s thoughts, the Apprentice Mage-Smith appeared through the trees, his pace heavy as a man three times his age. His face showed no strange marks of Nature bar those of years lived, too many years, in one day. He held something tightly in his hand and his mouth worked as he tried to speak to Mielitta.
‘I got this back for you,’ he told her, holding out the object to her. When she’d taken it, he sat down hard on the ground and wept.
Mielitta unclenched her fist but she had known straight away what she was holding. The Apprentice Mage-Smith’s master-work, its Damascene steel bee-wing patterns sparkling clean, lay in her hand. Steelwing. Kermon had retrieved her arrowhead from his master’s body and taken its defilement into himself. She could not refuse such a gift though her heart bled a dirty signature oath for all of them and what they’d suffered this day. And must yet suffer.
‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘I thought– I thought it was you. That you’d done… those things… in the Maturity Ceremony.’
He looked at her, his face ashen. He touched the arrow-head in her hand, uttered words that cut like a sharpened blade. ‘And now we know the truth. And it’s worse.’
She shook her head, blinked back the tears, hardening herself. ‘We must make one more decision. One of us must go back to the Citadel with the children. And live there. For the sake of the Forest and the future.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘The children all ate some honey, carry the germ of love for the Forest, but you heard Bastien. Their life in the Citadel will nurture only hatred for all of this.’ Mielitta waved her arms round the glade and a visiting party of bees skittered wildly then settled back on her shoulder, nuzzling.
She didn’t need to convince her friends of the Forest’s vitality. ‘One of us has to make sure their nature flourishes. Without support, it might wither and die. With one of us to keep their minds open, these children might open the Citadel to a different way, one day.’
The future of the Citadel lay asleep on pine-needles, tree stumps and warm rocks, while shafts of sunlight played on the soft down of their cheeks and arms. In the golden glow, the children looked like cherubs, pastoral images plucked fresh from the walls’ images of paradise. How did such children grow into ambitious, spiteful haters? Did forging do all the damage or had Declan merely worked with the material he was given, shaped and cut what was already there?
You had to believe in a better future. Mielitta looked at the grime-streaked faces of her comrades, loved each one beyond her own life. As bees do.
‘So I will go back,’ she told them. ‘Bastien and Verity will accept me if I go with the children, offer them allegiance. It will be a coup for them.’
The protest was immediate.
‘Verity has sworn to kill you.’
‘Bastien won’t stop her!’
‘What about your bees?’
Our people, the bees queried, anxious. The Forest needs you.
‘They will understand,’ Mielitta said. ‘The children are my people too. I can’t abandon them to the life I grew up in. Now that Rinduran has gone, I can talk the mages round. I was born for something. They know that! They’ll be curious, want to know what the walls mean by their actions.’
She could see their scepticism. ‘It’s not self-sacrifice.’ She grinned weakly. ‘I could go into the walls. I’m sure they’d let me now. I can find out where I’m from, maybe meet my real parents. The walls are part of the Citadel too and we know so little about them.’
Us, pleaded her bees.
‘No,’ said Kermon. ‘You are needed here. I’ll go.’
No, he is too gentle, Drianne objected. I’ll go.
Jannlou’s deep voice cut in. ‘I’m the best choice. Neither Bastien nor
his sister can hurt me. You should not be the one to judge what is best, Mielitta. You can’t see all the options clearly.’
Like house-hunter scouts, commented the bees.
Mielitta shook her head, besieged on all sides. Human leadership was not easy in a bee democracy. ‘I don’t want to but I owe it to you all to discuss this. Even the bees are harassing me so we’ll do it their way. I’ve had my say. We should take turns to say why each of us is the best choice, like bee scouts do when they’re house-hunting.
‘Each one reports on the potential home she’s found, dancing the details, describing how well it fits a hive’s needs. The swarm considers the dances, the reports, and copies the strongest dance until they all agree. They choose the home that really is best. And Kermon’s right.’ She sighed. ‘One bee can’t choose, especially not the queen, who’s never foraged or scouted. The swarm doesn’t leave the branch until all the bees dance the same decision, until they all agree. So let’s do this.
Each of us will start with the same number of scout bees, dancing for us, showing how good our proposal is and when everyone has had a say, we’ll know who’s the best choice, by the reaction of the swarm.’
She sent out all her bees in a humming swarm to hang from the nearest low branch, told them to send scouts to investigate each person. She welcomed her own scouts, reminding them of her arguments, making them waggle with enthusiasm, dancing on her behalf.
When Jannlou, Kermon and Drianne were each hosting several scouts, Mielitta was ready. ‘Drianne, go next and Kermon can translate your speech for Jannlou to hear.’ She glared at the Apprentice Mage-Smith. ‘And remember I can hear every word she says so don’t cut or embroider!’
I’m the youngest so it’s easiest for me to stay with the children, be one of them, gain their trust, Drianne began, stroking a scout bee that almost purred on her hand. I have magecraft so I can learn how to use it in the Citadel, become a mage, maybe even a Councillor. Looking like this, I’m safe from unwanted attentions and my magecraft is strong so I can look after myself.
